Board of Health: February 18, 2025

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.

0:01 Call the meeting to order February 18th. 18th is the working number for you, the working ninth. So, um, the first item on the agenda, we have, um, the safe. I want have to pronounce that by You. Safe, Um, information. But Madam Chair, before I talk about safe. Yes. I you wanna take a minute to apologize for my behavior? La Last week, during the minute meeting, Andrew and I disagreed on an issue. After the meeting, several colleagues of mine

0:48 were kind enough to tell me, strong enough to tell me that I came across as being very angry in expressing my opinion. Um, I was saddened, but I realize it’s probably true.

1:02 I do not apologize for the disagreement, but I definitely apologize for the display of anger. Board meetings should be a place where people disagree, but they disagree with respect and courtesy. And to the extent that I did not do that, I apologize. I know I’m a problem. I drive Andrew crazy. Um, his comments that he works his ass off for the community is absolutely accurate. Um, I respect him for that, and I have said to that, said that to him, um, to his faith. But I believe the challenges in public health today cannot effectively be managed by one guy alone, no matter how committed he might be, even in a small town,

1:51 and especially if he’s manning managing something as chaotic as a transfer station. Um, more directly he and I differ on what board membership means. And, and I think that’s the reason to say this a little bit. Um, Andrew’s been here 13 years and in my, my observation I wasn’t here is the board has been pretty LA State Fair. The example of LA State fairness is that 13 years you’ve not had employment review. That’s pretty hands off. I come from a world where board members are actively involved and challenging everything, not for the sake of challenging,

2:38 but for the hope that we might be able to find something, how to do it better and more efficiently. So inherently we, we do have some that went on my first meeting with you bef right after I was elected, I said to you that I would like to try to, to know as much about public health, almost as much about public health in Marblehead as you do now. Uh, by the way, I said the opposite to Tom. I, first time I met him, I said, I didn’t know what a transferation was, and I’m really not interested in learning a lot about kids. But, um, anyway, I hope even though I drive you crazy, that by my trying to be involved,

3:26 I can add some value. Um, we’re gonna have disagreements about roles and boundaries and everything, but learning about last week, I will commit to try to do it as respectfully encouragingly as possible. Let’s, okay. Safe. Um, could we, do you mind if I have few words to say? Of course not. You’re the chair. Oh, I wasn’t expecting you to say that, but I certainly appreciate you apologizing especially to Andrew. But we were sitting here too, and it’s difficult to be able to manage something like that. Yep. And, uh, I’m glad I don’t have my gal tonight

4:13 because last, last week was the first time I’ve used, not the first time. I apologize the second time I’ve used Mike Gavel in any chair position during my tenure anywhere in the community. So, um, I’m glad it’s not here tonight, uh, that I admire your passion in your intelligence. Your intelligence, and most of all inquisitive And yeah, I’m nothing if I’m luxurious. Yes. And I think that, uh, being inquisitive is, is a, is a fine attribute. Passion can go either way, but, um, keep both of them up so

4:59 We can go. Well, thank you. Okay. Safe 2.0

5:08 is a piece of legislation that was signed by Governor Healy in November, um, as part of a $4 billion state development effort.

5:26 It comes on the back of safe one, or it really doesn’t have a one didn’t have a number when they gave it. The interesting part of the acronyms are for two different words, two different groups of words. Safe one is not the same as Safe two, but in any event, safe, um, comes from a blueprint that was made

5:54 and we said 14. I read the piece from the Cheryl Sabers board and it said 19. But anyway, no, The blueprint is from 2019. We have a collaborative. That was the, the start of this that was formed back in 2014. Okay. Um, and that was says here, the first page that Sure. That Governor Baker signed it in 2016. N no, I have, uh, baker signed it in 21. So many numbers here. Well, any of it, it went through Baker then it was rejected. Apparently it got bumped out. And the bottom line is that it hasn’t done

6:39 what it’s supposed to do. The important part of what, what, at least the, the Agency for Health Boards said about public health that comes from the blueprint for public health. Excellencies Excellence says that Massachusetts municipalities, many of them are unable to meet even minimum statutory requirements. It says that we have 352 public health jurisdictions and little cross jurisdictional practices. It says that the 351 Boards of health have trouble keeping up with current growth, let alone meeting former standards.

7:27 It says that Massachusetts not have, uh, contemporary standards for public health workforce. And it says that funding for public health is inconsistency, inconsistent, and inequitable. The elements of Safe two are, I think it’s not a, at least from my mind, the, the wr writing of the law is not right. But when, when I talked to Ms. Chabra from the, the health board group, she is much more optimistic about the potential for it.

8:09 And she believes that a significant request for proposal will be, is being developed and will be published soon. And briefly, when you and I had talked, you didn’t think, because we already have money from Baker’s, we probably, that’s the way to say it, Baker’s safe as opposed to Healy Safe that we will be able to apply for Healy safe money, even if we have Makers. And the question I would like the board to, I think this is what board should do. Board should decide whether we want to consider how we could be a very strong regional partner, or should we try to be as good as we can standing alone.

8:57 And so, that was my last slide, and I hope we at least have, you know, we ought to have hear from people and hear from the board. Um, you, you guys know Marblehead a thousand times better than I do. When, when we went to Swampscott

9:19 to talk about Calm, the Heidi and s Swampscott said it was a shame that we can’t collaborate s Swampscott and Marblehead because we play football on Thanksgiving Day. And neither and neither town would wanna collaborate. That’s why we couldn’t build a, a joint shift school system one day, one Morning. Are we still there? If we are, then we both end of conversation. We Both built two new schools Yeah. In the last 20 years for 30 years now, isn’t it? So are you saying you don’t think regionalization is worth a lot of trouble? I think regionalization at, even at that time was, was important to duplicate efforts.

10:07 Is, is, is not, uh, not the best thing. What you’re doing is sharing it. The current one, we at Baker still safe. So Yeah. Is sharing, um, resources that really don’t influence the care in Marblehead. They make the system work better. Right. So the Idea is that obviously there are quite a few mandates for public health, uh, local public health, so all your restaurant inspections, disease surveillance, and yes, there are communities out there that are unable to complete all these inspections that are required, let alone trying to keep up with all the regulations that are out there. So the idea, when you looked at these grants, and we’ve been part of this since 2012, um,

10:54 and so in 2012, uh, the town of Marblehead signed an inter municipal agreement with Salem, Beverly Danvers, Linden Marblehead in Han Peabody and Switzerland to try to increase our services and try to better the community by working together. So by all of us coming together, we could say, all right, these are the things that we need to be working on. We should be looking at indoor air quality. And that starts with smoking. Let’s look at, uh, food code. We’re behind in food code. The FD is all the way up here. We’re still on the 1999 food code. Why is that? So we were able to work together and look at these different areas and say, all right, let’s pool our resources, our, our knowledge and our brains

11:40 and work together to come up with these. We have a steering committee, which is essentially the directors working together or their agents of these municipalities, and let’s decide what we need to push forward. So that inter, you know, inter municipal cooperation agreements have been tremendous for all the communities. And we’ve able to accomplish more than if I just stayed in Marblehead and just worked on marblehead things. We’ve done this also, uh, since for about 2001 with public health emergency preparedness. That coalition is 15 communities on the North Shore and also is a great resource because it does come with some employees and stuff like that now. So all this stuff, we, you know, when we look at it from a regional basis, when we talk about the things that we’re trying to

12:27 push forward, we generally talk about regulations. So again, when we talk about the regulations that you guys are looking at, tobacco control, tattooing regs, they affect all these areas. And we should really all have the same set of regulations and therefore we work on ‘em together using, you know, these grant money to do that. Yeah. You know, that I wanna go beyond the traditional public health Yep. And talk about health promotion. The weakest, absolute weakest part of safe one and two is in the 2024.

13:12 There’s not one word of mental health. There’s no, not, not even the term, there’s not one word about addiction, about substance abuse, anything like that. And they, they are partnering. They, they, they required DPH to partner with the environmental agency, but somehow there’s a, there’s a separate mental health agency. Right. And they’re not involved in the development of this all. Now, when I talk, again, talked to Cheryl that Cheryl May be an optimist, I don’t know. Um, she said that he, there’s a reason why they’re not in the legislation, but they are going to be involved in this RFP that comes out. And we will, we would be able to apply for sharing, um,

14:01 services or in behavioral mental health areas. Yes. Why do you think mental health hasn’t been in either Baker or Healy’s Sphere safe? So obviously when I, when you look at mental health, they don’t necessarily think it comes under, they, they look at that coming from the healthcare side and not necessarily from the public health side. So obviously healthcare in Massachusetts is really strong. They’re the ones with all the money that that’s, I think, you know, some of these people feel that it should be coming from that side. Yeah. And obviously we do feel that tobacco use, substance use is an issue. We do try to deal with that. Obviously we have tobacco regulations.

14:47 We have a grant from BS A S to deal with substance abuse. But generally looking at it from high school age and on up, um, obviously we have received opioid funds dealing with substance abuse with opioids. Um, but, you know, that’s kind of where we are at this point.

15:07 After the meeting the other night when we were talking more civilly, you said that grants are bittersweet blessing for us. That’s correct. That’s very contrary to what Thatcher said at the state of the town. He’s hired a grant writer and was trying to advocate that everybody write grants. Now, having lived some of my professional life on, on grant money, I, I don’t think that’s very easy. But I was disappointed to hear that. You, you don’t think it adds the, to adds to the town of Marblehead? Very much So. As, as you know, grants can be very challenging. So you need to have a grant writer that is very familiar

15:55 with the language that we use, is able to write these grants to show that we’re able to take this work, have a good idea, and put it forward. Then obviously we have to do the work. And then generally the heavy piece with grants is the reporting side. And so you need somebody that’s fallen you along with all this work that is able to just do the reporting itself. Again, we received a large sum of money for opioids, you know, about $330,000. Um, I sit on the opioids. It’s not a grant, is it? No, it’s, uh, but you still have to do the reporting for it. And somebody has to do that reporting. And that reporting at this point is falling to us. Um, you know, so, you know, grants can be great. Um, but as you know, it, it’s hard to survive on grants.

16:45 But I think we could work, especially with a five person board, and especially if we can get, and, and this is gonna sound self-serving, but people who have lived their lives in public health and have written grants for public health, there’s a lot of people in Marblehead who could help you get money. And we could follow the trail of the money as well. So the, the other piece with the grants is, yes, we can get the money. That generally what comes with that is that we need to hire additional staff. And when you tell staff, we can pay you for this period of time, but after the end of that grant, you’re no longer employed with the town of Marblehead. But people in that field are used to that. That field’s different these days. It comes and goes.

17:33 Um, it, it’s hard. Do you think it would be helpful? ‘cause I’ve just met the grant writer a week or so ago, and she seems very eager to, to meet the Board of Health. Would it be helpful to bring her here to one of our meetings near future? I mean, I think the idea is really, let’s ask her what grants are out there that would be, It’d be nice if we met her, I mean, as a group too. So I, I can’t promise you that she’s gonna be willing to come in here. She’s one of Thatcher’s employees. I’d have to talk to him about having her come in. Would you want a presentation from her? What, what would you, What we’ve had from other people? I Staff presentation and a few questions. I would recommend that the chair write an email. Send an email to Thatcher asking for that. Alright. And, uh, rest of you willing to,

18:21 Yeah, I’ll just back Andrew on that though. That like, when you have someone that’s not guaranteed a full-time forever, like they’re, they have one foot out the door, they’re looking on the outside, and so then their focus is not fully with you. Yeah. So that’s, that’s always a challenge. Yeah. Most of the grants that I’ve written like that we try to get the, the agency to say, if at the end of three years or five years of the grant, if you reach success, A, B, and C, then the town would make that a permanent position. And I think what they’re hearing from you and Tom may maybe, maybe Elaine as well, that that’s unlikely in the current situation in

19:07 Currently. That’s probably unlikely. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think that she’s here for a short term. I think she wants No, I I think she’s here for a long period. But If we hired about a few hired someone on a grant, We have $90,000 from the two best practice grants. Mm-hmm. And even when we started, Andrew said that was gonna be a challenge, but we’re able to hire them, not it, what’s the word for they’re hiring in short term. Yeah, yeah. Yep. So we could hire a public health nurse for two years.

19:38 Is that worth it to us to get two years, learn how to do certain things? And you have to remember when she’s here, she’s also looking for a full-time job. That’s exactly, yeah. So my experience with this is that we, we have this grant with the North Shore shared of public health, you know, public health excellence. We’ve gone through, we’ve had temporary nurses, part of the grant, we’ve had inspectors, they all leave to full-time jobs because that’s, Well, I permanent, there’s a lot of people that consider themselves consultants and they go, they do this, go from one consultant job to the next. We, we don’t see a lot of consultants in the public health field. But it, it is potential that you could find these people. My grand, my daughter does, But the consultants in the public health field make a

20:25 whole lot less money than the consultants, you know, on the Accentures who make a thousand dollars an hour. Right. Yeah. I mean, that’s the issue. You can, you can work as a consultant getting a couple weeks work, then you can go fallow for a couple of months and you’re okay. But in public health, that’s not the case.

20:48 Well, it just seems to me that Massachusetts has to face that in its safe too. It, it doesn’t, doesn’t say say it very well in the legislation itself. Cheryl implied that she thinks that everybody knows that soon when I talk to our two representatives, I Kennedy. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I I just wanna read something that I, I start, you know, that the state action for public health, which is safe, the acronym is safe, uh, public Health Excellence, I’m sorry, state Action for Public Health Excellence Program to encourage, to encourage boards of health to adopt practices that will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the delivery

21:33 of local public health services. And that’s what we want. The efficiency and, um, effectiveness of the delivery of local public health Services. Yeah. But what Andrew’s saying, we, if we hire them for three years, then they have to go away. ‘cause we don’t have the money to sustain them. It it, is it gonna be worse when you take it away from the community? Here? We’ve given you something and now away. I think that’s what you’re saying. I is seeing that it’s, it’s necessary and we need to continue.

22:08 But let’s go on. And I think it’s a good discussion. And, um, do you have anything to add with about what would this No, You know, the only, uh, so I did bring you copies of, you know, um, a lot would of the grant, this, these two sheets provides what a lot of the safe two point, you know, 1.0 does. Um, so I just wanna make sure that you had some of the information. And yes, we’ve been part of this for a long period of time. Um, again, we were part of this original cluster to see if this is gonna work in the state of Massachusetts. It does work. We are able to come together, put our minds together and push forward regulations that we feel are great regulations that should be adopted by communities and therefore making ‘em healthier communities. Well, it’s always good to collaborate.

22:54 Yes. If, if you would put all that material in your file for next year’s town report. ‘cause none of that material is in the town report. And we have a, we at least we wrote it this year to include a section on what we’re doing for the town. And I think these are very important things that yes, we are doing for the town without the board knowing a lot about it and certainly nobody writing about it. Yep.

23:24 All right. Um, I don’t think we have this motion, uh, on the, the agendas. Could I fill that into the motion that we have you given me? Or is that within the director’s report? Nope, you can go right to that. All Right. I have a, um, a motion regarding the complaint of the, uh, of the minutes. And I am going to read what I got from, from what we got from, um, town Council. And it’s a response to the open meeting, law complaint against the Board of Health filed by Alan Waller and dated December 2nd, 2024. And, um, the motion is a motion, and I will read it and I’ll ask for a second. Um, I move to delegate our response

24:11 to the open meeting law complaint against the Board of Health filed by Alan Waller and dated December 2nd, 2024 to town coun delegated to town council, me to and Costa LLC. Uh, I’m looking for a second. Second, but I don’t understand what we’re doing. Yeah, but no, that’s why. Yeah. What’s the, The minutes that we, we, uh, we had some minutes that Alan Wall had, had questioned and mm-hmm. And, um, they, it needs to go to town council, So the minutes are all approved and stuff like that. So Are we outta jail now? Yeah. No, I mean, aal Alan Essentially are, but you need the, the town needs to respond to the, the inspector General. Alan’s a smart guy and he is paying attention, and it’s probably good that he’s pushing back

24:56 and keeping us up to date and making sure all this stuff is out. And, uh, I mean, yeah. So now, now we had a flood of minutes that we’re approving and they’re there. Thanks, Alan. And, uh, other people can read ‘em. Alan can read ‘em. I mean, uh, what does town council do at this point? So they, They’re just responding to the, the Attorney General’s office to say the board is taking care of this stuff, they’re moving forward. We can’t do that ourselves. Generally not, no. Okay. Um, so we pay retainer fees to our lawyer. The, the chair can certainly write the same sentence. Yeah. They, they draft all this stuff to make sure you’re in compliance. Um, Uh, if there’s anything further, we Have Alan, you watching, we’ll be better.

25:44 Well, we’ve been asked by 10 council to make this motion, so, Okay. So, um, is there a second? Yeah, I second All was in favor. What? Whatever we have to do to get off to,

25:57 Yeah.

26:00 So, um, that’s done.

26:09 I sent my agenda over there with my motion.

26:15 Uh, the bills are next. Yeah. Okay. Uh, a one Exterminators for rack control. This, this is from last weekend. This week. Yeah. Yeah. Um, 1500 Agri Source, uh, for the grinding of the compost. That’s 11,520 Black Earth Compost for residential food composting, uh, 2005 54 88. Um, sin Oil Corporation. I’m assuming that’s oil disposal. Andrew, I didn’t email you on that one. Okay. Um, 6,432 and 44 cents Guardian booth. Uh, so those are for the transaction hu in the control booth. That’s 13,000 734 68. And that was half the payment, right? Yep. So there’s another half of that mistaken on that before. Um, Haley Ward Inc.

27:01 That’s the engineering firm for the transfer station. 16,810. Um, home Depot just for disposal area maintenance and supplies, $158 67 cents. Marblehead Counseling Center for Psychological Counseling, $4,063 54 cents. Marblehead Light Department for late, um, electricity, $1,221 and 19 cents Mass recycling, uh, department 5 5 0 for service training, $195 Mead, Teleman, and Costa for legal. $1,197 Printer Pro Solutions for Ink Toner for employees, $193 38 cents. Republic Services for Trash collection, $104,231 and 42 cents.

27:47 Sanofi Pastor Inc. Uh, that’s for the flu vaccine. Um, $7,889 and 6 cents. Sinclair Cleaning for Cleaning service, 150 bucks T-Mobile for telephone, $36 83 cents. US Bank, national Miscellaneous Banking, it needs $28 and 98 cents. Utech. That’s the Mattress Recycling Company. 4,200. Um, waste Management of, uh, Massachusetts for trash disposal. $63,057 and 88 cents. And then WB Mason for office supplies $95 3 cents.

28:26 Thank you very much. Well, there I see the one responsive. I didn’t see it. I’m sorry. It was after the bills. So we’ve taken care, uh, we’ve got the director’s report. All right. So SL Chase Steel was in last week completing the demo that was finished up on Friday. Um, they have submitted the shop drawings to us. Uh, we received those today. Those go off to the structural engineers, the architects to just verify all the sizes, all that stuff. Once that verified SL Chase will make sure that they have all the steel that’s seated and they’ll begin to work. Um, we hope to have them ordering, like I hope to have the structural engineer, the architects review this as quickly as possible.

29:12 Again, we want to keep everything moving. Um, and they’re hoping to have all the, you know, the seal ordered by the end of the week and keep this going. Were they able to give you an update on the Cost? They were not able to gimme an update on the cost at the time. Yeah. Is the timing the same? Yeah, the timing is the same at this point. Yep. Um, so that will keep moving. Um, we did have the fire department into the transfer station early this morning. Um, we had a small smolder with the, uh, leaf pile, uh, which is not uncommon at this time of year, especially since we had snow. And then high winds, what happens is that the snow blankets, it creates a nice blanket and sometimes it generates a little bit extra heat. And then with that really strong wind,

29:58 we had a little bit of amber. Um, and what we generally do at this point is that we just pile snow on top of it until we can turn it over and then it just stuffs it all out. So yes, we, we had them in first thing this morning that, um, operations are continuing up there. We have our transaction hut in our control booth. Um, we’re looking for to get a, a proposal or a cost estimate to have those, um, electrician come in, uh, and put those buildings online at this point. So I’ll come back with an estimate to do that. Questions when we Got the estimate to build them, which was about like 138, that that was for both. Right. So yeah, that, that’s a really hard number to kind of pull out. Right. So the 138 is, is essentially for that,

30:45 that one transaction building. Oh, for the one building where, where the control booth was kind of built into the compact. Yeah. But that’s everything from start to beginning. So, um, that’s what I was wondering. Doesn’t architects like estimates, everything that goes into anything that has to do with that building is part of that estimate. So getting it up and running too. All the electrical, all that, Yeah. All that. Yep. Okay. Yep. Um, so obviously it was, it was still a huge cost savings. Yeah, yeah. By going with, you know, the pre-manufactured units. Um, and so yeah, we, we will still see a huge cost saving in there. Mm-hmm. Uh, but it, but it’s hard to tell you exactly what the exact is. Yeah. Um, tobacco regulations

31:31 and, um, tobacco control, permanent makeup and all that stuff. I wanted to make sure that each board member had a copy of the current tobacco regulations. Um, and this is the format that we will be moving towards. So if the, no, that’s, yeah. Is this the one that, These are the current one I’m hand you right now are the current regulations. Those are on the books today. So those are, that’s just a different format and stuff like that. That’s the same thing. Yeah. You got two Oh oh yeah. One’s for one’s for Tom. Oh. So the document that I have with all the new language, you would take a look at that and you would ask questions if you have questions about that.

32:16 Once you were kinda comfortable with that, I would take that hand it over to the attorneys and they would format it like what I just gave you. So I was looked at this and, and didn’t eat my dinner, so I should have eaten my dinner. Is that what you’re telling me? But, so I just, you know, before we can really move forward with it, before I’m gonna have a, you know, we’re gonna hold a public hearing. So once the board’s good with it, we’ll advertise that they’re gonna have a public hearing. Uh, so you do that two weeks before the board would actually hold a, a true public hearing. Um, you might have an attorney here representing tobacco companies, um, and you go through all the regulations, the board would adopt them, and then that becomes law. So you don’t need to go to town meeting. You don’t, this is under the, what the boards can do.

33:05 And the same for the tap body art regulations. So these are the current regulations.

33:19 They’re for the whole state. So in 2003, the state put out general, they put out a guideline of what town should adopt. And this is what was adopted by the town of Marblehead.

33:37 Even though we have no body of people, Even though we do not have any body art people. That’s correct. They adopted a high fee Except for the ones who were in physician’s offices. Yep. But that does not fall under our oversight. That’s correct. And so we would be doing the same thing for body art, uh, regulations, tattoo, um, and all of that. So you really wanna take a look at that, see if you have any questions once we’re all all set with the questions. Again, we’ll push this out to town council. They’ll format everything with, hold a public hearing for that. And we, so if we Met and just, and said there were whatever questions we had and get them to Yeah. Town council, could we then, uh, have the public meeting in

34:22 April? You, you could, yeah. Do I would’ve to talk to town council to see how long it’s gonna take them to format it? I don’t think very long, depending on our questions and concerns. Our next Week is in two weeks, so Yep. So I’m trying to be respectful. Yep. But 351 jurisdictions are gonna look at something like this and then pay lawyers to write it for their towns. That’s correct. That’s the best argument for Safe two. You still, we could, you’re still gonna have to go do that with either Safe 2.0 unless you Still may have to do it if there were 10, 10 in the region. Nope. You’re, each community is still gonna say, I want my community to take a look at this

35:07 and see how it affects Marblehead and make sure it’s written for Marblehead. And if the state thinks of these, they can adopt ‘em and have ‘em over the whole state. But they generally don’t do that.

35:20 It takes them forever. And so generally what happens is local boards of health are, get ahead of them. They do it first enough of them draft it, and then they finally say, all right, we like this. We’re gonna draft it for the whole state. We being mistake. Yeah. Who, who would do this mistake? State Department of Public Health? No, at, at this like, uh, your senators, you know, at, at your true top, um, government officials. Not, not DPH and stuff like that. No. So you don’t want a input on this right now? You, You can, you know, I just gotta point out the one thing Tom’s gonna catch. Yeah. Right Ahead. Is, uh, the tobacco one says the board of Health does the enforcement and the body R one says the health department does the enforcement. I know you’re gonna point that out. It’s simple.

36:08 It’s giving me more credit than Elaine is the proofread the course.

36:15 So I, I have, um, a couple of questions ‘cause I did look over. You say they’re not very different. Which ones The, the one you handed today and the one we’ve had from previous? Yeah. So the difference are for the tobacco control you’re getting. So the new regulations that I’ve had to do have a lot to do with flavors and different flavors and different products. So it’s expanding on what we have currently. So, so the, the, the tobacco companies are trying to play this game about flavor, and it’s really about menthol. And so we have these great regulations to say, you can’t have menthol, you can’t do this. And so now what they’re doing is they’re creating a product that says, no, they don’t have any flavor. Well, this smells like menthol. It tastes like menthol.

37:00 Well, that doesn’t have any flavor. And so we’re able to catch ‘em with some of the language in this new regulations. Mm-hmm. So also, uh, I was had more of a question for the, for the, uh, tattoo, but, okay. But let me just, I do have a question for the, for the tobacco. Tobacco is the new product that we were talking about, uh, when Joyce was here, stated in this Yes. Document. Yep. Could you refresh my memory and tell me what it’s called? I would have to take a look at the thing and talk to choice to see What you have to refresh your, yeah. Okay. Good. I’m glad that we’re on the same page. Um, also I was impressed that, um, when I read it and the other format isn’t the same, I can see already that there were these 16 whereases, uh,

37:47 before we, uh, made our statements and wanted to regulate the tobacco products. And I, I think it’s quite strong and I mean, I like it. That’s why I like, so that was one thing. And on the since, because this may be be able get these answers before next tenant, um, on the body end, I recall that we had some pretty high fees. I don’t see any fees in this. The one that I have, not the one I got today. So Yeah. So for the current body out regulations, so the establishment is $500 and each practitioner’s 200 500 for the establishment. Yep. And then, and that’s a year’s, uh, for one year licensing or what, if that’s Correct. For the establishment.

38:32 Establishment. And then each practitioner is licensed as well. And Then there was one other thing that I,

38:40 And there’s not like a value added tax on everyone. They do. There’s not. And then there was a question here also that, um, an establishment permit, uh, shall be valid from the date of issuance and shall expire for, for the Board of Health’s permitting schedule. Do we have a permitting Schedule? Yeah. So generally with these, we, we go by the calendar year, so January 1st through the December 30th. Okay. So if I see other questions, we’ll do it at the questioning time. But I, I was prepared for tonight calendar year. So you’re convinced there’s no way we can make this less expensive and more efficient For the state of Massachusetts? Yeah, You’d have to take, talk to your state, state legislature

39:26 and say, Hey, why are you guys sitting back and not doing what we’re asking you to do? Why can’t you put this forward? Um, but again, generally what happens that each community is slightly different. Um, and this is the quickest way we can make sure that these regulations get in place.

39:44 I, I admit not knowing much about body art, but are there sort of reasons why people fight over body art? I mean, why w one juris one, one regulation for the whole state, eliminating 381 legal consultations couldn’t be worthwhile for somebody. You Could, again, you just have to talk to your state legislature why they’re not putting this stuff forward.

40:12 Well, what, for one thing, we’ve got very high fees and I’m sure everybody wants them and we have high fees for a reason.

40:22 Oh. I Mean, I think your fees are gonna be probably very similar to other communities in this area at this point. Tattooing is Maybe five years ago, those were very high. Yeah. But now they’re not. So I could have to take Mean tattooing is not a inexpensive hobby, you know, is marblehead, It’s not the fees that are gonna scare people away from doing tattooing and stuff like that is Marblehead. It’s a peninsula. Yeah. You know, you’re basically the majority, whether our restaurants or anything like that, the majority of the people go into these businesses are marble headers. So that’s your, and you know, you can get the best artists around probably in Salem, which is right next door.

41:08 So why wouldn’t you just go to Salem? I mean, I think it’s generally, it’s the same reason why we don’t have a pot shop up yet. Because you just don’t have the customers that you think you do to keep these things operational. Um, so I mean, generally I’m not worried about it, but, Well, I understand all of that, I think. But it just seems to me that what we’re doing today is spending an awful lot of legal consultation, buddy. So again, I think that it’s, it’s about protecting the health of marble head. And so if we can be, create a set of regulations for tobacco control that are where they sh the board feels that they should be.

41:51 So you, you think we should wait until the state catches up to us, or we should put those forward, protect our people, and then when the state finally decides, oh, I think this is a good idea, we can say I think, I think that’s a good idea. You are asking if I’m stopped beating my wife in that phrase. See? Yeah. No, but I mean, I was at, I was at the state of the town conversation and, and it looks like money is tight. Yep. Uh, it just seems,

42:25 it, it seems like the relationship between the little towns and the big government is as smooth as it could be. Maybe that you all lived with that for so many years and don’t survive. Um, okay. I, I think, um, I, maybe I’m just puritanical, but I’d like to have my fingers on this. Yeah. So rather than accepting it from some someplace Yeah. Okay. Live free or die. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s what I was told about regionalization.

43:00 So I think it’s an important thing. And I, I wonder this Board of Health has an opportunity to put their thoughts and feelings on the, on paper.

43:15 Well, I have less problem with that than then, then having to go through translating the board’s feelings into legal. It, it’s going to, but anyway, I can’t write lawyer. If you can write lawyer, It, it’s, well, what I could do, it’s is hire a law student mm-hmm. Or go to a law school and ask if they could have a student assignment to come and help us save some money. And I don’t, maybe the town council wouldn’t want us to do that. Maybe the, the, we would somehow be putting the town at risk because probably the, the town council provides some sort of protection for us if we do that. And no matter what, you’re gonna wanna sign off on it in

44:02 the end to say, yeah, I can stand behind this. I can defend this. I’m, I’m willing to go to bed for this. Okay. I, I don’t wanna always stay more time. I Like where your heads up though to Oh yeah. No. Again, like you, it would be great if public health as a whole could work on these pieces, push ‘em to the legislature and say, please adopt. Yeah. And it would get done. Unfortunately, it’s just not working that way right now. I don’t think that they’re gonna rewrite this whole thing. No, I don’t think, I think, I think it’s, This is a Plate. Yeah. This is the boiler plate. I think they’re pretty, it’s pretty close. It’s been looked at by several different groups. It’s probably not far off from where it, you know, where they want it to move.

44:47 So where did this piece come from as opposed to the first piece that we’ve gotten? Which, which piece are you Talking of? The, uh, of the tobacco. The tobacco. So today’s piece, this, this is what’s been adopted, That Adopted That’s, that’s, that’s on our town website currently. This Is the one we adopted. Yep. And what was the other One? That, The other one came from the state. Ah, but that, that is, you know, we, We, so we dropped that out of the state. Yep. Which is much, which is 21 pages and Is the highlighted parts the different stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, um, any more questions on that? We can be ready to accept it and then go to, to council. There you go. After the next meeting, which is March 3rd, that’s the regular One question. There’s

45:33 Andrew, there’s like two colored highlights here. Probably two different sections, but so pay attention to both the two colored sections. Okay. But those are both new. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Um, you now the, uh, bureau of Substance Abuse Services, have you had an opportunity to speak with Dr? I have actually. Um, and, uh, two, Um, Is she Coyle or co? I wanted changing Coil Coyle. Okay. Thanks. I spoke with her this morning. And, uh, a board colleague of yours, Andrew, is it, uh, Morgan Clark Yep. Is also gonna be working on cam with her. And we talked about this. I sent her the questions she thought,

46:19 but she hadn’t seen the questions. What she knew was the questions like this are very difficult, um,

46:33 to provide action items. We get the information, you fill out the survey and what do you do with it? Right. What are we are gonna do? What are we gonna do with it? So this Is, so this dovetails into the YRBS survey. So the YRBS youth risk based survey, it’s done in the high school. They’re asked a lot of the similar questions about perceptions. Um, how many students do you feel in your, your grade are using X, Y, and Z? Um, the average percentages is somewhere between 70 and 80%. And so you’re asking the community that similar questions. The truth is, the number of students that are actually using is more like 3% to 5%.

47:20 So the perception is there that as a high school student, everybody’s doing these things. So maybe I need to be doing them too, where we wanna get people to understand that’s, this is the perception. The reality is something very different.

47:37 Do the kids believe it once they’re told?

47:41 Well, but where do you even do what you just said you wanted to do? I did a library of Congress search. I did a library search, I Googled and no results that are like this that I could see, like this came up. So the YRBS survey is done across the Yeah, I know With Y but I don’t see how this fits into YRBS. We already have YRBS. Yeah. So this, this is taking the YRBS that the kids are filling out and asking adults in the community the perception of the usage in the community.

48:20 So when somebody talks about YRBS, we want them to have these results so they contrast. Yeah. Or you can say, yes, we understand that kids have the same feeling just as the adults do. And is there someone in BSAS who puts out a public relations document that goes out to newspapers and media and all that so that they’re prepared to do that when the YRBS is out there? So Again, each community kind does their own. Well, there is the YRBS and each community does it at a different time. And yes, eventually those numbers do become public.

49:03 Then we can take a look at numbers from times around covid to current times. Uh, obviously there was a huge mental health concern right after covid. Was that gonna increase substance abuse? It does. It, it, the data is starting to show that that might not be the truth. That there might’ve been a, a heightened time right after Covid. But as we progress further away, it’s, it’s going down. Yeah. There’s a lot of argument now that it’s social media rather than, yeah. Yeah. Well, anyway, bottom line, I was asked to check with Dr. Co. She’s comfortable with it. In fact, she thought it might be helpful to calm in the way we shape our questions, especially

49:50 in, in that the, um, survey, um, if, if it goes, won’t go out until September. So you’re ready to put this out. And so if it goes out in March, then there’ll be a six months. Yep. It’ll be in effect, a different kind of class of students all. So Dr. Co had no objection to this and would be very interested in helping to use it. Great. You said, uh, something that if the study, if we do it, you there’s a possibility they may not do it. Well, we don’t have $45,000 in the bank yet. You’ll get it. Yeah. We’ll de

50:36 Work at it. We’ll, We definitely get it. We’re working. Just, I I, I, given what I heard in the state of the state, the state of the town, I think we absolutely have to get enough that we can say that we’ll not not be $1 of taxpayer money. Right. Okay. I’m not as certain, I couldn’t be as certain about that, but I’m happy. I think we’ll get it. Yes, We will get it. You’ll get it. So don’t say if anymore. Okay. Power of positive thinking. Now, um, who’s going to collate the, uh, the BSAS, The, this survey? Yeah, so the, um, so the grant manager for this will collate all this stuff. So there is a grant manager. Yeah. And how many communities are using it?

51:24 Uh, so this is, uh, Lynn, Sam Swamp, Scott Marlin, The four communities. Yep. And, and, um, they’re doing it all at the same time, or they’ve done their early Uh, yeah, they’re trying to put it all out all at similar times. Yes. So They, they held up because of us the other day, so no, They’re, they’re ready to put it out, but they haven’t, you know, pushed the button yet. But yeah, they, they are ready to do it. So do you need a vote on this tonight? Yeah, I think, you know, that was the discussion. So I would appreciate a vote To, before I move that you move ahead, um, expeditiously with the delivering the pa the BSAS survey. Well, a second. ‘cause I have one question a second For sure. A second discussion. Um, so if we put it out, when, how,

52:10 how long is it gonna take to get it out now that we have voted or we will vote? So it, It will probably go out next week. That, that’s soon. Yeah. Okay. All those in favor?

52:22 Thank you for doing your, um, I listened to the chair.

52:30 I I knew you did when that gavel went. I didn’t, you knew that was, I Listened to the chair when I’m allowed to listen because of open meeting.

52:39 All right. So we have, uh, three sets of minutes to, uh, look at,

52:47 um, we, at the meeting of January 27th, uh, are there a, uh, any additions or corrections before we ask for a motion?

53:01 I move. You Move your approve. Okay. Second. All those in favor? A the meeting at, uh, minutes of January 27th, they’re approved. The, um, next minutes are of February 3rd. Um, that was, yeah, that was the, um, meeting of the, uh, compactor crisis and such. So, um, is there’s anything changing on this? Anybody have any additions or corrections? They be Approved. Okay. Second, all those in favor? It, its unanimous.

53:46 And the meeting of February 11th, uh, it started off above the, um, substance abuse night being postponed. And, uh, that was just last week. Thank you, Marty, for getting those out. Absolutely. And, uh, they look very readable and, uh, they, the way gets, uh, lined up. It looks great. So I’m looking for a motion to approve. Mm-hmm. Second Problems in favor meeting minutes of February 11th have been approved. So, um, there is

54:33 couple other things that I wanna bring up, but we do want to possibly for future reference, uh, we need to hear from the Town Council on another issue. If you, if you we’re willing to, uh, want to start talking about a contract for, um, Mr. Petty, and I think you are favorable to this at this time, and they, I guess it’s your contract right now. Contract. There’s not You, You’re technically at will employee, we don’t call it at will Mason Cheryl Ava’s Information, What do we call it? Uh,

55:20 I can’t remember the term, but there Yeah, there’s a term. Yeah. But it means the same thing. Yeah. Uh, it does not mean the same. No, it means we have not expectation of permanent employment. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So, um, we have, I’ve written to, um, Alex, who has been helping us with some of the things that, uh, Lisa Mead’s office and he said he’s going to, he’s getting something together. I’d like to have him get that to us. Um, I echo also so we could discuss it. Okay. And if you have any thoughts and you wanna share them with,

56:05 Well, I guess again, in line with what I could said by other things, I, I believe this will be, um, a pretty straightforward negotiation. And if we can do it ourselves and then send something to the town council and say, would they approve it? Is that gonna be more efficient and maybe less money to the town? So What we did, we provided them with a base contract that has been used in the past for the community.

56:38 Now, Stacher at the, at the town charter meeting the other night was talking about his own contract, which apparently is Yep. About to come do. He said there were only five contracts allowed by the state that would be special contracts like his, and he did not list health as one of them. That’s why we have the town council approval for the contracts. Oh. So that when the town council approves it, then it’s no longer special. Right. So when we asked town council about directors, we asked Cheryl Sbarro too. It’s in the language for mass Boards of health

57:25 that you can have contracts with your, um, your agent, your director, whatever you want to call the person. But I think the qualification that was made in the meeting I was at was you can have those contracts, but the compensation profile has to be within the standard in Does not have any of that language. It just says you can have a contract.

57:52 But I thought what I heard in, in Charter is that the state has that language, Not that I’m aware of. Okay. Yeah, because I think we’re in all agreement, we want that to be a good contract. Yep. And we, you know, that’s why we’ve gone to town council say, we can do this. Correct. And they’ve said, yep, you can do this. Okay. So moving forward, as Long as you feel comfortable. Yep. We provided a basis of contracts in my, uh, you know, my job class, if you were to say so other, you know, members in the same job class that I’m in. So there’s a, a scale of all officials in town. Um, and so we’ve provided other contracts with similar officials in my, in my group and step.

58:47 So is something necessary, oh, I guess the question is how do we go into executive session? Right. Well, you, you go into executive session for the purpose of, of negotiations. Yeah. I think that’s the only, And the question is do you have to post that in advance or could Yes. You have to post Nope, you have to post that in advance. It has to be on the agenda. So we will see that the second meeting of March if we are going to be able to put it on the April agenda. Mm-hmm. Okay. So, um, For our planning, I would like to have a reasonable block of time for the first meeting in March, which will be I think the fourth. Yeah, I should have, I’m hoping that the anchor funder

59:33 might come through by then. Uh, that Anchor funder is already, or you’re thinking of the female. Anyway. We’re, but we, uh, I was working with the, the, you know, the mass UMass Boston today about organizational structure. Yep. I believe that the minute the money is in the bank or promised we should be working. Yes. Um, for example, swamp Scott said they thought the surveys were fine. They did, but they, they had more limited than we, uh, are gonna do, but they felt that the focus groups were not useful. Okay. So we spent a fair amount of time talking about

1:00:23 how to make focus groups more useful to us because I, I, I actually, Joanne and I we’re, we’re on this call and we both feel that focus groups are really a key element of getting, getting people’s insight that as good as UMass or as experiences as UMass Boston may be, it’s still only 45 questions to cover the universe. Yep. She, well, we’ll talk about it next time, but she did say we can layer questions if you say, if you answer one question, say yes, I’ve got two kids in school, then there could be a subset

1:01:08 of questions in, if it’s a digital survey. Right. If it’s a hard copy survey, you probably can’t do it that way. So those are the kind of things that I would really like to get the leadership teams. And we talked about having three, the leadership teams in place as soon as the check clears the bank or whatever, so that we can be out there in the community getting leadership people, we can be identifying who’s gonna be in the focus groups, how they’re gonna report their data, all of that stuff. So that’s what I would like to have on, uh, uh, on the agenda for next, for the first week of March. Sounds good. That’s great. All right. So, um, we,

1:01:55 we’ll meet the 4th of March and then fourth week, which is a Monday. That’s, that’s what we’ve asked for a fourth week. The Monday fourth week is the, um, that just, is that, that, I think it’s the 24th we a minute. Is that correct? Mm-hmm. Yes. The 24th, then the regular meeting in April will be at the regular time. The second Tuesday, which is the eighth and the fourth Tuesday of, uh, uh, of Monday of April was the day of to Easter. I think it’s also, uh, that’s vacation. Vacation week. Yeah. So we might have to go Either the, is there still vacation after was drive? Well, they have, there is not the next day off, and I don’t do, does anybody know what happened at school today? Well, no, of that week according to the schedule,

1:02:41 the first two days around that. Yeah. One’s, uh, uh, Patriot’s Day. Yeah. So Monday is Patriot’s Day, the 21st. That’s what you get for living in Massachusetts. Oh, I know that. Uh, from, from m that was old marathon. Yeah. Old marathoner. And I was at MIT for four for, um, you did the Boston? No, I didn’t run the Boston. I, I ran, I ran the Marine Corps many times, but never Boston. Still pretty. So, um, We’ve, So should we push it to the 28th, that second meeting? Monday the 28th? Yeah, probably. Okay.

1:03:28 Um, um, the fourth Tuesday I think is Is, is Easter? No, it’s, well, so it’s The day after Easter. It’s Patriots day and gets a school break. And our director, I think is taking the week off. Yeah, I think I’ll be out. Yeah. All I’m saying is the fourth Tuesday is charter committee. Oh, yes. Oh, I thought that, I thought that’s what we’ve been taking is the, the fourth Monday. Fourth Monday, right. Yeah. That’s why we’re, so we’re taking the Monday, Which, oh, we’re gonna take the Monday. Okay. Sorry. Yeah, We’ve been going on the Mondays, uh, uh, today we haven’t, because it was a holiday yesterday.

1:04:05 So, um, fourth 24th, eighth and 28th. That will, that will work. 4 24 eighth and 28th. Okay. Um, that will, does, does anybody have problems with any of that at this table? Sure. Okay, good. How did school go today? I don’t know. I was gonna wait till the end of the week to ask them Oh. Pound them every day and say how many came down? No, no, no.

1:04:33 I was anxious to hear. Um, so, all right. Um, okay, so we’ve got some things that we’re gonna try and get to between the, the tobacco and the, um, and the tattoos and, and get your, um, I, I would like us to schedule, ‘cause we’ve done it intermittently. Brief sentences. An H five N one conversation. I picked up my son today and he said many of his buddies were out sick. And they’re sick because there’s a, what did he say? Super virus out there. That’s a bird flow that’s putting all the kids at school. Okay. So I think we had to do what we can.

1:05:21 Yep. To uh, Could you take the temperature? Maybe they’re, they think they have it, it’s also vacation. I Was gonna say, I kind of, I Think they have it. Yes. I could have told you a bunch of people are gonna be sick all week.

1:05:42 Well, he can, he can, uh, handle his Son. My point was that, that the, it’s going around, you gonna blame it on H five and one and we, uh, I see us as an educational agency that we should be telling the community that a human to human transmission for H five N one would be reportable for all of us in the New England Journal of Medicine.

1:06:07 Oh, well, Hope that’s a, that’s a cute one. Um, all So before we go to the public comments, I have, um, a correspondence that I think that you’ve all gotten from Megan Sweeney, and she asked us to, uh, respond, uh, to some comments made by, um, the federal government. Uh, I don’t know. I know that when we had Covid, we were, wait, we waited for the directives from the commonwealth, from our governor. Do you know of anything that Haley Driscoll was, what position they’re taking? I no, I have not heard from the governor on any position that they’re taking at this point. Yeah. Yeah. Is that’s something you might wanna look into as far as

1:06:53 And position towards, Towards how they’re handling, uh, transgender people? Well, information mostly. I think that article was just destroying public health information data in the files. Um, so yeah, I mean, we can definitely see if the governor has made a statement about trying to preserve information regarding, um, you know, files and stuff like that. Uh, protecting the files. And also I think that, um, protecting the trans transgender population, I don’t know what are, are there directives at the hospitals at, at our Commonwealth of Massachusetts level? There are.

1:07:40 Mm-hmm. Yeah. Obviously, you know, Massachusetts is protecting every individual. They’re protecting them. Yeah. I think Megan’s email was talking about Marblehead though, and I don’t know if we kept those data points. You know, So we don’t, obviously we don’t have, we don’t have a website that we’re, um, we’re not taking down websites. We’re not, um, I hope not. Yeah, of course. We don’t have one to take down to No, It’s out. Yeah. That’s a deficiency. But in her email, she said, like Salem said they were gonna preserve all that data, but I just didn’t think we had that data. I didn’t think we collect who’s gay straight, you know? So there’s nothing to preserve.

1:08:27 There’s nothing to preserve. Yeah. Yeah. Well, These people aren’t getting their care. A lot of these people other, You’re In mass, If you’re in Massachusetts, they should be getting their care. Yeah. We’re not looking at any of that. No. They, she was mentioning it as like, when she said sale, and that’s an individual town, so she was like, Marblehead should do it too. But if we don’t have the data, then there’s nothing to protect.

1:08:51 Yeah. Right. So That’s, that’s Well then, I mean, I read her email that I just, I didn’t know what data we were talking. I’ve never, I’ve never told anyone here my personal Right. You know, so it’s, That’s not information that we’re Collecting. Yeah. I was looking to it deeper to see what what is happening with. Yeah. I thought she was arguing that we should protest what the Feds are doing regardless of what we are doing. Well, that’s not what we’re gonna do right now. May not be, but I think that’s what she Isn’t that what’s, I thought I read it as a, I don’t know. Did you read it differently? How Did you read it? I, I thought she was talking about more about protesting what That’s being done at the federal government. Oh, okay. Maybe I read it wrong. I thought it was the town delivering our data. This

1:09:36 Is what she has. The Salem Board of Health will continue to work with other regional agencies. The Massachusetts department of this is the one paragraph that I, I highlighted at Public health and the Haley District di Driscoll administration to use data available to us at the local and state level to continue making equitable and evidence-based health policies and decisions. Yes. And we’ll continue to do that. That’s what, So the local level is what made, I think it was Marblehead and I was like, I Use all data available to us to stay science-based and make all decisions based on science. Right. We urge our local state, this is what Salem says, our local state and federal leaders to join us in pushing back against the, this assault. So we don’t need that statement,

1:10:23 but as long as we are doing it and nobody’s being refused treatment at, at a hospital or their appointments, um, Not Massachusetts. Good. All right. Well, I feel better. So, um, do you wanna respond to her on that since No, I didn’t. Sorry. You Well, I, I’m calling these correspondence and I just thought we’re, you’re the community health agent, you might wanna respond. Alright. I, why don’t I think about trying to draft something, but, um, my own view is things have changing so fast. They’re now, Jeffrey Tubman had an article in

1:11:08 New York Times yesterday about, I saw Him last night on TV for the first time in months. All Right, good reason for that. He, he’s, uh, he’s, his Hands are above the table. We apologize for that. But in any event, uh, he said it’s the State Attorney’s general that are bringing in multiple, uh, lawsuits and all this is changing so fast. But, um, before I came over tonight, they were interviewing the, from PBS, they were interviewing the, the attorney general from Arizona.

1:11:47 The judge went against them today, but they believed they’ll come back. So,

1:11:55 So a anything more? We’ve built a little agenda. I’ve got a, I’ve got a letter write to Cher on the grant writing. Yeah, I got one to do here. I got one. So let’s change the mood. It was a, uh, note I got from someone in, uh, president Marblehead just randomly shot me unsolicited last week. I needed some, uh, some help to install a handicap parking space. Your representative, Martin Flanagan was so helpful going the extra mile to get me the info that I needed. This was the second time I’ve had Martin assist me. He is an excellent representative of the Board of Health. This town could certainly use some employees of Martin’s character. There you go. I hear every day. Thank you. Yeah. He is the best.

1:12:47 He’s the best. Thank you. Thank you for that. Mm-hmm. Could we put that on the record? Yes, Definitely. Sure. Can you send that to them? Yeah.

1:12:59 You guys have, uh, um, folders, evaluation folders,

1:13:08 What you say? I’m not saying group He is, But if you get something like that and you go in the folder. Yeah, that’s nice. We’ll Make sure that goes into Mari’s fault. Right. We’ll be good friends. Come on the good stuff.

1:13:27 Good. But now it’s important. Um, so any public comment? Yes. Two, ah, there you go. We missed you last week. One is, uh, how will people access the, uh, meeting minutes? They, I don’t know. So meeting minutes are posted online to the town website. Okay. Posted or not. Yep. So if you go into the main body of the town website, on the left hand side it says meeting, meeting minutes. You click on that. Then there’s a whole list of every group that’s supposed to be taking meeting minutes. You click on the board of Health and then it’s all done by D So, so Go in there. It’s on the website. Yep. And by year and then it’s by Yeah. Year and then Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. Just And the second, the second thing was for Dr.

1:14:14 Massaro there, um, why don’t you collect what, you know, the, uh, the regulations from Salem Swamps got, um, Lynn and that, and compare them, you know, along with your idea that maybe there’s not much difference between them and actually collect a whole bunch because that may be much better Then take it to our representatives and show them Exactly maybe 10 different towns and show them that the, the differences are so slight and, and this is be the legal costs for each town do mount up. And, uh, so I would, you know, that that would be my approach. Do you know what I mean? Some very, some documentation rather than sort of more

1:15:00 of a theoretical idea about it.

1:15:04 That’s a great idea. Um,

1:15:08 and it will also be interesting to me to find out how many actually do this at all because we just read the report that said a lot of, of the 351 pounds can’t even afford to do what they’re supposed to do.

1:15:25 And if I, we couldn’t afford it, this would be one of the things. Exactly. Bodyguard one would be one of the things. Not you think nothing as as convincing as data, you know, I mean, so Yeah, no, I’ll try to do that. I’ll try to do that. Yes. I have a couple questions around the, um, tobacco rig. So, so you have something already that that Correct. Okay. And it hasn’t been changed since when? 2016 was the last update. Okay. August 16. And the last update came from the state or came specifically from the Board of Health? Uh, no, it came from the Board of Health. So it started, um, with our, you know, essentially working group and then it came to the board. The board worked on it with our, we have a tobacco control.

1:16:13 Right. Uh, Joyce Redford representative worked on it with her. Our legal heard what the board wanted to move forward with, drafted that into the regulations that, or the public hearing and moved it forward. And if there were three changes made to those 2016 regs, what are the, what are the top three changes that folks might wanna know about Tobacco 21? What’s that mean? 18 to 21? The age, Meaning boosting the age from 18 to 21. Yeah. Okay, cool. So, um, so that means not pursuing like what Brookline did, the tobacco free generation, That Was for 2016. At that time, tobacco forever, generations hadn’t even been considered. Well I’m saying now. And that’s part of the change. Now. Now that’s not something that’s not in the,

1:16:58 the draft that we have currently. That’s something that the board could talk about. Okay. So that’s one what, or two other changes for folks to pay attention to. Um, It’s really about, um, a lot about flavor tobacco. Okay. Is another big flavor. Yeah. Okay. So we, we’ve limited flavors in the past, but getting, dialing down into some of the exacts. Okay. The companies get very good at like changing names, changing flavors, um, and you have to be up with the times. Otherwise the companies feel that they, nope, I can have this product, my con tobacco control person, you know, or tobacco companys saying that we can do this, package It differently or whatever. Um, and number three, what would you say? Is there a third one or is it No, that was those, Just those two and does there

1:17:44 No, those, those were the three. I mean obviously Tobacco 21. Okay. You know, Flavor the Flavors, the other one. Um, and then we, we really got into top, uh, tobacco like delivery products. So before it was like regulating, um, vape products. That was the, you know, that was a big piece last time. Alright. Is it, that’s what I wanted to ask you. So like the tobacco boosting the age from 18 to 21, would that include vapes? Yes. Okay. Yep. Okay. Cool. And so when will that document be ready for the public to see before they go come to the hearing? So Generally when we, we will have that document ready, um, generally when we post it for the hearing. Oh Yeah. Okay. Cool. Um, and then I wanted to,

1:18:29 It might be draft at that time, but generally it’s pretty, you know, if there’s some differences or discussions that the board members need to have mm-hmm. It might be a draft at that time. Okay. Cool. Um, and then I wanted to ask you guys, the current has found out that, um, the town meeting article that moves your board from three to five was never filed with the state. So you guys know about this and will likely not be approved by the legislature in time for the June election, according to Jenny Armini. I wanted to get your reaction to that. Oh my God. I spoke to John. I spoke to Jenny. Oh my God. First of all, you’re taking my thunder away.

1:19:14 I’m sorry. I wanna do that. So Second of all, I was gonna save it to next month, the Monday meeting, the regular meeting. Sorry. We should get more people. And um, third of all, I told, I spoke to Jenny, uh, on Friday and I said, please, please, please can you make this a priority? And she said, I’m not too sure, but I said, well, I’m gonna just leave my foot in the door. I spoke to her right before I came and she said it was not likely to happen. Not likely, but I, I said, I’m just putting, keeping my foot in the door until much first. Can you? So that was what, yeah. So, but what’s your reaction? Disappointment? Yeah. I, I mean we’ve, we’ve put this out last year

1:20:00 and we’ve been really, our hands have been tied, uh, not not able to, uh, have discussions, uh, among two people. We can’t go to, I can’t go to Tom’s mental health task force meeting. There’s so many things that, that our hands are tied and we thought that we’ve solved an issue that has been an issue. And, um, now we find out that somehow or other, I don’t wanna point any fingers. Right. But some something fell through the cracks. Right. And we just found out about it. I actually heard it Monday sitting in and last Monday a week ago, sitting in Andrew’s office

1:20:46 and um, Kyle called, yeah, right while I was sitting there. ‘cause it was going on the agenda. Who’s Carl? Sorry? Kyle. Oh, Kyle. Right. Because It was going on Wednesday’s agenda and I about flipped my lid Tomorrow night’s agenda. I Was supposed to the select board, is that what you’re saying? It was last Wednesday’s Agenda. Oh, it was on last Wednesday’s agenda. I didn’t see the meeting, but that’s what I was told. Oh, okay. I didn’t know that. Yes. And so, um, Okay, So the ball Was dropped in town. I’m not just, It’s not, I mean for the most part it is because then, you know, Jenny hasn’t received it from the slide board yet. She’s expecting it. She Was Gonna get it, but they haven’t even made committees yet on her level, like for it to pass through that first.

1:21:34 Those committees haven’t been established then as to go through like three or four different levels of voting and, and that has to all happen before Robin prints the ballots. So the timing of that with how slow government works is, I just asked her when, when she was gonna print the ballots and You asked, you asked Robin when she’s gonna print the ballots. I didn’t get an answer was Last year It was voted on a town meeting, but I guess It has The select board has to move it to go to go to the legislation. That’s What I understand. But they, it was never brought up at the selectman’s meeting. Okay. And then As

1:22:19 I, as you know, obviously it seems like a very straightforward with legislature, but I don’t know why it would take so long to get voted through these committees, but you know, again, I’m not familiar with how that Committees don’t even exist yet. Right. Yeah. So that’s what Jenny was saying. Yeah. So I, So at least one more year with three, it looks like I was, I was gonna say at least one more week till I feel I just, But I, I, I concur with you, but I just felt that I wanted to wait till the March meeting, but the ballots could be printed by then. God only knows when, when they gotta be printed. Yeah.

1:23:04 Had you guys heard of anyone who was interested in running

1:23:09 I on the school committee? People running, talking, but I haven’t heard about this. Okay. Okay. So I mean, it’s part of my slideshow when I talk about comm to ask people to think about board members for Oh, I’ve been asking you, I’ve been asking people. I said, there’s gonna be two, two virgin slots. I’ve been telling people, which they are. I mean they’re, yeah. And, uh, Have you decided if you’re running again, Helene, I know your seat’s up. I have eaten. You think I’ve had tangent Think about this when I didn’t eat dinner tonight. I know, right. Okay. Thank you.

1:23:47 I, um, no, I’ve had a lot going on. Yeah. And MTA at, at State House was pretty active this week too. Did you follow that at all? The MTA? Yeah. Massachusetts Teachers Association. Rough. Um, they’re very rough. Not that I’m doing anything about it, but wring my hands. Yeah. So, um, any, any other questions? Just a quick one. Um, when I was up to transfer station, I noticed a whole bunch of roll of fiber cages. Yeah. They’re getting ready to do that. It’s gonna be in the ground Or no, on the walls. On the poles. Yep.

1:24:35 So that company’s gonna be setting the poles? No. So they run an existing poles essentially. Okay. Yep. So, um, obviously Marblehead unique where we have Marblehead electric light, so the poles are owned half by Marblehead electric light and half by Verizon. Um, now Marblehead electric light is, you know, say there’s certain areas where they were able to put fiber optic. Um, but yeah, this is a town’s fiber optic loop that will be installed. So it looks like it’s gonna happen in the near future. Yes. Yep. Good. And so obviously for us, um, the fiber optic optic is necessary for the, um, license plate. We do cameras. Right. So they’re doing a loop for us as well. Good.

1:25:25 That’s it. One Other quick thing, sorry Tom, do you wanna ask that gentleman or gentle woman who emailed you, if she wants to send that like as a letter to the editor or we’d be happy to publish it about. I can ask them. Yeah. Okay. No hands on line.

1:25:42 Anything else? No, no. Hands up. Would that, um, motion to adjourn?

1:25:49 Second. All in favor. Meeting is over and well, that clock is wrong. 8 57

1:25:58 Is really too bad. Yeah, I’m trying.