Board of Health: September 29, 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.

0:00 This meeting. So, hey, just gotta turn down all Your volume and microphone.

0:12 It’s seven thirty three on the 10th, 29th of September. And this is the Board of Health Open meeting. Um, the first item for us is, uh, approval of various minutes, meeting minutes, and we have copies of those. We have some copies of those distributed to us. And, um, um, are there any comments, if not I With them? It would be appropriate to have a motion to approve. Motion to approve July 10th, July 22nd, and August 13.

0:57 Second. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. A. Okay, great. So, Mor morning, the meeting minutes have been approved. Um, we’ll go to the reports of the, um, board and the officers, um, chair’s. Report is up. Um, I’m going to talk about two things, Mo mostly calm, and then the charter committee report briefly. Um, as we put that, um, hopefully to bed. Um, we had a meeting at the select board on last, the 24th. Kaylyn Coyle came

1:43 and gave a talk, primarily directed at, uh, um, the security and privacy of the, of the, uh, ceremony. And, um, actually I think she did a great job and the room seemed to be quite comfortable with it. Um, her slides a little bit doctored. She, uh, described the general goals of comm, as we all know, basically to document and describe the health and wellness status of the town. That will inform the strategic planning and accountability of the Board of Health. It will provide relevant strategic data for other groups in town beyond the Board of Health,

2:32 and it will serve as a baseline for documenting progress for future projects and or in invent, uh, um, investments that the board has, has to, uh, suggest. Okay, we are active. I, I have to admit, I had a little bit of an anxiety until I got on the QR code this morning. Um, wondering if it would, if it would pop up, but, uh, it opened up immediately and sometime about the same time. Um, um, one 16,739 postcards

3:18 were mailed this morning. Presumably they will reach the mailboxes. There’ll be one for every voting member, every resident over 18 in the town. And it’s an interesting age distribution. And it tells us what our challenges will be, what it’ll tell us what our challenges will be, um, to get a really robust response. The largest group now, it has a couple, uh, an, uh, an extra year, two years, uh, is the 18 to 29. And Kaylin was quick to remind us that this is going to be a challenging group because many of these students, one small group is in,

4:06 in high school, uh, that remain in, in Marblehead High, but most of the rest that are 20 on either in college, um, or beyond, they may still get their mail and are residents of Marblehead, but they may not get it first. So we’ll have to try to convince parents to send it on to their kids. And a friend of mine suggested what I ought to do. What we ought to do next day or two is try to find out from either families or the schools who, who were the leaders of the last couple of graduating classes in Marblehead High that still might be

4:53 communicating with their colleagues, even though they’re away at college. So we’re gonna try to see if we can, um, we can do that as well. So otherwise, um, the 16,739, it would be great to get to the same level of participation that the town meeting got in the second and third nights this year, which would be somewhere in the high 5,000 to 6,000 range. Um, Caitlin has had one, at least one municipality on the Cape this last year that got up to 50%. Now it was a very limited senior group,

5:39 and they’re gonna be probably easier to respond. But nonetheless, I think we ought, uh, have a stretch goal for ourselves. And I actually think timing is good. I, I think that the, the, the waste department, the transfer station really got through the strike without really, with, with any, no real negatives in the town. In fact, if anyone was paying attention, we, we did the best of the 14 municipalities. So, and I think many people understood that. And, and a lot of people I talked to had a good time, um, by and large going to the transfer station

6:27 and dumping off their recycling stuff. So the, the, the, uh, waste, um, challenge that could have been there wasn’t, we had the tragedy. I think there’s still people, there’s definitely people that want to respond in a positive way to the, to the tragedy. And this information will allow us to, to begin to do some things to make that happen. So this is the survey. This is the postcard on the right hand side here that went out this morning. And these are, uh, uh, screenshots of the, the big, uh, I’ve got the big version of the, the one that was handed out. Um, this was done for us by a, uh,

7:16 marketing person in the counseling center. The one on the right hand side is one that, uh, Jack Ridge put together. Little more business like, um, um, the, the, the bubbles, uh, on the left hand side, much more, I guess pediatrician, like, um, um, but in any event, if we have more ideas about how to communicate to the environment, I think we should encourage the creative nature that goes on. It was absolutely amazing how rapidly the, um, the person at the, uh, at, at the counseling center was able to draw this up

8:03 with some directions, really what a, what a gift to be able to think like that. Um, so we’ll, we’ll have a number of these. Uh, we’ll have them in the eight and a half by 11 plastics sitting on card tables at the y we, we you are still in the JCC board? Yes. Can you get us invited to be with that? And Susan Stoke wants to maybe work with you on that, so we’ll Okay. Connect you afterwards. And, um, we’re gonna do it at the, uh, senior center. We’re gonna do it at, um, the mar, the Marblehead y um,

8:43 and, uh, any place that’ll, uh, have us, um, there with the ability to get people to sign the fill, fill out the survey at that time. So what About places of worship churches, temples? There, there was the rep, the, the, the person that’s coordinating the ministerial group, uh, was at this meeting last week. She has this, she’s gonna submit it to all of the ministerial groups. If, if there’s specific faith organizations that we should send something to, we let me know. We can just do that easily. Um, but I think there were two,

9:34 two rabbis when I gave the presentation a couple of months ago now to the ministerial group. So she was ready to distribute that. And we do have, um, a, a, a handout page of text, not just the drawing. So we have an elevator speech for the ministerial group and anyone who wants it. So to kind of be prepared for some of the stuff I have in the office, 12 of the plastic, um, mounts that stand up. Um, I’ll have more of the handouts. How many more posters do we want? I mean, I can print another dozen of the posters, obviously I can print unlimited amount of the, the eight and a half by 11, I would say. Uh, even

10:19 the one on the right if it could also have a QR Code. Yeah. So I’ll have to talk to Jack and try to work with him to put a QR code on that one. Um, all the stuff that we have so far has QR codes. Great. Um, so yeah, that is something we can try to figure out quickly. Hang one up by the uh Yep. Yeah. But we can have a big one. Uh, Yeah. Where people pay their bills up, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Cash at the front door. Yep. Yeah. Well that’s what we don’t need. No. How many people will allow us to put things on their doors and that, so we got a dozen of these now and a couple of hundred of these. I think that’s where we want to go. Sounds good. Mm-hmm. So I have those printed up around. Yeah, it’s great that you’ve got that capacity.

11:05 And the banner will is complete. Um, so the banner will go to a marble and electric light and that goes up, um, that week in October. It’s next week, isn’t it? Yep. Should, Uh, it doesn’t have anything there now. Maybe they’d like to put it up early. Yeah. Uh, medical offices. Yeah. I mean, you know, I have copies for everybody, so. Yep. Yeah, You can drop It off. Okay. That’d be great. And no, I’m not a social media person. I’ll put it out. You don’t have to ask. I can send you the file, stuff like that. So you can post all that stuff. Yeah, just shoot me an email. Like Jack says, he has 45,000 Friends on social media of various levels.

11:51 And so I’ll send it to Jack as well too, because he is really good about that stuff. Um, so I’ll get that over to him as well. And I, and I’ll try to work with him to try to, I like that one on the right as well, so we can try to, if we can add the QR code to, to that, that would be great. I dunno if it’s appropriate for me to jump in now, if I go to marblehead.org ‘cause it says there go to Marblehead. Yeah. It’s not up there yet. Okay. Yeah. Okay. It’ll be up by Wednesday or, yeah. When those are going up. Okay, cool. How long will the survey be out? Uh, since it’s out, it’s, I mean, you can answer that question. We’re, we’re looking at three weeks, but if things go badly, which we don’t think they’re going to, we might have to extend it, you know, that, that we,

12:36 we really ought to work that we’re, we’re gonna have a meeting a week from Wednesday. That’s a, it’s the earliest we can get feedback from Caitlyn on how she thinks we’re going. Usually she says there’s a, a, a bolus at the, at the beginning and then it levels off. So we’ll know how, how, um, what, what the responses look like in a week. And if we need to adjust and press are more, more, more progressively on various things than, we’ll try to decide it at that point. But three weeks ought to be enough. We’ll put, um, eighth a page

13:22 or so ads in the newspapers, giving people, oh, you know, you always, you wanted to fill out the survey, but you haven’t done it yet. It’s going to kinda wind down before Halloween anyway, so please get it done as quickly as possible. And I spoke to a PR person today, and so they said, every time you do a push, so every time we push everything out, social media, post stuff in the doctor’s office, post up on the website, you’ll see a blip of people filling out the survey. So they, you kind of get into these cycles of continuing out the bush, uh, to keep people interested in it. Well, that’s stagger. Well then may we go, we do the first push with this. Yeah. Second one we do with Jack. Yep. The third we find someone else who’s creative

14:07 and can do something else. And we keep just put it putting different pushes out there to be able to get that response. I think that, I think that the, uh, the banner will be interesting as well. I, I I Banner at esco. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, great. And I got it double sided ‘cause I drove by, I’m like, oh, you can go see those in good ways. Yeah. So I had it pretty double sided. So I mean, we’re telling the town that we are taking them very seriously. We really do want to hear what they think. Yeah. And I think, I really do think that’s consistent

14:53 with what’s going on in the country today. I mean, I, when I’m walking, I listen to Boston Public Radio and they spent that almost an hour today talking about Tylenol and vaccines. And, well, there was one physician there for, for a while, but, but it was really just that the public is confused. And basically what we’re saying is, tell us what you really wanted us to be doing for you. We will bring up the literacy any, in any way, in whatever direction there might be to, to make it work. And, um, given the chaos at the national level, I think some rational approach to, to being organized

15:41 and responsive will be, will be seeing this positive. I hope so anyway. It just, uh, it obviously I, I’m not unbiased, but it, I I think the timing is right for this. And so yeah, that everybody will receive that postcard this week, and then next week we can do, I have a huge email list serve, um, from the board that, you know, the health department. So we can do an email blast next week. And then on the third week we can use code red, which is, you know, we use during, um, the trash drink. Oh, and on that one you can say we’re winding down. Yep. Yeah. Great. Okay. This is the slide that, um, I, I kind of like this slide.

16:26 Caitlyn used this Wellness is being happy, uh, in multiple areas of life. And the, the different levels of wellness that we describe, uh, or we’re looking for in the survey are, are listed. Um, and again, sort of working with her, her presentation to the select board. Why do you wanna do that? Why should you do this? And the townspeople should wanna do this because they’re being heard. That’s the, the, we, we are, it, it’s, it’s, it’s further along than just transparency. We’re not just saying, we’re not just explaining what we want to do.

17:13 We are asking them what do they think we should be doing? What can we do? And, and actually, I, I think that’s sincere because it, once we get to five people and we can talk to each other and we can have subgroups that are looking at things, we can really make a difference and we can break the, the pattern with the three person board and limited resources has been an enormous constraint on public health. I mean, I know you’ve felt it for 13 years. Um, and, and if we can get past, um, the, the passivity that that’s been enforced on the board,

17:58 um, especially now with relatively new, all of us, relatively new to the board without any predispositions of what our role is, we’re we’re prepared to listen and to move forward. And, and there, there has to be ways that people can be part of the solution. Um, it’s a short period of time. Now, Caitlyn said it, she thought it would take 10 minutes. It take a little more than 10 minutes, I think if people are thinking about each question in detail. But if you really just going through and checking boxes, it’s, it’s possible 10, 12. So, and, uh, it is a way of, of linking to the community. Um, so it in, in this sense

18:47 of isolation that’s out there now, um, globally, nationally, globally, uh, for us to be reinforcing community, I think is a positive thing. Um, and what she did say about data security, I think is very important. All the responses are anonymous. There’ll be no personal identification whatsoever. The whole process has been approved by the institutional Review board at UMass Boston, which means that they’re putting their research funding on the line a as federal institution, as, as institutions getting federal funding, they have to have this institutional re review board

19:34 that protects the people who, who fill out that survey. So I think people can be quite confident of that. The data is collected on a password protected platform. It’s stored on a similarly password protected, uh, server. And none of us e even Andrew will, it won’t, not just the elected board, but also the, the, um, the, uh, staff members will not have access to any part of the data. Raw data will not ever come back to the board or the town. And, um, what will be reported will be aggregated data, um, and will be made public

20:21 and, uh, in, in our open session. And then finally, um, you probably know that this, I did not know that the state of Massachusetts has an healthy aging community profile, and it, it lists, I, I didn’t take all of this, but basically there’s a whole section that talks about

20:49 what we know demographically about Marblehead. And one of the things that Kaitlyn picked up when she was re and that’s part of her service for us, is to review all of the data that’s out there. And she saw that Marblehead rates of falls of cataracts and osteoporosis and arthritis for the seniors above 60, um, are greater than the Massachusetts average, um, that could contribute to isolation. So that’s the kind of cross-referencing we’re gonna be able to do with this kind of survey data. We’re gonna get what the state sees about itself, how it relates to Marblehead, how,

21:34 how we are slightly different than the average. And then, um, we should be able to give again, more insight. I mean, it was fascinating. It, it, it says we do pretty well in a lot of things. Um, lower rates of tooth loss, Alzheimer’s, dementias, anemia, chronic kidney disease. But on the other hand, we have higher rates of fall. I mean, you have to think that on the left hand side of this slide, the, the first thing I can think of is somewhere some sort of calcium deficiency or mineral deficiency or something like that. It’ll be Sorry. Yeah. Or, or alcohol. Well, I think, I don’t, I didn’t look see about liver disease.

22:20 But anyway, uh, this is, this is the, this is the kind of thing that we’ve got. Um, and all in all, I think we, uh, it, it, it, it, it should absolutely at the minimum be extraordinarily interesting and exciting as we go forward. Um, and so, um, I think we are, we’re doing everything we can. Um, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll do what we can with the, the social media rollouts in a number of different ways. Uh, apparently multiplier effect if you put it on yours and book. And, and so we’ll be in great shape there.

23:02 Okay. So, uh,

23:08 uh, comments or questions at this point about where we are going forward Is how quickly after the end date will we see the data? She’s been a little soft about hard dates on that. I suspect it’ll be before the semester’s over probably Thanksgiving is a reasonable time. We will have the data so that we can be planning the focus groups, which should start early in the new year, and whether we, whether we get a preliminary 30,000 foot assessment early, and then she drills down with her cross-referencing later, uh, um, we, we don’t know.

23:56 So we’ll see. I mean, it lot depends. If we get 6,000 responses, it’ll probably take a little longer than if we have three, which is another good reason against 6,000 responses. Okay. Um, any questions? Um, anywhere? No. All right. We, um, we were listed by the way, uh, at the last charter committee meeting as being one of only two of the 68, uh, committees and boards in the town of being okay with draft B. Uh, you responded to Kyle, I certainly reported on our last conversation, and it, it, it, it is, uh, it, it is, uh, acceptable

24:46 to, to us and we’re moving along. We did get some bad news, uh, um, from, um, Jenny when she talked about it be because we are doing this

25:05 in a, in a year that will end one term and begin another. There will be probably some lag time when the new legislature gets, uh, uh, finally in place when, when they get their committees set up. So it will take longer for us

25:31 as we, we’ll go to, we’ll go to the town meeting this year, but she doesn’t think that it’ll be completely through the legislature before their term of, I don’t know what the number of this current legislature is. But then there’ll be an election and a whole new group of people. So it could be as late as 2028 till it comes back and goes to the, um, the town meeting again. But the, that’s, that was the only negative. It has had its three readings at the, uh, house level, and it’s had at least one reading at the Senate level. And she believes we’ll get that, uh, the,

26:20 the acceptance of our loan to five, uh, very quickly.

26:26 Okay. That’s all for the chair’s report. Um, do you have any reporting from the two groups that you, We haven’t met yet? It’s, we’re gonna meet Wednesday, so I’m basically gonna tell you what I’m gonna, you know, I’ve been, that’s on the school side. Yeah. So it’s, um, one member of the school committee, one member of the select board, one member of Park and Rec and me. Uh, so that meets Wednesday. So basically I’ve just been putting out feelers, um, spit balling ideas just to see what I can bring and can be talked about. So some of the things, um, one of ‘em was very contentious. I threw out the idea of a, you know, so in Massachusetts, um, there’s a under 18 driving curfew of 1230 to 5:00 AM

27:16 So I didn’t know about that. I actually always grew up, and until a month ago, I thought there was a curfew in Mar Hill. And so I put it out there just to see what people thought. And then I realized, I don’t think I worded it right, um, because I found out people thought that a curfew meant you all had to be home by 1230. Like, so I was talking about like a general one, sometimes do it, Lynn Revere, there’s a whole bunch of them that do it, and they all have various times and various whatevers. So I threw out the idea and I realized I probably wasn’t specific enough, because I think people thought their kids had to be home by 1230. It’s like, that’s not it. It’s like you just can’t be wandering around Village Plaza or like, you know, if you’re at a house with no parents involved and the police happen to show up to be like,

28:02 you guys have to go home. So it’s actually like, but I, but I think the way I worded it when I said curfew, I think people thought that, um, some people, at least a lot of people understood exactly what I was saying. And so it was very mixed. It was very divided, but that was just something to spitball. Um, and then there was, um, but because I put that out there, some people reached out with some really good ideas. Um, one girl I graduated with reminded me of something that I actually didn’t even know existed. I feel guilty about that. Was that when I was in high school, she was, um, I think it was like the, the vice president of my class had created a driving program, um, a sober driving program, and there was like pagers used or something like that. So, um, and then the girl that told me about it said she actually drove for it a couple times. And so it was like students could just page where they were.

28:50 Cool. Yeah. And then she would go and pick ‘em up and give ‘em a ride home. Um, so that’s something to talk about. Um, you know, um, Matt Martin in town gave some good insight on that as well. And then, um, the main one I’m gonna bring was a lot of work that Cynthia, who was here last week, she’s really going above and beyond. Um, she found out about this Arrive Alive tour, which is what I gave you guys. Um, so what it is, is, um, a program where, so there’s a bunch of different things where they do like thriving simulators. Um, you can, here, Lee, you can have Oh yeah. Um, oh, um, so there’s a bunch of different things with driving simulators. Like you can buy one outright and have it at the school,

29:37 but those were, it was unrealistic. They’re like $150,000, something like that. So what this does is, um, they come to your school outside, they set up a car, you literally, every single student sits in the car and it’s virtual reality. And so they can simulate, but like some of ‘em, I guess they give you a phone and you like texting and driving and you’re trying to also, but it does drunk driving. It does drugs. And the prices were reasonable. So it was like, um, so what she proposed to them, she get the number of, um, people in our high school and then added in seventh and eighth grade. So that’s a lot of people. That’s a big range. And, um, the total cost based on that, they estimated at 22,500 and it would be not over nine days.

30:27 So natural. So that one sounds interesting. And one of the interesting things about it is that, um, you know, if you go through that wide of an age group, then you don’t have to do it every year, you know, because, so you could do, see, you’re not dropping 22,000 every year, maybe every two, three years, something like if it worked, you know, you do a trial one and see how the responses. But, um, they, they had interesting funding options, which, um, I mentioned to a school meeting, uh, member, and they weren’t aware of it. So it’s something to look into was like Title IX funding covers it. Interesting. Yeah. And insurance agencies sometimes sponsor it, so she’s been reaching out to, and there’s actually been a little interest from the insurance agencies on sponsoring it. Um, but otherwise, you know, this is car insurance not health.

31:15 Yes, correct. And, um, so, um, trying to find ways to cover it. I’d mentioned to Andrew, which he’s gonna check, it probably doesn’t qualify, but it, it’s worth asking if the opioid funds, um, would cover it. Um, otherwise, you know, you, you know, you could, it’s, it’s, it’s a number that you can work with. 22,500 isn’t like an outrageous number for what’s offered there. I mean, it’s definitely high, but it might be able to be something where even if you parse it down and you’re like, okay, we can only do, you know, the high school at least, it’s, it’s kind of a realistic number. So that’s something I’m gonna talk to them about. So there’s all the information there. If you wanted to check it out online, they give a nice little demo. Does it come with a presentation? Someone giving a talk? Yeah. I mean, they come and tell you all what they’re doing,

32:02 and then each student literally gets to sit in the car and do it. So that’s why it takes like nine days. So you really gotta coordinate with the schools to be like, Hey, this is coming. And since it’s kind of like such an involved thing, they said, um, they’re in the area doing a college, I think in April, so they were suggesting like, if you guys are able to do it, you know, they were like eight, mid-April is kind of when they’re around in the area, because I guess they travel a lot. So, um, that was just one thing I was gonna pitch. I thought that one was pretty promising out of all the, I think the most promising things would be this and, you know, the designated driver one, um, as far as kicking the tires on responses.

32:51 So I’ll present that. Yeah. Okay. Well, I was interacting actually today with, I think I mentioned last time that SAMHSA did a fantastic, uh, presentation on cannabis and how it influences behavior. And I’ll get those slides within the next couple of weeks. Mm-hmm. And boy, we can present some of them here. And hopefully now that we can put, uh, columns in the paper every so often, we can, we can do that. Some of the slides were really quite remarkable. Excuse me. And the interesting, uh, thing that’s part of that session was to show how the, the cannabis industry is now following

33:38 what the alcohol industry and the tobacco industry have promoted. Self promoted. Oh, it’s not addictive. Oh, it’s not a problem then. Cannabis is doing that, but cannabis has it e in many ways, a whole lot easier because there is no national oversight. Mm-hmm. Because cannabis is still level one in, uh, the federal drug levels. And so the, the, the federal government doesn’t get involved and none of the states have really taken the responsibility to look into the consequences of recreational cannabis. So it, it was a fascinating, uh, um, fascinating program.

34:24 And I’ll have that with, uh, in, in the next couple of weeks. You might know better, both as doctors, when I asked my doctor about it, he said they don’t give information to doctors on studies and stuff like that because of its scheduling. Is that right? Say more about what you just said. So I asked him, um, you know, when it became medically available in, in Massachusetts i’s like, me and my doctor have a good relationship, and I was just asking him about it. And he goes, honestly, it’s like, I don’t have any information I can give because it’s not, I don’t know the, remember the wording he used, but it’s like, because of its scheduling, he can’t, like, as a doctor talk to his patients about it. Oh no. You could, you could certainly talk to Or make recommendations maybe, or something like that.

35:11 I, I don’t remember what he was exactly said, but he made it seem like because of its scheduling, like he’s very limited on what he was able to say. We certainly don’t have training in the different Right. Types and how to prescribe. And, and I think you need additional training to write prescriptions for it. Typical. Typically we don’t, don’t do that. Um, typical MDs, um, but there have been some CMEs on it continuing with medical education credits that you could take on cannabis, but there’s just not the studies, there’s just not. Right. That’s kind of what he was saying. It’s like they don’t provide the studies because they don’t like do them, I guess is a, maybe the schedule. I, I don’t know. This was like six years ago. I asked him, I wouldn’t, I know If it’s because it’s so cheap to produce

35:57 that there’s no pharma backing to produce the studies. Oh, interesting. That’s what I always thought. Okay. Because you need a driver, you need someone with a lot of money to Yep. Design these studies and there’s no pharmaceutical company that’s driving it. Yeah, Okay. Which is a problem with a lot of supplements. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But the webinar I’m talking about actually shows emergency room visits and psychiatric, uh, episodes of particularly the polypharmacy that, that cannabis is mixed more than alcohol is mixed with other things. Mm-hmm. Um, and um, it really becomes,

36:42 it would be very difficult to do CME on on that, but, but I actually, I, um, when we get those slides, the, they were really the dyna mind to, to show, um, the recreational side is there. Mm-hmm. But people need to understand that there are, this is, this is not, um, j just your grandmother’s brownies.

37:12 Yeah. Okay. Well, um, I, I think that’s, that’s one of the ways that we fulfill our commitment to the town regarding the, the tragedy. Do everything we can to increase the, the knowledge, the community knowledge of, of what’s going on. Not to tell people what to do, but to make sure they’re better informed. And that’s, I think that’s the best of public health. Um, okay.

37:51 Do you have a list of bills? Yeah. Um, alright. Uh, a one exterminators for rack control at the transfer station. $2,725 Agri Source for covering the grinding of the compost removal. Um, 800 Amazon, uh, capital investments for, uh, capital services for other disposal. $339 20 cents Atlantic Vet for testing services. $240 black Earth compost for residential food composting $3,601 and 76 cents. Bob’s Tire Company for tire disposal. $735. Boston Green Fuel Company, uh, which recycles, uh, the waste oil $4,729 50 cents.

38:38 Encore images for printer cartridges, 6 85, um, 22 cents f and S hardware, um, for building repair maintenance, $37 3 cents. Uh, g and L labs for beach testing. Uh, lab services 208 bucks. Cap players for uniforms, uh, $1,296 16 cents. Home Depot for disposal area maintenance supplies, uh, three $45 80 cents. Uh, Jay’s Automotive warehouse for auto loop grease for loaders and backhoes. Uh, $1,451 90 cents. LJ Bouchard for vehicle, um, registration, $35 Marblehead Light Department for electricity, uh, 1030 $1 and 34 cents.

39:25 Um, Marblehead News Group for advertising and promotional. $650 marble and water and sewer for water and sewer. $126 and 2 cents. Mary Street Services for grinding compost removal. Um, 27,500. Mike t Louisa’s for, um, transfer station employee. Um, $144 reimbursement, whatever that was. Yeah. Um, NAPA Auto Parts for Enter antifreeze $15 84 cents. PERMA line for signs at, at the transfer station, $320 25 cents. Uh, quadrant Health for doctors $110 RMG Enterprises, uh, they recycled TVs, monitors, et cetera. $1,021 and 95 cents.

40:11 Stericycle, uh, they pick up, um, Sharp’s collection medical waste, uh, $1,332 and 22 cents. Uh, Thomas Soro for, um, the laptop, $999, um, T-Mobile for telephone, uh, $35 and 5 cents. Uh, Tracy for postage $7 and 30 cents while printing, uh, for printing forms $228 33 cents. WB Mason for office supplies, printing and forms $1,329 11 cents. Uh, William F Man for, uh, final Graphics, four $75 and Winter Street Architects for the transfer station project.

40:57 $43,473 and two four And the laptop. This did not come out of tax money. It came out of the brand. Right. And it, it is the property of the town. Yeah. These all have improved, you know. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

41:14 Uh, I just didn’t have a laptop when I came here. I’m do, do Max at, oh, I, I’m, I feel very fortunate that I’m in this position, but I didn’t plan on it. Um, okay. Uh, actually I see that we did not list, um, um, report from the Vice Chair for Community Health. Sure. And I know you have a, a report. I do, I do. Um, I’d like to talk about COVID Guide guidance, COVID vaccine guidance for the 25 26, um, season, uh, as we enter respiratory season. Respiratory virus season. Um, so there has been understandable confusion about the COVID-19 vaccine recommendations. Um, on September 20th, asip,

42:02 which is the Advisory Committee on immunization practices, which is under CDC, um, shifted from previous broad recommendations to an individual based decision making approach. Um, this change has been controversial, um, for a few reasons. The previous panel that was on ASIP has, was completely dismissed and replaced with some that lack, um, health expertise and some hold anti-vaccine views. There’s also, um, haven’t, there hasn’t been any new evidence that has been presented to justify the shift, um, the downgrading of their recommendations. Um, there was a proposal to require a prescription, but that was narrowly voted down with one vote. Um, so for now we have preserved access, uh,

42:48 without a prescription. Um, the final recommendations, we’ll need to still go through the CDC director or the HHS secretary. So this is an evolving process, so I’ll, I’ll keep us informed, uh, with each meeting if there’s, if there’s changes that arise. Um, in contrast, uh, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, um, has taken great clear steps, um, including a standing order allowing all pharmacists to vaccinate all eligible individuals. Um, so you do not need a doctor’s prescription, even if it’s, even if the federal government says they we need one. Um, uh, the state of Massachusetts is requiring insurance coverage, uh, for COVID. Um, and the Massachusetts Department

43:35 of Public Health is, um, uh, they’ve issued guidance that aligns with the professional entities of, um, A A P, um, A A FP and acog. Um, and also reflects consensus from there’s this new Northeast Public Health Collaborative, which is a voluntary coalition of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York State, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and New York City, who are all working together to share expertise and strengthen, um, evidence-based public health. So, um, the, the guidance that the mass DPH has given is that, um, adults 18 plus vaccination is recommended for all, especially those greater than 65, those

44:22 who have never been previously vaccinated. And those at higher risk, um, for children six to 23 months, uh, vaccination is recommended. Um, it seems like looking at studies that the risk for these kids, six to 23 months is just as high as the 65 plus group. Um, so certainly you wanna vaccinate between six and 23 months, and then for the ages between two and 18, you can take a risk, um, risk-based approach, uh, but also those who are low risk can also be vaccinated. Um, and then vaccine is recommended at a, any stage vaccination is recommended at any stage of pregnancy, uh, to confer immunity to the newborn in that, in those first six months when babies can’t get vaccinated.

45:08 Um, so women who are planning pregnancy and postpartum and, um, lactated, it’s, it’s recommended that they, they all get vaccinated. Um, so just as we head into respiratory season, it’s very important to take steps to protect ourselves and those around us. Um, but certainly for any questions you’d wanna consult your personal healthcare provider, um, of note, the a CIP, the same board that downgraded the recommendations they are recommending influenza vaccine for everyone six months and up. Um, and I will go into more about the flu vaccine in our next meeting, including dispelling myths about the vaccine, Including Dispelling myths.

45:52 Okay. Well, I think that having a regular update or to organize thoughts is, is really absolutely mandatory. Uh, we, we, we have some sort information lighthouse, um, um, because it’s, it, it is really, um, I, I never, never thought that it would happen here. Um, but in any event, okay. Um, It’s reassuring that we’re in Massachusetts and they’re taking appropriate steps.

46:29 Yeah. Alright. I think now we, uh, wanted to set aside a, um, a fair amount of time not only to, to get a little bit of an update on, um, the transfer statement, but also to talk about the future of, um, recycle and trash collection in a new, new contract negotiations. Yeah. And where you are. Uh, so first, uh, transfer station, um, so we have a current, or we had a current transfer station projects, uh, that consists of a brand new scale house site work that includes moving the scale to a permanent location, which would be in front of the pit, um, site work around that whole area.

47:14 So new paving, new curbing, new gates, um, new fencing along the, the border with the neighbor there. Um, and new site work down below, um, where the tractor trailer is parked. So there’s gonna be a concrete pad that that sits on. And then various wing walls on both sides, um, making sure that’s a, a permanent location. Um, some grading down there, um, but quite a bit of, you know, some lights, some traffic flow. And so this would be the final phase for that area. Now we still have other work that we want to do in the future, um, but yes, we need to award the contract to Dele Brothers construction of Lynn. Uh, and the winning bid was $1,590,000. So I need a motion to award the contract to Dele Brothers,

48:01 um, of Lynn. Were they the only? No, we had two. Um, so that it was them and GVW. Okay. What did GVW coin? Um, $1,708,435. Where are they at? Um, they’re also at a win. Yeah. Yeah. So difference of a hundred thousand Yeah. Between two. That’s not fair. It means The DU list brothers. Yeah. Did the, um, Salem Hospital entrance and lobby. Yep. And they con currently are working on the Revere fire station as well. Okay. I try. Um, okay. Yeah, I can make a motion to approve

48:46 Second. Okay. All those, do we need to take a roll call? No, you don’t. Just all Those in favor? Mm-hmm. Aye. Any of opposed? You so great. We, uh, Yeah, so that is really exciting. I mean, obviously the biggest piece of that, um, is that there is gonna be some disturbance up there, there is gonna be some downtime. Mm-hmm. Obviously working with the contractor will try to minimize the downtime as much as possible. Um, the impacts to the residents should be minimal. Um, the impact with the moving the scale, there will be some PI downtime because we’ll be working in front of that. That’s gonna be some of the, the ma major issues. Um, but hopefully working with the contractor, we can really minimize all those impacts. And when we shoot in

49:31 Fall, so obviously it’s a fall construction for concrete work. Yeah. Um, and then obviously, um, they have the winter can kind of do the construction for the scale house. So they’re doing the lower area where the, um, Yeah. And ideally you’re doing both sections at the same time. So That shuts down the pit though because Yep. That’s such, yep, that’s, that’s exactly right. So that’s the hardest piece. Um, so we will be, you’ll have to reroute trash trucks to, um, SCO directly. We will have to be hauling to scoe directly. Um, and yes, that the biggest impact is to commercial. That’ll impact residential too though, right? Because No, ‘cause we’ll be taking the trash from the residence directly to resco as well. Okay. How many times do they go bring the truck up to the,

50:17 Just generally if it’s once a day, generally it’s like every day and a half that, that, yeah. Just be doing it every day Basically. Yeah. And essentially we have enough cans, so I have enough octagons to make sure we can always be moving, stuffing around and a little bit extra. Yeah. Okay. Yep. No. Will the inter interruption be like a week at a time, or will it be It’s gonna depend on multiple Weeks, depending on weather. It’s gonna be multiple weeks for that concrete work. Um, because it’s gonna be excavation, it’s gonna be forming, and then it’s gonna be pouring, and then it’s gonna be curing. So it’s gonna be multiple weeks for the scale pit and that pad down below the walls, that’s gonna be your really, your biggest interruption.

51:03 Um, obviously at the same time, they should be pouring the foundation for the scale house, get those all set again, people can operate their cars over, you know, uh, over the gravel. Um, and again, the idea is that you always have an exit road directly out for residents. So the residents can come in Green Street, they can do what they need to do and they can exit. It’s gonna be the upfront part that’s really gonna be affected. And again, that’s really the commercial side of it.

51:33 But yeah, I mean, unfortunately you have to break some eggs to make a cake. Mm-hmm. So, and this has been a long time coming. Um, once this phase is complete, we look at other phases. Obviously we have a feasibility study out there looking at building a construction demolition warehouse, uh, dealing with that waste. The other big piece that’s a huge comm community need is the swap shed. Mm-hmm. Um, so those would be the other two pieces. And then a couple other little things.

52:03 Um, with that, I’ll, I’ll talk about, uh, curbside trash and recycling, um, and trying to get everybody kinda to understand, um, the way things work. Um, so currently today you are allowed 1 65 gallon toter for trash. This is a 65 gallon toter. A lot of times they will say it right on the label. Um, we can tell usually right when we walk up to it, but if we have to take a look at it, we know it’s stamped right. On this. We can also go by measurements. If you don’t have a toter, you’re allowed to use 2 35 gallon trash cans. Uh, the requirement is that all trash has to be bags. The bag goes in the the bin, and that needs to have a tight fitting lid. There’s a couple different reasons why we do that.

52:50 Obviously, we’re a coastal community. We do have rodents in town, and those are all preventatives to keep the rodents away from your trash, keep it from getting tipped over and just keeping general pests out of it. Um, the biggest questions often office usually come from the downtown districts where people don’t always have storage from these. They like to put their bags out and have it disappear that day. That’s one area that we’re gonna have to take a look at. The other side of this is the recycling. So currently there is no limit on the amount of recycling that you can put curbside, um, which is great for all the residents. One of the issues that comes with that is that we get a lot of waste in there that’s not appropriate for the recycling technically. Uh, so all communities of Massachusetts,

53:36 we follow what’s called recycled smart. These are all the items that we accept in recycling, and we really, really want people to follow this list.

53:51 This is what creates a valuable recycling item or recycling container. Um, this is a 65 gallon to that we self recycling and we have this stamped right on the lid so people know exactly should I be putting these items in there. Um, the other piece about the recycling is that it cannot be bagged. We do not want any thin film plastic in here. So no plastic bags, no sandwich bags, no chip containers, none of that stuff belongs in the recycling. The issue with moving forward with unlimited recycling is that it’s unknown costs. When we entered this contract 10 years ago,

54:37 we said we did not wanna play the recycling market, and we gave the material to the contractor. It’s a losing game today. If we do about 3000 tons of recycling curbside and today’s numbers, it would be about 80 to $90 a ton just to process that material. So that’s a significant number, and that’s a number that will be added into this contract, essentially. So moving forward, I’m gonna recommend that you want to standardize barrels, beam curbside. You’re gonna say, we only want to see a 65 gallon toter for trash, and we only wanna see a 65 gallon toter for recycling.

55:23 And the best way to handle that is to provide those big, these containers to the community all at once. So we service 8,000 homes every week. That means 8,000 homes need a trash can or a toter and a recycling toter. So the cost of that is about $900,000. Um, when you break it down, it’s about 48 or 52 de depending on the size. Um, so the trash, the total cost for 8,000, uh, units is $384,000. That’s $48 per household. If I was to go to Home Depot and try to buy this, it’s easily a hundred, $1,050.

56:12 So again, we’re trying to maximize and bring large quantity to bring down numbers to provide to the community. When I buy these now and I buy ‘em at several hundred, I sell ‘em back to the public at cost for us, about $65 a piece. Enough. Is this leaning towards the arm? Yeah, so that’s the second piece to it. So currently the way our trash is picked up is that we have a driver and we have a laborer on the back. Um, one of the issues with that is that you’re, you’re employing two people per truck, and there’s an additional cost to that. So we have a rate for the driver, we have a rate for the labor. The driver makes roughly $2 more than the, the labor an hour. Um, but if you can eliminate one of those positions,

56:58 that is a cost savings for the town. Um, so one of the things that when we’re looking at cost savings, we have a five day collection week. Again, it’s 8,000 homes every week. Um, it’s divided into five days. Um, downtown Monday is the kind of the downtown district. It’s falls a little bit on other areas, but you can essentially sse that area and say, all right, the downtown district will have to look at different types of collection, which might mean non-automated, but your four other days could be automated. So that could definitely be a savings for the town. So the other piece with the Yep. You can, the other piece with doing this is that you were mandating that people can only put out the 65 gallons of trash.

57:45 This for the 65 gallons for recycling. That in itself is a cost hold. You know what your tonnage or your, you’re kind of squeezing everybody into a certain amount of tonnage. And so you’re, you’re saying, all right, I know essentially what my tonnage is gonna be for the community, and it’s gonna be about 6,000 tons. Do you do, would we still pay by ton? Yeah, you always pay by ton. That’s just the way it is. So only way to accurately measure everything instead of like blanket This is, yeah. No, no. So everything obviously, so curbside, it’s all paid for the residents. But when we get the bill, so you have a collection contract, so that’s just to pick up the material. And then you have a disposal contract.

58:32 So the disposal contract currently is with Waste Management. The trash comes to the transfer station and we transfer it into the larger trailers, and they’re hauled out by waste management. Um, we have a, a tonnage fee for that. Um, and we, the tonnage also includes the trucking and all that stuff, the recycling. Where Republic owns that, there is no disposal fee. But in the future, we will see a disposal fee for the recycling. Generally the recycling would not come to us. We don’t have the facility to handle the volume of that material. And that would go to a larger recycler like Republic or Waste Management that has these facilities that can handle that. But yeah, you’re gonna essentially say, all right, we need to lock down the amount of material that we’re gonna accept curbside by limiting the amounts

59:19 of material through the containers. And by doing that, you’re also, again, you’re saying that we know it’s only gonna cost us x, we know other people can’t add to it. It’s safer, it’s more sanitary, all those items. There is a cost to it. And so by providing the 8,000 containers to every home, it’s about $900,000. You can finance that over five years, um, with these companies. So it’s about $130,000 a year. Now, my question would be, having done this since Salem, the in Salem, each resident life, they have a recycling one that size Yep. That’s collected every two weeks. So that is the other, so since

1:00:09 we got to deal with this a little bit with Republic, when we, at the end of the strike and we’re able to bring back recycling, we were collecting recycling on an every other week basis. Mm-hmm. Which I think went really well. Yeah. And people were able to use the transfer station. They were able to do some material, uh, curbside. But yeah, you could entertain and look at, this is a 96 gallon, you could look at doing a nine six gallon curbside for recycling and look at doing that every other week. Yeah. And that would also be a cost saving for the town. Now, probably what they would do is that they would divide the town up in half called one side A, the other side B, on week one

1:00:54 A would be collected on week two, B would be Collected. And then in addition to that, Salem does trash every week, but the container is not as big as that one. So do they use a 35 or Some, I, I can’t remember the Exact, I think it’s a 65. I don’t think they do anything small than a 60. It’s Smaller than that. Okay. Yeah. And that’s what I’m wondering, like, is that gonna be excessive for trash if trash is done every week? So right now, I think you would have, isn’t that what we do now? 65? Yeah. This is what we do now. Um, so families that compost mm-hmm. Can definitely get away with a smaller container. Um, I’m not so sure I could do 35 gallons a week. I could probably do 45 gallons a week.

1:01:40 Why don’t we check what Salem’s rocking with? Yeah. Because it, it worked out very well. Yep. Like at two weeks that was always full. Yep. With the place I was at. And then every week the trash was Yeah. Was full. And it seemed to be about that for everyone else. I didn’t see anything like overflowing anywhere. Right. So, um, maybe we, maybe we just check what they Definitely, yeah. So the other piece is that, so those are the two big options for the recycling. Um, the other option is that currently in our downtown district, we do have some businesses that are putting out recycling. Now, originally we didn’t have a problem with that. It wasn’t costing us any money. Now, as we move forward, there is gonna be a cost to us. And so we are gonna have to make a choice.

1:02:27 We’re either gonna have to say, that’s not allowed, and you’re gonna define options to do that, or we’re gonna look into having them pay for service. Um, and so the pay for service would be probably around the a hundred dollars per item a month. So you’d pay a hundred dollars for trash disposal a month, and you’d pay for a hundred dollars for a cycling, the disposal per business. Um, so you’re talking about $50 a week. Um, and that’s also something that we can took a take a look at costs and stuff like that. Um, but that, to me, that is a reasonable cost. And they would have the same restrictions. You would’ve the same restrictions. You would be on the same exact playing field as the residents. Um, the same thing with, if we moved to toters that we buy for all the community members, they would all come

1:03:14 with an RFID tag. We would know each, we would know every container who it belonged to. Um, so if a container happened to blow down the street a little bit, um, and Mr. Smith was using your container, we could scan it with a, a QR code or um, an r you know, a scanner and say, oh, this is actually belongs to Mrs. Jones up the street. The cost seems a little high to me for business. I do think it’s appropriate to do that. It seems a little high. Um, so maybe that’s something to talk about. Oh, yeah. None, none of this is finalized. Yes. Yeah. My, my real question would be that, that most of those businesses, you know, it’s boxes that wouldn’t necessarily fit So that we wouldn’t be able to play with them, because it only works if we can limit the amount of material that’s going in these.

1:04:01 Okay. So if it’s an unknown, you’re not gonna be able to calculate your costs. Right. And it’s gonna be something that we’re not gonna want to be involved in. Yeah. I, I feel like that’s gonna be the biggest thing for them is boxes. But I mean, obviously you have certain businesses that generate a lot of boxes. Yeah. Certain businesses are gonna like, generate a lot of food. Those are businesses that we really can’t be, you know, they need to hire private companies. Restaurants need to hire private companies to deal with their trash almost on a daily basis. Comp, you know, companies, liquor stores that generate boxes. They, again, that’s a huge amount of material where, where today it doesn’t matter because we’re not paying for the recycling. But moving forward when we’re, we are paying for the recycling, that is gonna be something that we need

1:04:47 to be very cost conscious about. Mm-hmm. Um, the other big pieces, you know, so just so everybody understands, we only pick up trash and recycling from residents that have four units or less. And so that won’t change. Um, we just want to make sure that that can continues. Um, but that’s in our contract now, and that will continue to be in our contracts. What are the others? Do they just have to get A Yeah, they have to get private collection. Okay. Yep. Do you think people are gonna be concerned about the size of that? Smaller homes? Yeah. They’re always so, so this is even this one in the downtown districts, we had residents that were concerned with the size. Yeah. That’s why we purchased 35 gallon recycled bins for people to buy. Mm-hmm. So again, working with the company,

1:05:35 that’s not a problem. We can switch it out to us. If, if we buy in bulk from one company, we could switch those out to the residents to say they need to try it for a period of time. But if they say, no, this isn’t gonna work for me, we, we will be able to switch it out to a 35. Okay. But yeah, I mean, it, it, this is a pretty big container. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so I, you know, that’s where the visual aids are really helpful. Um, we just want to bring these in and make sure everybody’s aware of it. Um, the other piece about collection is leaf collection. Um, so we do seven weeks of leaf and GRA grass collection. Um, and again, we’ve gotten strict about this because the material and how hard it is to collect.

1:06:21 Um, so the regulations now is that it has to be in leaf bags. Um, and a lot of times these are industry standards. Um, what was happening is that people are using barrels. They’re over 50 pounds, which is technically against OSHA loss for the guys picking them up. If you use, if you use a leaf bag, essentially, you can’t put in more than 50 pounds, they’ll start to fall apart. Um, so we would continue to put out the leaf bags. There isn’t now, we don’t have any limit at this point. We don’t think we’re need to limit it, but except for it is seven weeks, um, it only costs us $1,500 a week to do that. Now that price is, you know, that’s so low, obviously, we’ll never see another price like that again.

1:07:09 Um, in a perfect world, you’d be able to, we would like to increase that number a little bit, so we’ll see. Um, but again, this is gonna be a big number, um, between the collection costs and the disposal costs. Mm-hmm. Questions,

1:07:27 uh, the finance department is aware. Yes. Jeff Bright. And so we bring that into, we have been talking about this financial implication for the last 10 years. Yeah. Reminding them, Hey, this is gonna be a budget buster. Yep. Um, we’ve done some projections for them, some estimates. Um, so currently in this fiscal year, um, trash recycling collection is just over a million dollars. We’re anticipating it’s gonna be a jump to like 1.6, 1.7. Yeah. Just for collection. Right. And then you add in barrels, that’s another $130,000 every year. And again, we understand it’s a cost, but if I said, you have to go out and buy all this stuff yourself,

1:08:14 you’re gonna be spending twice the amount. Yeah. Can we make a system where people request barrels if they have ones already? No, it doesn’t work that way. Because what happens is that people, they’ll use this for their trash, and then I have to go out and inspect it and tags to say, that’s a violation. You can’t use that. You can get into that, but it’s a little bit more work on our side. And you find a lot more violators. What Do you do with the old barrels? You recycle, you throw ‘em away, essentially. So, uh, The ton of them are gonna be comfortable. Yep. Yep. So we can work with a company about try to properly recycling them. Um, they would be a good bulky, rigid plastic. But again, yeah. The rollout of 8,000 barrels, you know,

1:09:00 so 16,000 barrels is quite an, you know, a production. Um, these companies are used to this. This is not an unknown thing. Um, again, these are essentially built to last for 10 years. Um, when you buy into these programs, you can add into our curbside collection contract that the contractor has to make repairs to the owner’s barrels. Um, what happens is that they’re pretty robust wheels. It’s got to, it’s like got a steal or axle that’s not gonna break. Occasionally in cold weather is where we see damaged items. So sometimes you get a broken little, um, and sometimes you get a broken lid in a really, really cold day. We do get calls, Hey, they picked up my barrels

1:09:47 and ripped the handles off. Those plastic barrels, like close to 15 degrees, become really brittle. And so we do start to see those damages. But you can add into the contract that the, that the contractor owns the repair of all this stuff. We could do it ourselves. We could work with the company that provides these to us, um, and do it ourselves. It’s just another numbers game and stuff like that. Yeah. We don’t have a very robust or large business community, but are we adding an extra cost to them? Could, is there a way we could include all of the business community in our contract and buying in bulk? We save them money, then they would have to go out

1:10:36 and get it themselves. Yeah, you’re definitely, by adding them in, you’re definitely saving them money. Um, again, that’s a cost that we’d have to take a look at, which would be, you know, when I said a hundred dollars for trash, a hundred dollars for recycling, I think you had some concern about that. Those are some numbers that are not set in stone, and we could take a look at that. Um, again, we still have to limit the amount of material that they can put curb set. Mm-hmm. And then if you’re supplying, would you have to supply them with dumpsters? No, we do not do that. Now. We, you know, we would never get into that. That’s a whole different, That’s a Yeah. Technology. Yep. So having lived through this with the arms and stuff like that, it does work really well. It works well in certain areas. So in my house it’ll work well. Correct.

1:11:22 In most of this side of town, it’ll work real well. Yep. And they’re actually easier. They’re, they’re huge, but you can find places to store them. Yep. In the historic district where I’ve also lived, it’s, uh, way more difficult. So yeah. That one’s gonna be the one where people are gonna have, you’re not, You’re not gonna be doing automation down in the Yeah. You’re still gonna have to have old school man in the back picking up trash plainly for the amount of traffic and cars that are parked down in the downtown district. It just doesn’t work. Right. Um, you couldn’t say on Mondays, there’s no parking in the downtown district that’s just not gonna go over well. So you’re gonna have to allow regular collection to occur down there. Yeah. Um, and so again, we’re gonna be, when we put this,

1:12:11 when we create the RFP, so the request for proposals, um, we’re gonna have a laundry list so we can pick and choose how we wanna do this. So we’re gonna ask them to price multiple different ways. Um, so we’ll know what it’s gonna cost to use the 96 gallon for every other week. We’re gonna know what it’s gonna cost to limit people to, to the 65 gallon every week. Um, obviously we already have the cost of barrels. I mean, yes, you could say, all right, people have to use what they have today, but the, the health department is gonna be going on around, looking at all barrels. If we find violations, barrels will be left. They will not be picked up. And, you know, that’s just the way it goes. Um, most likely when we, after we, you know, put out the RFP, um,

1:12:58 and we kind of decide how we’re gonna move forward, we will be making regulation changes as well. Um, we have regulations for curbside trash and recycling. Um, and so if you said, um, we’re gonna allow residents to keep the barrels that they have, some of the regulation changes are gonna be that all barrels have to be labeled, um, with your number, your house number on it, so we know exactly whose it is. And so when we issue the stickers, or we can tell that as somebody has 2 65 gallon trash cans out there,

1:13:29 I like that option of allowing them to keep their barrels, but then also buying in bulk maybe for like half the town. Those. Yeah. I mean, so the, so you just have to remember is that as you cut the numbers in half, your prices are gonna change for the per barrel limit or for per barrel costs. Yep. They’re gonna go up. Yeah. Yeah. Generally when you open up to the opinion of the public on these, you’re gonna get most of the people that are naysayers on it. I still think it’s a good idea if we open up a meeting where we’re like, Hey, this is where we’re thinking for all concerns, brainstorm. That is the whole reason why we’re having this initial discussion. Yeah. We really want people to give us feedback. Right. Obviously, you know, this isn’t the end of this conversation. Yeah. We will be putting out the RFP

1:14:14 as we get information back in on the RFP, the pricing. We really need the public to weigh in, um, and say, Hey, you know, I want to, I want the town to purchase all the barrels from me. Or no, I think that’s a wayside of two great barrels. I want to use the one I have now. Again, there will be regulations for that. We can deal with that. It’s just something else that we have to think about and stuff like that. Okay. When do you think you’d want it would be appropriate to have that conver open up that conversation so That conversation is open now, essentially. Okay. Um, we need to, we need to essentially write this RFP this month and put it out there. So you need in October? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. The reason is, is that it takes a long, almost a year for these pump collection

1:15:01 companies to gear up. ‘cause they have to purchase the trucks for our community. Right. So they have to, once we award them the winning bid, say that’s November, they’re gonna just make September of 2026 to be ready for collection. So do we want to, next meeting would be the second Tuesday in October. Do we want to try to make a spot Republic? Can, That may be norm this day we’re gonna Talk about. Okay. Yeah. But, um, whichever day. Yeah. The next meeting anonymously. Yep. Um, that’s a Monday. Well, how about, yeah. Um, doing It in a senior center or where, where there’ll be more people. We have a special meeting. Yeah, that’s fine.

1:15:47 Yeah. I mean, again, like we’re trying to promote this tonight so people can ask questions. But again, even if the cut questions come in through emails and all that stuff Yeah. We can kind of put all these questions together and then have bigger conversations about them. Can you leave these out for People to see? Yes, I can leave them by my office. Yeah. Put like a little card in each chair. Yep. I mean, so we never would’ve thought about the recycling every other week except for we just did it because of the strike. Yeah. And it worked fine. Yeah. Yeah. And so when you’re talking costs, you know, when you, you break the 1.7 million down or the 1.6 million down, that’s $800,000 just for recycling costs. If you can divide that in half

1:16:33 because it’s every other week, that’s a pretty significant savings. And I’m not saying those are gonna be the numbers, but those are pretty close when you divide those. Yeah, no, I like the every other week. And me personally, I like the idea of the big one from every other week and then actually not a slightly smaller than that one. Like the Salem size for trash. Yeah. Let me Look what Salem has. It almost encourages you more to push into the recycling. So We have to be very careful with That. Well, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So We want to create high value recycling. Mm-hmm. We only want items on the list. Right, right, right. If people start to put their trash in the recycling, the recycling becomes trash

1:17:18 and we pay for it just the way we pay for the trash. Gotcha. Yeah. So instead of the $80 a ton to recycle it, paying the trash disposal number, so you’re 130, a hundred, you know, no. Mm-hmm. That’s the biggest piece. Right. But how do you know? So they have optical source. So when this stuff goes, so, and in the contract too, we will tell the company to say, we wanna conduct audits on the material that we put curbside and we want the audit done by per truck, not per container or per two yards. And essentially what they do is they do it a audit of all material. And they say, alright, you have a 5% trash audit here.

1:18:03 That’s your rate for the year, or that’s your rate for the quarter, however the agreement comes to be. Um, otherwise, once you started into getting anything, they really like it to be about the 5%. When you’re getting into the tens, the fifteens, the s that’s when they start to get upset with you and say, you’re providing us with trash. Um, so the cost to them is these large optical sorters. So all that whole truck, it’s ‘cause it’s mixed material goes to these, you know, greenwork plants where they dump it all on the ground and they push it onto a conveyor belt. There is some manpower pulling out plastic bags, detanglers and stuff like that. And then it’s all running through these machines and it’s all done by an optical eye

1:18:50 and it separates all the items out. Um, one of the issues currently is that you’re not allowed to put any black plastic into the recycling bin. Mm-hmm. And that’s because the conveyor belt is black and they can’t read it so that it can be recycled, but they, the opticals can’t read it and so therefore they don’t want it in there. ‘cause it gets all screwed up. And probably just so the public would know it in case we have any reporters in the room. Um, that if we were just to be like, so I know people are very stuck in their ways that all of us are. And if we were just be like, Nope, we wanna do it exactly the way now, that is the most expensive way to Do it. Yeah. It’s gonna be the most expensive Way. This is the cost savings way to do it. Yeah. Yep. Which is going to jump significantly. Yeah. Regardless. Yep.

1:19:37 So that’s, I the other people are thinking that like, oh, they’re just trying new things or whatever. It’s like, no, no, no. You know, so The other big question that we’re getting a lot recently is why doesn’t the town do it themselves? And so the cost, the manpower increases even bigger than that. So if I had told you that it was gonna take two tr a trash truck, a recycling truck, and a little truck to do the route, yeah, I’m gonna need to buy an extra truck for when my truck breaks down, that’s gonna sit off to the side and not get used all the time. So I’ve just increased my cost that way. And then I need two sets of employees, essentially, because trash and recycling business is a heavy industry injury job, and you have employees out on a regular basis.

1:20:25 Um, because pullbacks needle sticks a whole litany of stuff. And so you’re carrying a whole bunch of extra employees just to fill this journal. And so it’s not a cost savings. I also saw that most people thought I, and I don’t know why they think this is that because Republic went on strike. If you bring it in-house, they can’t go on strike. Right. And I’d remind people to look at the teachers. Right. Like, you can be a municipal worker and go on strike. Yep. So It’s, and again, I think in the, the very first we were looking to big companies, we’re gonna open this up to everybody. Mm-hmm. Um, everybody that’s qualified. Yeah.

1:21:06 And again, we’re looking for contracts for both curbside collection and disposal. Mm-hmm. That’s it.

1:21:19 MTV or Marblehead TV has generally been showing our meetings. Yes. Is there any way we can get them to advertise that? This was the topic tonight. This would be really, They’re off the air because there was flooding at the veteran school a couple days ago Friday, and they’re off the air indefinitely. So As soon as, as soon as they come back up on air, they will ask for the meetings. We will make sure they’re always provided to them. Um, they show our meetings on a regular basis. Sometimes we’ve talked about this a little bit. We’ll go in and do one-on-one discussions with them where they will record stuff. Um, we kind of talked about doing that with calm. Um, we could definitely do that with trash.

1:22:06 Again, there’s, we have some time to kind of play this out a little bit. Obviously we need to write the RFP get, you know, get some numbers in, um, over the, you know, next month and stuff like that. Um, so we do have a little bit of time to continue this discussion. Mm-hmm. Salem does a 65 for trash. 95 for recycling 96 Every other week. Is it that big? Mm-hmm. Okay. Um, can I ask a couple questions? Yeah. Is this a good time to ask it? Is it possible, um, Andrew, Andrew, for you to put together like a fact sheet that sort of gives, I’m trying to remember the timeline. So you’re gonna put on an RFP in October, you’re gonna award a bottle a bidder in December so that they could start

1:22:53 by the following September. September 26th. Okay. Cool. And so then, yeah. And Really like it, it would be great if I could get the RFP out. Uh, but yeah, that’s gonna be pretty, pretty close to the Okay. Cool. And so, but like just the different options if you want people to come in and sort of Yeah. As I will develop the options writing the RFP we’ll, we’ll make that available so people understand it. Yep. Thanks.

1:23:17 I don’t know what the traffic here is during the day, but could we get the community center to put these two,

1:23:27 We get more traffic? Well, we can, I could probably get another set and provide them at the community center as well, Because that way they get a lot of traffic. Yep. And and it would be, what you just did is, is incredibly positive for us. And we learned a little bit because of the strike, but the people who just put things out there Yeah. Their, their first response is gonna be don’t change. Right. Yeah. And we need to, to one, explain why not changing is terribly expensive. And two, these are your options and your options require certain things. But you, what you just did is, is just I terribly important to, to be seen by as many people as possible.

1:24:13 Yeah. Mm-hmm. So we’ll figure out a way to try to get that out to more people.

1:24:21 Andrew, with the ex, the cost being 1.7 million versus one For collection. Collection. Right. And another, I guess what’s the percent increase that you’re anticipating? Um, as 60? Those are, Let’s see, I’d have to calculate it out.

1:25:04 I mean, I’ll, I’ll provide that to you, but Yeah, it’s, you know, and those are just estimates. It’s, it’s never a final until we get the number back. Right. Um, How, how is that, is the town gonna increase your budget by that one? You don’t have to go for an override for that, right? Like No, the problem is, is that they’re gonna have to increase my budget by that number because they cannot do it by override. ‘cause if the override fails, there is no collection. Right, Right, right. Okay. Okay. So yeah, that’s why we’ve been talking about it for 10 years. That’s why the finance com, you know, I’ve already provided them with estimates. They’ve given done presentations on the estimates of costs going up. Um, so yeah, we’re we’re trying to make sure that everybody’s aware of this. And again, you’re gonna have additional costs

1:25:50 for additional recycling that has to be paid for as well. Right. That has not, there hasn’t been any cost of the town for the last 10 years. So I guess my question is, how will it impact residents or homeowners proper or renters, or like, will the, I don’t even, I have to admit, I don’t even know. Do we get a bill every No, you don’t get any bill for your trash. And So You, you, so currently the way this system currently works is that your trash and recycling curbside is all covered by a taxes. Okay. And will that continue? That’s the idea. Unless the town, so you have to do it this way. Otherwise you’re taking a huge risk by waiting the town meeting to decide. Yeah. Yeah. And so, because I won’t, if the community

1:26:39 or if the finance department and community, you know, committee decides that they’re gonna wait for town meeting, you’re gonna have issues with bidders, you’re gonna have. Right. No one’s gonna hold onto those bids for that long. Right. And what happens if it fails, then you’re just not getting trash collection. Right. Like, right. Okay. Yep. And, and I’ll, I mean, I’ll reach out to the finance team, but have they been planning for it? Like have they been setting money as up? No, there’s no setting the money as sunk budget’s. The budget? No. Obviously. So the, a long time ago before I came here, um, they introduced something that town meeting called pays you through. Mm-hmm. Right. And that did not go over well, it went down nine to one, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And people from Swamp Scott

1:27:24 do not speak highly of it. Correct. That’s what they have. Yeah. Yeah. They have 35 gallons and then they can do the additional bags on top of it. The issue I have with that is that it becomes a sanitation issue. Right. Because nothing’s contained in the barrel. Everything’s loose out of the Yeah. Each house pays for what They No, you pay, you buy the bags. And so generally it’s about two 50 a bag. That’s how they, you know, it, it’s broken all the way down to that level. You get shenanigans too. Yeah. You get shenanigans, you get additional waste. ‘cause some people are like two 50, I’m just gonna keep throwing everything away. And then, so it’s like, you know, I’m gonna put everything curbside as much as I want. And so these guys who are trying to do a collection route, your numbers are going up and down, so it’s taking you longer to do one day.

1:28:09 So it, it causes all these issues and it, it causes some costs to go up as well. Does the Republic contract end in August of, no, In end. September Of next Of 26. Okay. Yeah. So the reason why it’s off is that we used that hilt, Hilts went out of business, we had to change very quickly, and it was in September. And are you gonna address at some point the, um, the savings of what you’re not sending to Republic? Um, bill Wise? Um, so essentially what we’re doing is that, so my bill was roughly $84,000 a month. Obviously for the months that there was no recycling collection, I’m cutting the bill directly in half. Okay. Um, so you’re getting from 84 down to 42,

1:28:58 and then we’re taking some additional money off for the missed collections, um, at the highs, you know, at the schools, at the municipal buildings. So it’s about $38,000 That you’re saved that you’re No, then I’m, that I will be paying out of like the close to 84. Okay, so you’re paying 38. Yep. And they’re receptive to that. Yep. Okay. That’s Great. I mean, You do some money for parents. Yeah. Yeah. So the town budget’s about a hundred million dollars. Yeah. So basically you’re gonna go, we’re gonna go up maybe $2 million total. Yeah. So basically our taxes gonna go up 2%. No, no, No.

1:29:41 So in Massachusetts we’re, um, proposition two point a half. So taxes can only go up by two point half percent every year. Unless there’s a general override, then you can increase the, that then you can increase the tax revenue that stays indefinitely. But that’s only if you would do a general override, otherwise it could only go up by two and a half percent. That’s always the hard piece because obviously costs are not increasing by two and half percent. They generally increase by three, three and a half, five. And so you’re always trying it, it’s becomes a squeeze issue forever To enroll overrides fail. Well, no, I wasn’t thinking about the override. I was just thinking of the numbers. Basically, the town budget then has to go up by about 2%.

1:30:29 So, and, and what we’re saying is that the rest of the town can’t afford that. Yeah. Essentially that two and a half percent, we need that two and a half percent to keep the trash going. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The question becomes, I guess where does that, where does it come from? Does it come from it’s Right. Not the schools, not the, yeah. Well, Good Data. There was one article that passed that I think will be helpful for overrides in the future, whether you have to, it’s not that you have to, but it’s very strongly advised that you, you have to single it in like single issue mm-hmm. Overrides instead of looping a lot of things together, which is what people really hate. Right. So it might leave more room for things to pass in the future if you have to say exactly

1:31:16 what it is each time. So, So, sorry, would that be addressed? It would be Would that be addressed at this coming Maytown meeting? No, It’s gonna be addressed during this fiscal year. So obviously it starts January when the day of the town. Right. And then we go into budget season. Right. That’s when this is all gonna have to be Addressed. Right. So, but people will, the budget that people vote on in May will be the budget that includes this new contract? Correct. Okay. Yep. Wow. Plus the schools. Yep. Uh, contract raises and everything. Okay. Interesting. Well, I find Mr. Jordan fascinating. He brought that up three times in his, his monologue

1:32:02 for the select board the other night. He is clearly you have made the me, Mr. Jordan knows the message for the trash. There’s no question about that. I mean, the, the i part thing and the great thing about the trash is that we’re delivering trash service to every household in Marble Land every week while the schools are only to a percentage. Yeah. It’s a small percentage. Mm-hmm. But obviously the importance, they’re both really, really important.

1:32:42 And so yeah, these are some difficult situations and it takes a lot of thought. Um, it takes some time to, to view everything and really make sure that we get this right. Mm-hmm. Well, the, the charter committee did four town communications for VER version A and the one we got absolutely the most people was at the senior center at midday. So I, I just think we have to get to out there to the make it, make it visible and, and your, your, your display is very visible. Uh, you put some money associated with each and all that,

1:33:28 but I think we really have to communicate with, uh, every, every way we can. Um, because, you know, you’re clear. It’s, it’s a compelling argument. Yeah. Nobody wants to hear it, but we, it’s legitimate. There’s not a, And you can go back to the current trash collection costs per household mm-hmm. Is about $2 a week. Yeah. That’s less than a cup of coffee. If anybody remembers that commercial. How long Of a contract do we shoot? So it’s gonna be three year plus a two year extension. So, okay. Um, we would love, I would love to do another 10 year contract. The landfill situation. Yeah. No, no. Disposal company wants to enter into those right now. Yeah.

1:34:17 And if you say three and two, it means it’s gonna go up incrementally Yeah. After three. Yeah. So generally every year there’s an increase. Um, so, but yeah, usually you do a, a three year contract with a two year extension possibility, But the finances of the two year extension are Yep. Or known. Yep. The final landfills of Massachusetts closed in 2030. Yeah. So that’s why no one wants to go past that. What happens then? Sorry, I don’t know. Uh, anything gets trained out. Michigan And Ohio. Oh, Michigan. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it’s all, unfortunately it’s all to middle America. Um, Ohio, Michigan, even, like, it can go as far as Louisiana. Um, doesn’t New Hampshire take some?

1:35:02 They’re gonna block us all off. Um, so New Hampshire and Maine are gonna ban our material from coming into their state. They’re gonna save their capacity from themselves. We’re starting to see that a little bit. Um, you know, it’s not a, it’s a smart move if you’re worried about these issues. Um, so, you know, Maine’s gonna say, we don’t want your sludge, we don’t want any of your solid waste. New Hampshire’s gonna do a similar thing. Now, waste Management does own some landfills privately in New Hampshire, so they can do a little bit of moving around. Um, but that’s kinda what’s what we’re headed for. Um, you know, again, you’re gonna get into these big picture ideas of like, Hey, do we need to bring back incinerated incinerator plants to reduce the volume to train that off

1:35:49 to all the big trash companies and all own rail line. Mm-hmm. There is technology coming, but it’s, I don’t know how much to there, like the burning to turn it into fuel. Yeah. You know, I obviously releasing carbon. Yeah. Obviously wasted energy is, is a, you know, a, a sound practice, Marine trash. It has great BTU value. There is reduction in volume to, to landfill that if it goes into a proper landfill, there really shouldn’t be any, any environmental concerns if it’s all built correctly. Um, obviously for the burning of the trash, as long as you have the proper scrubbers and you know what you’re burning, um, you’re gonna have a huge reduction in, um, like CO2

1:36:34 nitrous socks, all those emissions that we’re concerned about. Um, but it’s, you know, making sure the technology’s there, make sure the technology’s working properly. Um, again, that’s a great way to create energy. We’re gonna run into an energy crisis at some point that we’re gonna have to deal with this one. Do any towns build incinerators in their transfer station? We used to. We have. We have not a one. So the, so obviously yes, we had an incinerator. Um, it ran from 1950 to 1975. We all the ash, we just cleaned it all up. Um, if we had done a little bit better job and made sure it stayed on our property that we had actually capped the landfill earlier,

1:37:20 the cost would’ve been drastically lower. But those, just the way it works,

1:37:29 I don’t sound like the Lorax, but has anyone done sort of like an analysis on how much space we have left on earth to fill with trash? I’m sure handfuls Question for how many generations left to go? I mean, like, you know, so some of us, we drive around, we spot the landfills. You’re always like, oh, I, you know, I’m just starting to notice that one. Or I’ve never noticed that one before. That must be growing higher and higher. Okay. Um, you know, it, the hardest thing about landfills is that obviously, depending on how they’re designed, you’re concerned about groundwater, what’s around them. Um, are you taking over farmland? Are, you know how close you are to communities? There’s a lot of pieces that go into that. Um, yes.

1:38:17 America’s a huge country, so we have these huge spaces. What tends to happen is that you find, you know, all the mining that has, you know, strip mining, all the other mining, they tend to use some of those areas to, to place rubbish and solid waste. Now it has a variable issues that go along with that. Um, depending on what you’re putting there, you just have to make sure it’s either aligned landfill or unlined. Hmm. So aligned landfill means that none of the leach can get, get out of it, but you have to deal with that as well. So that’s not getting into the groundwater unlined some of Lee Shape or, you know, can get into the groundwater. They’ve Built golf courses on them before and stuff like that. Yeah. They’ve built golf courses on a lot of them.

1:39:02 That’s kind of been a big piece. Um, I, you know, there’s a lot of municipal golf courses in Massachusetts built on landfills. Wow. Mm-hmm. On capped landfills. Yep. How many landfills are there in the state? I think there’s 300 and I’m trying to think of the number. I’ll have to take a look. Okay. There, there’s a whole book on it. Okay. Sorry. That’s fair. I find this fascinating. It is interesting.

1:39:30 Well, great. I mean, thank you for that. Oh, yeah. Um, boy, okay. Um, great presentation. Thank you again. Uh, is there any other new business for the evening? Uh, is there anyone there for public comment? I nobody raising their hand at this time. How many people are in there that, Uh, there’s just three right now. Uh, okay. All right. Well then I think, uh, motions for adjourn, Mr. Mm-hmm. Motion to aur second. All a Bailey, uh, um, meeting with Ajour. Thank you.

1:40:15 Tom Is ca I’m gonna give you updates like, oh, yesterday we got this many responses. Or like, are you just gonna wait till you get closer to that.