Board of Health: March 24, 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.

0:04 Good evening, everyone. Um, we have our agenda in front of us, and I see that the first item on the agenda is Dr. Zaro. Yes. Um, the short report on, um, Kong this evening. Um, I, I continue to meet with people and talk about the strengthening public health BLE head, and a good enthusiastic support governor. Um, I hope that by the next, the next board of Health meeting, I’ll be able to give a little more, um, detail on some things. But, uh, things are moving. We have a meeting with, uh, our UMass Boston colleagues on the first of of April. Who’s we, Uh, Joanne and I,

0:51 and, um, on a group that we’re meeting with No, But not the, the board. The board. That’s not a, a day that I have. No, we can’t, we can’t do that. We’re still, uh, open meeting. We could have No, I’m, I, we could have meeting. We could have a meeting. Yeah, We could do that in the future, I guess.

1:10 So that’s April 1st. Yes. And what, what’s, what is the agenda on that meeting? We’re, And you should have it by then.

1:22 Well, at the end of the meeting in Hoku then. Oh. But I thought we first have to get the financing, uh, before we get begin with them.

1:34 Well, this is gonna be an iterative process. So the people we’re meeting with wanted Coyle to be there. So Coyle has agreed to come and, oh, explain the details. Okay. That again, this is the hassle of, uh, Raising funds, Well, raising funds and raising funds in an open meeting law environment. Um, may I, do we have the Yeah. Ledge. Just, uh, this is, this is my attempt to cover some of the concerns that are being raised. As almost everybody knows, we’re five years, uh, last week passed the, um, WHO calling COVID and emergency, um, worldwide emergency.

2:21 And so there are a lot of, um, m and mss, uh, the morbidity and mortality conferences. People are writing books, um, and, uh, questioning some of the things that those of us that were on the front lines did during that time. And one of, one of the, I think, legitimate ones may be that we didn’t communicate enough. So we have agreed here, we talked about it last time, that we would try to anticipate a possible, uh, challenge to public health, um, uh, possible challenge and infectious disease disease. And we would talk about H five N one on a regular basis. And, um, so, um,

3:06 that’s the purpose of this today. And my ques the question today is why should we care about H five N one? And, um, next slide? Um, and the answer ca came from us to, came to us from Ashish Jaw in the globe on last Thursday. And he had, um, an, an opinion piece in this. He, his sentence that he, uh, pro provided that it’s possible that the virus is just a small number of mutations away from sub sustained human to human transmission, which would be devastating to human health. Some of the criticisms are telling us

3:52 that we should have been more careful at making statements like that and explaining them. So I’d like to explain that a little bit. Next, next slide, please. This will be this one. Covid taught me, certainly dirt caught us, that in public health, it’s impossible to over communicate. People wanna know what’s happening. And in the more complicated things get, the more there is that appetite to know. Next slide. The next slide is for me. It also taught us that unless I’m quick, sharp and to the point, people get bored very quickly when I’m, when I be, uh, when I play academic. So, next slide. Okay. One of the things I wanna do today is make sure everybody

4:39 understands what a virus is. Viruses are non-living obligate parasites, which means they cannot either move or propagate on their own. They, that’s what a parasite is. And obligate means they have no other way of maintaining their existence. Viruses are a very small package of genetic material in a protein envelope. They are much smaller than even bacteria and all human or major plant cells. So they can invade a living cell.

5:25 They take over the reproductive machinery of the cell, and that’s the way they reproduce themselves. But because they now run the factory, next slide, please. Because they now run the factory. They can produce lots and lots of viruses over a very short period of time. But the factory’s not per no factory’s perfect. And this one’s not perfect either. The virus, the influenza virus, which h which H five N one is, has a single strand of RNA. And that single strand of RNA has to go into the DNA of the animal cell and force the animal cell to replicate the proteins.

6:15 And the messenger, RNA, that’ll produce viruses. So the details r mr, RNA and DNA as I think most people know, are the, the, the building blocks of the genetic code. So basically, um, the virus hooks on to a cell, in our case. ‘cause we’re worried about humans, a human cell. And it attaches, it attaches, I used to think it was like a zipper or a Velcro, but the more we learned from, well, covid, it’s much more like a lot three dimensional lock and key. It really has to be a close fitting of the, the

7:00 exterior of the virus and the, the, um, the ex, the, the cell wall or the exterior of the animal cell that it’s trying to invade. Next slide. Okay. So this is a schematic of the influenza virus, um, of the influenza A virus. H five N one is an influenza virus. That’s a very large family of viruses that we’ve known about, we’ve certainly known about since 1918, because that was the Spanish flu epidemic, which killed hundreds of millions of people. Uh, a third of the population of the world, uh, got a, got Spanish H one

7:46 n one Spanish flu at that time. If you look at the slide, the purple popsicles are the H factor on the, on the virus wall. And the little pinkish things that looked like, uh, I don’t know what they looked like. They looked like a, a, a lamp pole with four bulbs. It looked like a lung to me. A a lung? Well, a lung, yeah. But in any event, that’s the way you name virus. These, these viruses. This is the fifth iteration of the H component on the viral cell wall. We’ve known about this virus,

8:33 HH five N one since, since at least 1996 when it affected some, some birds in Scotland. The interior of the virus is supposedly schematic of the little circles of RNA. There are eight packages in the influenza virus. So the influenza virus comes up to the annual cell, it attaches to, it goes in and, um, basically carjacks the, the cells, uh, um, machinery for reproduction. And it makes little, little, uh, little, um, viruses that, that then float around the body

9:19 and attack all the other different cells causing the various organ systems to be disabled or underperform. And that’s how we get sick and ultimately die if it’s bad. Okay. So what Shaw was saying was, right now, um, H five N one isn’t really attacking humans very much. We have a report of about a hundred cases or so, maybe 600 worldwide that the WHO thinks it has. So what it’s saying to until today is the lock and key mechanism doesn’t work very well

10:09 for the virus to come to human human tissue. It’s interesting that virtually all of the, all of the first infections that we saw in humans from cattle workers and farm workers, whatever were conjunctiva, conjunctival around the eye. There are apparently some cells around the eye that have a different kind of cellular coating. And the H five N one virus seems to have been able to attach to those, those cells better than they can attach, say, to the lung cells or the heart cells

10:55 or the skin cells elsewhere. Okay? So that’s the big background. So as we go through this, talking about H five N one, hopefully you’ll remember a little bit of this background. The final slide just puts well, second to last slide says, where are we today? Left hand side, we know human to human transmission is relatively rare today. That’s why the official public health documentation that comes from Atlanta at the CDC, and they just nominated a very sophisticated CDC director today, which is great news for most of us. Um, they are saying

11:43 the risk from H five N one is still relatively low, but that’s to human, co human transmission. But we already realized that there are major food chain implications for even today from H five N one. We’ve, we’ve called killed 40 million birds over the first couple of months of this year, and egg prices are gone way up. I’m surprised that stake price haven’t I, I, I don’t eat red meat that much anymore, but I’m surprised that stake prices haven’t gone up more at market basket in other places because of what it’s done to the currents. So the left hand side, we know what we do not know,

12:29 and what, what we do not know if the, the, if Shaw is right, that a small number of mutations, we, we can’t program mutations. We don’t know where the, the lettering will become uneven, and we will produce the, the virus will produce a different code than it has so far. So we don’t necessarily, we don’t have a guarantee that there will be a num, the right number of the right kind of these mutations. And we don’t even know for sure whether, um, if even human to human transmission

13:19 is noted, whether it would be devastating. We have human to human transmission from influenza, a virus every year. Last year, 28 thou 2022, the 2324 year, 28,000 Americans died from influenza infection that year. What would be devastating Asian flu in the 20 years ago killed 115,000. Then it was younger Bush, I think set up a, an Asian flu vaccine to stop that in its tracks.

14:06 So these are the issues that we don’t know about. And what I, I think it’s reasonable for us to be sharing with the town. Next slide, or the final slide, please. This is what I think the town has a right to expect from the Health Department and the Board of Health. I think that, that the, the, that we should, we should be willing, able, eager to share with you what we know Amber gets f Can you wanna talk a little bit about the stuff you get? Yeah. So obviously we follow several different websites. Obviously we work with the state of Massachusetts, Massachusetts, department of Public Health.

14:51 Um, and so we are provided information on a regular basis. Um, and yes, there’s constant surveillance going on. So if somebody gets sick in the community, they go to their doctor, they get tested, I have the flu, they can get tested for a variety of different things. It’s a, if it’s a communicable disease that will come across our desk. And depending on the disease, we will have to make notification to individuals contacts, um, or public announcements depending on that we use for each communicable disease. There is an RO number that essentially says how contagious that disease is. So for the original, uh, Wuhan covid virus, one person could walk into a room, and we would expect 2.4 to 2.6 people becoming infected.

15:41 As the virus progressed and mutated, that increased in number. So we went to the version cause by the first European wave. One person with Covid would walk into a room, three people would become infected. By the time we got to Delta, one person would walk into a room, five to eight people would become infected. Again, we’re looking at these things. Months. One person would walk into a room, 12 people would be infected. The one of the more, and measles is the heavy hitter, and measles is the heavy, heavy hitter. So with measles, it’s one in 18. And so you’ll hear us talk a lot about measles because of how infectious it is. And so when we talk about outbreaks in Texas and across the southwest, that’s why we get so concerned.

16:28 It’s because obviously it, it can cause devastating issues, it can cause death, but the fact that one person can walk into a room and 18 people can become infected is a serious concern to public health. In the past, I’ve had to, and the hard thing with measles is that it can hang in the air for a long period of time. So if an individual walks into a coffee shops, he can leave. If he was infected with measles, I’ve had to post a coffee shop to say, I’m a public health nurse here. Yesterday, an individual walked through this coffee shop with measles. If you have a concern, you can talk to the nurse. And if you’ve never been vaccinated, we can vaccinate you. Currently. That’s how far and how much surveillance the state of Massachusetts does.

17:16 We really try to stay on top of everything. There’s a lot of communication between us and the state. It’s technically 24 hours a day that I have to answer my phone and respond to them. Now, they’re in charge of infectious disease. They’re telling us what we have to do, the notifications that we have to put out. It’s not us choosing the letters and the words and stuff like that. It’s them telling us how it goes. Um, so that’s the biggest piece. The other big thing that’s changed since Covid is wastewater. We do a tremendous amount of surveillance through wastewater. It’s a great source. You can grab large samples. It’s real time. Um, we’re doing it all, you know, constantly. So there’s several different wastewater sites. The CDC has a wastewater site now,

18:02 and you can see all the different diseases that we’re constantly picking up and showing what’s out in the environment and showing what, you know, what kind of concerns we have. Recently, we have seen some, um, H five N one in the wastewater. Um, but it’s not at a point where, you know, we’re very concerned. Does animal waste end up in the most wastewater, or No, It’s generally downstream. Yeah, it’s generally down seam. So you’re flushing your toilet. It’s going over to SESD. Um, you know, generally that’s, SESD had a wastewater. So the, the type of system we were using at the time, it was called biobot. Um, it’s a local company, um, but they, they’re very big in taking wastewater surveillance. Um, that company expanded across the whole US

18:50 and a lot of companies are into at this point, but it’s a great tool.

18:56 Okay. So Andrew has just done what I think the second term you have a right to expect from us, and that is that we should try to extent possible frame the scientific reality that we have to work with in ways that the community can, if they’re interested, they can learn and talk about. Um, again, that’s the, the, that’s the current criticism of, again, I wasn’t here, but I was in New Mexico, and, and certainly, um, we did not do as much of that as we could. Okay. Third, um, we clearly, when there is an issue about what’s the next step,

19:41 next step, um, and Shaw talks about the next steps. He, he wants to, uh, vaccinate birds, the chicken coops and things like that. We are not in a, the public health, local public health isn’t in a position to be speaking about vaccinating birds necessarily. No. But we track all the backyard flock. So obviously if you have a backyard flock in Marblehead, it is required to have a permit. Uh, we’re in close contact with Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture. So if there’s a concern, they do surveillance. So if you, there has been notification that’s sent out regarding back backyard flux. If your birds are seen be sick, please contact your vet. They’ll come out immediately. They will test your birds if there is an infection.

20:28 At this point, it’s been culling, so it’s been what? Culling Oh, so killing the birds. Yeah. Um, and yes, we’ve had to call some birds in the county and across the state. But yes, we also receive phone calls regarding, uh, seabirds that are passing through and passing away. And we will also deal with that and go collect specimens, um, and make sure that those are thrown away properly. Okay. And then finally, uh, I think the, the community has a right to expect that at this table. In, in our community, we will try to debate the cost and benefits of action and inaction. Again, the, there’s just some considerable criticism

21:15 of the way Covid was handled this way. Covid focused the conversation that came from the CDC and therefore through state governments according to what, uh, you read, focused on morbidity and mortality, who, who died and who didn’t, and what groups were most likely to die. What the criticism I is that, uh, that’s out there and, and probably legitimate, is that we, we did not try as well as we could to balance the social and economic con considerations. Um, and, um, I think that’s a legitimate topic to, to when it’s, when, when we are in a reality like that, uh,

22:02 to have those conversations here. Okay. So hopefully that helps you understand the public health interface that the community is facing now out there with H five N one. And we are basically going to try to share what we know from our literature, um, to everyone, and hopefully we can present it in a way that it’s, it’s, um, some meaningful learning for everybody. And if not, tell us and we won’t do it. Well, thank you for that. Is this, is this slide sha and your is this last one? They’re all mine. They’re all yours. You know what? I, because you, you mentioned him a couple of times again, You No, I, he had an article on paper on Thursday that

22:48 Was, uh, mistake. Yeah, I I’ll bring it. I have it. I’d to see it. Yeah. Uh, but his article is about what he, the article is five things that Trump should do, and it’s basically, he wants him to ramp up the vaccine production for human vaccine and already start to, um, inoculate the bird populations. But I’ll bring it in for you. Well, I have a couple of questions before we go on, though. First of all, if, if H one, uh, to H five NN one was first, uh, seen in 1996, why haven’t they been working on a vaccine for that?

23:25 Uh, a actually there is an animal vaccine that’s available, But not for hu It’s not in the human flu vaccine, though. No. Well, in part because it’s been around since 1996, and nobody was really, has it said, gee, it’s 30 years already and nobody, only a hundred people have died. We’ve got a lot of other vaccines. We had, as I said, 28,000 die in 23, 24. We worried about that vaccine Hundred. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it, that’s the, that’s the tricky thing about these viruses. You don’t know when one is gonna all of a sudden mutate in a way that makes it much more likely to propagate and to propagate

24:11 and be able to attack, um, human or animal cells. Now, is Sha still working for the federal government, or is he in back at No, He’s back brown. Well, at least porting to the globe. He’s, you know, yeah, he, yeah. No, And just to talk about, uh, the flu vaccine. So obviously we offer, we all talk about the flu vaccine in the fall. Um, and there’s many different types of flu vaccine. And the way the flu vaccine is developed is that we look down south in the southern hemisphere to Australia and look to see what is the most po um, flu at that time. They take those viruses and make them into, you know, at first it was a monovalent, so there was one virus per shot. Then they got into bivalence and trivalent cells. So you can have three different viruses of one shot.

24:58 And now they’re even getting into quadrivalent. They’re, they’re taking the four, the three, the two most popular flu vaccines at the, at the time of year, putting ‘em into that flu shot. And that’s what we’re getting in the flu. Well, I realize that they, And so it’s not always perfect. I, I Realize I take various strains. That’s why I asked why H five N one one part of it. So the easy answer is it’s not that prevalent right now. Right. Well now be the birds and the cows have acted as the Petri dish, all of a sudden they have a source that’s having them multiply in ways that they hadn’t in the past. I, I mean, I’m, I’m not a virologist, but, but I think that basically H five n one has popped up. I think most of the flu vaccines are like H two N four

25:46 or Yeah, some, I mean, they, they’re not, I, I’ve not seen a vaccine that has an H five, the, the purple, uh, Popsicle on the, on the schematic. But they’re all in that family. They’re all respiratory viruses. They all attack and it can attack the, the, the respiratory tract. Okay. I have to just comment on what your social and economic statement, because the Board of Health here at Marblehead was very, very, um, cognizant of the social problem. And it wasn’t anything to do with what we were doing. It was the community itself, nationwide, not, I’m not gonna point the finger at Marblehead,

26:33 but nationwide, the people went about their own business. And I think it’s Something that everybody had that, go ahead. I think it’s just something that, you know, we, we’ve lived through a pandemic. We need to take, we need to look back at it and see what we did well, what we didn’t do well, and if there’s areas that we didn’t do well at, and I’m not just saying Marblehead or the, I’m saying everybody overall, we need to take a look at that and see how we can do better. I think that we tried very hard. Understood. I would say Marblehead was not successful, otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here. Well, Marblehead did their job. It was the people that in the community that didn’t listen, Like the one that went to Florida. Well, look, in hindsight, we need it. It it, what we wanna do is learn from the past in order

27:20 to deal with the future, not spend a lot of time dealing with the past. I mean, if you wanna read a book that, with the, the current book, it’s called Covid Wave, that two political scientists from university or from Princeton have written. It’s fascinating. Um, anyway, I, I have a question to, to Andrew. Do you, what do you think about the board, um, before the, uh, people get their, uh, license for chicken, uh, file, um, test testimony of their birds and see a So you don’t have to test them until you see a sign concern. So you wouldn’t, your birds would be sick. Um, they have information that we’re supposed to call Massachusetts Department of Agriculture at that time. They would come out and they could do the testing.

28:05 But you don’t think it should be no. A, a policy to be No, you don’t, you don’t need to test before, ‘cause most likely it’s all gonna be negative until something becomes sick. Okay. And then what happens? So at the time of sick, the, the state’s gonna decide how they want to handle the situation. They could coal what you have in your backyard. They could create a boundary, so an isolation area where they’re gonna say, we don’t want any birds to move in and out. Now we’re talking backyard chickens. We’re not talking large poultry farms where these guys are new, moving hundreds of thousands of birds potentially around the state. You know? Yeah. The sense is that the factory farming is the, is the part of the reason why H five N one is a bigger problem today than it was in

28:52 in Scotland in 1996. All righty. Thank you for That. Okay. And I, I, the, when there are questions about the science of public health, I think we all are committed to trying to share what we know. I I certainly am willing to say, I don’t know, and I think we all are there, but we’ll, we’ll work very hard to try when there are questions in the community, because that’s clearly what, that’s why public health is local to answer local questions. Thank you. All right. But, but you have one other topic that you wanna speak on about the charter. Well, actually, I, I, somebody has, I was asked

29:38 to do this, this surprised me. Uh, but, but, but it’s, but it’s very relevant. Those of you, uh, uh, that pay attention to what’s going on in the town, know that we have a town charter committee. There are not two people on the chart charter committee here tonight. Um, it, it’s great. I think it’s a great committee. And the purpose of the committee is to, to basically consolidate, um, everything about how the town runs. And we’ve been meeting now, I think for six or seven months, right? Since, uh, since this, um, since the late summer. And, um, we now on the draft a, which we’ve agreed will be the most

30:26 accurate sense of how the town works today. And on last Thursday, I guess we got to chapter five of version A and chapter five, sub three is the board of health. And the debate around the board of health as usual, was not about the board of health, it was about the transfer station who was supported health well. But yes. Uh, the question, well, actually that was the question. Um, on the organization charts that we work with in,

31:11 in the, in the charter committee, Thatcher put organization, uh, the whole town on organization charts fascinating. If you, if you want them go onto the website of the charter committee and, uh, you can see what a complicated town this is for 20,000 people, uh, all the committees and everything. But in the, in the org chart, it says, board of health, and it has that as it has line to two departments, public health and waste. But in the text in chapter five, is it 5.3, isn’t it, Jim? 5.3?

31:56 Like in the bylaws, most of the conversation is around the transfer station. And the debate at the charter committee was, is, is the, uh, transfer station a in a sense, a subdivision of the waste dealing? Or is it a standalone? And there were several of us who, who argued that it is sufficiently unique and encompassing that it should be treated as a separate entity rather than just a subdivision and not show up on these kind of org charts. And I think that was the way it ended up. Although we, we are, we’re going through this the first time.

32:42 We, we, we have a whole bunch of things that we’re gonna come back and talk about again. But as it stands, what we basically said was the, the transfer is a sufficiently important and identifiable, uh, facility that it should be treated separately from the, the curbside pickup and a waste facility. Well, right, But you were making that decision without the, without the input of, of the health department. No, you were there. You No, no, I know, but since I said you, you said you’ve been talking about it ever since. No, no. We talked about it Thursday night. ‘cause we’re going through draft. So you talked about it since I was,

33:27 our board was at the charter Committee. Right. My understanding is that Thatcher made a comment and it built off that comment that where he thought it should be standalone. And from what I understand from me reaching out to the select board members, they didn’t see it coming. It was never discussed between Thatcher and them. And it definitely wasn’t discussed between Thatcher and us. I’m assuming it wasn’t discussed between Thatcher and you. So Thatcher I’d say was outta line in just even bringing it up is what I think. I, I have a similar feeling. I think, what does he know about health and the Public Health? I think Thatcher, I hope he regrets doing it. I guess the question, the question is, would,

34:13 what are you tr with the charter committee when you’re trying to organize all this stuff? What is the basis of calling out the different areas? Look, we, you know, what are you guys doing at The charter committee? Wait, are you asking a member of No, I’m, you know, obviously I’m asking our members. I’m calling the individual if you want. No, I’m asking our member That’s a charter committee member. Yeah. What is, so when you guys are creating the charter, you’re, I’m here for you. Okay. What is, what is the purpose of calling out these different areas? It just, just also to elaborate on Andrews, I would think they’d be identifying it as is That’s what we’re trying to do. Yeah. And Thatcher was more pointing to what maybe he thinks it should be by making that comment.

34:58 Um, I didn’t get that. Um,

35:05 What do you think he’s thinking?

35:10 I guess rather than that we, the board should send a message back to the charter committee that the board feels that it’s in the right location. That yes, that waste is a health concern. Yeah. And therefore, should, you know, and I don’t necessarily understand the charter where you have to dry everything out, but it should be under public health or that health. And I definitely think if that conversation is ever to come up, there’s gotta be a lot of like preemptive conversation here. Even the select board who had no idea he was gonna say That, but why would it he have even gone to the select board? Because he works for the select board. So he shouldn’t even be making comments that they’re not, you know,

35:56 And in the, maybe you ought to recognize Jim. He, he,

36:02 Hi Jim. Yeah. So right now the charter in section five three says transfer station, just like schools, say school buildings and so forth. And what Thara said, well, it’s just a building so we could take it out. Several of us, myself included, said, well, it’s more of an operation. Uh, so we ended up going back and forth, and Amy Drinker had just a show of hands, not an official vote, but it turned out to be four to four, just it wasn’t an official vote. So there’d be more discussion about that. We actually have a meeting tomorrow night. Um, and, uh, but my personal feeling was that it belongs in there and should be identified in, in the Board of Health. It’s big enough. See,

36:48 I, I thought what that, this is, this is what Thatcher drew up, and he has two, he has two departments coming from the Board of Health. And the way the wording in chapter five three is that there should be a third one here, transfer station. What Are the two things he has On there? Public health department and waste department. Oh, right. And, and everybody both. When, when the board went and when Andrew went, everyone said the public, the transfer station is and should be in, in, in under the, the Department of Health. The issue was really how to reconcile the organizational chart

37:34 with two bars and the wording in the chapter. And in the end, uh, there were how many? Two or three, two people I guess that weren’t there. Um, the four of us, that, that felt that it should be recognized, um, uh, felt pretty strongly about it. I don’t know how the, the others did. Um, but that was the conversation. I don’t know.

38:07 It was a surprise to me that it came up at that point. Yes. And he, he did say, just to be fair, that, um, he didn’t wanna lock that into the charter in case they wanted to change where the, um, transfer station reported to. And some people like that idea. I did not personally. I, Well, I certainly don’t think that the charter committee should make that decision within a vacuum. No, no, no. It, it, No. And, and it won’t Hale and, and just so everyone knows, we, we didn’t, it’s still in the draft charter, the word transfer station. It never came up. And even then, just keep in mind anything, the charter then goes to the select board, then goes to town meeting, then we go to a town wide vote. So it, it’s still in there. And,

38:53 and we do have a meeting tomorrow night. And, um, And maybe they should refer to the, uh, to the general laws of the, of the Massachusetts Department of Health. Because I think within that, it states that transfer stations fall under, under the board Of I don’t think so. But It’s the, you know, the facilities are overseen, are regulated by the board. Yeah. Yeah. But, but Wellesley, for example, is not under the board of Elton Wesley. Right. But it’s sort of regulated by the board. Well, Yeah. So I think that we should look at the general laws. The, The issue I think is It’s more than just if The charter, If the Charter has a wording in it to change, it would have to go all the way back to the legislature. So it would be a very big deal if the, if the document

39:41 that doesn’t say that the board of health manages the transfer station, then the transfer station management could be changed by a vote of the town, the town meeting. Mm-hmm. That’s the substantive issue there. It w that was, it was certainly subliminal, but that was clearly the issue. So I, I, I think the general laws need to be, uh, looked at before that happens. But, um, and certainly speak to our and To, yeah, I guess that’s the only other concern is that if you’re having these, you know, very important discussions. Yeah. How come we’re not notified about them to be part of that? We Could, we could attend. That’s my concern with Thatcher just saying that there. So, I mean, I’m making it public that we know,

40:26 we know he was saying it and think he spoke out of, out of turn. And hopefully he doesn’t, hopefully he realizes that. It just seems Well, He’s only one person. He doesn’t have a vote at the table with the, Um, no, I know, but I don’t like, I don’t like the way it was done, even that it was brought up. I know about it. Yeah. But thank you for, If I may can object again, nothing was done. And it did catch the attention of several of us. Uh, yeah. That, you know, it wasn’t like he didn’t say, well, we should take the library out of the library board. Yeah, yeah. Nor it was the opposite. What he said was that in the cemetery board, they don’t list all the cemeteries or in Parks and Rec, they don’t list all the parks.

41:11 And so the transfer station is under the board of health. You shouldn’t list everything that the tra that the Board of Health is doing It. And if I may, I, I know I’m not proud of, but it does say for Parks, playgrounds, which is all the playgrounds, and it does say cemeteries. You know, we have a singular transfer station. So that, that was, but again, nothing has, it’s still in there. And we do have a meeting. Nothing is even close to being finalized. Who Time the day, tomorrow evening, Six 30 at Abbott Hall. And, um, you know, and feel free to call this isn’t any of the members As well. This isn’t worth, I, I don’t think so. I can’t show up because I’ve got a person that’s on the board of, of the, well,

41:57 I’ll certainly report, I’ll certainly report that, um, the, the board of health was concerned about the con the, the, the, the scuttlebutt about the conversation. And we would Like to be part of that decision. I mean, Yeah, you can go actually, Well, he’s a, he is a member. We, You just won’t meet. You’ll be you, you, I I don’t wanna get that. You can ‘cause a quorum. You won’t have a quorum. You do have a quorum. You won’t be debating discussing. She’ll just be, but anyhow, I don’t want to get Yeah, that, that’s a tough one. Um, we’d have to sit in the audience and not say a word. Are you available? Yes. Yeah. I, I mean, you know, I could make myself available. Yes. Why don’t you, why don’t, Why don’t you,

42:42 why don’t you let Amy invite you If you think if, if you want to communicate with Amy, or we’ll communicate with Amy and see, I, I don’t think this is, is Of interest to you to show up? And I think at this point it’s in, in, it would be responsible for me to, to be at the meeting tomorrow. Well, I think, you know how I feel about this. Yeah. So, alright. Yeah. You can speak by half be responsible, irresponsible. It would be responsible for me. I’m just asking if you’re, I mean, we are not. No, I mean, you would have to make your own decision. That’s, uh, I, yes you could. I am an agent of the board, so I think it’s important for me to be there. I think, you know, obviously, Well, we’re not planning to go back to five three.

43:28 We’re gonna move on and deal with the cemetery board or something else. But I can let Amy know that you might like, So you all right. Yeah. And I don’t wanna say, but Amy did say there was a couple members missing and we took a, not a formal vote, but anyhow, I, I’m in a straw vote, But me, but meanwhile, if he shows up, you’ll certainly hear him. I don’t, I don’t need to speak unless they’re, you know, gonna be talking about the I See you there, then may bring it up. Happens. Okay. So can we move? Mm-hmm. Um, we, the director’s report Budget. So let me hand out copy of the waste budget. Copy of the health budget. Well,

44:15 I, you doing that, this the communication. I might have to, I haven’t opened it, so I’m gonna do that.

44:23 Perfect. But both together, all the way down, both together, I got a packet all the way down to being.

44:32 Yes sir. I put together there

44:40 and then one of those all the way down, down view. And one of those, wait sir,

44:57 This is all what we’ve already seen, right? This is all what you see in except four. Um, they, the town does have a budget shortfall. Okay. Um, so the, the town has a budget shortfall of $1.7 million. Mm-hmm. So last Wednesday night I was contacted to say, Hey, we need to make some cuts, uh, and your departments aren’t gonna be affected. Um, it first started at $340,000 coming out of the waste department. I said, oh, hold on. Mm-hmm. You need to sit down and have serious discussions about this. You can’t just be slashing our budgets without discussion. Um, so after, you know, long discussion with the finance

45:43 director and the way that we create our budget is based on numbers that occurred generally from last year. So we track everything. The big piece that we track obviously is curbside collection, trash recycling, trash is responsible obviously under one number. We got a dispose of all that stuff that’s collected. The second piece of that trash number is trash that comes into the transfer station. We collect transfer station fees. Those fees go to the general fund. Mm-hmm. So when I put together a budget, the waste that’s collected at the curbside and the waste that’s collected at the transfer station needs to be disposed of using general funds. Mm-hmm. Tax dollars, stuff like that.

46:28 Commercial waste that comes through the commercial transfer station. The way in pay those get deposited when we collect on those into the waste revolving account, we use the waste revolving account to cover all those costs. We use the waste and we try to keep those operations essentially separate. We have an employee that we pay for out of the waste revolving account. We have equipment that we buy out of the waste revolving account. We’ll have additional employees that we will need to spend out of the waste revolving account. But those are the two pieces that we, you know, try to keep separate as possible with the waste disposal. Um, generally there’s amount of material that we assume is coming in. We have a waste management agreement.

47:15 It sets a, a, a tonnage fee. Um, that tonnage fee, you know, is about $127 a ton. And we track all that and that’s how I essentially create the budget for next year. Now as we’re going through, through the year, because everything has been level funded, if I’m overspending, if I have repairs that I was not aware of, or if I have additional yard waste that I’m getting rid of, I might overspend in certain areas and use waste revolving accounts to cover some of the disposal costs. We’ve gotten to a point where it’s very, very tight. I don’t have any flexibility with my waste disposal line item. They’ve asked that we cut the waste disposal line item,

48:02 um, $182,505. So because there’d be cuts across the board, we’ve agreed to this, the additional, if we have waste that’s gonna exceed our budget of $626,487, we would use waste revolving funds to do that. So we will have money. I do set aside additional funds to cover for emergencies. An emergency could be a hurricane, it could be a, a flood. You know, those would be unknown large expenses that we want to get, that we need to get rid of waste. And that’s how we would help do that. Um, the 6 0 6. So we had, obviously we have a budget request, um,

48:49 of 7 25, 4 91. Um, we’ve spent three quarters of that currently. We have a couple months left. We have about approximately $250,000 to get us into the next year.

49:04 We’re gonna be very close to using that whole number. So this FY 26, you know, using the 6 26 4 87 is gonna be very close. We don’t have a choice. This is where we’re, we’re told to do. We’re just need to continue to remind everybody. We are, the town is on a very slim line financially of getting by with operations. We’re seeing a cut here. You’ll see a cut in the health department. You’re gonna see cuts, you should see cuts in all departments, fire, police, everything but administrative offices. I can’t comment on that, but I believe there’s cuts across the board. But this is where we are. Obviously we all know that we need a over end next year.

49:51 We’re going into a new contract in September 26th. We need to just explain Yes. A town meeting. We will need to make comments about going into this year and next year. So, you know, Helene would like to make some comments about her involvement in the board over these last 30 years. But yes, we were gonna want you to stand up and put together a statement at town meeting about where we’re headed, um, and stuff like that. Um, When you say you and you’re looking at me. Looking at you. Okay. I just wanted make sure Yes, I can do that. And obviously I can be right, right there to answer any questions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and we can make sure you’re comfortable doing that. Yeah, we can figure that all out. Yeah. Not a problem. Been cleared with Jack. We, we will get

50:37 that all cleared with Jack and get that all situated. Yep. Obviously, um, we have not even met with our liaisons yet, but this is gonna be our budget. This is what it is. Yeah. The liaisons know. We just have to go through the formality of meeting with liaisons. Then our true fin com hearing is Monday night, um, the 31st. So a week from today is our budget, budget hearing. I will give a presentation on our budget. I’ll explain to them how we get our numbers. I’ll explain to them the potential shortfall of this. But this is where we’re at

51:14 Now since recycling curbside still free. Yes, correct. So just talking log shot here. If we’re here to be able to convince the town to recycle more and put less in the trash, reducing our tonnage. So when you have new contracts, that’s not the conversation. It doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. It’s more about you want to create a clean, I guess I’m not talking about the new contract, I’m talking about this current year. Like does it make a difference? You know, You still wanna make sure people are doing their part recycling. Yeah. Re recycling responsibly. So we have Recycle Smart in Massachusetts. Mm-hmm. Everybody should really know what they can put in the recycling bin. Again, it’s a commodity.

52:00 We want to make a good commodity that’s that people wanna buy. Yeah. And that doesn’t mean people like Republic ‘cause they’re not buying it. They’re selling it. Yeah. So they want, we want to be known as Marblehead and our commodity is a good commodity and I want that. Mm-hmm. Are you Seeing less recycling because people feel that the product’s not being recycled? No, we’re seeing it’s still pretty high. We’re seeing the same numbers across the board. Um, well what’s your Re what’s your answer to that? That we, we’ve heard that. So the biggest concern about recycling is that everyone’s feel is that, well, it’s not really getting done. Right. Again, it’s a commodity. So the only way it can be recycled is if somebody wants to buy that and turn it into something else. Mm-hmm. So products, there are certain products

52:47 that are more valuable than others. Now some of the larger companies are going to be investing more in polymer plants and trying to recycle more into their plastics. So we’ve heard that Coca-Cola Pepsi wants to come out with a Pepsi bottle or a Coke bottle that has higher percentage of recycled plastic in it. ‘cause they wanna be known for doing that.

53:13 But there’s a, you know, paper, obviously there’s great value in paper. Mm-hmm. The hard thing with cardboard, it used to be high valued. Now we’re being inundated with cardboard, so the value goes lower. It still has value, but not as much as it used to. Blame That on Amazon. I can’t blame, I can’t grade company seven, but yeah. Alright. No, I just wanted see if there was anything Yep. Communication Wise that would help that. No, I mean obviously, you know, you’re limited to amount of trash. You know, again, people really should be thinking the three R reduce what you’re buying. So look at, you know, and obviously it’s easier and tougher. Uh, it’s easier in difficult economic times when people are kinda looking where their dollar’s going.

53:59 People do start to evaluate what they truly need. And so that is a good first step, obviously, you know. Second is, can I reuse it? You know, can I reuse this jacket? Can I reuse? You know, or can I pass the jacket on to somebody else? That’s a good piece. And then the last thing is really recycling it. Mm-hmm. Okay. Um, but yeah, so this is where we are with the budget, um, for the waste department. Um, the total ask, um, for this coming fiscal year, uh, is $2,943,402. So I need a motion to, um, have the board accept this. We’ll be moving on to the finance committee, and then after that we’d be,

54:44 I’ll ask for a motion, but I, I also Yep. After the motion, I have a question. Do you have the motion move? Okay. Um, second. Second. Yeah. And then I’m gonna wait for the, what was the, what was the budget last year? I mean, was it less than 182,505? Uh, the budget last year is 2,000,840, uh, 40,000, $38 for this year. So that 2025, That Was a hundred thousand dollars. So we’re only cutting it by 2000. Worth. What?

55:16 Right. You’re cutting it. I’d have to the math, um, it’s about a million. No, it’s about a, it’s about a hundred thousand. Yeah. A hundred Thousand. Yep. 110. Okay. Excuse me. All right. Um, all in favor. A

55:34 So for the health department, the, the health department budget is so lean it, it, we’re underfunded in the health department. You guys have heard me say this over and over again. We really were trying to increase the Marblehead Counseling Center. Um, the counseling services is a direct benefit to Marblehead residents tax dollars, helping Marblehead residents and to really good program. They’re asking us to level fund this one. So we had asked for an additional, we would ask, we were at 60,000. We were asking for 120. They would like us to stay at the $60,000. Um, so our total budget, um, for FY 26 will be $326,041.

56:20 The budget for FY 25 was $324,190. So it was very close. Yep. Very close. Well, and the other 60 that they got that the counseling center got last year was through opera, wasn’t It? Yes. They’ve gotten some ARPA funds. Um, and so, you know, this is kind of where we are. Well, it’s, it’s, it’s too bad because Counseling Center is very dear to my personal heart. And, um, I feel Bad. I think it’s a great resource to all the Marvel head Residents, but, um, they’ve been living on the 60,000 that we’ve been giving ‘em for 30 years. Yeah. Since I was on the school committee. To me, it’s not that they’re living on it, that’s, unfortunately, it’s Marblehead residents have to live on that. And so we’re trying to help people with that $60,000.

57:06 Of course, we’re gonna be going through some tough EEC economic times. We’re gonna be going through some tough situations. And the need and the want for that mental health services is only gonna be greater. And so I think it’s unfortunate that we’re not able to allocate additional dollars. Well, the One good thing, but that’s where they, one good thing about the counseling center is they work on a sliding scale. Correct. It’s too bad that they’re not gonna see those funds. But yeah, I, I hope, I hope that our citizens, uh, get the services.

57:33 Um, so I need a motion to, to move forward with the health department budget of $326,041. Mm-hmm. Second dollars a failure. It’s unanimous times. I just want everybody across the board doing, You know, it’s hard times for everybody. And, and again, a lot of times it generates some mental health issues, you know, and so this is just kind of a, a, a, a difficult situation. Um, but please, if you need help, please reach out to everybody.

58:09 Um, update on the transfer station. Um, new England Mechanical was back on site today, uh, installing the compactor. Um, so the work that they need to be completed, compactor needs to be installed like it was this morning. It needs to be wired to be electrified. The big portion of this job is building the new steel sheet. Um, so they will be completing this work as soon as they’re, we complete this, we will open that facility back up and obviously we’ll be looking forward to taking away and bay customers as soon as possible. How many weeks has, has the commercial been closed? I couldn’t Tell you. I can count on that. It’s been a while. Yeah. In January, wasn’t it? Yeah, a month. Yeah. Um, the biggest piece with the transfer station,

58:54 obviously this is a huge piece that helps all of Marblehead it, you know, that’s where we bring our curbside trash. It’s where we bring our residential trash. So we’ve had to make huge adjustments to deal with that. Obviously contractors have had to make huge adjustments. You know, residents have had to make huge adjustments. Um, we still have pieces of the barn head transfer station construction project that we want to complete there. You know, just please be patient with us. There’s gonna be some other disruptions coming forward in the future. Um, this is all to better the facility and take as much, you know, deal with all the ways that Marblehead has to offer us. Um, and try to create the best facility that’s in the best interest of marble all Marblehead residents.

59:39 Um, So where are we with the stainless, with the STA steel plate? Is it arrived? So the, the new tipping floor is installed. The new ladder going down to the bottom is installed. That is complete. Um, we’re looking at Weatherproofing for the steel floor, so it was built per plan. Um, but we’re looking at things that, trying to make the facility as weather tight as possible. So does that mean, you know, that could potentially mean us adding some additional welding to the steel plate to do all the seams, or we can look at other technology to do that. IE paints and, um, finishes and stuff like that. So, but yes, the tipping floor is complete

1:00:19 and that new ladder going down is a huge, you know, that’s ocean standards. We’re, you know, we’re hit, we’re hitting everything with this, which is great. So we got 47 years from the old one. We hope to get more than 47 years. Yeah. Yep.

1:00:36 Um, regulations, um, I just need to make sure that you guys don’t have any glaring questions. Again. Um, town council’s looking at all this stuff. Um, the tattoo permanent makeup regulations, um, have been looked at by many different communities. It’s gone through a legal process itself that shouldn’t take too long. The tap tobacco is a, a little bit smaller piece, but shouldn’t take too long. As soon as I get those back, I will get those out to everybody that will set a date for a public hearing. So If you get it by tomorrow, I would send it out. Uh, if I got it tomorrow, we could potentially have a public hearing on the eighth. Yes. After that we can’t because it’s more than Two weeks. Correct. Yeah. I need two weeks

1:01:21 to publicly noti notice for public hearings. Would you Like me to call town council Or no? No. Okay. I don’t want them to rush. Alright. Yeah. Um, The last thing for my update is that our public health nurse has given her us her notice to retire. Really? Um, so that means that, you know, she’s following protocol that gives us a year notice. Um, so she will be with us for another year. Um, but after that, she a Year from today or year or, Um, it’s a year In April. A year In April. Yep. Well, I think we, we, we got, We got a year to discuss this. Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, we can’t exactly post that. Just No, not exactly post that. Oh.

1:02:08 But I just, and notifying the board that she’s giving her notice mm-hmm. She’s Been, she’s been terrific. She has been excellent. I’ve worked her with her for, um, approximately 12 years now. Mm-hmm. And, and we’ve Been through thick and thin. Yeah. We’ve been through a lot Together. Did Yeah. Everything. She was incredible during Covid. Yeah. She, she’s an incredible public health nurse. Yeah. She was, um, she worked truly Covid. Yeah. But I had her for a year, so I’m not going know how it,

1:02:37 um, and that’s it for me. Well Also, uh, I think we may be able to discuss your contracts at, at this meeting. Yep. Which is the eighth. April 8th. Yep. And that has to be in a, um, in a, uh, executive session. Could both, other, other, uh, board members come at seven o’clock to have the executive session before the regular meeting? The next meeting is, Is the Faithful, uh, yeah. And can you come at seven? So seven o’clock we posted a Yep. Executive session for half an hour. Yep. And, um, I had hope that Alex could have come for the same thing for the tattoos if we needed him or anything. But Yeah, when we have the public near, uh, public meeting

1:03:24 for those regulations, we will ask if they’d be here for that, for any questions. There will be an attorney generally from tobacco. He, He said he could stay a little bit longer if we had any questions. So we’ll see about that. Yep. I mean, even if it’s not for the, uh, for the public hearing. Yep, that would be good. Okay. So you’re wanting to put the public hearing for tobacco? And We cannot until we get the, we contract the, Yeah, but you’d like to put it on our next meeting if we can, but Yes, we won’t. No, We Don’t, we can’t do it past tomorrow. Past tomorrow. Yeah. Because we have two post it. Yeah.

1:03:59 And what’s the, if we wait till the Following, there’s a problem. Yeah. Okay. It’s just the ship, just, you know, and, um, hopefully, um, he might even give us some answers on the, um, on, on the health department and the, and, and the Board of Health. If you have any questions on that.

1:04:21 I mean, while he’s here, he actually, he’s not gonna be here in person. He’s gonna be, he, he said that he was gonna be, uh, on Zoom or however, whatever he, yeah. Um, but we will keep putting up a new sign outside our office. Um, it will say Health Department Office slash Board of Health. And that way everybody knows it’s very similar to the select board office Town administrator. That’s good. All right. So should we go to the, uh, anybody have any other questions for Andrew before we go to the minutes?

1:04:55 Guess no answers no answer. Isn no. They know to find me All. So, where, where’s this very thick paper that we shouldn’t have talked about recycling? You know, I got two questions in the last 24 hours about recycling, one about pill bottles that recycled though, aren’t they? Not in the, not in curbside recycling. So the best website is recycle Smart for masks. It covers everything. Uh, there’s a mass encyclopedia, um, that you can enter in the item and it’ll tell you if it goes in the trash or in the recycle. So those plastic ones cannot go into Correct. And I also, and, and the, um, things that are under depression, those don’t go in. That’s correct. Those do not. So that, yeah. The pillows.

1:05:41 Yeah. It’s not as many as you need all. So, let’s, is are they all fixed? I thought some of them. Nope. There’s top ones. Yeah. So I’m missing Wait one, let me get the rest of them.

1:05:57 Alright, I’ve got the first one on top is July 9th. Is that right? The ones In, in all your piles are in, uh, chronological order. This one is March 4th, then chronological order. So if you grab the last page, that’ll be the March 4th minutes. And then We can go in order. Okay. No, we’re going. Should we get one of them? No, we’re just gonna ask for a motion unless there’s a correct motion. Wait, you know what? I think I put the heavy thing on. So could you give me a March 4th of, yeah, March 4th. You stuck the, the minutes of March 4th. Uh, are we all set to make a motion or is it anything you, you’ve made the collections. So, uh, a motion to accept the,

1:06:44 that was the most recent meeting, March 4th, 2025. Uh, could I have motion for that? Somewhat second. All in favor? That’s unanimous. That is, it is the next one. Am I right? The next one? July 9th. June 14th. June 14th. Go ahead.

1:07:06 How could it go from your desk to me and be, if

1:07:14 was there, take this, uh, You should just crank that. Just make sure you know, The June 4th meeting. Put a one before that four. Where is that and which, which paper? June 14th. Oh, June 14th. Okay. It wasn’t Juneteenth June 14th. Okay. Um, there was, um, one direction on that. Um, it’s been, it’s been made. Uh, all those in favor of the, uh, you any motion? June 14th? Yeah, I moved it. We approved June 14th. Second. Uh, all those in favor? It’s approved. That’s June 14th. Okay. Now July 9th. I move that we approved July 9th.

1:08:00 Second. All those in favor? That’s good.

1:08:10 13th minutes from August 13th to approve. Second. All those in favor? Thanks. Unanimous. And then this, the September one? 10th. 10th move. September 10th. Be second. All in favor? Okay, so, um, the one correction then the date? 14th? No, so, so The, the date was June four. Oh, it was, it was 14th. Yeah. So one of them, uh, just the, then the meeting notices. Okay. Yeah. Do you know Tuesday? We’re good? Yep. Excellent. Yeah. ‘cause it was the last meeting that Joanne was at. That was, thank you. So Ms.

1:08:57 Um, alright. So will comment, I, I just opened this up. I hadn’t seen it. It’s, uh, uh, and you must have this, um, someone on two 18 Green Street, uh, has, uh, eating oil problem. I did not see that. No, you haven’t. Nope. So I don’t think we have to take a reaction if you haven’t seen it and we haven’t. No, I can, I can take a look at it. And I was not, not aware of those. Just go the certified Okay. Mail and I opened it up while they were passing out. Oh, is it, Uh, is it oil spill On, on January 12th, 2025, the mass, uh, DDP was notified by the Marblehead Fire Department about home heating oil release at two 18 Green Street when it goes on.

1:09:45 Okay. Um, just A a point of order. It’s, it’s near me. It was an underground tank. Yeah, the leak, they’re just about done with it, but they’ve been there for several weeks. It got under the Foundation. Yeah, it was a big, were we moving all the spill? Oh yeah. It was a big job. And this is the first time we’re notified about, No, so this is the official letter from the LSP to the board. So we are contacted by Mass, DEP, the fire department. Um, so no, we, we, we were aware of the oil spill, but I was not aware of the letter That was sent out. Oh, okay. What’s the o and speed Licensed site Professional. So you have an oil spill. You’re required, as a homeowner, you’re required to hire an LSP that will walk you through the mitigation process of cleaned up from a oil spill.

1:10:32 It can be very lengthy, obviously there’s a lot of paperwork. Um, generally what happens is that you contact your insurance company. Your insurance company will have somebody that you will need to hire the LSP who has to make all the, you know, proper documents. They share it so all the soil is, is removed to certain levels. Um, hopefully does not get into groundwater. Obviously groundwater around here is slightly different. Um, I’ve seen these things last for considerable amounts of time. And yes, there’s a considerable cost to it. Um, so that’s why it’s really important for people to inspect their oil tanks. Again, this was an underground oil tank, so it’s a, I’m gonna say extremely o old because most of us have above ground oil tanks.

1:11:17 They tend to be in our basements. Um, but you generally should have, if you still have an oil tank, make sure your oil company is continuing to take a look at that. You’re technically supposed to have maintenance on your oil burner and a yearly basis. And when that guy is in there, these were woman is in there, they should be reviewing your oil tank to make sure it’s of sound condition. Is that how this was found when they, when the oil company came? I believe it was an overfill. Oh wow. Yep. Yes, Jim, I, it was actually, uh, you only woman lived there. It was the house she grew up in and they went to put it on the market and it’s, it’s been the same owner since like 1950. And they went to put it on the market and they realized it was an underground tank, which has

1:12:03 to come out and it just spirals from there. Oh Boy. So It’s very unfortunate situation, but it’s, I think they’re just f**d on. And you’ll hear us use a lot of acronyms when we talk about this stuff. So an underground oil tank, like UUST, an underground storage tank. So now the press is here. I mean, is Is it’s all public information. No, it’s, so, it it’s not personal if she puts down the address or anything. Yeah, correct. Yep. Everyone in the neighborhood. So I said that way more than the neighborhood Now, you know, obviously Marble Hana has a public water system, so, um, it’s still a concern. It’s obviously an environmental concern. It’s less of a concern because we’re not looking at it affecting neighboring, um, wells and stuff like that.

1:12:48 So do we need to, uh, reply to this? We do not need to reply. It just goes into the file notification. Um, we create a file based on that address. So if somebody is buying a home, they can come to the health department, look up the file and find relative Documents. I’m just asking if you need to reply. I got a letter and I usually reply to a letter. Yeah, You do not. Sorry. So yeah, thanks. Percent of poems in Marble Orlando Oil, Uh, that’s a tough question. So what you saw obviously be very, you know, very high, you know, um, 90 to a hundred percentile. Um, we’re probably

1:13:28 30% at this point, if not less than that. Obviously there’s a huge push Concentrated in the historical district. No, not necessarily. It’s all just spread out everywhere. Just very random to tell you the truth. Um, a lot of it generally has to do with change of ownership. Um, gas prices, oil prices generate a lot of that change and stuff like that. Um, we’ve seen a big push probably 10 years. Uh, yeah, probably close to 10 years ago was when there was a significant push for people to change from oil to gas. The National National Grid has been pushing gas recently. Why? They’re doing all the gas expansion and a lot of people have switched over to oil at that time or from oil to gas at that time. Wasn’t there a time that people were doing electric too?

1:14:14 At this time? You are seeing some people switch over from oil to, um, electric, but not a huge number. National Grid doesn’t for free if you’re in a certain range of their pipes. But there’s, so if you’re on a street that where you’d have to collectively pay to have it like, like Peach Highlands. Yeah. They all has a neighborhood have to pay to have National Grid come in and to get the gas line. Yeah. Yeah. And so they don’t, they don’t pay for a gas boiler. Yeah. Getting a whole neighborhood to agree to do that would, But what you see is like, you know, in neighborhoods like that, that are kind of remote, you might see a backyard propane tank. Yeah. Rather than an, an oil tank and stuff like that.

1:15:01 Um, on the Cape where I worked before, it was a, you know, significant issue. I was a sole source aquifer. Um, so we had board of health regulations to say you had to have a double wall tank.

1:15:16 Anyone else? So the next meeting is April 8th and mm-hmm. Uh, uh, we have public comments And we have obviously a fin uh, finance committee meeting. Uh, May 31st. Um, At what time? They start at seven o’clock, But we haven’t been given a time yet, which It’s seven o’clock until I have a time. Um, I assume you would like me to post the meeting for that. I assume two board members would be showing up to that, or will it just be the chair myself? I’m available. Okay. I’ll go. Okay. So I’ll post the meeting for the I’m jury 31st. Yeah, it’s a Monday night. Sure. It’s Friday. Yeah, next, next Monday. Is that good Calendar? So I’m not crazy? No. I check my calendar. Yeah.

1:16:02 I’m showing May 31st as a Saturday March. March. March. Oh, March. Yeah. Next Monday. Next Monday.

1:16:12 Yeah. So next Monday is March 36th. What board made the room? No, it’s right here, generally. Oh. We usually will gather in the room next door. I think we technically bump them out of this room till when it’s our thing, but Well, they they have a meeting this evening or they, I believe so. Yeah. They might be meeting tomorrow night. Oh.

1:16:33 Oh, okay. Um, and the meetings, is that meeting on, on Zoom or how Yes, it is. I I’m talking about tomorrow now. Yes. Yeah, chatted, I can watch that at six 30. Six 30. Six 30, Okay. Um, any public comments please?

1:16:52 I thought that Dr. Tommy would comment on, uh, on Dr. Tom’s presentation. I think it was, I think that, um, back to, um, the, the one thing that I think really has to keep coming out is that there is so much uncertainty. I mean, just because we, we, especially with viral transmission, there’s tons and tons of un uncertainty and I think people think there’s more certainty than there is. And I think there’s a lot of things that evolve along. And I’ll be honest, I, I know it frustrates me when people armchair backwards to Covid ‘cause there was so much uncertainty.

1:17:37 And I think the problem was, was people tried to put more certainty on the uncertainty and you know, like so far a distance and we didn’t know, we don’t know, but people can’t get by with not knowing anything. And I think that that’s the big problem. The other thing is we talk about morbidity and mortality. If you really wanna do cost benefit, you better part, you better put a cost on mortality. How much is a life worth? How many millions of dollars? Because you can say economically this and that happened, but huge amounts, you know, when you have a million people die, what are each of them worth?

1:18:23 You know, 10 billion, 50 billion. And I think that that’s where we forget things. So that has to be foremost, I think. And as a society, we are risk averse. Everybody in this society is risk averse. So I think that we have to think about this as we go ahead. Um, we have to really track HH five N one. Uh, I, I subscribe to this, um, website called your local epidemiologist, and are you aware of this one? Yeah. And to be honest, bird flu is kind of heading down a little bit now. So we don’t know. This is what I’m talking about. We just don’t know.

1:19:08 And the idea is you can’t say, oh, well it’s heading down because it may just go like this again. And I think that that’s very important for people to understand that there’s a lot of uncertainty. That’s, that’s why I’m just sort of, but I think, uh, Tom, Dr. Mezaros presentation is great. It describes what happens with viruses, um, that um, they really do hijack things and when they get in there, they make zillions of copies of themselves. Whoever said medicine was an exact science, well, I think that people somehow think that it is, or that we have antibiotics that can treat, um, all sorts of infections.

1:19:53 Well, we now have so many, for example, antibiotics, just so we know, treat, do not treat viral infections. They do not treat, they do not treat measles. If, if you get measles, you have measles pneumonia, which is very common if you get measles and then you can get a super infection, meaning a bacteria on top of that, which may be, uh, resistant to antibiotics. We are, antibiotics are at their just about we’re treading water with them right now. So, um, I don’t know. That’s my all I have to say, but I I I knew you were stuffing it there. I know, I just, its fine. Hope you don’t mind me. Yes.

1:20:41 It’s you on the spot. No, it’s, Things are uncertain and you know, you can only ask so much. Yeah. If, If I can read the, this is a quote from, um, uh, the former director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins. We failed to say every time we made a recommendation, guys, this is the best we can do right now, there is a good chance that this is wrong. Right? You didn’t say that We wanted to be sure people actually were motivated themselves, but to by what we said. But it, it, we did not admit our ignorance. And that was a profound mistake.

1:21:27 We lost a lot of credibility along the way. And I think, I believe that the board recognizes that. And we want to say this is what we know and this is what we don’t know. And we will work at knowing more, but we will not come across as absolute. Right? I think that’s the best we can do. But it’s better if we have to have the co I believe it’s better if we have to have that conversation that people now know a little bit about viruses. And your comment is absolutely that maybe you can do the next little five minutes about the consequences of a vir viral infection that antibiotics don’t work. And, and even for bacteria these days, um,

1:22:14 drug companies don’t make a lot of money building new an antibiotics. And so therefore the number of new bacterial fighting compounds out there is relatively small. And although the bacteria don’t mutate as fast as viruses do, they do mutate. And so we have that, that problem. And a, again, I, anyway, we’re on the where we are. We want, we want coming to the board meeting to be a mini MPH over time. Alright. We have some There. Somebody that’s as A question. All I was gonna say, these ducks can chalk out in the parking lot. We can go to the, uh, questionnaire on, on. So let’s screen

1:23:01 Jack shouldn’t have the ability. There we go. Good evening. Good evening. Oh, wait a minute. Is that, uh, Mr, Can you see me? I don’t, maybe you don’t wanna, I always wanna see you. We can hear you. Okay. Um, I don’t see where to turn on, turn on the, uh, the video, but that’s okay. Um, one question before I get a little bit about town meeting. Um, it seems like, like single stream recycling really dumbed everything down for us. And I mean, I try to, I bring my recycling up to the dump because I know that I put it into the, into the different containers. And I don’t know if that makes a different or not, but if recycling components are an actual commodity,

1:23:50 maybe it’s time to get away from single stream and rally the community behind telling the, telling people what we can recycle at different times so that there’s more ownership to, you know, the connection to the budget that we actually have versus what people might just think is going to the, to reco. So, so it becomes very hard to do it in that fashion because when it goes curbside, we have a contract for collection and so the contractor is gonna dictate, you know, the single stream, the dual stream like it used to be. Essentially everybody’s gone single stream to try to make it as easy as possible.

1:24:35 Um, the idea about, you know, yes, when you go to the transfer station, you separate items out, it does make that load a little bit more valuable. So like when you put the paper in the paper bin and I go to the recycling center with a load of paper, it does make that load more valuable because it’s just paper and they don’t have to sort all it. I’m gonna say the trash out of it. Um, yeah, the hard thing. And we, we try to work across the state and so we un unified with recycle, recycle Smart to say these are all the products we’re gonna take. Um, so it’s a uniform, but because of Massachusetts we’re required to recycle. And so those are the items that we have to recycle. I would love to say these are the only recycling items

1:25:23 that I wanna see in the bin because those are the most valuable. But if we ever got caught throwing those other items in the trash, it would be a violation to us. Okay. Just food, food for thought, that’s all. Yep. Because, because there With, Believe it or not, that and what we put down our disposal costs us more money and there are are two things that have direct impact on our budget. Um, yep. So something I learned a long time ago from, from Dana Snow. Um, and then about town meeting, um, I’m gonna request again that, uh, so article two is reports from boards and committees and I’m gonna request again that and, and what I’ve asked for since I’ve become moderator is updates on any outstanding capital projects.

1:26:09 So I’m gonna ask again for a quick update on the transfer station project and then when it comes to your budget, because I know that you have, um, a lot of moving parts of the big increase coming up, um, I would ask that you put that you, uh, hold your budget line item and make a presentation at that time. Okay. And any questions before then, feel free to reach out and I’ll also codify it over email when I send it out to all of the other departments. Sounds good. Thank you very much. Yep, Thank you. Have a good night. Thanks for coming. Oh, you bet. All meeting adjourned. Moved second. All was in favor Adjourned.

1:26:55 Fact as clear on that five minutes night says I Do we record that? Yes. Yes.