Board of Health: August 13, 2024

Transcript captured from MHTV’s Vimeo auto-captioning. No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

0:03 August 13th. Um, welcome everyone, welcome to the in the audience. Welcome to the board on a beautiful night. Um, and the first item on the agenda, I think you’re going to take out of order. We don’t need to have a vote to take out of order, do we? You do not. You can, you don’t have to answer. Okay. Uh, I’d like to introduce the idea of community health as I deal with the issues that the first three issues. Um, at the last meeting, the board graciously, uh, appointed, uh, a vice chair for community health, and probably people in the audience and anyone who read it in the newspaper wonder why do we need one? And I wanted to spend 30 seconds

0:50 or maybe two minutes on, uh, why I think that’s necessary. And I actually thought, I’m sorry, I’m an old professor, but I have a handout if anybody wants to, if anyone wants to see it. Um, well, I think the board would like to see. Yeah. No, and this is an article appeared in one of the, uh, um, health system, um, journals that I read fairly regularly. And it’s consistent with the trend of where I think public health is going in the community and the country. And basically the title obviously says Community

1:37 as the full partner. I wouldn’t expect anyone to read this article. I’ll send them a copy if they want it. But there are two sentences that are worthwhile. That is they represent why I think the board having a vice chair for community health makes sense. And the first one, the lower left hand corner of your page says that public health is too often seen as the sole purview of the public health department rather than an all of society effort. And that comes from an assessment of where the United States failed in the pandemic.

2:23 And, and one of the clear reasons for that failure was the disconnect between the, uh, the top of the, a power chain, particularly the CDC and the people on the front lines in the local public health departments. And so there’s a, there’s an overriding effort to change the CDC, and this is an argument or article that’s saying at the same time, we have to change the municipal, the city, the, the county public health departments to be much more robust in the way we approach our responsibilities. Okay? And the second one, on the lower right hand corner,

3:12 communities must be treated as experts in the lived experiences and the local assets and the barriers that deeply affect health, health in their community. So what now? Ambitious goal. But what I would like to do in as vice chair of community health, I would like to, to have us all work, hopefully once we get to transfer station as the dominant issue that we’ve studied in, in this meeting for the year and a half that I’ve been here. Um, but that, that we should be working very hard to bring the community as much as possible into these meetings.

4:00 And at the same time, we should be out. And, and I know that, that, that Andrew and, and certainly Elaine and Tommy, um, uh, uh, to do that. And, and I am trying very hard to learn as much as I can about the community, uh, as rapidly as I can while I’m, while I’m here. Okay. So that’s why I think we need it. We need this, this is a, this is a trend and, and it, this, this isn’t driven solely by the pandemic, the initiative to make the local public health departments much more important.

4:46 Started in 2017 with a trend that was called in, in, uh, public health circles as as public Health 3.0. Um, it, it got paused in the pandemic, uh, because of the, the problems of the pandemic. But now this community partnership is coming through. Can you just just talk a little bit about the, uh, 0.30 yeah. It said the Public Health 3.0 basically said that this table should be the strategic

5:30 provider for the community in which we live. It should be the, the, the, the, um, the, the strategic driver that suggests what we, what we, how do we fulfill our role as a, as a board and a department to protect and improve the health of the community. And public health 3.0 suggested that the, the strategic input into that should come much more out of the local environment than in the centralized FDA and CDC, the way it was at the time.

6:18 Again, it, it, it, it, it got, it got held up a little bit by the pandemic because we did need central control. You, you had to fight a war. You, you needed the generals. But, um, basically, uh, uh, this, by the way, this article is written by two people in mass, four, four authors, two Massachusetts. And I’m, I’m gonna work at trying to get in contact with them and see how it goes. But basically the issue is, um, um, that this body should really be dealing with strategic intent long term. How do we make this community healthier? Um, well,

7:04 Uh, just to interrupt for one minute, um, last year when you offered to have a long range planning committee Yeah. Which I really thought was, Well, I still believe it, but I think we, I think that that’s what we were driving at. If, if you read this article, what are, one of the things it says is that the first thing that public health local people have to do is to rebuild the trust that the, the lo the municipal health departments and Boards of Health had before the pandemic. The system was such in the pandemic, the trust, no one trusted anybody, and there was trust lost at our level.

7:51 So I think we should work together. I think the three of us have to work together, regardless of history or anything else. We’ve got to build trust. The community’s gotta trust us. We’re willing to work, work together on behalf of the community. Don’t Forget, we are elected and we are the community, the three of us. Well, you know, I have a lot of debate on how we interface with the department, but yeah, no, but The three of us, of course, The community, of course we are. And we can’t spend any, any more of our collective time on anything. But where do we want, where do we want, how do we make marble head healthier? And I’ll come back to that as I, as I close. So I think that the, the marblehead, the subcommittee

8:39 that you all set up, uh, two years ago, three years ago, the, the Mental Health Task force, We did it in, uh, in 20 is a perfect example of how the community is coming together and dealing with an issue of improving the health status of this whole community. It, and, and the, we had a, the, the mental health task force met last week, and it asked me to make two requests of, of the board and the body. One is, we really do need to address the membership for at least four of the people who were identified as members two or three or four years ago.

9:27 Um, uh, have moved on, left, moved out. So we need to reestablish the membership. And the second thing is that now that this board, in addition to our sub-board, is, uh, very much involved in substance abuse and, and those sorts of issues, but we should have a closer relationship, not just bridge through one member going there, but maybe every so often we come together. And, um, many of you know, obviously I’m sitting in the seat that Joanne Miller had before. She was one of the key players with the other members of the board who established that task force. That the chair of that now is, is Mark Labone, who is,

10:15 um, a faculty member at Salem State University. He’s a, he, well, he is a great God, which is important. But in addition to that, he is a clinical psychologist and much of his private practice has to do with, um, troubled children and parents who are having, who are having challenges. And he’s, he’s got great insight, great experience, and he knows a lot of people. And so he would very much like to one ‘cause of the crazy open meeting laws, can’t talk to us together without either bringing the meeting here or meet with the two of you one-on-one, and, and have that discussion.

11:00 But he has made great inroads in six months with the school system. Um, we actually may get, uh, I don’t wanna jinx it, but, but, but, but hopefully we will have students on the task force when school opens in the fall, or at least we’re working on that, both at the student level and at the teacher and administrative level. And that’s, that’s the depth of, and the kind of understanding that someone like Mark has in terms of understanding the pulse of youth in, in this community, because he sees, he sees in his practice a lot of them.

11:45 And, and then to me, that’s a perfect example of how we, the board and the department are partnering with the community to make the community better. And so, one question I have, like we, uh, I think you, when you made it a representative body, say the p the police had the should be there. I think the police chief was identified, can we go to a generic title? Somebody from the police should be there and not have a name. Were allowed to do that. That Was my understanding. Because you weren’t, so now obviously you had a member of the Board of Health, you had a member

12:31 of the counseling center, you had a member of the select board, um, your faculty member. Yeah, a faculty member, a member of the police department. And yes, originally it was, you know, um, you know, like the select board, they’re gonna assign an individual to it, but if that individual can’t come, another member of the select board can come. Well, so could, and so Same, like similar with the police department. If the chief is unavailable to come, he can send a, send a representative from, or If he chooses to put a representative. Exactly. Honestly, I wouldn’t even use the chief. Not nothing against Dennis, but it’s, uh, you have half that police force that grew up Here. Well, I guess the question of the board, and maybe it’s more my question ‘cause I don’t know the system very well. Could we in a sense, have a list of people

13:17 who are friends of the task force? And as long as four or five of them a quorum are there, we can proceed. Do we have to specify ex officio reasons why they’re there? We, we initially, we initially set up a, a, a a system where we have asked for applicants. Oh. And that’s how people applied. And they filled, we said they should fill one of these slots. And some were, uh, people of the profession. We asked for that. And, um, we got applications and that’s how we filled the first, the first, uh, round. You guys read this paper before it came out, We wrote it. This is really you, this is real community integration

14:06 into making Marblehead healthier. The Only the people that were put on that board, probably aside from the chief, were people from the community, including the, uh, principal of the Marblehead High School, which Was, that’s one of the people who everybody loves, but he’s gone. Right. But, but he, he also offers to Serve. Okay. Alright. Well, that’s the request. So I think you’ve given us the task force some flexibility to re revitalize the membership. Yeah. So we, what You’d wanna do is have the board decide, you know, you’re gonna say, I wanna see 10, I, you know, I, I just throwing numbers up. I wanna see 10 members of the Marblehead Mental Health Task force.

14:52 Um, and that would, you know, that’s your, your body, that’s your committee. Obviously a quorum would be six members of those people. Um, but, you know, the board needs to decide, you know, are they gonna appoint people to this or are you gonna say, You say board, you mean this board or that board? No, this board, because It, you know, it’s, it’s under the control of this board. This, it’s this board’s subcommittee. Well, Well, originally we appointed them because they were the only group. Correct. The only body, once they formed, Joanne would come Yep. Ask us, tell us that she had a, a, an applicant to fill a place and we would accept it. Then we went beyond that and we said that the task force has full right. To appoint their own members. So you’re gonna person from the press here right now,

15:39 you can request for applications if you wish. Okay. And so the board’s okay with having that a, you know, Whatever. Unless we Re a certain number and then just, you know, obviously you’d need a quorum to have a meeting. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. Okay. So do you wanna make the request or you wanna wait,

15:57 Say what? My request would be? I, so To ask for applicants Oh, equal something in our news and brief section. Uh, you, I’m gonna, okay, then let’s make a couple of requests. I’m gonna make sure. Okay. More than happy to do that. All right. So go ahead. Why don’t we stop, go there. Then I’ll go to, uh, the, the second item, uh, on the three of, of the agenda. And, uh, uh, Andrew, well, First we’re gonna request applicant’s for the mental health task with the community. Is that correct? Well, but let’s wait and I’ll come back because I may make another request of the press. Okay. Um, Andrew gave, gave the next issue, uh, the title communication. One of the really smart things that, um,

16:44 the mental health task force has done is it’s developed a partnership with the current and the mental health task force is committed to publish an article on mental health. Um, in the current was originally, I guess, monthly they didn’t get it, month get it, did it didn’t get it done monthly. Um, but, um, now we’re committed every other month. And I, I am a recovering academic, so I don’t mind doing some of some of those things. And, um, I have proposed to the board, I sent the board members and Andrew an article that I have written for, um,

17:33 for the current that will be published next week if the board okay. It in principle. And, but I would like to have, um, kind of an overall approval that as long as I stay within those things that are within my experience and background, that I could write them and send them out. I’m happy to share with the board, but because of the crazy open meeting law, we can’t talk about it. So, but in any event, the article that I’ve written it, or hardly an article, thousand words, it’s a short guide to understanding substance disorders. We talk an awful lot about overdose. We talk a lot about people dying and all of that.

18:18 But I would guess there’s not very many people who feel they understand the system. So what I’ve tried to do in 970 words is to try to give some definitions, some examples and why it might work. And that’s the kind of article, or that’s the kind of communication that I think we, the board working with the department ought to be sending out to the community. I would love, that’s why didn’t wanna bring it up right away. I would love to go back and have the current, see if they would take an article from the health system board and, and sub-board and department every month.

19:04 Because there’s a lot of things that I think we should be writing about Andrew and I, and maybe we’re just boring and decent people, but we’ve spent a lot of time talking about H five and one.

19:17 It is potentially the next PO pandemic.

19:23 I think if we’re gonna be trusted in the community, we should let people know before the, the shoe falls or what’s going on out there. And maybe the two of us could write an article or put together a page. Hey, what, why does this bird flu stuff and why are my chicken thighs costing so much more? And it’s because 13 states now have massive, uh, kill killings of, of birds who had a, chickens who had bird flu rate five had one in them. Another article that I think is, is, is very much like this. Um, we talk about dealing with substance abuse and mental health.

20:10 You know, when I went to medical school, the brain was a black box. We didn’t know much about it. And there were only two groups of people who dealt with it. You had the psychiatrist who were Freudian types, but they could give drugs. And you had the psychologists who weren’t Freudian, they were very practical people, but they didn’t write prescriptions. But now we have a whole bunch of people out there helping. Would it be a useful article to have a, a glossary of terms of professionals, paraprofessionals and peers out there to provide he help to the community. I I, you know, my wife’s a social worker. I didn’t, as a medical student, I didn’t know how much

20:57 therapy and mental health involvement social workers had. I not, don’t, don’t put that in that article. It’s a public meeting. So you should log what you said. You, you might not be able to go home today Very unfriendly. No, but I think that would be a reason. And then we, we had somebody from the, uh, two people from the nanny project the other day. Well, in a way that’s peer therapy. That’s a, that’s a big, big deal. Um, that in the evolution of mental health care, it’s, uh, become very important to have people

21:45 who are suffering in some way to talk to people who have suffered in that same way. Mm-Hmm. And recovered the n Project is gonna help with that, but it’s, it’s really back to, it’s, uh, probably aa, the, the 12 point system, all of that. But that, a simple explanation of things like that, I think would probably be pretty useful. Now what, so we would like, if, if the current in writing about this meeting Yeah. Right now, our, our arrangement, I mean, if I may chair through you, um, uh, right now we have an agreement that’s every other month, and we’d need to, like recon, we’d have to go back to the drawing board and,

22:31 and have a conversation about that. I will say that a lot of the writing that has appeared through that mental health, and there’s nothing wrong with it. It has been very academic, and we want it to be accessible to people, so it really hits home for them. Um, and so, so we’ve kind of like cut back a little bit, you know, so when you’re thinking about writing articles for the paper, like think about it from the perspective of like, you know, this person used to have an addiction and now they’ve gone through that. People wanna hear those types of stories. People who’ve kind of, you know, been through the system rather than have like, you know, glossary of you know, what, what addiction is. I mean, that’s helpful, but Yeah. So You want them to personalize it more. Yes, exactly. That’s kind Of story to be at a sixth grade. Sixth grade reading level. Yes, exactly. And You want educate more.

23:17 You’re trying to, what you’re asking or saying, sorry, but you’re asking educating and they’re asking nos. I think there’s a different type of, Now we have a doc speaking, we had a journalist speaking thing. I just know. But that’s, I Gonna talk from the audience maybe, Maybe like a mixture of both. You Know, I think that, well, I’m just trying to brainstorm with you here. I’m not trying to interfere, but it seems to me the things you’re talking about, ed, are educating the public and to some extent, new the news is educating, but it’s also a different kind of a different, it’s educating in a different way. Yes. Is what I’m, so, I, I just wanna start, can I interrupt for one moment because something’s really troubling me. Yeah. Because, um, first of all, we’re,

24:04 we’re on one chocolate for a long time, so we’re gonna wrap this up a little Bit. Well, I’m gonna wrap the three together. Yeah. Okay, good. But the other thing is, um, we have someone from the current here, and we feel close to this newspaper, but there is another newspaper that’s delivered to Marblehead, and they are on, they’re always online. And I think that we, we have to give them their due. Um, and whether it’s even sale news or whatever, I don’t know how we’re gonna work this, but I, I don’t want people to think that the Marblehead would’ve, health is only giving news to the county and maybe the mental health task force is, but I would like to make sure that we are equal opportunity. Don’t forget, I come from the, uh, the Marblehead task force against discrimination. And I don’t wanna discriminate against any group. Well,

24:52 Today, what I would like to have though, was approval from the two of you. But I can sort of think that you’ll probably approve things that I write without. But the think having have a month delay waiting for, I think that, I mean, if you’re putting it out, not saying like, well, Tom already agreed without saying, you know, asking me, then that’s one thing. But if you’re put, I think the more information you put out, the better. That’s, you know, I, that’s how I, I think if it’s coming from a board member, that the board really should see it first. We don’t have to correct it. We just should see it first. And that’s my feeling. Because there are some things that We, okay, but if you, I don’t, is there a way, You said something that I’m really not sure about? You told me that we failed and the, and the, uh, pandemic, and I think we did a wonderful job. Oh, I think, I think most people agree we failed as a country.

25:38 We country. But there’s, that’s a discussion. I don’t, I mean, There’s nothing wrong, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sharing information. It’s just deliberation. Deliberation happens. Like, you could send out an article to your board members, but you guys can’t talk about it, and you can’t deliberate on it. You can just say, this is a bit of information, but no back and forth through emails field As Chair. I think that’s how, Andrew, is that correct? I feel as chair that we would like to see it before it goes out. I don’t wanna open up the paper and see that Tom Varo, I, I wrote, but he speaking with the globe. Not Anymore. He’s, I Wrote Well, that’s the, that’s the subtlety that I, I have to take. Yes. You’re not a, you’re not a, a member of the community anymore. You’re a board member. I think there’s a, you can separate that. I think you just say

26:23 What the Globe did. We wrote the letter, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Globe and what the globe, the way they do it, uh, they, they’ve listed me and Joanne and it said the views expressed are there and not of the board. Yeah, Exactly. But I would think we might need legal counsel on that.

26:47 Is that what you guys would like? Well, I feel that I, I’m one person that feels that, um, I’m sure when Dr. Zaro writes, he’s gonna write, you know, something that is professionally done and that it is accurate. But I think that it would, it, but I don’t wanna open up the paper and read it for the first time. But he’s only A, he’s writing it as him. And so if we, if we make it so we have to review him, we’re giving him an anchor and just making everything drag along longer. So it take he’s, He’s got, uh, 60 days to do it because they’ve gonna put it out every third, every other month.

27:25 Well, eventually, most, I I, in terms of things like that, I wait till the last minute and then I write my article, and then I don’t want the paper to wait. Well, okay. So I, I understand. Let’s, let’s, But once we are elected and, and we’re, you’re writing on about this, what we do as a, as a body, uh, this body. Yes. I think that we need to agree on what, what if you decided you wanted to write about, I don’t know, something that we don’t really interested in. And if I said in there that it does not, it does not reflect what the board or the other board members believe. That’s not enough. I think it is. No, not when you’re a board member. I think that’s,

28:12 I’m happy to be queen. You mind, would you mind if, if legal counsel just reviewed that he, because No, I have, if we agree, because We have to, we both seeing this, is it okay to go? I, I think it is so good that I think we should discuss this at the table. Oh, okay. Well, that’s, well, I don’t know. Then nobody’s gonna read it. We want to get in, have it, But it, it, it, it’s full of information and I don’t think it should just be dormant. Let me, let me tell the, the issue about the, the, it’s not just the difference between teaching and news. It’s teaching at one level. I, I’m a I was a university professor, never taught high school or grade school.

28:57 And what I’m told the current wants and everyone wants is an article at sixth grade. At a sixth grade reading level. The way we’ve got around that for two articles now, which I think is genius. This this is classic. ‘cause the, one of the really great people on the, on the, on the, the subcommittee took my article, the last one, which was the Review of the Anxious Generation. And she fed it into an AI program and told the AI to make sure it was at the sixth grade level. So this now, at least according to her AI review, took my stuff

29:44 and made it at the, uh, sixth grade level. So we, we can do do it that way, but let’s, let’s see, let’s see how it goes. So, um, all right. So my third issue for community. If our mission, if our mission a, uh, as a board and a department, somehow together, is to improve the health status. Not just protect, but the, the mission and the, the current report of, of Tom Report says we protect and, uh, promote. To promote, to promote health. We need to understand where the health status

30:30 of the community is today. And I would like to know of my fellow board members and colleagues, um, the, again, the Marblehead Mental Health Task force worked with UMass Boston to get a proposal to look at the mental health status of the community. I thought that was an okay idea, but I said, why do we wanna deal with just mental health? Why don’t we deal with all status? And so I went back to the UMass Boston and they reinforced that and said, yeah, that’s the way they normally do it. When you asked for mental health, we said we could do it, but we rather do health status.

31:17 So I have a, a, a proposal from UMass Boston that says that they could come to Marblehead over the next year or so, and they would, they, let me just read it. They will conduct a study focusing on the health needs of the marble health population across the lifespan. A whole person wellness model will be used to guide the project to establish a baseline of health needs, challenges, and strengths. The information generated by this project will aid in justifying how and where resources are being a allocated

32:04 to meet community needs. Are you putting that in emotion? ‘cause I think it’s fabulous. Well, I, I just actually all I wanted today, uh, as long as the two of you are OI will, I will wanna flesh this out and make it work. I don’t wanna spend a lot of time. And then the board says nobody one wanna do that. Well, they’re gonna do the study. I think now that’s, well, we have to flesh out what, what one some of these words mean. Um, I’m told, um, Terry, uh, McDonough of the counseling participated when Salem did this. Apparently Salem did it. And Salem presumably, according to Terry, did a great job with it and was very happy in how it’s approached.

32:51 Um, but I would like to, we want, we want to customize it for Marvel at it’s, it’s smaller. We have probably, I think probably more Does Salem have like a community center? Does Salem have, but any of that, i, I think we need, and I’m happy think we certainly have. I’m happy work on it.

33:13 Um, the question will, will then be funding. I think that we ought to be able, and one of the things that I think we ought to be able to do is get funding, uh, somewhere out in the community what they cost at part of Yeah. What they offered was $35,000. Really. I’m not gonna, I was gonna just have them come for free. Well, but I, I believe, uh, I’m not up on the current, current hospital Medicare issues, but I believe health systems are required to do a health status profile of the communities in which they operate. And Andrew sent me a, a report

34:00 of the Marblehead study, and it was paid for by Mass General Brigham. So what I would be prepared to do is to try to find at least partial funding in the community. I don’t think that the board should be paying for the whole thing. So if the board is okay, I’m willing to go to that next level and for provide the, well, can you write a grant for it? Well, we have to figure out who’s gonna see the grant now. Frustrating. The, I, again, I’m new here. It seems to me that the, that the Massachusetts legislature, what I’m reading in the globe and hearing in the radio is they left an awful lot

34:46 of things, uh, uh, not done. There was a legisl, there was legislation for 1 0 1 or something like that was gonna put a lot more money into local public health agencies. And maybe we could have used some of that money. But in any event, if the board’s at least willing to accept the next level of detail, I’m willing to work at, uh, fleshing this out and see where we might go for, for money. Yeah, No, I was curious when you wrote about it, I was like, how would they even do this? So yeah, I’m very curious to see how it is conducted. Well, I would like to see it. Well, Andrew sent one, I haven’t read it yet, but Andrew, Andrew sent me what he saw from, well,

35:31 you, you both have heard of it. I, that’s the first time hearing about it. Yeah. So sale hospital is required To conduct one every three years. And so obviously Marvel Head falls within their jurisdiction. And so we’re part of that study. Obviously the surrounding communities are part of that as well. Um, so I mean, obviously it would be interesting to talk to BU to see. All right. What, what additional information would you give us that’s more Marblehead centric? Or are we gonna be seen this exact same inform, is It BU or University of Mass? That’s UMAS Boston. Oh, UMass Boston. Mine. Just like, how did they get the information from the Pete Survey? Survey? All survey that’s, I talked, actually said how many people from Marblehead they actually surveyed.

36:17 It gets pretty, it would have to go to the town meeting probably, or, or something like that. So, so budgeting, stuff like that. Yeah, this would be an FY 26 budget request. So do we see the, uh, the three year study from Salem Hospitals? It’s online. I mean, I can provide it to everybody. Yeah. It’s, it’s always available. These are all public documents. How long is this circuit? When? I don’t know. I’d have to go through all the different questions and stuff like that. Yeah, I can definitely, yeah, very easily to send it out to everybody. When, when Was the last, we don’t know how much. 20, we don’t know how much Salem Hospital added to what UMass Boston gave them. So we’ll have to work at that. Yeah, I don’t, I don’t know if you’d be able to pull, look at that document, say, all right, this is what UMass Boston added to it, versus this is what came just from the survey and stuff like that.

37:04 Okay. But, but, but what I, what I hear to my left and far left, is it no one yet is saying, over my dead body, will I approve it? No, I, okay. Well, I think we then we, we move forward. So if you, uh, have any creative writing to do about the meeting, the first 15 minutes of the first half hour of the meeting today, if you could just ask anyone who might wanna serve on the Marblehead Mental Health Task Force and regarding articles that might be submitted for publication in the two community newspapers, what would people like to know a little bit more? What health issues, um,

37:49 are there out there that people would like, someone who knows a little bit to, to put it at a reasonable level and make it go forward? I mean, I really think that we oh, the community in as much information as we can give them intelligently so that people can make their own decisions. So when, when something bad happens, like a a an H five N one pandemic, when the food supply is animal protein, food supply is in trouble, then they will, gee, oh, we heard the Board of Health talk about that. And there was an article on the current

38:35 and weekly news about that. Um, but that’s I think why we do community health.

38:44 Well, thank you for your work and for you, very sincere presentation and for the information that you’ve been giving us, because This is exciting. This is a great place to do this. I, I have to say, just one more sentence, I’m on the charter committee and I have, I think I’ve been on a lot of committees in a lot of places in my life, and that’s one of the most pleasant, powerful, um, intellectually satisfying groups that I’ve ever seen. This is an amazing town. And we should lead in areas where the town, uh, the town can benefit. Well, I’m gonna wait for you to tell us that this is the most satisfying.

39:32 I’m happy. That’ll be. I I I, when we finally get to transfer station, when Andrew stands up, see, I can’t think of anything board needs to do here on the Transfer station. Danielle say it’s the most satisfying. Alright, so I have in writing, we’ve, uh, we’ve covered the mental health and community health. So the wellness was that your, that was a deal That You said top three were yours. So you only the top two. Right. So, and, and you’ve done everything that you wanted to. Now, let’s, before we go on, um, I’ve read this and I think it’s a great paper. And I think that I would like to discuss this at, at this table. I mean, I don’t think it should just go, as I said, go warm it. If you put this in the article in the paper, um, where,

40:19 what else are we gonna do with it? Well, do we want to publish it after it’s in the, the paper so that the audience will talk to us about it? Or do Whichever way? Generally what happens is we discuss something at the table and then it’s presented through the journal, the journalists, through the paper, through the reporter, through one, the one report that reports it. But So, so obviously with the, the articles and if they’re coming to the board or, you know, however that’s gonna work, they, they can be part of the meeting mill. They can be the, an attachment to the meeting minutes. Um, so obviously all the meeting minutes here posted, um, the, the, you know, the article can be posted online as well. That’s a Good idea. But I,

41:04 why does the current wanna publish it if we’re No, Obviously like, you know, not many people Check the meeting agenda. So, so obviously, you know, We, we Would make sure that the current or the newspapers receive, you know, people are going to there, but later on. And so like, once it’s published, we could, the board could talk about it and they could save it, you know? So you’re, you’re saving a document to make it part of the record.

41:33 But do we react to our board member or do we react to the publish public publication on the paper that Is gonna be doing business at the table? I mean, Right. So I think that we should do the business first and the people will read, read it and read what the doctor has to say and what, uh, and what we say as, as input that maybe we wanna work in one of these areas. There, there’s always a a level of, you know, Why don’t we Spoiling the, They are doing this every 60 days. So we’ve got this now. Um, why don’t we, through Andrew, write some of our thoughts and then we can ask you to re No, you have to, you can’t debate. Like you can’t date debate through me. Well, then we’ll have to, then I’d like to put it on next agenda

42:19 If, if, if I could. It’s too good a paper to, it’s too good a paper to just put to publish and, and leave the, But it, it’s kind of late anyway, this was due in July and so we waited for the August meeting. Um, and so I would really like to get it to them this week and then we can do it. Uh, I’m happy that you, you’re, you’re wanna talk about it, but I don’t see a problem about bringing it up in the vice chair’s report next time and we talk about it. What does it mean for the community? Alright, let’s do it this time. But we’ll be reacting to what was published.

43:06 Yeah. On the paper. Well, Maybe people come to the meeting. Okay. Are you in favor of the going Out? I’m in favor of him doing it whenever he wants to. So, well Now I can, we, our work together. One of the things of the things the community needs to see is the three of us working together. Let’s, let’s release this and we’ll, we’ll probably get some re response. ‘cause it’s a, it’s a, and, um, whatever you need. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And they may or may not put it out before we, Before we, that’s Right. I mean, it’s their, it’s to their discretion, but they know that if the other paper’s getting it, they better get it out faster.

43:54 So, ‘cause we’ve been, we’ve been down that road before, so, um, so we’ll move on to the wellness update. Um, so Really with the wellness update, obviously, you know, you wanna hold it at the community center Yeah. In January. Yeah. And so you want me to go to them and secure a date and obviously Yeah. I mean, obviously a Saturday or something. Yeah, right. Yeah. Ideally a whatever, ideally a Saturday, but, but potentially a Sunday could. Yeah. Well, what, do you have any plans? Like how many tables you want? How far? Well, Let’s obviously I, with seeing what we can secure for space. Yeah. Think I’ll start with the gym and then see if, well, Are you handling it or is If I can handle it, I can talk to Lisa about the space. He’s, yeah, Andrew said that he knows all the context for, you know, trying to, so

44:40 It’s your recommendation, but it’s gonna come from the director. Uh, what, for the date? No, for the, for for the program? No, I’m just gonna No, no, no. He’s just getting a date. Yeah, No, I’m done with the program. The program, what it would be is just, um, places in the community gyms, uh, you know, couple things like that, you know, ballet, whatever, CrossFit, showing what they offer that improves physical health. Um, putting out a table, doing whatever they want. Maybe there’s, there’ll be a raffle. There would Be more than physical. There. Be mental health and Be Yeah, it can be, it can be Question all kinds of Areas. Absolutely. What mar So it’s basically showcasing what Marette has to offer to marble headers. I’m hoping, and I, I know I’ve talked to a few of ‘em that they’d offer up some raffle prizes. It’d be great if every table had one. I’ll, I’ll put in a pair of Bruin tickets.

45:25 I just wanted, I just wanna say that the wellness isn’t just about, um, fitness. It has to be No, it’s not. No, but they, areas of wellness No, it is, but, but I mean, fit, fit, physical health and mental health are connected. I mean, they can be independent, but they are also connected. And so it should be all of it and yeah, that’s what it would be.

45:47 And, and this, uh, uh, substance and, and Those wouldn’t be there. No. So those Z could be there. No, not that, that’s not substance abuse. Yeah, that’s the, you know, there could be, well there could be nutritionists, there could be all that stuff, but no, there’s something, I mean, the next item is Yep. For that. Well, that’s A program. But I think that if people wanna come and, and if they have something to offer in other areas, I don’t think that we should let Well, you have to gimme an example of what you’re talking about. Say if COPE wants to come and have a table, you’re gonna say they can’t come. No, I’m not, I’m not gonna say anyone can’t come. If they wanna come, they can come. It’s, uh, I mean, I just don’t want it to go off the rails and just be something that’s, you know, all of a sudden have everything in there when it was, you know,

46:33 it was the focus of something I had to Hmm. A focus on wellness. Yeah. So wellness is Ing Okay. Yeah, We will Take a look at this. Let me go back to Lisa, take a look at the space. Um, we’ll see, you know, approximately how many vendors that we could have in there. Mm-Hmm. Um, I will ask her what the potential to use the dining room and the lobby and see if we’re able to, you know, I think you need strategically set up the tables so you know. Oh, Yeah, totally. Okay. Can you use the gym? Yeah. Yeah. That’s where I, yeah, that’s where I was picturing. Yep. But, you know, if we had an overabundance of participants Yeah, no, you, you’d want people to be able to walk in, walk around to all the different tables, um, which could include the cafeteria and stuff like that. Yeah. They could have tables set up in there,

47:19 but let me see how many tables we could potentially have and stuff like that. So, um, if you do it in rows like they’ve done before, I Think I would, I would probably have it set up. So all that, everything’s on the outside. Mm-Hmm. So people are walking, you know, keeping people separated, so there’s room to talk generally they’ve had, um, but yeah, like kind of outside, let’s Start with the outside, and then if you have to go in the middle, you go In. Yeah. But you know, if you have to go in the middle, that’s where maybe we, you know, take up the cafeteria and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so let me see how many participants we, you know, we handle. I’d like to encourage you not to, to single out and then We, I’m not Singling anything up, but what I’m, what the idea behind it is to have, show what Marblehead has to offer. So it’s, that’s what I’m trying to keep it, you know, something that’s local in what Marblehead has.

48:04 Okay. You know, so that’s,

48:08 and that’s why I’m saying not go off the rails where like all of a sudden PVS coming in and Danvers is coming in. Like there’s too much I’m, I Understand. Yeah. Yep. So it’s really gonna be, you know, Marblehead businesses, um, for physical health, mental healthcare. Yeah. You know? Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe our, our Nonprofits too. Mar accounts. Oh yeah, totally. That’s fine. You know, all that. And, And a public health nurse might wanna have a table or, Yeah. I mean, we’ll, we’ll figure that out. Um,

48:45 So, um, the substance abuse program, I, I did speak, uh, or I didn’t speak, I wrote to Kathleen from the Drug Story Theater. She’s their, um, their program administrator. And, um, she’s on vacation. I asked her to give me some dates or time, uh, for this meeting. She’s not coming back until, uh, August 18th, actually ac I apologize, August 19th. And, um, so I don’t have a report from her, but she’s, she said, we haven’t forgotten about you. And I suggested that we would do it on our own or with Swamp Scott. And I asked her if Swamp Scott had been, um, booked yet, and, uh, she didn’t answer me. Okay. But, um, she knows that we are interested

49:33 and she has responded and she’s gonna get back to me, but it’s not, there’s nothing to report for this meeting except that she, they’re willing to do it. And we’ve talked about the fact that we have some funds that we can use, um, and, and, um, to have this program, it’s a theater program of, uh, young people who have, um, had, uh, drug issues. And That’s, that’s also independent of what this item is, correct? No. Oh, I’m, I a hundred percent think it’s independent of that. Well, It, it, it isn’t because I’ve Been waiting. Well, I don’t agree to that at all. I’ve been waiting for you to make a, I asked you what your vision was about this, and we haven’t gotten off that. What do you mean? I’ve said it every single.

50:19 Well have, do we have a date? Do we have a text? That’s what, that’s what this is all about. That’s why this is on the agenda right now, is Andrew is gonna look at the high school to see what we could locked down for a day. But it is completely independent of your theater one. This was one that I’ve, you know, too many people You’ve been talking for about six months on it. And so I said, I’ll try and find this program. Yeah. But I do not support you putting that into this one. This is completely different. Oh, we Could have two programs. Yes. Two different days, not the same time. These are, these are completely different. What is your vision? This may Be something that the substance abuse program may be something that the mental health task force can partner with the board on, On the, uh, on the theater program. Yeah. Okay. All I’m saying is that I jumped into this

51:05 because we hadn’t had any movement on, um, the substance Day. Well, we have been targeting in the fall, and then Andrew is going to look into getting, uh, what Dave, uh, with the high school would be. So you need me to get involved with that, or No, I can talk to them. I mean, obviously we’ve had some rearranging with, you know, admin over there. So now It’s, it’s never been something that we’re not, you know, ready. Like it’s the target was the fall. So it’s not that it’s, we just need a Date, you know, obviously it’s like no. Mm-Hmm. Uh, you know, November, early December. Yeah. November is what I was, you know, In the back. Yeah. Friday, not in the back in that, um, the high school auditorium. Mm-Hmm. Um, but yeah, now that, you know, admin’s back and have a new superintendent and a new, you know, yeah. We can talk to them about space. Yeah.

51:50 May I ask a clarifying question? So you guys were saying the community center a couple minutes ago. Yeah. You’re talking about the how school? Are you talking about the community center? No, So for the Wellness Day, Mm-Hmm. Um, that would be at the community center. Okay. For the substance abuse program. Okay. That would be, That’s more, that’s more an individual talking. And so, you know, that’s more of an audience thing, like the high school bag. And the other one is more people walking around. Okay. So, yeah. So look, Dr. Zaro, myself have gone and made some inroads on some things. Maybe you could take some responsibility to work on this with I have, I’ve brought speakers, I’ve brought everything that we, this is good to go. I, I’m not sure where your confusion is on it. Well, who are the speakers? We need to, you Have two of them right here, but they’re not gonna

52:35 come vet in front of you. They’re not gonna come in front of the board and, and give their stories and see if they’re good enough. They don’t. We’ve discussed that as well. That’s not happening. These two are brave enough to do it, and I commend them for it, and they’re gonna be participants in it so long as they’re still willing, which I think as far as I know, we are right. But I can’t have every single person come and present their story to see if it’s good enough, like it’s substance abuse, uh, American Idol or something. I did suggest that they go to see Andrew because if we are sponsoring it, we like, we have to look into it. I think You’re really taking a bad approach on this. This is not a good look because this is very much in the works. The wheels were turning and now you’re throwing some wrenches into the gears. I I just think that if you’re gonna bring people that the Board of Health is, is sponsoring that,

53:23 I think somebody should know who the, who they Are me. This is a program that I’m establishing. I’m gonna know exactly who they are and whether it would benefit the town or not. You’ve got to here too. And, and there was, and I can’t tell you how many people like, have, and they Were wonderful and they did come to the table. Yeah. But not all of ‘em are gonna come to the table. I know their stories and they’re extremely impactful stories. They don’t need to be vetted anymore. I think at times it is hard for people, you know, who are willing to share their stories of a very difficult time to come forward to a public meeting to try to share that. But I, I think the idea is a really good one, that you have people from the community

54:09 that are willing to share the stories. What we’ll figure out is obviously, well, you know, we know the location. We need a date. Once we know the number of individuals, we can kind of say, all right, this program’s gonna, and we can talk to the individuals and say, how long do you believe you’re gonna speak for? We can establish, you know, how long I can do Target times Some guidelines. So You so you would meet with them. We don’t need, I don’t need to meet with them. I think if they’re friends at town Talk can easily meet with them and, and provide, you know, we can say how long a program that we wanna set up, and we can make sure that we have enough individuals to fill up that CII mean, I’m happy to share their stories with Andrew from my point of view. I don’t think Andrew’s gonna sit there and be like, that one’s not good enough. It’s not gonna, it’s not for You to say. Yeah. If

54:55 somebody wants to share their story in this community, I think everybody should be heard if that that’s what somebody wants to do. Okay. That’s unbelievable. Those are hard. Yeah. It’s extremely hard. And I don’t think we should make it any harder for, you know, or put roadblocks up or hurdles for them to do that, because that just scares people off. And this is will be a huge benefit for the community. It’s happened in the past, and I know people, it still remember those speakers coming to their, you know, classrooms. We’re not doing it in their classes yet, but they still remember it from 20 years ago. Right. And so it, it, I think the board needs to, you know, you, you’ve agreed to the concept. I think you need to say Mm-Hmm. I think it’s, you know, we we’re gonna have it the month, uh, high school Torian. Um, it’s gonna be late fall. We’re gonna try to catch everything, you know, before the holiday season, which tends to be a good time,

55:41 which is a good time, as we all know. Mm-Hmm. And we believe that the program should be two hours. And obviously, you know, Rob, It might be less to start, I mean, like totally. Like, I just, I was Gonna say Yeah, no, it’s the first one, you know, I mean, house said, I just put on a great program with Rob Delaney and he spoke for an hour and 15 minutes. Like, so he was outstanding and he and he was outstanding. No, He was on, uh, on uh, Jimmy Kimmel last night. Oh, nice. Why? But, you know, again, you know, this would be another great marblehead, you know, people coming from the community, we just have to figure out, you know, It speaks exactly to what Tom Massara was saying. It’s right there. Yeah. It’s right there. And we have to trust each Other. Even though we may deal with things differently.

56:27 I would prefer that the, the current publish my paper before we talk about it. You wanna talk about it for so long. I maybe have to also, But I, We have, we be the same way with you, Johnny. Tommy’s got a, a good sense. But even though we may, you may not see the fullness of that. You may want a little more. Yeah. I think we have to trust him. He got but thousand votes that brought him to the table. It’s, It’s exactly what you have written there. And what I’ve always said are the best assets of Marblehead are the community, and those are the experts. And there’s two experts right here. You know, they, they don’t need a degree. They don’t need any practice. They, they’re the experts through lived experience.

57:14 So we’ll continue on this, Tom and I won’t, you know, to Tom and I will be, you know, talking about it more. Um, and, and we’ll continue. And you know, I, I’ll, you know, we can continue to have it on, but I don’t think it needs to continue to be on the agenda. No, it doesn’t. I I just wanted to see like once a date, you know, and if, if you wanna do that offline, that’s fine. I, We do that offline and make sure. Yeah, we can definitely take this offline. So You’ll just give it as a report next Time? Yeah, we’ll give it as a report. Okay. Okay. So now we’re going to the director’s report. All right. I have a whole bunch of different stuff. What about Bills? Uh, yeah, so Bills, so we wanted to talk about bills. Is That on the Agenda? It is on the agenda, yes. Um, Oh, that’s part of your report, isn’t it? No, it’s, it’s has its own line and stuff like that.

58:01 It’s before the director’s report. Well, that’s what I asked if I had a, I have a funnel. Yep. And I did ask, I apologize. No worries. No, I asked you. Same yesterday.

58:13 So the bills are sent out, obviously in, in any email with all the copies of the bills. Um, you know, so then we, we take the bills, we process the bills, it goes to, you know, um, the accounting department. They turn it into those, uh, warrant schedules. Um, the warrant schedules sent out to you. And it’s, we need, currently we need two or the board signs. All board members are signing off on the current warrant. Again, I need a quorum. So two members of the board to sign off to approve, uh, of the warrant schedule. Um, I know you always talked about doing it at the meeting. We looked at the school process. Mm-Hmm. Their chair goes and signs the bills. The bills are paid. Then the schedule comes to, um, the school committee.

59:02 The school committee votes on the schedule, but the bills have been paid and all that stuff is that if We just do five minutes of just letting the community know what we just paid. That’s all I need. So obviously, you know, And, and, and I’m not saying I’ll sign it in advance. Yep. As long as we agree that at the meeting, we’d just be like, this five minutes of this is what was spent, you know, and so that the community knows and they can watch and it’s transparent. And that’s it. That’s all I need is some transparency on it. And so, So, so that’s not the process that the school can discuss. That’s okay. It’s okay if it’s not. Yeah. Um, so obviously then you’d be reading down every bill. Now I can, I mean, I can make a summary of it, if that’s easier. Okay. Um, but obviously the bills need to be paid before the

59:48 Meeting. Yeah. No, I, if, if we can agree that I can take five minutes and, and I’ll take it on me to do it, to put ‘em together where I can just, you know, tell everyone what we paid, when, what it was for. I’m good to sign it before, as long as everyone agrees that I can have that five minutes in a meeting. I think that that’s up to, that’s up to the board. I think that this is a, a new,

1:00:12 a new presentation to me. And I would like to just think about it because it’s, I have sat on the school committee and I have sat there and the bills are not read out loud. They just say the bills have been paid. Well, I’m saying let’s be better. Let’s build transparency, Deus. I don’t care what anyone did in the past. And that’s what, and that’s what I’m saying. But I can continue to not sign it. And you too can sign it. I won’t sign. I won’t agree to you signing ‘em yourself. Because when we did the little quiz where I asked you what companies do you didn’t know, and so that made me believe that you rubber State, I didn’t know what they did. I said, I read right across the line. I didn’t know exactly what They did. No, you didn’t know what they did. You said they dispose of things ‘cause it said other disposal. And I said, dispose of what? And you didn’t know. And they each have different disposals.

1:00:57 So that leads me to believe that I was correct, that they’re being rubs rubber stamped. And I’m not okay with that. And I don’t think anyone in the community’s okay with that. So I know what they’re, you know, when Tom, before Tom Swo and I sent him, um, a list of what each company does to be helpful. I know what they do. I ask Andrew all the time what they do. Um, I need to make sure everyone else knows what they do and where their money’s going. And that’s, so, To be fair, we had a bill scheduled and you pointed to something like that at the meeting, and I read across what it was and that’s what I did. No, I first asked you what the company did, you didn’t know, and then you snatched it and you sent other disposal. They dispose of things, but you didn’t know what they disposed of. We have like 10 different companies that dispose of things. So you gotta know what they dispose of.

1:01:44 You gotta know. I do know My, my direct, my director knows. But you don’t. And that’s the thing, like I do and you don’t, and that’s the, that’s a problem for me that you’re signing off on bills that you don’t know what, and I think Tom has a problem with that too. And so it, I’m just saying five minutes. It’s the easiest thing ever. And I’ll do all the work. You don’t have to lift a finger.

1:02:06 You wanna try it next month. You gotta agree to it that I get the five minutes and then I’ll start signing them. I gotta agree with it. Yeah. That’s the, well, that’s, that’s the only way I’ll do it. Well, I I’m in the same boat as Tommy. I have, when I have to do DocuSign, I don’t think I have enough information to ask if somebody catches me at Market Basket or something and says, why do we, why do we pay 30% maybe, um, overtime hours compared to regular scheduled hours. Wouldn’t it be more efficient if we had another full-time employee? We didn’t have to Do we pay time and a half for overtime?

1:02:52 I mean, these kind of questions that I think as a board member, I should board member be able to answer. I can’t the way it works, so I think Right. But so just so the bills and every, all the documents are always available in the office. Mm-Hmm. It wasn’t until Covid that the board started to use DocuSign. We don’t have to use DocuSign. The board can come into the office and review all the documents, ask all the questions they want that, that, I mean, we’re just using document DocuSign to make it easier on the board. Yeah. We, we provide all the documents in the DocuSign. You just have to look at that. And if you have questions, you just have to come into the office and ask those questions. All the information is there. You know, we will get, I mean, not that it,

1:03:39 I need to sign this. Um, I just don’t know what the opposition would be to transparency. Well, well, I’m just saying he’s giving an example of someone in Market Basket walking up to him right now. Unless they go into the office and read the bills. There’s, there’s no opportunity for the community to ask Now if we’re gonna sign them, we’re gonna have more questions. And if you’re satisfied with that, then we’ll, we’ll go. We’ll give it a try.

1:04:08 Well, I’m happy to come into the office and be able to get questions answered. Maybe we need to set up a time for me half hour Thursday morning, I’ll do it or whatever You wanna work it out, but, or text me. I mean, I live close, so No problem. Always there. You, so which do you wanna try? Do you wanna try walking in and signing or do you wanna try break? Let’s try both and let’s just see how it goes. I mean, I, I, we all have the same goal. Unfortunately for me. We still have to use Docus. We Wanna be squeaky clean to the community we serve. We don’t have to use DocuSign. I can’t come in during the week. I’m five days a week in Boston. Okay. So that’s the only, that’s the only issue unless Marty wanted me to sign on Saturdays when he is at the transfer, which I can do.

1:04:53 Um, but that’s, that’s the only issue I have. Do you come in to before six 30 on Wednesday night? Uh, no. Not Wednesday. It’s just, I I,

1:05:08 we we’ll learn how to make it work and I, I’ll sign and I’ll sign and maybe I’ll learn a little bit more than I can help with Your, so Tom always ask, I mean, Tom’s the one that emails me all the time is like, Hey, what is this? Um, you know, can you, you know, what’s this company? What do they do, you know, pretty quick to say, hey, because they All make sense. I’ve never had any that don’t, and you know, I, and I don’t know the going rates at certain things, but when I see ‘em, I’m like, yep, I could see that being used at the transfer safe, you know, things like that. So I just need to make sure I know what’s going on. And I think the community would benefit too, if they just knew what’s going on. And it would take me five minutes each time, each meeting to just be like, here’s what we pay.

1:05:52 Are You ready? Are you willing to prepare that for Next meeting? I don’t need to prepare anything. It Doesn’t need to do anything. I’ll do it All. All the information is provided to you. You have part of my process. Yeah. Yeah. Part of the process. You know, he’s just gonna provide a summary. Yeah. All right. So provide it next time. Okay. You’ll get your questions. It it’ll Be after the fact. Yeah, I know, but I’m, I’m, I, I will do it after the fact. So long as we, it’s the same as this. It’s the same description just after the fact, but they’ve already been able to, so long as we agree that I can have that. Five minutes. I’m good. Okay. Let’s see how long it takes. If it’s, it’ll probably take more than five Minutes. No, I think be quick. I, you know, I think that’s the understanding. Yeah. Do sounds good. All Do we need to vote on that? Or, you know, Pizza, making sure. Yeah. Nope, we can just move forward with that. But again, the documents are always available in the office.

1:06:39 Completely understanding it. You know, I Think the minutes outta say the board spent five minutes talking about how to be squeaky clean. Yep. Board folks. Um, Transp Station construction. Um, so we’ve been working with our architect. We’ve been working with our, um, handling board engineering, uh, looking at value engineering. Um, the two big pieces that are standing out for value engineering are the transaction hut in the residential area, and the control booth next to the compactor, the transaction hut in the recycling area. The estimate that we have is $150,000. That was a big piece to say. All right, we need to look at this again. Yeah. Is there ways to, to bring down the costs?

1:07:26 And there are, so we looked at some pre-manufactured buildings. Um, yeah.

1:07:38 Like us getting into the tiny little business. Yeah. And it’s even tiny. The two each. Yeah, two each.

1:07:55 So if you’re looking at Yep. What gets Done at the transaction? Hu is there one now? No. Um, so at the transaction, there is not one now? No. Okay. So the big piece that we’re doing is that we’re, we’re dividing the operations. So I’m gonna say like the front of the house with the scale house is, that’s gonna be commercial operations. That’s commercial way in pay. The residents will enter in Green Street, they’ll go into the recycling area. They’ll have access up to the yard waste area. They’ll enter, they’ll exit out of West Shore Drive, you know, beacon Street, west Shore Drive. But we’re really trying to separate the two areas. Um, we will be moving forward at some point with license plate reader, cameras, technology,

1:08:40 that’s gonna ensure that the people that are using the facility has paid appropriately, um, that we’re trying to capture all costs appropriately. Um, and, and so when you’re dividing those two up, we wanna make sure it’s easy, still easy for people to dispose of items that they need to pay for. They need to pay for a refrigerator or an AC unit or a TV and stuff like that. I don’t want them to go up to the scale house and pay. We want ‘em to be able to pay in the, in the residential area. We also want to be sure that they can purchase stickers there as well. We’ve always sold stickers up at the transfer station. Um, again, I don’t want them to go to the commercial side, to the scale house. I want them to go to the residential. Tom, do you know where the Green Street entrance is? No. Okay. Well, I know roughly, but, okay.

1:09:25 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I, I think, yeah, I think we go to a restaurant down near there. No, no. This, so this well, sort of that’s way down. Um, so when you’re coming down past the pit and off to the right, you’re gonna see a road that no one ever uses that goes out to Green Street. So Everybody should have an SD one and an SD two. I’ve got two SD ones. All right. Tom, what do you have? Uh, I have an SD one, an SD two. Okay. Holly, you need an SD two.

1:10:04 So, Tom, that was voted on like two years ago or something like that, that, so when, when the money kind of dried up, it, it was kind of a different plan that, uh, that it would change. That would be two separate entrances. Okay. To kind of reduce traffic, I guess with a hope to reduce Traffic Yeah. To the Idea. But does that, is it more labor costs now? Do we have somebody in the, well, in the transaction Hu and in this commercial, correct. Correct. Yep. Okay. Yep. But yeah, you had a lot of crossover and a lot of congestion up at the scale house on a day-to-day basis. Currently you had this crossover between commercial vehicles doing the loop up at the top and residents driving through them. And so, um, there’s concern about safety efficiency and all that.

1:10:50 The best thing to do is to, you know, separate the two and you can do that by, you know, using that Green Street entrance, um, and having the residents use that facility out back essentially. Um, So we’ll begin with before. Yep. One more point. Yep. Again, I’m a new guy. I totally, but it would be great if we had two dozen people sitting in our room here. Is there any way we can figure out a way to share what we’re going over with at the board with people here? So All our meetings are recorded and they’re, you know, all this can is sent over to MHTV and it goes right online, weekly. In the current, when, when they redesigned it, they did put out pictures and stuff. Like didn’t you will, I know one of you did, but

1:11:36 I’m sorry, what is It? The, the new design for the transfer station. Oh, yeah. I mean, leaves it on top of this stuff. Okay. No, I’m thinking, but if I were sitting there, I, sorry. We don’t see what you have. That’s what I’m saying. Right. If, if, if I were sitting in that chair and I did for 18 months, I was bored silly. When the board talked about things. Can we project something so that we can be pointing, well, this is complicated ‘cause it’s zoom, but can we do something? You Can, but that it takes me away from my job of doing, putting together presentations every, you know, Every month. Yeah, it is. So I mean, there was some, I think it’ll be a lot easier to, when, when the new website comes out. Do we know when that is? No. Mm-Hmm.

1:12:22 Because then it had just make it more useful. Put all these things up there because there was, you know, a section. Yeah. All The plans are up there. Yeah. We can these plans now. Yes. There still is construction section. It’s just not the, I mean, I’m sure you’ve seen it’s just not the easiest website to navigate. Oh, no. But it’s not easy sitting there. No, I know, I know. Well, we can put a few of these out on the corner Link. I only had, I only brought copies. We did, But I mean, next time maybe we can try to figure out how to get, uh, rather than wait till the end, the public comment. Get the public to be, I mean, they, they aren’t, they’re our community members in, in these terms. And I just think we, we need, it’s, it’s a mental model we’re working together. Can’t see The point. So around everywhere.

1:13:07 I love where your head’s at to,

1:13:11 Um, so again, uh, if we’re looking at SD one, um, this is the transaction hut. And again, this is a, a shipping container that is being repurposed for this. Um, and again, you’re taking costs of approximately $155,000 and we haven’t gotten the final estimates, but down to 30 to $40,000. And This, this is just electrical, right. There’s no plumbing in that. There’s no plumbing in this. It’s just electrical. And it doesn’t even need a slab on grade. Oh, it doesn’t need a No, That’s a tremendous saving No, no brainer. Yeah. It still has heat ac um, or we’re just looking at new technology. Yeah. Um, and repurposing, you know, obviously much smaller bill, this will be built offsite. Um, this will not be part of the contract costs. Right.

1:13:57 Um, and so you, you would be able to, you know, there’s a tremendous stop scene Now, just, just outta curiosity, because I know that the, the other one up by the pit is gonna be more complicated. Is this the model that can be used? No. Um, so the idea, so let, let’s finish this. Okay. And then, and we can talk about the swap shade. Yeah. Um, so again, with the, the pit hut, again, very basic building, um, you know, we, we need to have some good site lines. There’s an existing slab. This structure can fit right on that. Yep. And again, you’re, you’re, you know, it’s not 155 down to the 30 or 40, um, but it’s significant savings down. Yeah. Now with the, with the, um, the swap shed,

1:14:45 talking with the architects and talking with the engineers, their recommendation is to only include one alternate, which would be the slab for the swap. She, you know, Okay. That, you know, we almost positive that we don’t have enough money to build the, all the whole swap. Shed take that look at the tech schools, look at other processes. Yes. You could look at a smaller design builds building that could sit on top. What About those, um, those like warehouses, you know, the ones they put up in like a day. Yep. You could look at all that stuff. Function is like seasonal, so it just means a Heat now. So if you went with, you know, so we, I can go back to them again. We’re, you know, into kind of crunch time. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. But You could say, we want a basic slab.

1:15:30 We don’t even wanna build what the proposed design for. Right, right, right. The swap shot is we just want a, I’m gonna say, you know, a 20 by 30 slab Yeah. And we can fill it, figure out the building that’s gonna going on. Yeah. I think if, if these are the priority, then add, just making sure there’s a slab and we can go for it later. Is, is something that should be, How big is this slab, uh, transfer station or, uh, swap. Shed gonna be, So I, I’d have to go back and look at the estimates for the slab itself. Um, we’ve used, we’re leaving that as an alternate because it’s kind of an unknown. Um, obviously we’re taking this slab out, um, for the transaction. Hu so there’s less concrete work on site. So it, it, it increases cost a little bit, um,

1:16:15 because there’s not as much for Mark and stuff like that. Um, but I’d have to go back and take a look at the cost estimate. But if I’m gonna change the, the, the shape of the slab, that can potentially get a cost savings as well. So what, why does the, uh, selection need a slab and the transaction hut doesn’t? Because the transaction hut is a, uh, a sole building that is structural and can be placed. It’s a very small building. Um, so it can be placed right on the asphalt. Again, it doesn’t have any electrical com or the electricals can be brought in overhead and not underground. And, and the electrical for the swap shed is underground And for the of the ALS underground, but Yep. It could also be put on, on the, on the, um, No, the, the electrical

1:17:02 for the swap shed has to come underground. You know, we’ve already, the re the trench is already there. The conduit’s already laid. You have to do all that work when you’re doing the landfill itself. And that’s been done And that’s been done. Yep. Well, the reason I ask, I mean, I, I belong to Costco. They send out flyers about big things that you can buy through There. That’s, that’s what I was referring to. Is this nine by 12 or is this 20 by 40? Uh, it’s more like 20 by 40. Oh. They probably don’t sell those. But again, you’re, what we’re trying to Do, I think could work Together. But, but again, what you’re trying to do is, is look at cost savings and look at more, you know, module construction. There’s a whole bunch of other construction you could do rather than being built on site that would have cost savings.

1:17:47 I mean, I think Yeah, totally think because the swap shed is seasonable, you know, you remove the whole like, oh, we don’t need, I mean, You could go in a totally different direction and you could use two 40 foot shipping containers and cover it with a structural, um, roof and be done with it. The bottom line, we’re holding off on the swap. She, Well, so right now we currently have the, the current slab, the, the design of the swap shed, the slab would be included. Included in the, um, in the proposal as an alternate. Um, so, so, but how, but I can come back and, and we can talk more about the swap shed. We needed to get the approval for these two buildings to go on the stretch. Well, I think you brought up the swap chair, so that’s what we’re talking about. Yeah. But, but the thing is, is that, um,

1:18:34 the slab is gonna determine the size of the swap chair Slab is gonna determine, I mean, so you could build a larger slab Yeah. And, and build a smaller building on that slab. Yeah, that’s what I mean. If we’re doing, You could, you can do that For the horse, I’m not sure about No, he’s not. Because like you said, you could, you could build a 20 by 40 slab and have a 10 by 10. It doesn’t matter. It just, you know, it’s, it’s a footprint. Yeah. So That’s Just what I, I see that We don’t wanna have that problem, but let’s, we’ll talk about what you wanna talk About. Yeah. So, you know, I will, you know, I will go back and I will talk with the engineers and architects to say we want a basic slab design. Yeah. You know, let’s, let’s square this off. Let’s make it a basic slab design for the swap shed. It will be an alternate. Um, so we’ll keep the same dimensions. I will come back to you before the,

1:19:20 the project goes out to bid. There’s gonna be some additional costs for the architectural work. Um, but that’s the direction that I’m hearing. And so I need a motion to, to tell me to move in that direction. So, motion. Okay. Second. What, what’s, what, what’s the, So you’re approving these two buildings. So moving forward with this, and I’m going back to the architect to say, and the engineers to say we want a basic slab, um, square it off. Um, and that will, that will be the alternate, but I will come back before it goes out to bid, um, to say this is the estimated cost for the slab. Um, do you guys still want to have that as an alternate or do you wanna remove that from the project altogether? But you haven’t mentioned the pit hut yet, and you’re asking for a vote on That. I, I have talked about the pit hut and the transaction.

1:20:06 So the pit hu hu the exact same thing. The Pit hut has more in it though Now. Now it’s gonna be, but it has, it has a bathroom. No, that’s all in the scale house. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Yeah. Yep. The pit hu the, the pit hut is just a, a control room. Okay. It just has the, it removes the guy from standing, you know, he’ll still be over there at times, but he can sit in the control room, look at the cameras and stuff like that. Yeah. And control operations. He just doesn’t have control of the scale. Yeah. I think going one with something simple like, this is the way to go. I save money and Yeah. Good message to c be cost effecti. Oh yeah. Okay. So you, you’re then, you’re now gonna get, um, with this? No, so I will go back to the architects and say, yes, we’re in favor of using these two structures for these two areas.

1:20:53 Um, I will tell them to modify, um, the swap shed to a basic, you know, um, foundation square off found, you know, rectangular foundation. We’ll add that, we’ll keep that as the one alternate for the projects. Mm-Hmm. Um, these will not be part of, you know, they’re part of the project, but they won’t be part of the construction. These will be built offsite. Um, and that, you know, there’ll be a huge reduction in costs. Yeah. But I will come back to you to talk a little bit more about the swap, um, but discussions about that. Yeah. Okay. So, uh, could, could, uh, we get a motion? I You had a motion? You had a second. Yes. All all in favor? I. Good job, Andrew. Would it be worth, uh, uh, the motion passed, I hear, yes. Would it be worth going to see

1:21:39 what might be out there commercially? Yes. And then tell the engineers to work around it? So, um, I see ads on the ball games and the TV that people sell sheds. Yes. Yeah. So, so like companies like Reeds Fair, we’re looking at that. Um, so like companies that are, you know, yes. The idea of the Costco shed is, is a great idea. We’re just trying to take that and, and put it to the next level. So companies like, But if we did that before we went to the engineer and then we told them that this is what we want, don’t spend a lot of time, could we save eng? Are we paying, we’re paying a lot less Now we’re paying a little bit of money for the, the, um, the help from the engineering firms to kind of guide us Sure. To say, continue to take a look at this, continue to take a look at that.

1:22:25 Um, I mean, if, if I had a, you know, a, a price for a res very shed that, you know, um, you know, I can come back to you and say, Hey, I can buy a res very shed and you can go here and this is what your costs are. We can take a look at that as well. Yeah. Um, I think you want to go with the biggest slab. Yeah. Because the swap shed is extremely popular. They would love more room and then we see how we can, the best we can get to there. That’s Why I said we don’t want the slab to determine the size of the rupture. Right. Well, it wouldn’t That well, because he’s gonna go for liquid size. Yeah. Yeah.

1:23:20 So,

1:23:32 um, so yeah, the current slab is a, you know, it’s kind of an odd shape, but it’s roughly 43 feet by,

1:23:41 uh, 21 feet, almost 22 feet. So that’s the current proposal for the swap shed. Um, but you know, you can square that off and say, you know, 20 by 40, um, what can we get for, you know, a building to sit on that, you know, basic building, stuff Like that. Good. Okay. In New Mexico, which was very rural, there were tractors R us and things that you could just, Tractors are Yeah, Just go buy these things. It’s, you’re pretty close to 20 by 40. Right. Let’s find the chain put. Good. So I, so I mean that, that’s, that’s, you know, so there’s two sides to go. Yeah. So you, you can go into like building what, like almost like a garage structure or you can go building into like these wide span, um, you know, white covers.

1:24:26 Again, we have planning board approval, so we would have to try to figure that out a little bit. Um, but let me go back to the architect. Lemme go back to the engineers and say, you know, we’re really looking at a basic 20 by 40 slab that we wanna work with. I think you’ve got agreement here. Okay. Um,

1:24:47 It’s cheap and fast as you can do, But That’s careful

1:24:54 The history.

1:24:58 But yeah. So Tom, with the LPR for all the board, the LPR cameras, um, we have the town has a contract to do fiber optic in the, in the community. Um, part of that fiber optic contract would be fiber optic for the LPR cameras. So that would run essentially from, um, it’s gonna go from the transaction hu out to Green Street or out to, um, west Shore Drive. Yeah. Back down to Green Street. And then in, so we can set up the LPR cameras. Mm-Hmm. Talking to the guy, we need the fiber optics for that to, to do the video and stuff like that. That would be the best. Um, again, once the fiber optics in place, we’ll continue to talk to him about installing the cameras. I need the transaction hunt in place to do all that work. Yeah. Um, and then you need the software to go along with that. Yes. So, you know, I thought you had cameras up there already.

1:25:46 I have cameras up there, but not licensed. So license plate reader cameras is a special technology where the camera is positioned just to read the license plate. Mm-Hmm. But you’ve got cameras for vandalism. Yeah, we have cameras for observation and not for license. So we try to use the cameras now for license plate reading it. It can be a challenge at times. Yeah. The license plate reading cameras are, are built to, you know, with software to, to figure out exactly what the license plate is. Um, the other piece with that, obviously the camera and the softwares, um, and then the feasibility study. Mm-Hmm. Um, working with the engineering firm, they, we’ve talked about scope. They’re coming back to me with the scope for the feasibility study. Um, this is for, um, essentially constructing

1:26:33 in the yard waste area, a building that can handle the C and d, the additional work that we can’t handle currently, or material that we, you know, c and d, concrete, anything, they’re gonna look at all costs, um, equipment that we’re gonna need to build this equipment that we’re gonna need to run this employees and come back to us with a, a package to say, this is what our SM a costs are. This is a potentially, you know, additional costs and potential revenues that you could see, or material that you can kinda, um, sort and, and process.

1:27:05 Um, obviously, you know, we, we all know about the fire that occurred up there, um, in the evening of, you know, it was the 21st into the 22nd. Um, again, we’re gonna work with the fire department. Um, you know, it was something in the trailer. The trailer began to smoke and burn around just before 10 o’clock at night. Um, the neighbors called it in the fire department got there. Um, there, there was some issues with, you know, obviously employees have to be brought in. Took about 45 minutes for employees to be brought in at that time. They can move the trailer, disconnect the trailer, um, and kind of begin to make sure that it’s away from the building. Um, we are gonna work with the fire department to do some training. Um, so when they get there, they can disconnect the trailer. They can move the trailer away from the building, um, and disconnect the truck from the trailer itself.

1:27:53 So if it is a large fire and, you know, it is burning, I’m gonna say outta control, you’re not gonna lose the tractor that drives the trailers and you’re not gonna, you know, you’re not gonna, you know, trying to reduce the damage to the compactor as much. Mm-Hmm. So, so you never, it was just something smoldering in the Yeah. So obviously, you know, we looked at it, the fire department investigated. It can be anything from, you know, there, there’s so many different things that actually, you know, that people throw away. It can be old rags that were soiled with oil. It can be a watch battery. There’s a lot of things that, you know, that can be part of that that can be, you know, potentially at, you know, start combustion.

1:28:34 I mean, it goes, unfortunately, it goes hand in hand with, um, facilities of ours. Well, we have to, uh, thank the employees and the, and the fire department for getting there quickly and getting it under control. And I’m happy to hear that it wasn’t, uh, vandalism. Yep. Do we have insurance or does the state self-insured? No, we have insurance. It’s, uh, Massachusetts municipal insurance. So we, we are part of our program, um, to ensure the community, um, um, again, this is the c it’s a CWT trailer. Um, and they’ll look at all that stuff, you know, technically not on our trailer, um,

1:29:19 budget. So the finance committee has asked us to begin to work on our budget topic Out, out of the transfer station? No, that’s, this is all still kind of related to operations and, okay. Oh, go right ahead. If you have questions. I, I didn’t know whether you were gonna talk about contractors, if you’ve gotten any or, So we have a list of contractors. Once the project goes out to bid, those list of contractors will be notified. Obviously all the documents will tell them where they can get the documents from. Project dog. You know, we want, you know, we’ve been talking to them. We’re telling them that this project is gonna be going out to bid in the fall, and so we wanna make sure that they’re ready for this. We’ve been waiting for several contractors to make sure that they have their D CAM certification. We want, you know, e list about approximately 22 contractors that we can send this to and make sure that we get somebody that’s gonna bid on it

1:30:06 and Marie get a, you know, a fee. But we had difficulty last time we met. Correct. Yep. So you, you feel that we kind of, I mean, we’ve reached out to quite, you know, like I said, I, we’ve reached out to approximately 22 contractors, um, several in the community, several, you know, we tried to just look at this northeast region, um, not looking at the whole state, making sure that they’re DKM certified and all that. And what makes you believe that we’re gonna have success when we didn’t? You have to have faith. I mean, obviously we’re trying to do everything we can. Yeah. Um, it’s a very difficult, you know, many communities are having very hard time getting contractors to bring them projects. Um, you want a contractor that’s used to doing municipal work for the most part, um, they have to be understanding of prevailing wage.

1:30:52 Their employees have to be understanding of prevailing wage, um, because they’re probably gonna get paid more for this job than they are for a private job for the employees themselves. You know, that’s, that’s bonus Whether, whether it works out or not. Local people are inquiring Yep. And try attempting to step up. They, they have, We have several, You know, stakes in the game, you know, living in this community and they know there’s a need and they are attempting to step up and we hope that’ll work out somehow. Rather. We didn’t have any bidders the last time. Nope. But they didn’t, they also didn’t. Right. They might have not been looking. They might, Yeah. But The efforts that Andrew’s done, especially with these have been to make it more appealing to bids so that we get that number that we didn’t have before. So I think it’s, I have faith, Jeff. Good. We wanna make sure our package

1:31:38 is less complicated. The contractors can easily understand it. That’s the idea with, you know, hiring the engineering firm to review this stuff. It’s a second set of eyes and there’s multiple eyes in the engineering firm. Um, and so they’re able to give feedback to the architect to say, why don’t we word it this way? Why don’t you word it that way? Or, why are we doing it this way? Um, and that has been extremely helpful. Along with all the engineers have been helpful As Well as the change the alternate to the single A that was huge. That Right. Alternate change to the single alternate from, we had multiple before. Now we just have the slab as an alternate. That’s it. Well, to answer, I mean, I I it would’ve been great if we could done last year, don’t get me wrong, but the timing may be good. Last Friday we had a labor market that said the pressures are down.

1:32:23 Uh, yesterday we had, uh, uh, we have pro producer, producer CR price index went down. Yep. Uh, only 0.1% above last year. And today the CEO of, um, home Depot said that remodeling, home remodel home home building is, is soft. Right. So it may be that the contractors may re the, the bid a little more carefully. Yep.

1:32:57 Um, all good, all good points. Yep. Um, we do have a new employee up at the transfer station, um, and yes, he will be one of the employees that will be working in this transaction. Hu So he is learning the operations in the scale house as well as all the other operations in and around the yard, the recycling area, interactions with the public. And, and that’s a, a, a New position. Right. He’s not Replacing. So that’s a new position. That’s correct. Is he there today? He was there today, yes. Okay. I, I saw him. I just thought he was filling in. No new Billy. Billy. Okay. Yep. Um, again, uh, we will be, the FinCon is working on budgets early. Um, we will begin to, you know, start this budget process. Um, again, this is a lot further, you know, this is way before we’ve ever done in the past. Um, that means, you know, we’ll have plenty of time

1:33:44 to discuss these things. Um, obviously I will recognize that, um, you know, we can, you know, I will earmark the $35,000 in our health budget, um, for Ffy 26, hoping that we can, you know, whittle that number down before we can get town to town meeting, um, making sure that we have appro, you know, appropriate, um, money to, to deal with that. But we’ll, you know, lots of time to discuss that. Um, but we will be putting together a budget, um, and begin, um, budget conversations with finance committee liaisons. When Will you begin? When are the finance committees? Um, budgets are due, uh, August, September 6th. And then discussions will take place after that. Couple, couple weeks. Yeah. Not related to this budget. Um, future though, since we are supposed to have a special town meeting, is there a possibility

1:34:33 that we can get some time to talk to the community about the expiring, um, you know, trash collection? So obviously that will be huge conversations with Fin Comm now. I think they’re looking at not just at, you know, this, this coming fiscal year, but long term fiscal. Yeah, No, I mean, more just making, make like, the more we say it, the more the community’s aware. Yeah. And if, even if we don’t have hard numbers. So I, I don’t know if we’ll have the opportunity to talk about it at town meeting. Mm-Hmm. Um, but obviously the more we talk about it here at this meeting as well as at all the budget meetings that we have, um, with the fin com, um, obviously we need to get that out there. Yeah. Um, Would be a shame if you were to write about it. Well,

1:35:19 Um, obviously we have a very favorable collection contract. Um, that contract expires in September of 26th, but if we’re trying to do long-term planning, um, we need to take a look at that. Now, obviously, you know, Republic would love to renegotiate now. Mm-Hmm. To extend the contract out for a long period of time. Um, when you’re looking at collection contracts, we tend, we look at them, the best way to, to compare contracts from the town of Marvalette and other communities is essentially cost per house. We’re paying approximately $123 for collection for both trash and recycling per home per year. When you look at that number, that’s small, that’s small. I pay 43 per month for my house in Salem. Correct. If you wanna put that into perspective. Right. Exactly. And,

1:36:05 and like on the Cape, you’re paying a hundred dollars a month, I think, for just trash. And if you did trash recycling, it’s probably close to $200 something. Now other communities are in the 200 to the two, like two 30 range. And so we need to take a look at what we’re offering, what, you know, what, how is it comparable, who has the most recent contracts, and try to get numbers to kinda say, all right, this is where we’re potentially heading. Um, but that’s just for collection. So the other pieces that go into that are the disposal costs for the trash and the disposal costs for the recycling. The recycling market has been doing a little bit better. That market’s up and down all the time. That market often goes up and down based on economics, construction, all these other things.

1:36:50 Obviously how much people are making dictates how much they’re buying and, and drives the market a little bit as well. Mm-Hmm. Um, but those are all things that we need to kinda evaluate when we’re looking at the budget now too. We wanna make sure we’re looking at the costs of curbside collection, the cost of the transfer station, the cost of disposal for all those things. We wanna make sure that we’re operating a positive for the transfer station. And obviously the cost of the collection and the disposal of the collection materials is a community cost. Um, the cost that the transfer station for the, the people that use that should be held, you know, should be paid for by all the costs associated, you know, the stickers, the fees and all that stuff. So we might need to come back and take a look at fees.

1:37:36 We need to evaluate our fees compared to other communities, both for disposal, you know, for waiting and pay fees, all that stuff. So we’ll continue to do that. Um, I just wanna make Sure, so what would, if, if Republic would like to negotiate now, what would be the downside of doing it early? So there’s no downside to doing it early. So obviously the downside is that we have two years on a very, very favorable contract. You would need to make sure, or you’d have to make sure that you have the feeling. ‘cause it really comes down to feeling that if you negotiate another 10 year contract with them, that you’re getting the best deal. And it, if you waited two years, what would that deal be like in those two years? Would it be not as favorable or are they really trying to cut you a deal now

1:38:22 to keep you as a client? Well, I would think the latter. It, it, it’s hard to say. It’s a, it’s a very difficult, um, atmosphere for collection. You know, the, the contracts are much higher across the state than they have been in the past. Um, always, we would always look at, you know, look to three companies to give us, um, cost estimates like we did in the past, regardless of just trying to get from, you know, we would ask for public to give us one, but we would wanna make sure that we got contracts or estimates from two other contractors as well. So we probably has competitors in the, of course everybody has competitors. So you’d be looking at Waste Management, you’d be looking at the sell, you’d be looking at, you know, we tagged to, which we’ve Done before. Correct. And then we picked Republic. Yep. That’s correct. And, and obviously it wasn’t Republic.

1:39:09 It was, um, some of the names it was Sarah. Oh, it was JM Yeah, we came from Hilton went to JRM. So I mean, you know, you know, you know business much better than we do, but if, if they’re coming to us, they must want something, you know, that’s, Well, I mean obviously they, they would need to make sure that their business is operating. They have, you know, good cash flow that they have customers that, that they’re gonna be servicing. Um, you know, there’s, there is always this kinda, you know, are, you know, there, there could be a big shift between if you lose a Salem and you lose a pea and now another com you know, another company you just lost. You know, obviously there’s a national companies, these are publicly traded companies, but even little hits like that can have effects in this area. Um, obviously, you know, employees, all this stuff go into it as well.

1:39:55 Good. I’m Not proposing anything. I’m just asking did Marvel thing used to just do it itself? Yeah, I know it. So the, the hardest thing with doing trash and, and recycling curbside collection yourself is that the amount of equipment and the employees that you need to have. Yeah. Um, trash and, you know, recycling curbside collection is one of the more dangerous occupations out there across the country. Um, so your injuries and stuff like that are very high. Mm-Hmm. Um, your equipment is really expensive. Mm-Hmm. And you need to make sure that you have backup and maintenance for that equipment. Mm-Hmm. Um, so all that kinda adds into maybe it’s best as somebody else handles that. Yeah, No, I get, I get, I just, I swore I remembered like no logo on the side of the old ones when I was a kid, so Yeah, you, You, that’s probably right.

1:40:40 You know, there was multiple, there was trash trucks and there’s recycling trucks. Mm-Hmm. Um, I think the town had, I think four of ‘em. Um, and then all the employees that went, went with them. They used to be in the tree department garage up at the highway department. That was what they were out of. Um, but yeah. Mm-Hmm. A lot of the guys used to work on the back of the trash trucks and recycling trucks. Yeah. Um, you hear all these stories and stuff like that.

1:41:10 Composting school, we are now, we’ll be composting in all the schools that will begin at the very beginning of the school year. Um, in the past we were only composting at the middle school and the high school. And now we’ll be capturing all the schools. So the two elementary schools, the Brown and the Glover, and as well as the village. Um, to go along with that, the school has been a great partner in this. Um, I’ve met with all the principals. We went, met with the superintendent. Um, the assistant superintendent has been tremendous. Um, Julia Ferrara has been, you know, a great partner in this. Um, so yeah, we, we wanna make sure that the schools have a robust recycling program that includes composting. Um, and we’re actually looking to actually recycle, um, snack wrappers. So granolas, granola bar wrappers, um, potato chip wrappers.

1:41:58 We’re working with TerraCycle, um, to recycle that material as well. Okay. Terrific. Um, there is a sustainability fair September 28th, uh, from 10 to two at the high school. Um, we will be participating in that. We’re often there talking about trash and rec recycling. So we will be at that event. I just wanna make sure the board’s aware of that. Mm-Hmm. Um, onto the health department. Um, I will be bringing to you guys tobacco control regulations and tattoo regulations. We’re just finishing up regional, um, review of the tattoo regulations. As soon as that’s complete, I’ll bring those regulations to the board. The board can have some time to look at all that stuff. And then we’ll schedule, um, actual public hearings so

1:42:44 that the board can adopt these new regulations. Um, obviously we’ve had Joyce Redford here before talking about all the new stuff. Um, and the biggest discussion across the state, um, as far as tobacco control goes, is the idea that you can have forever bans for certain age groups. And that’s not gonna be part of this tobacco control regulations, but that’s, you know, there’s a lot of talk about tobacco across the state. Um, baby, it’s not gonna be part of, so it’s not gonna be part Yeah. The, you know, it’s not gonna be part, you know, we haven’t been discussing that. That’s a much bigger discussion. Um, we need these, you know, regulations to get, you know, adopted. Um, but I’ll hand the board those regulations. You can take your time to read them. Um, and once you’re comfortable,

1:43:30 we can have a public hearing to adopt those. And would you do it on the both Of them on the same night? No, most likely not. You could, if, if, you know, if you felt the board, you know, if the board felt they wanted to do both regulations, you could have the attorneys here and get both regulations done one night. And would you expect, um, uh, people that are doing tattoos? No, we don’t have any tattoo vendors in the community, so we don’t have anybody obviously. But interested That, I mean, would we have to listen to, I wonder how long it would be A public hearing, so Yeah, you’d have, you know, public discussion, um, and people would have the opportunity to speak. No, our, our regulation right now is it that we’ve made the tattoo price

1:44:16 for the tattoo was high enough today. I don’t think people were interested in coming here. I mean, so the, you know, I believe the price is obviously gonna stay about, is gonna stay the same. Um, Marblehead iss not necessarily a community where, you know, you have Salem, which is becoming like one of the biggest tattoo locations across the country. Um, you know, everybody goes there to get a tattoo during, you know, the season of Halloween all through the fall. So they have some incredible artists, um, Marvel that’s not really that location at this point. And so if you open up a studio here, you’re not drawing those people. You know, we don’t, we don’t have the, we don’t have the tourists, um, that sale mass. They would be more for the, uh, the beauty products. And, Um, so beauty products, they, so they can do

1:45:02 that under a med spa. So they, that’s occurring currently in Marblehead. So, uh, micro bleeding, micro-pigmentation. So micro bleeding is tattooing of the eyebrows. Uh, micro-pigmentation also is lips in other areas. Um, this has become very popular. Um, but that can currently be done under a doctor’s license and med spa. So you don’t Need a tattoo, uh, regulation for that. So it’s part of the regulations, but it’s being done currently under a doctor’s license and, and we don’t license the doctors. That’s all done through the state. Okay.

1:45:36 Um, bathing beaches, we’re coming to the end of the bathing beach season. Uh, the last, uh, staple will be taken September 10th, um, which will, you know, take us until September 16th. Um, last week again, we had a high, um, bacteria count for Grace Oliver speech. We resampled it, we were able to reopen it. Um, again, as the water temperatures increase, the bacteria count tends to increase. The more storm events we have, the more waste, you know, stormwater is washing into the ocean, increases the bacteria. Um, so I just wanna remind everybody, all the information’s on the website, if you’re interested about the water quality, go to the website. It will give you up to date information. Um, that’s really the best way to take a look at all that stuff. You know, obviously we are very lucky

1:46:22 that we have Dero Beach that has all the facilities. Most of our bathing beaches are neighborhood beaches. And I need to remind people that these neighborhood beaches do not have facilities. Your home is your place, your facilities, your friend’s house close by. So please, you know, make sure that you’re using the facilities at the, at your house. Um, and if you have to use the bathroom while you’re at the, at the beach, that you need to leave and go to somebody’s house or, because All you’re doing is ruining it. You’re just, yeah. You’re just increasing the bacteria, um, for that beach itself. What, What’s our connection to Browns Island? We don’t have a connection. So Brown Browns Island is a privately owned, um, it’s owned by the, you know, the conservancy, trying to think of the actual name of it. Um, but it is a privately owned island now

1:47:11 during the 4th of July and other periods of time, there are some, some very popular weekends and stuff like that. Um, I know there’s some individuals that live in the neighborhood that go out and help clean up, you know, if they have additional trash that they’re dealing with because they cleaned up a property. Um, you know, we’ve always worked with, you know, cleaned up Marblehead. You know, we have people that go out and clean up beaches and steer swap and all this stuff. And we’re always willing to work with these people to come and collect that trash if it’s put in like, you know, a a known area that we can coordinate with them and, and figure that out. All right. So that’s basically our role is we can help them out, but we, we can’t do anything about Brown Island. No, I mean, I, that’s really comes down to, you know, harbormaster Police Department as far as, you know, that’s what I

1:47:56 kind of thought. So I’ll go, Well, we got some correspondence, uh, about that af after the 4th of July, didn’t we? I mean, I have it here. Yeah. You, we have received some of that. We’ve reached out to the individuals to say, yeah, we can help deal with the trash that’s come that you’re bringing off the island. Obviously we have no, we don’t go out and clean up Browns Island. Um, but you know, those residents that are trying to help the better Marblehead, we can definitely work with them to help. You know, they shouldn’t have to pay to remove, you know, get rid of that trash. Mm-Hmm. We have no problem working with them and going to pick up that trash at the end of that street or Whatever. So, have we responded to the correspondence? Yep, we have. Oh, good. Thank you. Yep.

1:48:34 Um, mosquitoes obviously we’re, you know, still in mosquito season, um, there have been lots of communities in the surrounding or in Massachusetts that have reports of Triple E and West Nile virus. Just wanna remind everybody, if you’re going out during mosquito hours, so after sun at dusk, anytime it’s cloudy, um, to remember to wear, um, EPA approved mosquito repellent, um, look around your yard so you don’t have any standing bodies of water, the standing bodies of water can contribute to mosquito population. Tip those all over just again, so dusk, early morning dawn. Um, people should be wearing, you know, be cognizant that it’s mosquito time, um, and there’s a lot of disease, you know, um, that can be contributed to mosquitoes.

1:49:21 Um, we are starting to see, um, other mosquito-borne diseases getting reported. Obviously, you know, anything that’s coming from other areas, we’re starting to see that stuff. So we’re starting to see dengue fever. Obviously Marblehead residents don’t just stay in Marblehead. They’re traveling to all these areas. When they come back and they go to these, you know, they’re sick and they have to go to the doctors, we do get notified that, you know, dengue fever and some of these other contagious diseases. And, and we’ve seen that. We are Seeing that. Yeah, this is this summer across the state. Um, we’ve seen a lot more dengue fever for and other mosquito-borne illnesses than we have, I believe ever before. Where Are people picking that up overseas? We don’t get that information. It can be anywhere from down south to East Asia to overseas.

1:50:07 Um, but you know, obviously like fever and stuff like that is in the US at this point. It’s coming. Yeah. Um, the last thing, oh, two little things. Obviously Covid is on the rise again. Um, we do, we just received some test kits to the health department. Um, so if you are in need of a a test kit, you can come in. Um, I received a thousand test kits. Um, there’s two tests per box. Um, obviously, you know, the beginning of the school season we’ll see quite a few people come in and ask for those. We will limit the number of test kits to the number of people in your house. Uh, but we do have test kits available. Um, and the last thing that I have is that my health, public health inspector is retiring. Um, and she’ll be retiring at the end of the month. For real. For real. Alright. Yeah. Yeah.

1:50:56 Um, and so we will be putting the job out, um, and looking for a new health inspector in the, in the real moment for sure. Well, I think she’s done a, a good job. She has been wonderful. She’s very thorough, she’s very thorough. Um, She’s responsive. She Very responsive, And I wish her well, and I think she’s looking forward to retirement. Yep. She definitely deserves it. Does that mean she Sold her House? Yes. Okay. Yeah, she wasn’t gonna, she wasn’t gonna leave till she did that. Okay. So, um, I maybe we should write her a letter of appreciation. That Would be great. And, uh, could, could our trustee administrative assistant do that?

1:51:39 Sure. Maybe there’ll be Something you wanna promo you guys want. We can do that. Yeah. Maybe there’s someone that’s sitting here on the chairmanship that will, uh, help.

1:51:52 We’re good. We’re Good. All right. I get something real quick. A couple items, just, um, one which wasn’t on here, it’s just a refund. I’ll be happy to pass it around. An individual purchased a sticker, then purchased a replacement sticker at full price, found both stickers and returned them to the office. So I just included the information here. All I need is an okay from you folks to refund. Well, usually we, we vote that correct? Correct. That’s, I just have the information For you review here. That’s all. So, uh, I’m looking for a motion to refund the sticker price. Is that right? Correct. Second. All those in favor. A, it’s unanimous. Thank you. Thank you.

1:52:34 And that’s it. Well, um, we’ve gonna have some public comments and before that, uh, Uh, new business in terms of, and wrote a note, um, there are eight, what is it? There are eight departments in the town that do not report to the select board that have at least one town employee. Um, in point of fact, there are, um, I don’t have the numbers, but something like 30 different independent boards in the tenant and it, it, it, it, it, we bo bottom line

1:53:19 is the big eight, the eight that, that have employees and do not report to the select board will be asked to, uh, come to a meeting of the, of, uh, the charter committee and talk about how, how things are going, how, how, uh, what our me short, medium, and long term challenges are and what’s going well. So I I certainly, not just because I sit on the charter committee, but I think that that ought to be something we do either collectively in a special meeting or somehow, um, work together on that. Yeah. So I, I think, you know, I talked to the facts a little bit about today. So I think obviously we,

1:54:06 we’ve talked a little bit about this as well. I think the first thing that I wanna do is give a very basic overview of what my, our departments do, the waste department and the health department, and you know, how it kind of intersects with the board. The f first one’s gonna be basic, and then depending on the conversations, we can go more in depth of what the department does versus and the board. And then we can begin to talk about, obviously we will be giving kind of a presentation or something, or obviously be meeting with the, the charter committee, um, to explain. And so obviously we wanna make sure everybody, um, is agreement with that before we move forward. So you’re gonna give the presentation to us first. So first will be a very basic introduction to what the, what the department does

1:54:52 and what’s the responsibility of the board. You’re gonna do that to us or to the charter committee? To, to this board. We, we tentatively talked about doing it in September. Yeah. Doing it in a relaxed way. Yep. Just sort of brainstorm. Um, I’ve spent, uh, I apologize that I’m nerdy enough to do this, but I tried to find everything I could in both Massachusetts general laws and the bylaws of the town, and there’s virtually nothing about the Board of Health or the Department of Health. The things that I find in the general, uh, legislation are that it looks like the state thinks that towns would have either a Department of Health or a board. Correct. And so the,

1:55:39 The, there’s Master Milan that says the pounds must cover certain things,

1:55:47 But it, it, it’s when it’s when it’s written, it rather either with, either with a board, like the law that I looked at that I had hoped was gonna get passed that would give us more money, uh, says either a Board of Health or a Department of Health. Yep. And you have to understand that with the history of Massachusetts, our laws written very long ago. Paul Revere sat on a board of health originally. Um, and so I think, you know, for new members, I always recommend the Mass Association of Health Boards offers training and all this stuff I’ve provided, um, the handbook, the handbooks and stuff like that.

1:56:32 Um, I recommend that all, I, I recommend that all board members, um, at least become familiar with that, but take the classes, um, and really understand some of that stuff so they can understand their responsibilities. Um, but yes, when you have a department, um, there, there’s a different, you know, Even over the weekend I’ve read the 120 pages of what the, whatever it was. And, um, then I called the mass department of, of, of Health Ports. And, uh, I didn’t get a call back. Um, I also, uh, emailed her, but, um, I understand she, she’s, I didn’t realize that she was, um, part-time that she was a volunteer. She has her own legal practice. She’s an attorney. Yeah, she’s legal, she’s legal for us in the state of Massachusetts.

1:57:19 But, but she also, um, oh yeah, She has all, she’s very busy. She also, so Cheryl Savara, She also chairs this, uh, the department. Yep. And is it a volunteer position? I believe so, yeah. I think it is from what I gather. And, um, in fact, when I placed the card with a number that was in the, in the handbook, um, somebody answered the phone with another name and she said, oh, I’m sorry. She said, I work for the, for the state and for the, and for this company. And I said, do I have the right number? And then she explained to me that was, so, um, yeah, I hope to, yeah, So we will add that to the agenda. But yeah, So the Next, the beginning will be a very basic discussion and we can expand on that From there. The next meeting is September 10th, but, um, we’re not having the charter committee. I mean, that, that’s, No, that’s gonna be further down the line.

1:58:05 Okay. So I was, I had it written here to tell, to tell Don. Is that what you told? Yeah, I was, I was not told that. Like they didn’t have a date for us at this point. There are three, three dates over the next six weeks. I haven’t seen any dates. Are you expecting to have the charter committee come on the next meeting? Is that what You’re No, it’s the other way around. We’ll go charter committee. Oh, uh, Wait. It is an extremely busy time of year for us with the contract, you know, construction budget and all that stuff. So I’m not so sure we able, he’s Gotta get out by September 6th. They’ll be able to really dive into the charter committee stuff as much as The, the calendar. And it may, it may be that it’s flexible, but the calendar was set by the Collins, uh, Institute, um,

1:58:51 that’s the consultant to the process. Okay. So again, our next meeting is September 10th. And, uh, with that I’ll uh, ask for any public comment. Uh, some people have had an opportunity to chime in, but, uh, anybody else have any comments? Couple of things, Ms. Elliott, have you looked into retrofitting the trash trailers with, uh, sprinkler ports, like the little mini compactor? No, I never had a fire like that before. Before that I can recall. Yeah, we ago you had a, Um, no, they, they’ve actually all been in the trailers. Um, so I can talk to CWT. So our trailers are manufactured by our hauling company. Right. Um, they tend not to have ports. A lot of trash trailers are open tops.

1:59:37 Um, and so obviously you could just roll the top off and get to the fire that way. Fire stone. Yeah. Yeah. Um, the one benefit to the closed controller is that they tend not to provide a lot of oxygen. And so the fires tend to smolder in there and we tend to find them. Um, and it’s not an I’m not an issue. Okay. She cares about that. The other thing I’ve noticed on my walks that there’s new bulletin boards that are showing up and the one at Gracie’s occasionally when the beach is closed. Somebody, I assume you screw a sign on it saying that. Do you know anything about these bullet? Yeah, so the bulletin boards are first sanitary sewage overflows notification. Um, so the state of Massachusetts requires that if there’s a sanitary sewer overflow or a combined sewer overflow, we must notify the public, um,

2:00:26 and notify the public where they could be, have interaction with this material. Obviously that could be potentially be at bathing beaches. Um, so we have placed signs. We got a grant, um, from the state of Massachusetts and we’ve placed, I wanna say it’s 10 billboards around the community in different locations. We are only gonna see, we don’t have a combined sewer, we only have a sanitary sewer. So we, you know, we could potentially, a sanitary overflow would be, you know, we’re having a large rain event. Um, obviously our sewage is pumped over to SCSD. We can’t, they can’t handle the sewage and they have to say, Hey, you need to, you need to dump. Um, it does not happen very often. Um, but if we do not dump, it will start

2:01:12 to back up into homes. And so we have a location, um, it’s, it’s off of lieutenant, I mean off of, um, um, the neck Used to be like by tin out. Yeah, I think that’s exactly where it is out that way. Um, and so that’s where it gets dumped, but we still need to make notification and those boards are designed for the notification. We will be providing other information in there. Um, but we have to set it up in a way that we always leave space for. When the notification shows up, people notice it right away and say, all right, there’s something different here and I can do that. So we will be putting basic information up there like our beach ate, um, if I’m closing the beach and one of those are there, we’re trying to make that a little bit more of a focal point, um, for some of our bathing beaches.

2:01:58 So at DeVero Beach we’ve been using the pavilion to post our Bathing Beach permit and the sign for no swimming, if I have to close that beach, it would now be shifted to this billboard, um, that is right in front of, um, you know, the restaurant there. And so I just have to, you know, we have to begin to shift people’s, um, where they’re gonna look for this stuff. Um, and that will really begin next season. I didn’t want to kind of shift it in the middle, but I will be working with, um, obviously Marblehead Water and sewer, um, potentially park and rec and myself, um, to put up appropriate information on those boards. You’ll also see information on new dogs on the beach during certain times. All that stuff that kind of goes into its log. I’d never seen anything in the papers about it.

2:02:44 I just saw my walk. I said, what’s this all about Dave? Like, down by the fort in Park. Park. And you only ever seen a sign on, is that Gracie’s? Correct. Yep. The other thing, how you were mentioning how you cooperate with the people that clean up Browntown and stuff. I know after, lots of times after storms, my brother-in-Law and I will take my dumper. We don’t get trees, branches from the road. And I just tell Kay, wherever shed, it’s coming from town. Same thing with clean up at Gracie’s. Yeah. And the other, you know, very helpful that way. Yeah. Um, the other areas that, you know, um, s Lane gets hit pretty hard. Those, some of those fishing, fishing shanties get hit pretty hard. We always wanna make sure that we’re working with the fishermen, you know, some of the locals that are having to deal with some of the additional waste that we help them out with that.

2:03:29 Appreciate it. Anybody online? Uh, Marty online still? I Don’t think so. Nope. Just us. Nobody? Uh, no questions there. Nobody’s there? Nope. All. So, uh, I call for motion to adjourn. Same second in favor. We thank you very much everyone. Have a good night. Everyone. Good.