Board of Health: January 13, 2026

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 Seven it, 7 32 on the 13th of January, and I’m Please just open the, uh, board of Health meetings set view, or January, not on. Yeah, you just have to mute yourself, so this is in control.

0:19 Okay. All right. Um, I have a relatively positive, quick, quick, uh, chairs report. Um, first slide isn’t as positive as I wanted it to be, but we got a great letter from, um, uh, representative Jenny Armini saying that sending along a, um, a copy of the legislative approval that sends the Board of Health Marblehead from three members to five members. The, the legislation was signed, uh, by the Senate f first on the, the house on the 15th and signed on the Senate by the 18th. So this is, this is completely done

1:07 through everything in the legislature. Um, now, personally, I was hoping that because that was signed on the 15th and 18th, that we became a three member board right away. And so the, the three of us could talk to each other, uh, a little more than we can talk under open meeting laws, but I’m told at least by Town Town Council and Andrew, who knows, uh, how things work, uh, that that’s unlikely, very unlikely. Um, but I, um, I wrote a letter to the Attorney General this morning, and it normally we, we, we get, I get a response, and then day or two, the open meeting people are happy to tell me no for almost everything I ask about.

1:53 So, um, but in any event, we are gonna be five. Uh, I think that’s really positive. I think this board has worked very hard to try to sort of rebuild, um, the perspective, the positive perspective of public health in the community. It, it’s, and, and it’s not just this community that has that problem, and it’s a national or international issue that the mandate co cost public health, the public health world a great deal. So we’ve been working very hard to try to do the town’s business and do it in a way that’s respectful and collegial across the board.

2:40 So I, I think it’ll be really great to have two more people to provide different perspectives to, to know more of the town. And, um, and as you’ll see, we will have lots of things to do. So this is an optimistic slide. Um, it’ll probably won’t occur until, um, the election. The election, which is the first Monday after, no, first Tuesday, after the first Monday in June, which I think is the ninth. Um, and so we probably won’t officially become five then. But nonetheless, it, it, we finally are through, through that, and I think it’s very positive. Um, I, I would like my colleagues to endorse a change

3:30 that I want to make as we, the, the charter committee is going, I’m a, on a charter committee, and, uh, it’s going through the second review of what is known as draft B, the second iteration of the, the Total Charter Committee. And there, uh, the draft B section 6.3 is the Board of Health. Historically, we have kept all of the elected and the appointed boards in the same sort of template of presentation. It starts out what’s the name and what’s, how many members and that sort of thing. And item three is powers, duties and responsibilities.

4:19 And historically, the Board of Health and almost all of the other boards have just had one sentence. The board shall have all the powers, duties and responsibilities given to blank under the laws of the commonwealth and the laws of the town. But as I become more com comfortable with my understanding of Massachusetts and of, of the Board of Health, and, and actually Thatcher has brought this up several times in their, and never, in, in our, in our, um, charter committee meetings, how special the Board of Health is Boards of health are relative to normal boards in the town. The boards, boards of health, by the, the, the,

5:04 the Constitution or by the, by the legislation of the Commonwealth are one of the few places where executive function and legislative function come together. So boards of health, not just Marblehead, but all, all boards of health that are following the, uh, chapter 1, 1 1, um, are able to offer, um, reasonable health regulations covering general public health and a and a bunch of other things. And, and post it in the newspaper for a couple of weeks, I guess it is. And then it becomes legislation, and then we are able to enforce those regulations. And in addition, we are, I think, at least what my reading

5:53 of the charter committee and all the committees in the town, we are the only board that’s able to make emergency, uh, emergency regulations with, without any, um, uh, prior hearings. So if, if all of a sudden an enormous flu epidemic hit the town tomorrow, and we really needed to make some decisions, the, the, the, the, the, the town is, is in a way protected by the, um, by what’s in the, the, uh, state, state legislation. And so I wanna make a proposal to, before we go to draft C, that the, um,

6:38 board of Health add that sentence in red. What is the definition of reasonable on that? Um, I don’t know. It, that’s the way that, that that’s the exactly, that Would be important to me to ‘cause some people’s reasonable, as other people’s not reasonable. And I think that was one of the things we learned in COVID especially.

7:05 Okay. Well, I guess I can a a as it it’ll come, that kind of question may come up, but that’s already in the, that’s already in the law. Yeah. No, no. The, the, the, the only thing that’s not in the Massachusetts law are the five, the last six words in the best interest of the town. That’s the way the town bylaw clarifies what needs to be done. Mm-hmm. So maybe the town was thinking whatever is in the best interest of the town, in the opinion of the board is reasonable. But I, but I don’t know that, well, I, I will try to see what I can do about getting, uh, some sort of signal on that. Would you like to hold Yeah.

7:51 Um, hold that for our next meeting. Mm-hmm. And I’ll try to find, uh, that answer. I imagine It’s what the state recommends, like, Follow, not necessarily, so like reasonable can be, when you’re setting fine limits, they should be reasonable. So, um, you know, selling tobaccos to minor, you know, you’re gonna find, Oh, I’ll send you the slide secure. You’re gonna find a certain reasonable order. You know, it could be a hundred dollars, it could be $500, it could be a thousand. It could be 5,000, but unreasonable, it would be like a hundred thousand, you know, thing. Things of, you know, generally things of that nature. Um, again, it’s supposed to be

8:33 trying to set up a system that is protective of your community, enforcing of, that’s also not punitive, but that’s gonna allow the law to be carried forward.

8:48 Okay. So put that on hold and I will try to get clarification both from, um, the, the charter committee and, uh, town council. Yeah. And a lot of the, you know, board of health issuing an emergency orders, a lot of those come boiled water. We have a, you know, we have a bad water supply. The board needs to issue a quickly abor boiled water order. We can’t have a meeting. This is the order right now. We will set up a meeting in a couple days to discuss it and make sure everybody’s aware of the situation and informed. And see, I think that the, the uniqueness of that oppor of that regulation that allows us to do that needs to really be in the charter because it separates us somewhat from the rest of, not,

9:37 not in a bad or a good sense, but it is really the, the, the people who were writing the Massachusetts legislation were thinking about how to manage emergencies. Yeah, yeah. Manage emergencies. So, um, you know, measles outbreaks, different outbreaks that need to take immediate action quarantines, um, making sure people aren’t leaving their homes. Um, when you’re talking about regulations, um, you’re regulating septic systems, you’re regulating wells, you’re regulating tobacco, um, you’re re regulating food protection. Um, and those would all be, you know, you would have a hearing, um, and talk about those regulations. People would be allowed to speak. You could have a fine structure associated with that. Those are kind of those two pieces that they’re considering. Okay. And,

10:22 and the rest of six three, there still is in the, the, the, the existing draft B, it lists, um, the board of health overseas, the health department, the waste department, and the Marblehead, uh, transfer station. The board voted to take the transfer station out of that and just say the two. Is that right? Yes. So, yes. ‘cause We’ll, wait. ‘cause the transfer station is part of under the waste department. Yes. Okay. But it, it hasn’t been accommodated yet. But I will make certain that at least it, it is, it is, uh, brought forward. Uh, at that time, uh, Sean, uh, rest his soul, uh,

11:07 had it noted that there was lots of discussion about it, but no final decision was made. Yeah. And again, the why, you know, why a lot of times waste departments or transfer stations are under the boards of health is that they’re overseeing different operations that can be related to public health issues. So you’re making sure that trash disposal is handled properly. You’re not affecting water supply, you’re not affecting homes in the areas. Those are why a lot of those things fall under the board. Okay. Alright. And I, I, I actually, it’s probably crazy of me, but I actually kind of enjoy reading some of the legislation. And Marblehead again, or, uh, Massachusetts again, really deals with boards

11:53 of health in a, in a very robust way. Um, town boards of health are at the beginning different from city boards of health. ‘cause city boards of health re generally relate to city councils and things like that. But town boards of health tend to be much more autonomous. Like we are, towns can choose whether to have a board of health or not. If the town chooses not to have a board. And all of this is in this chapter 1, 1, 1, then it’s sort of fun to read. Um, then if you, if town chooses not to have a board of health, then the select board defaults on those kind of issues. That, and if there, if there’s a water purification issue

12:39 or, or something like that, then the select board comes to, um, comes to the four and has to make those kind of decisions. But if the town chooses to have a board of health, it can keep it as a board of health or it can turn it into a health department, which is somewhat structured in a little bit different way. But that once the, the town has chosen to have one of those organizations, then the select board steps back and doesn’t necessarily get involved in public health, per se. When the charter committee writes the regulation, the, the, uh, responsibilities of the select board, public health is not one of the things that is listed. Public safety is, of course, and since so many of the issues in public health are sort of

13:28 co-align with, uh, public safety, it’s, I think, important that we have a good working relationship with the select board so that we understand, we understand each other. Okay. So this is just my curiosity, uh, uh, about how Massachusetts works. Um, the last meeting people asked me to meet with, uh, chief King and I did, it was very pleasant. Uh, we met, I think over two hours. Um, and we, we discussed how the board of health and the public safety, the police department have, uh, different but certainly aligned and, uh, uh, uh, appropriate, uh, responsibilities

14:15 to protect health and wellness of the town. But we were particularly talking about young people, uh, and particularly young people, protecting them from the consequences of substance use in our town. Um, the, the chief introduced, I, he and I had only been in one room together one time, shaking hands and never talked. So we introduced each other a a little bit, and I was, I impressed by it. He, he considers himself a very child oriented police person. Um, he, he, he, uh, uh, I guess was in Salem before he came here in Salem. The person who’s now the lieutenant governor was the mayor there now. And I’ve been incredibly impressed by all the things

15:02 that Salem has in its mayor mayoral offices to protect and support children. So Dennis sort of was a young officer in that environment and is very, very positive about that. Um, we talked, um, about, uh, the things that I was trying to do, writing columns in the paper, and trying to improve health literacy, uh, about, um, the issues, um, to try to have very, have parents in particular, but the, but the community as a whole understand the issues of why, uh, the adolescent brain is so sensitive to, to external, uh, external substances.

15:48 It, it, it, uh, those of you who may have seen that, that graph in the, the, um, column about, uh, cannabis, it, it, it’s absolutely fascinating that the, that the kids who start using cannabis, um, before or 14 or so over a five year period lose, uh, a significant amount of cortical, uh, gray matter. The kids who, well, kids then young adults who start, um, using cannabis at 20, um, use much less, uh, lose much less cortical function at all. And ultimately, in, in the, in their young adulthood,

16:36 they’re no different than the people who have been, never tried cannabis. So it’s really that age group between maybe 13 or 14 and 17, 18, depending on what study you read that makes, makes the, the, uh, makes the, the adolescent brain, the youthful brain so sensitive. And so, you know, it was, you know, the chief has chief said he that kind of, those kind of things for a very long time. So we were in complete synchrony, uh, uh, a around that. Um, we did not agree all, all, we agreed that enforcement was important, but we had different perspectives on that.

17:23 And we, we certainly never did get to any sort of resolution of the differences. But we certainly have agreed to continue, uh, our dialogue after the holidays. He’s, he certainly tied up now. Uh, and, um, uh, we’ll meet as soon as he, he gets free. But it was a, it was a good, uh, it was a good session. And from my perspective, um, I am cautiously optimistic. I think there is broad interest in the town about the issues of, uh, protecting the adolescent, uh, from substances, whether it be at the board of health, whether it be the select board, whether it be, um, in the church I go to. ‘cause people come up to me and say, it’s really good

18:10 that you’re working, uh, on that. And many people, uh, give, uh, our colleague, uh, a lot of credit for bringing those, those, those issues up. Some don’t give you style points, That’s okay.

18:26 But, um, but the issue is on the table, and it’s, and it’s a good idea. And one of the things that made me most comfortable about the conversation with the chief, uh, I had Googled, uh, social health law, health laws in, in, um, in preparation for meeting with him. And I found, I, I found a, a document from the district attorney in the Northwestern district, and it, I, I showed it to Dennis and said, this is what I think we need to be able to get out and distribute to everyone. And he said, oh, yeah, we, we have, we in our district attorney’s office, we do this all the time. Now. I have never seen it. But nonetheless, he was really quite comfortable.

19:12 They have it. And this is the kind of factual information that lists this, not in this one. It’s not Marblehead bylaws, it’s it’s state of Massachusetts regulations. But, but it lists both the cannabis and the alcohol for young people. What, what the, what the lead structure is, what the cost, what the p penalties would be, all of those things. It’s very factual. And, um, I’m hopeful that when we, he and I meet again, that we’ll be able to put something together that we can figure out a way to bring it here, bring it to wherever else it would go, to make it as, as highly visible in the community as possible. So He saw this exact paper,

19:57 I handed it to him. Yeah. Because There’s one line in here that interests me. Well, for those to be fair, you know, we meeting for two hours talking whether he read every word. Uh, I Don’t know. There’s, I mean, there I would not have read every Word a lot, but there’s one line here. This Is, I would not have read Word Massachusetts host, host social hosting laws, information from parents, ma message from the office of North, uh, Western District Attorney, David E. Sullivan. And I scroll down and it says, um, people who host gatherings where minors consume alcohol or cannabis risk, criminal prosecution, police who learn of an underage drinking party or gathering, have the duty and the right to enter someone’s home to make sure it is safe. So if you learn about it, just learning about it,

20:43 which we have a school resource officer who learns about these things all the time. So that line is very interesting to me. He, he knows about the parties before they happen from hearing them at school. So saying, if they learn about it, they have a duty to enter someone’s home to make sure everyone is safe, is a very interesting line in this. I think. Well, I, I, I am not putting words into Dennis’s. No, I’m just saying, all I’m is, I, I’m very comfortable that I went, I started this conversation Yeah. Knowing nothing when I first learned. What about things with you? Yeah. I have now learned a lot more. I know how many states have, uh, social hosting laws.

21:29 I know the difference. I know the problems. I know, uh, all all of those sorts of things. This is at least a template that at least two of the stakeholders who are in the context are willing to start with as a framework and go further. And if we can get something like that and give it to all the parents and all the, all the adolescents and all the, uh, other stakeholders in the community, I think we’ll be better off. Okay. Th this is one of those things that hopefully we can get perfect, but perfect is the enemy of good and a lot of things. So let’s take good, good, good steps starting from scratch, moving forward and, and trying to, um, um, improve what we’re doing now.

22:16 Mm-hmm. And the other issue that I have, I was certainly,

22:23 I don’t understand, and maybe you have a better insight, but the fall, one of the things that attracted, attracted my mind about when, when you were talking, is that we have not had that any citations to the town clerk. But it’s since 2017, right? The, the, the chief didn’t come till 21, I don’t think. Right. So what happened, and I have asked a bunch of people mm-hmm. What happened in 2017 that might have changed things. And nobody has good answer. And I haven’t got money, though, even Dennis have. Yeah, yeah. But that Doesn’t mean in, in my mind, that doesn’t mean just because in 2017, you know, something stopped. We don’t continue with that. You know? And that’s, so that’s where I felt like, you know, like,

23:08 well, it wasn’t done, so we don’t do it now. It’s like, no, no, Any of that. I think the board sent, uh, me to meet with the chief, the chief chief. And I had a, a very good conversation. I hope we’ll continue, uh, we’ll talk in a minute that in the comm re data review, there are a couple of other things that we wanna partner with the chief about. And so he’s aware of that already and we will go forward. So, uh, I think that the, um, uh, I I, I hope that we can be a little bit optimistic that we are being begin. We’re not, we, we have the chief and I talked about this, that some people are really offended by the use of the term, changing the culture.

23:54 We are not talking about changing the culture like the Chinese Communist going into, uh, uh, province and trying to change Muslims in, into, uh, uh, different culture. We are talking about a learning organization that understands neuroscience and, and the evolution of what we know about the maturation of the adolescent brain, and we’re trying to do better for our children. So basically all this is saying is, is we’re trying to get Marblehead to, like, it always is in okay. Always, almost always is in many things, trying to be a learning organization. So I I I’m not gonna talk about, uh, culture change a any, no, I, I Don’t even think culture change.

24:40 I mean, like, do does, no one in here wants a culture. Our culture in Marblehead is underage. Kids getting drunk. Like, that’s not our culture. Yeah, no. So like, it, it should never even be part brought up in the, in the Well, but the word was No. I know it’s been said. I Heard, I’ve been unhappy it newspaper that way and everything. But Mike, when I, I, when I first came, I visited, uh, of the pediatric communities in the, in the region, and I asked the Marblehead pediatric group, what’s the best thing about practicing medicine, practicing pediatrics in the town? And they said, because these are smart parents, they really care and they will learn about how to do it. Right. So that’s the kind of thing we’re talking about. Yeah. Okay. And that’s where clearly, that’s where I can commit the board. ‘cause I know I’m willing to do the work.

25:26 I will do whatever we can to put the kind of learning material in the, in the columns that we’re given in the newspaper to make sure people have access to the most up-to-date science. And it is unbelievable how much is coming up. Um, the, the number of, of papers that are, that are out in the neuroscience journals and in the general medicine journals, this stuff is even getting into jama, journal of American Medical Association and England, uh, um, journal of Medicine, the, the traditional mainstreams, the issue of children of adolescents and, and their neurodevelopment has become mainstream. So I I, and again, the chief

26:13 and I were very comfortable that that kind of information sharing should be a base on how we go forward. Okay? Yes, sir. All right. Are you planning to get a copy of what the Essex County DA’s office had that Yes. Chief King we’re gonna try. Yeah. Me cry. He should. Oh, yeah. I mean, I, I haven’t done it. Okay. It’s too bad. The town never knew anything about this. He’s the police chief. He knows he’s been here three years. They renewed his contract. I, too bad he didn’t give the information to the public. Here. He’s sitting on it. Today is the new day. We will get what we need out of the, uh, uh, uh, out of the how, how, how does a district attorney work?

27:01 I mean, do we vote for or They were elected? How, how? Over In Salem at East. I know that. I don’t know if it’s a four year. Yeah. But it’s Problem manage guy now. So does he have his judges or same thing, He was police chief. No, No photo. No. Okay. Well, any event, that’s where we are. I, I met, I, I did what I was asked, and I hope, uh, to meet regularly, um, um, to, to build on what I, I hope is realistic optimism. But one brief comment on that, I think the Board of health should focus all the information that you just gave on these young people,

27:46 the development, the health side of it. And I think the police chief should be worrying on what they’re doing and what whatnot they’re doing. Because I think the Board of Health should, like, the public should be aware that you’re saying at a such a young age for five years, I don’t think any, I wasn’t aware of this. And I know all kinds of people. I don’t know if they have a program in school or anything like that. When I went, they didn’t. And I’ve never heard anyone. ‘cause I, I know people that like, let their kids at 14 smoke marijuana and stuff. So I, that I was not aware tonight to what you just went through on developing a five year. I’ll send you the column that was, uh, Yeah, no, no. But I’m saying it’s gonna be short and sweet for these younger kids. It take 15 minutes at an assembly

28:31 for someone to bring it up. I, I don’t, the thing about threatening the kids, we’re gonna find the, the parents and all that stuff that, that’s up to the, the police department to deal with. We already have laws on the books. They’re not enforce. It’s like parking tickets. You know, we have all these laws. We don’t enforce three quarters of the laws that we have in this town. But I think the, it would be good to try to notify the parents that you get this UpToDate information, um, you know, it, the, the, the town should know about. And you know what, I, I tried, there’s only a few I know. I understand that the, the few people watching this, so it’s too bad the police chief didn’t come in too and show a commitment. He, he know, he has all this knowledge and was, I never knew this. He’s applied for three different positions in other communities. So I don’t even think he’s interested in

29:18 staying in this community. So that, but, but like I say, we have, We got the sense that he was committed to marble history. Well, I, that’s all we talked about. But I, but I just hope the public, I just hope the public, public health, you want to get the kids, the parents to know what’s going on this up to date. This is like breaking news as far as I’m concerned. Believe me, I look around at my peers on the board, and I know the kind of people who will come next to you. The only UI think the only unique thing I can really offer is I’m nerdy enough and I have enough time being retired that I really enjoy doing this kind of research. And I’m not a bad writer. I love writing these columns that the two newspaper allow, allow me to do.

30:03 So I think there’s a, I I think I have written four different columns over the two years, uh, about substance abuse issues in kids. And the last two, were both about, uh, one on alcohol and one on cannabis. Both the destructive, uh, nature of them for the adolescent brain. I’ll send them to you. Thank you. Okay. Thanks for all your hard work. Look, it’s, I know you enjoy it, but when I work, it keeps me, keeps me outta trouble. Keeps me outta trouble. Okay. Now, the rest of the, the, the, the really kind of exciting thing that, that Marvel had, has finally, we, we, we, we now see the beginning of,

30:50 of why we’ve been pushing for the last, what, eight months to do this, uh, creating a healthier Marblehead column. And we got, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, we finally got a summary of the answers, the checkbox answers to the 42 questions that were in that survey. Remember, we got about 1600, uh, responses, which is 15. No, we got 15% of the population between a 18 and forever. Um, and so UMass Boston thought we would’ve been very lucky to get 10%.

31:37 We got 15%. I had hope we’d get 20%, but we didn’t get share. We, they actually had another hundred that were in there. They were empty. So I don’t know why people did that. But in any event, we got the responses. And Andrew, did you bring, uh, I meant to bring mine. The, the, the response is th 33 pages of, of, um, of answers checkbox. And they’re, they’re based on the deciles of age. We, um, the first one, we didn’t get a lot of people very young from it. So we have 18 to 39, uh, 39 to 49, 49 to 59. And so we have 42 answers with the, those,

32:23 uh, that group on age deciles. But in each one of those 42, almost all, there’s more than one in one question, sub question within, uh, do you have any concern about X, Y, and Z? So we get both X, Y, uh, X, Y, and Z. So it, it’s, it’s an unbelievable amount of information. And if you remember, this is all based on, uh, a wellness, uh, a wellness, uh, approach, um, where the board of health, but how wellness is, is, is the positive end of being healthy. Okay? And there’s, there’s traditionally an eight level, uh, uh, um, wellness profile.

33:10 If, if you can’t see that slide, the eight different levels of wellness, their physical wellness, social wellness, emotional wellness, intellectual wellness, environmental wellness, occupational wellness, spiritual wellness, and financial wellness. That’s the, that’s the social infrastructure, um, that, that has been in, in the literature for wellness. So these 42 questions,

33:42 e every one of those eight levels gets at least one multi-level question. So we, we now have, um, it, it, we, we now have this information. So, but as a, as a former, you know, hard scientist, having basic data isn’t very important if you don’t have it organized well enough that you can understand the information. So the, the, the steps that we are now going through, we now have this raw data. We, we, we, we signed up with, um, UMass Boston for two reasons. One, they have done 80 of these in various municipalities

34:29 around the state. So I including Salem and Swampscott, and so they know how to do them well. But secondly, um, all of us are concerned about privacy these days. And so we, by, by using UMass Boston, Andrew Ha has to pay them. But there’s no way they will give Andrew one iota of data, or me or Tommy or, or a man. They, the, the re we can honestly say that they will protect this data. And, and, and so the people, people in Marblehead were able to feel quite comfortable that it, it would stay safe.

35:14 So UMass Boston has been a, a really good partner. I I, I think, uh, and we are in the process now of taking this information, and we’re gonna try to put it in an organized way. And then once it gets organized, then we want to turn that organiz organizational mo knowledge into a set of strategic goals. And there’ll be strategic goals based on the depart on the board of health. But as you’ll see in 30 seconds, the, the interface now, because of the, the, the universality of those eight levels of wellness, they, the goals and the, and the strategic implications

36:00 may play out in other places as well. Okay. So what I did, what we did, I did, we have a, a, a team of, uh, eight other people beside Andrew, Kristen, Abeta, and I, who are the leadership group. And unfortunately, because of the open meeting law, we couldn’t do the whole board being the, the, uh, open, but the leadership group. But in any event, we’ll, we’ll work, we’ll work on that next year when we have five. So I asked each of the, each of the people in the leadership group to look at their 33 pages and come up with one interesting thing, one surprising thing, and one important, uh, um, uh, piece of information they learned from the, the data.

36:47 And it was a fascinating, um, breadth of, of what people found, um, bicycle pedestrian save being really high. I, I was surprised at how, I wonder How high it would be if e-bikes didn’t exist. Correct. So, like, I think e-bikes have really put that on steroids of, like, most people are afraid of probably e-bikes just going a million miles an hour rather than some kid riding a two wheeler where he is actually pedaling. I, I Think that has added to it. Yeah. Well, okay, but okay. But it’s nonetheless, no, no, no. Talked to now, now, the chief said he was already working on some of the stuff that he probably may know a lot more about the e he may know the curves. But in any, even a lot of conversation or not conversation, a lot of boxes checked

37:34 around depression and anxiety, particularly, what was it? 40 to 49? 40 to 49, you, you have to re uh, uh, I, I don’t even remember being 49. But, um, that, that decile, that decile, if they were giving us straight answers, are, uh, in, in incredibly stressed in, in the current environment. And so that’s the kind of thing that we have to turn that raw data. What can we do? How could we have strategic goals that come out of our, come out of this information that ultimately will benefit the town and the people of, okay. Uh, clearly a lot of stuff like child

38:20 and adolescent mental health, substance, substance abuse, alcohol came out, um, very high. WW uh, 70, 80% of people felt that stress work-life balance. That’s where I think we’re gonna have to be pretty creative. How does a a five me, even a five member board of health, how does it deal with work-life balance? So we’re gonna, we’re gonna have to be creative about how to take this raw data, this the, what we know about the society and see what we can do to build on that knowledge to, to add value that we were talking about this today. One of the overwhelming things that I think we both agreed

39:09 everybody on our little guide leadership group said, you know, people are asking for things that we already have, and they don’t know we have them. And so one of the things we have to figure out how to do as a board of health, I think is set up a navigation system so that when a person even just has a concern that my, my, my work life is, is just driving me crazy. My family’s in trouble. What can I do? Where can I go, go to get some help? Is there any way around we, we need to figure out how to navigate through the complexities of life, uh, today? And, and, and that’ll be, I think as we move forward, you know, we’re,

39:55 we’re in the green box over here doing strategic goals. The, the board of health next year is gonna really have to fi be figuring out how to do that sort of thing. And, uh, I think information exchange navigation is really quite, quite an important first step. So we can get a, we can get a bunch of resources out there for people. Okay. So, um, and, and not, and, and, and the, all of these strategic goals, they’re gonna be very different kinds of strategic goals. I mean, obviously we’re a board of health. We want, we want it to improve public health practice. We want to have public health policy improvements. But in addition to that, the town has told us

40:42 that in addition to old pure public health restaurants and clean water and all that sort of stuff, there are other stressors. There are other issues out there that are, that are decreasing their wellness. And we’re gonna have to figure out what to do. For me, again, as and two of us that have practiced, uh, through years in the delivery system, for me, I think the delivery sys the interface. If we can create a more, uh, open interface with the delivery system, if we can, at the end of a year when we’ve really written our, our final report, we can go to Salem Hospital and say, Hey guys, let’s see what we can do to work together. One of the, one of the questions that surprised a lot

41:30 of people, I didn’t list it was, what was it? 50 over 50% had been giving, caregiver had been doing caregiving to, to somebody in their family or in their house. That was an overwhelming number in my mind. But now I don’t think that care individual caregiving, per se, is pure public health. Is that, Can I, is that all like caregiving for an elder? Or is that also caregiving, like taking care of your kids? Is That, well, it, it was not just regular taking care of your kids if your kid, if your kid had, uh, special problems and required additional. Okay. So it’s Not just, it’s not just parenting. Okay.

42:16 Gotcha. Gotcha. Parenting is a big deal. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So we’re gonna try, we, we’ve, we’ve already begun to, to be thinking about how d we had started that before, but, but before COVID, But it was, it was. So in the, um, in the past five years, have you provided care or assistance to a person who’s disabled, frail, struggling. Okay. So that it was specific. Yeah. Okay. Like the 60, so 60 to 69, 50 6% said yes. Yeah. So you, another child. No, but, but it was really interesting at the meeting, um, Lisa Hooper from the Council on Aging said that they actually have a working group that they meet every so often to try to help people who are doing caregiving to in that kind of situation.

43:03 And nobody else in the room even knew about it, That the C class, Sorry. It’s the caregiver support class. Oh, Okay. But again, so when you’re dealing with caregivers, they generally only have a period of time that they can take off. Mm-hmm. And so it’s doesn’t, those schedules don’t always work for them. Yeah. That’s always one of the biggest ones. So you need to have multiple classes during the day mm-hmm. To kind of deal with all the, the pieces. So it, And we’re not keeping all this stuff secret, but it makes no sense for us to submit 33 pages of information out there without some indication to the community what we’re gonna do with that information. ‘cause don’t go crazy, but this is where we are. Yes. So if the response ratio was 15%, what happened

43:51 to the other 85%? And how did, how was that information, the fact that we didn’t get a response from 85%? How do you interpret that? How do you go from 15 to A hundred? Well, for me, the biggest problem is not only just that question, but if you look Yeah, the, from 18 to 29, only 2% of the population responded. So when you look at this, there’s, I think it was 41% of the people are retired. Yeah. Big Smart. Sound like the oldest community 70, the 70 to 79 decile, they had 25% of all the people in town who are in that age group like me, they have time to, to fill out.

44:37 Right. 30, 43 questions. Yeah. Um, look, unlike hard science, social science has a lot of uncertainties. We, we will never solve, uh, things. But the best we can do is, um, be visible. We can try to get the highest benefit for the most people for the least cost. And if we’re honest with each other and we’re accountable to each other, we can say, well, that didn’t work. Let’s try something new. This, hopefully, if, if we’re capable of, of putting this information into good strategic plans, um,

45:25 the next five years of the Board of Health and the select board and a whole bunch of other boards in town will be using this information and, and have metrics to say, gee, can we do better in that? Um, uh, I mean, I’ve been talking you, you guys have read it. Yeah. No, And I found, no, I was a little disappointed, Tom will probably sympathize with me on this, that, um, more than 50% of the people were worried about healthy eating. So they clearly didn’t pay attention to my seminar on healthy eating and affordability of healthy foods. So it’s, uh, that was a little upsetting. Well, Market Basket came to be number two grocery store in the country. Yeah, that’s great. So I that the best produce around. So, yeah.

46:12 No, I think that jumped out on me. You know, a couple things, you know, I was a little, I think more than 50% of the people are moderately or very concerned about the homeless situation in Marblehead, which I was like, what? Homeless situation. So that was, I don’t think we specifically say Marblehead, do We? Well, I mean, I, I assume it’s about Marblehead. Well, it’s about Marblehead, but if I live in Marblehead, I can be concerned about homeless. Okay. I get, yeah, I guess so that’s, yeah. We spent eight hours, a group of six of us working with UMass Boston about the struggles of all these words. Yeah, no, the and then the bike one, you know, I had that one queued up. ‘cause that one jumped out at me where I was like, is this bicycles or e-bikes? ‘cause yeah, e-bikes get the crap outta me too. But a normal bicycle, I think. Yeah. Doesn’t exactly. I see it on the trail. I’m fine.

46:57 Do you have the age Breakdown for that response? No. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Well, that’s the other thing UMass can do. They will, they’ll plot, uh, versus whether you, you have waffles or sausage and eggs for breakfast. Yeah. According to the data that, that’s one of the services they’ll provide for us. And, and in fact, that’s what we want the board to start thinking about. What additional information would we like? Yeah. Mm-hmm. It’s pretty uniform across all the ages, which is, Yeah. So our age break down is 18 to 39. So we had to group that. I mean, when I see e they’re like lot responses. This is 50 to 5, 9 70, 7, 80 plus.

47:45 And the, so that’s why I wonder, like if you bring that now to like concern when you’re looking at high concern, so I don’t know, 18 to 39. So those jumped almost one jumped out 40%, 33%. Sad about healthy food, 4 29 35. Again, that 40 to 49 few other sites has a lot of high concerns. A lot about a lot of things. They’re the sandwich. Yeah. They’re the sandwich generation. Yeah. They, They have a lot of worries. Okay. And one of the things that I would like feedback, again, one of the things I would love to do is to be able to teach a program we’ve talked about about it here, and I’ve gotten no feedback of anybody’s interested. And, uh, what does the American healthcare system look like? How many pe how many people in what? 20,000 people?

48:33 We’ve just closed the, the, the federal government for what? 40 some days. Because one party was saying you have to change, uh, you, you have to change what the decision you’ve made, uh, about subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. How many people in Marblehead can explain what the subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, um, might mean to them. And I, I, and, and it’s, it’s arcane in a way, but it does influence our lives, and we can make a difference if we understand the systems better. So I would, I would love to, to, and I did this when I lived in New Mexico. Um, they didn’t have any universities, so they were happy to, if anybody wanted to, wanted to give ‘em a couple of lectures.

49:19 But, um, in any event, if, if there’s interest in, in encouraging health literate literacy in the town, um,

49:30 we, we are capable of, of providing, uh, uh, that kind of information exchange, uh, if, if, uh, if, if necessary. Uh, that’s, I admit, I, that’s a personal, uh, thing for me. But in any event, um, this, this is, this is where we are in calm, the next steps. Now, uh, over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to be taking this raw information and try and looking at five elements where we want to dig deeper. Probably not just like looking for electric bikes, but, but say we, we,

50:15 we wanna know something further about substance use. We’re gonna talk, we have in our contract with UMass Boston, that they’re gonna run focus groups. They’re gonna try to identify 10 or 15 people who understand the system, who bring some openness to the table and talk about what might be done to drill down, to be able to give the board a little more insight in how it can develop STR focused and measurable strategic goals. So the next true march, we’re gonna be doing those five focus groups, not, Andrew and I have a goal, we, we haven’t paid for this through UMass Boston, but we, we, we wanna be able to figure out

51:04 how every six months we can go to those focus groups and say, okay, you talked, you helped, you helped us understand a little bit about, about substance use. How are we doing? Have we improved? What’s different about your life? And, you know, I don’t know those, you might see, you know, um, John King on, uh, CNN, he has those eight groups that he goes all over the country and talks about politics. I mean, I think that’s a great model. If we have four or five different groups of people in town who are paying attention, holding us accountable for making things better, we will learn a great deed. So we’ll see how that works. That’s not in the contract. Not yet. And it may may be impossible to make it work

51:50 because people may be too busy at this point. But, but it, this, this kind of information, even with all the shortfalls, there’s only 15% of the town. Um, I think one of the focus groups ought to be to try to find some of the people who didn’t sign up and see if they’re willing to spend a couple of hours and sit down and talk to us and say, what could we have done differently?

52:17 I mean, to, Tom tried to put stuff on social media. It wasn’t just that we were using the newspaper. It wasn’t just you, you, we, we did postcards at home, all all of that sort of thing. I talked to, uh, um, um, nursery school across the street from me at the church. And that the nursery school, even even with parents that are in the nursery school, the, the, the teachers have a hard time getting the parents to have time to answer emails. Mm-hmm. So it, it is just, it, it it’s the stress of the world. It it for that age group. But, but we have to, I, I think we have to figure out how try four our results. Similar to swamps Scott and Salem, no, for several reasons. We are the first of the 80 that have gone

53:04 through the entire life cycle.

53:08 Uh, both swamps, Scott and Salem. The, the researchers at UMass Boston that we’re using are gerontologists. So in Swamp Scott, for example, they only gave the surveys, they handed the surveys to 2000, 3000 people who were over 50. So they never, they never spent much time thinking about the lifecycle. Uh, and, and, and, and, and, and in a way, I think that’s why UMass Boston has been very interested in Marblehead because we’re the first people who are crazy enough to try to think how, how, how that’s working. And the, the other thing I think that we have, we have,

53:55 what I understand from Swans, Scott, they, they, they were interested in the, the built environment. And I’ve heard that SW Salem at the time was much more interested in housing and e economics and things. Whereas I would have to say that our questions were probably a little more clinical than any other group that this, that the researchers at UMass Boston have done, in part because of where we’re coming from. So we, we, we, we’ve talked to the people, but it, but, but it’s not the same. Thank you, Joe. But what was the Percentage of swamps get if you had 2000 applications go out? You know, the percentage of what they get back,

54:42 They got about the same. But it was very, very diff They didn’t have postcards. They, they, they like SWAs Scott. They, they had opened SWAs Scott first, the, the select board paid for it. So the select board brought people together. Uh, it, it was a whole different mechanism, and it Was only paper. Yeah. And, and I’d really have to take a look at the age groups that Swamp Scott was looking at. So we have a very drastic, so when you look at the, I’m gonna call ‘em the working group, 18 to 60 had very different answers from the 60 plus and the 18 to 60, I, again, there’s a lot of concern there. Not that there’s a lot of concern in the older generations. Uh, people can see two different types of concerns

55:28 all the way through the, you know, across the board as far as level of concern and stuff like that. Um, so it, it is amazing when you’re looking at both sides of it. And again, the concern would be, you know, as this working age group, as they retire, does some of that concern and fall off? Or is it gonna get carried with them and create a, you know, further issues.

55:54 Yeah. Did you have, how, how is this, is this totally consistent to what you see in your practice? Certainly a lot of stress, anxiety, depression. I, for the, um, for the under 18, I was surprised how much concern there was about bullying. Yeah. The old town with bullying. Yeah. Which was, yeah, I don’t know. In that part of it, I, I also correlated that a little bit with screen time, because then you’re like, is this social media bullying or real bullying? You know, so that, yeah, screen time was very high and the bullying was very high. So I was wondering if those were connected. I can area to address too, how to help parents navigate that.

56:34 I think you brought up the other points. Um, Do you ever look at the public health assessments that come out of the hospitals? Did you ever review any of that data? That’s another comparison that we need to make at some point. Yeah. That would Interest the, the last one for, uh, Salem was three years ago. Yep. I tried to get them to talk to us, the committee that was working on it, but I, I wasn’t able to. But, but hopefully they will. The Medicare and maybe things have changed. Medicare requires every hospital that takes Medicare patient to do a broad overview of their encatchment area to look at. They wouldn’t call it public health. Yeah. But they would, they would. The social determinants

57:21 of health and those sorts of things. So in, in 2022, there is a, a fairly well written, ni nice document on the, the environment of, uh, of, of referrals from the nine, nine community, nine municipalities that refer to Salem Hospital. And I learned a little bit about the demographics. Um, Marblehead is, has the third highest percentage of young people, and the second highest percentage in referrals of older people into, into, uh, into Salem Hospital. ‘cause you get that kind of information from them.

58:08 But, but for me, partnering that when I, a hundred years ago, when I was in medical school, even then, we were told that 40% of all the patients’ family medicine had met, you know, were were psychiatric type questions. Is that consistent? Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Not more So. The, from my perspective, the interface, one of the things that separates the American system from almost every other healthcare system in the world is that public health is so in separate from the delivery system. No. No matter the the country, they have figured out ways of linking public

58:53 and delivery system health better than we do. And that cau that is an enormous bad word, but stressor on the system be because there’s not that continuity. Um, and, um, it would take an enor, it, it, it took Affordable Care Act, a great deal of political capital and everything else. And Trump still wants to, to get rid of it to, for us to change as fundamentally as one would have to do to go away from the market oriented healthcare system that we have, uh, it would be, it would be enormous. But in any event, those are the kind of things that we should be thinking about.

59:39 Big picture. And if, if I ever do get a chance to do that little health literacy program, that’s the kind of thing we talk about. Okay. All right. Um, questions, comments? We got other parts of the, uh, of the meeting to go to. Alright. Uh, I’ll, I’ll just do Bills first real quick. Um, a one exterminators for rack control at the transfer station. $300 Agri Source for, uh, the grinding of the compost removal. 6,400 Amazon Capital Services for other disposal. $22 cents at and t for internet access, $131 96 cents. Black Earth compost for the residential food composting.

1:00:26 Pick up recycle bags, $2,554 88 cents. Bonai. Um, is, is it Logic or Logic? Logic. I typo. Um, $9,097 34 cents. I’ll never pronounce these guys, right. D Ulli Deli. Yeah. I can’t see. I don’t know. They need to fix that. 201,000. They’re there for the transfer station project. Um, 201,200, uh, $21 and 40 cents. Um, f and s hardware. Uh, miscellaneous Building repair maintenance, $140 5 cents. Uh, gamblers for uniforms, 106 $76 56 cents. Hayward Inc. Um, engineering firm for the transfer station.

1:01:12 $18,367 and 13 cents. Home Depot for area maintenance supplies $336 84 cents. Marblehead Collision for repair to a health inspection vehicle, 1090 $2 and 62 cents. Marblehead Counseling Center for Psychological Counseling, $4,435 and 5 cents. Marbled Light Department for electricity, $2,868 and 78 cents. Marble Light News Group for advertising. Promotional $150. Um, marbled water and sewer for water and sewer, $126 and 2 cents. Meat teller, Mecosta for legal, three $44. Um, Michael c Che, uh, he’s the licensed site professional for the transfer station project.

1:01:58 $8,498. Um, ocean State sign for the blinker sign. Uh, flashing Beacons. 12,100. Where’s that? That’s Gonna be, uh, as you’re xing the facility, that’s gonna be the new science. Okay. Um, this one, I don’t have a good definition for Quant. Quant health doctors. So that’s our quad town’s, um, physical stuff like that. Yeah, I have to figure that was like flu shots, things like, no, Quadron Health is us sending employees for physicals. Okay. Okay. Um, $654 Republic Services for Trash collection. $69,204 and 4 cents. RMG Enterprise is LLC, the company that recycles, um, TV monitors and such.

1:02:44 $860 44 cents. Stericycle, they, uh, pick up the Sharp’s collection medical waste, um, $1,998 and 33 cents. Uh, Tom Soro had head and expense $39 and 18 cents. Yeah. Postcards for Gil, um, T-Mobile for telephone. $33 and 6 cents. United Construction. Um, the repair and maintenance of non-high vehicles, $947 78 cents UTECH for mattress to recycling. $7,722 UTS of Massachusetts. That’s concrete and soil testing. 3,400 Verizon for internet access, $168 99 cents. Waste Management for trash disposal. $64,656 7 cents.

1:03:33 WB Mason for office supplies and printing forms. $141 34 cents. William Scottsman. Um, they pay for the rented trailer, uh, $2,502 and 71 cents. And the Winter Street Architects firm for the transfer station project. $22,482 and 52 cents. That’s that. And then, um, we have the Wellness Fair, which will be February 28th, which is a Saturday. Um, so I, I, I’m sure I have a copy of all the ones that we came last year and their information. Do you still have one just in case? Yeah, I probably have copies of everything. Okay. Yeah, if you do, and we, I don’t know if you wanna forward ‘em to me,

1:04:19 make sure mine is, I, I, I know I have. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, Yeah, I can take a look to see what I have for layout and stuff like that, and who, who did it last year. We can. Yeah. And if any of you, if you guys think of someone else that should be there, you know, reach out. The big draw for people is raffle prizes just for showing up. Huh. So, um, now, And you have, uh, people don’t eat. Yeah. So that’s everyone I ask. You know, some people, it’s not obviously gonna work, but, you know, for whatever they do. But, you know, they can still have a table, whatever. Um, but you know, for lots of the gyms and stuff like that, they do a free month membership or like yoga class. It was, it was good. It was great. And now the problem we’re gonna run into is a lot of the

1:05:06 advertising for this came from me on social media. And I was actually literally going to these places, you know, most of ‘em for physical stuff, taking classes and writing huge reviews. And I was doing like one a week pictures, everything, and then I’d increase the list of raffle prizes on there. And I did that for a couple months. Well, I’ve, I’ve obviously already done that, so they, that’s the past, I can’t redo it. Um, so I’m gonna try to figure a way to make, revisit the ones I did online, um, but also with, as long as you guys are okay with it, I wanted to get, um, Kim Crowley is very good with social media and very connected to a lot of these places, so I wanted to kind of team up with her on

1:05:54 that advertising on in social media portion. Uh, as long as you guys are good with that. Um, Yeah. Do, uh, why February 28th? Yeah, you gotta get the rec center. So we, we were initially gonna do it, you know, it was gonna be a January thing, new Year’s resolution type thing. Um, and so you then, trying to keep it relatively close to that, but give us time to promote it a little bit. And so we were looking at February and Andrew found that, you know, when the rec center’s available. Yes. Do you Need more time? Do you wanna push it out? I don’t, I think it’s enough. Um, I think it’s just gonna be a matter of recontacting everyone in the good thing, last time accidentally, we did it on a holiday weekend, so that maybe that hurted a little bit. But, um, we still had really good numbers. So, um, I think February 28th, you know,

1:06:41 we almost have, you know, a month and a half. It’s pretty good. Um, so, oh, the one thing, one thing I did get pushback on last time was we did it for four hours. And some of the things people said it was a little long matters. So I, I kind of tested a couple of ‘em was like, what’s, what’s better? And they just said three. Okay. So, So like nine to 12? I was thinking more like 11 to two. Okay. You know, we just started With Jamie, but I, you know, I think we have the whole day. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so 11 to two, I think that’d be good for a Saturday. The community Center or? Yeah. Yep.

1:07:19 Did you have places offering food or like little, They can Do not have any places offering food. They have like different, different groups at different samples. Yeah. Um, there’s a lot of like supplement samples. There was some other stuff. Um, you know, Yeah. It was kind of on them if they, you know, I think, uh, I don’t know who was, there was definitely some stuff. Was it, was Hope Nutrition given up stuff or They were there? I don’t, she think she was giving out samples. Um, I think the, Like with the food stuff, there does come in some food safety issues and the things you have to follow certain procedures with that, with the supplements, it’s usually like contained it’s bag, it’s already prepared. So it’s ready to eat. Um, like

1:08:05 Grab the bagel, that’s something that people can Purchase. Yeah. Again, like you have to like, because we do the food safety side, like he has to be conforming to that. We can’t be promoting anybody. Um, so it has to, if you start to open up for one, then you’re gonna have to open it up for everybody. And so that then you’re gonna start to create like a taste team. Oh, sure. The different, Yeah. Yep. So I did get offered last year and I said no at the time. And I said I’d ask this year if it was appropriate athletic beer did offer, which is non-alcoholic. Alcoholic, yeah. Yeah. So I didn’t know last time I said, let’s hold off, this is short notice. ‘cause they offered at the very end. I don’t know. Is that something that they could, they were just gonna give out free stuff.

1:08:50 I mean, again, that’s all canned and like ready to eat, and so I wouldn’t necessarily be against that. Okay. I didn’t know if it was against the rules ready. Exactly. They’re getting a good Flu now. I, Yeah, it’s a kind of like, to me it’s, you know, it’s, it’s not a supplement, but it’s kind of like falls within that category a little bit. I I’m not a, I’m not a boost to that one. Okay. I didn’t know if there was any Or anything. So maybe there is some benefits to that. Yeah. Um, Um, did we have blood pressure monitoring? We Did it. Yep. Okay. What about, um, uh, uh, measuring head measuring of kids for helmet? We did not have that. No. Okay. Yeah, that’s something that would be good. I don’t know, maybe the bike, one of bike shops you might offered to do that. Um, and we had Marblehead Counseling Center. Yep. We had Marblehead Counseling Center.

1:09:37 Isn’t that the Tilly group? What was, What’s the Tilly group? That’s another, um, uh, therapy group in town. Um, they’re also in Beverly and s Swampscott, but there’s also Marblehead office. So we’ll have the check our records on that one. But you know, if you wanna reach out to them and say, yeah, we’ll just let them know. Um, um, And we needed a release form last time, is that Right? Yeah. So we’ll have all the forms and stuff like that. So we’ll do all the paperwork. It’s gonna be very similar. Okay. If you can send me a copy next, when I reach out to people, I’ll just send that right to with, so It’s, so yeah, none of that needs to get recreated. It’s all kind of developed. We just have to push it out again. Um, and that just tells us, you know, they want a table, here’s the consent form and stuff like that. Yeah. Um, we will set up the tables and,

1:10:22 and again, like they were allowed to bring, you know, some of ‘em have more than just like the table like booth stuff. So they, you know, we allowed some of them to kinda set up some of their stuff. Mm-hmm. Um, I wanna say there was acupuncture person, there was massage people. Um, so some of that stuff was kind of interesting. Like local gyms, like the wide, Like local gyms, the y was there, A lot of the aerobics, you know, are, um, different, you know, yoga class studios and all that stuff. Was there Bloom poster? Yep. We can do a Bloom poster. We could reach out to Bloom to see if they actually want to come. Yeah, that’d be great. So let that, let me take a look at that one. Um, When I was sick, I was making all these notes, like, Again, you know, this was trying to work with the community to, to allow everybody to kind

1:11:08 of showcase what Marvella has. Oh. Uh, farm Direct co-op. Um, I wanna say, but they, they are kind. Yeah, they accomp, you know, Steve is the one that does that. Um, we can reach out to them and see, you know, oh, and then Marble had parenting, I’m sure. Uh, I think, I don’t know if they came last year or not. Yeah. Okay. I got, yeah. Reach out to them. Yeah, We’ve been trying to be, yep, That’s, that’s I, Okay. And if the press is listening, I’ll, I’ll throw another pair of Bruins tickets in as a raffle prize just for showing up. If you wanna stop sharing, I can go back to the,

1:11:51 So I’m just gonna bug off. Yeah, you can log off. Yep. I sent, I sent the slides to you. If anybody else wants the slides, gimme either your text or something, but I could do, Okay. Um, then the last item I had was the, so this is what we voted on in July, was, um, the transfer station landfill closure settlement statement. This is the statement of what happened to the money. All right. None of these board members were on the board during that. Andrew did a very good presentation. I, you know, I’ve said this is a two part thing always is.

1:12:37 So Andrew did it, you know, and I’ll make this available too, you know, when we, however we put this out, the web address for the, it’s recorded. I don’t know how many slides you did. 70 170 is very good. I sat through it, um, live. And, um, you know, it explains when you dig in an area like that, um, you know, which in a historical town, you can kind of guess what you’re gonna find, but you don’t know what you’re gonna find. And then when you do find things, it, it changes stuff. So that’s half the story. Um, the other half would be that there was a settlement reached eventually. So something clearly went wrong. Now I could write this, and if I wrote it, every amount of dollars that we got from the settlement would be taken back

1:13:23 because I would break all the rules. So that’s why we had to have town council write it is probably not surprising that if town council writes it, they’re gonna be very much, you know, cautious of saying anything, you know, even remotely close to the line. Um, I don’t, quite frankly, I don’t think they wanted to write anything, period. But I, I harassed them enough to get it. So we do have a letter. Um, you know, it’s okay. It’s not, it’s not gonna answer any pressing questions that anyone has. And, and we’re never gonna get those answers because, you know, then all of a sudden you’re,

1:14:08 you’re writing a check back for $1.2 million. So, um, did you guys have any thoughts on this as, I mean, you guys already been here in town, right? But when did you move to town? 2016. So, uh, you were barely in town for it because it ended, what, 2018? Yeah. So I don’t know, did you have a chance to read through this? And I, Yeah, I read through the email. I, but I, I didn’t read any of the, The statement, The this from Yes. This One? Yes. Okay. What you sent us from the lawyer. I, but I didn’t go back into the, uh, board of health Meeting. Okay. What, what did you think?

1:14:46 Let’s see how I be polite. What it was classic, uh, uh, legal response that people know how to say nothing and charge it for it. Yeah. I mean, it, it, they, they didn’t want for the right reasons. They didn’t want to Yes. Put the, put the settlement at risk. The, the trick, not the trick. The, the most important thing is to sit through Andrew’s slides. It really is fascinating be when I came, I didn’t even know what a transfer station was. But when I would talk to people about wanting to run the board, run from the border, I would say, why the hell do even want to do that? They don’t know how to do anything. They can’t even run the transfer station. So I wanted to learn he

1:15:33 170 slides, what, 90 minutes? It’s a lot. It’s a lot. It was years of work. But you really wanna understand the depth of how complicated an effort that is. He does it, it did an amazing job. I don’t know if you could cut it to slides in half and raise, but, but in any event, it’s worthwhile to really understand it. And at the time I went on, uh, EPA, we could get a lot more information on how the federal government, and almost every one of the kind of project that the transfer station was to reclaim soiled or, uh, damaged landscape

1:16:19 was always over budget because nobody knew what they were gonna get into. And nobody wanted to bid the, the highest possible price because then they wouldn’t get the contract. So it was a, it was a double edged sword. People wanted to bid the lowest possible legitimate price, and then they kept asking for more money as the contract was extended. And that’s exactly what happened. Um, so I, it, it is a fascinating slideshow for anyone who wants to know the history of Marvel life. Is it available on the website? It should be available. It was on the website. The website’s changed, so I don’t know if it’s still there. I I have the, I have the link somewhere in my emails.

1:17:05 Um, I can send it to you. Yeah, Send it to me. Yeah. Um, I, I know the, uh, the, also the marble, the TV has it. Um, but I mean,

1:17:19 yeah, I, I don’t know. I don’t know how much more pushing back would get more answers.

1:17:27 I, you know, there’s some things in here where, you know, it says, oh, if you want more information, check the, you know, the meeting minutes don’t, it’s like two sentences. Again, newcomer wasn’t here, but the positive things that came out of the transfer station around the strike have put a lot of those things to bed. I hope. I mean, I hope so. I, it’s just, you know, I think that, you know, like I said, none of us were on that board. I think at the time. If, if it had been spoken about more at the time in a way that people knew, then, then you wouldn’t need something like this. And you wouldn’t have to rely on town council being, you know, vague.

1:18:13 So, lesson learned for everyone in the future that kind of kind of talk when things are going well, you know, put it out there when things are going wrong, so you don’t have to try to look back and figure it out. But if we get the, I mean, I could put this out there. If so, I don’t know what I’d read it right now, but it’s two pages, so I don’t wanna, it might open up a can of worms. You might just wanna make it available. Yeah, no, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll make, yeah, I’ll make it a available. Money’s never gonna come back. It’s gone. Okay. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. No, I’ll maybe The best of 14 municipalities getting through the strike. Let’s just sell it that Way. So, yeah, so I can put up something kind of just reiterating

1:19:00 that there’s a video out there. I can give the link. I can say, you know, this isn’t gonna be perfect, but this is what it is. And I can make a little statement like that and give it to put it out on social media that, and put it, uh, send it to the current weekly and independent as long as you guys are okay with that.

1:19:20 Okay. Uh,

1:19:24 Move back flu.

1:19:27 Um, yeah. So, um, for, uh, flu update, uh, first. So, um, as we all know, flu activity is very high in Massachusetts and throughout the country. Um, that’s why I wasn’t here last meeting. I tested positive the next day, so I’m glad I didn’t spread it around. Um, but from my personal experience and seeing patients, it is as bad as everyone says. Um, it seems like symptoms are more severe and lasting longer, um, than in typical years. So, um, on current, on review of current numbers, uh, the latest data we have from the CDC is from the week ending, uh, January 3rd. So it looks like the percentage of respiratory samples, it was quite high, um, that tested positive for flu A was was 32.9, and it did drop to 24.7. Um, but that’s thought to be due to more, um, decreased,

1:20:14 decreased reporting over the holidays than a true drop. It’d be great if we’re past the peak, but that doesn’t seem likely. Um, it’s more likely that we have a few more weeks left of high flu activity. So, um, and then, so currently the influenza life illness, or if you see like ILI, those are outpatient visits to the doctor for fever, cough, and sore throat. And currently the percentage of visits is highest, and it’s been since about 1997. Um, this week ending in January 3rd of the Massachusetts, ILI is founded for almost 11% of visits, um, which was down from the prior week of 12%. And baseline is about three. Um, so the marble head current recently did a nice article

1:21:01 on the flu, but I want to reiterate that the flu vaccine is still the breath, the best protection against severe disease. Um, and even though, uh, there is a mismatch from the dominant flu strain, um, and what’s in the flu vaccine, the data from the UK show that there’s still meaningful protection with effectiveness reducing ED visits and hospitalizations by about 72 to 75 in children and, uh, and adolescents. So that’s up to 18. And then 32 to 39% is adults. And that’s pretty similar to prior years when there is a matching, um, strain. Um, so as a reminder, the flu vaccine is not likely going to prevent people from getting the flu, but the its strength lies in preventing severe illness.

1:21:48 Um, and so, so far in Massachusetts, we’ve had four pediatric flu deaths at 66 adult deaths so far. Um, and last year in the US there were 289 pediatric flu deaths, and about 89% were unvaccinated. Um, so, and our current, our country’s current vaccination rate is about 43.5. That’s as of December. Um, so we’re hoping more people will get vaccinated and we’ll, we’ll shoot past last year’s numbers. Um, but in two, we don’t have last year’s data, but we have data from the year before, and it was about 55% in children and about 47% in adults. Um, so in addition to vaccination, kind of standard, um, hand washing is important. Trying not to touch your face in public, guilty of that myself.

1:22:35 Um, and then staying home when sick to prevent transmission to others. Um, and then individuals at higher risk to talk to their doctors when they do, when they have positive home tests about, um, antiviral treatment, if their candidates, um, that reduces severity and also reduces transmission. Um, I think that’s, well of people. One, the numbers. Um, there’s been about 15,000 infect, 15 million infections so far, 180,000 hospitalizations and 7,400 deaths so far in the us. Um, I just looked back and see to see what year had the highest numbers to date, and it was 2018 with 29 million illnesses and, um, about 28,000 deaths. Um, so that’s all about flu.

1:23:21 Something that is mentioned though, because food, I’d like to hear what your thoughts are is that the flu virus is a different size, and masking might actually help. And people, you know, um, we, we associate masking because of COVID, but you know, as far as other respiratory illnesses, rhinovirus and all those masking does help even the surgical masks that we’re talking about. So, you know, going into, uh, a movie theater you might put one on because you’re gonna be sitting there among many other people. It’s not just walking by somebody. So exposure would be much more, um, and that somehow never gets

1:24:09 talked about along with the hand washing and that, because if you’re in a group and you’re talking with somebody, you can have the cleanest hands, whatever, but it’s transmitted directly to you. And so it’d just be something to also think about. Um, Just wanted to add that in there. I, I’ll, I’ll have to tell you, my last year of practice as pediatrician, every time my medical assistant said there was a respiratory illness, I decided I just didn’t wanna get sick that year. So I wore a mask at each time, and parents were fine with it, you know, because they didn’t want me to get sick, but who’s gonna take care of their kid? Mm-hmm. Okay. Mm-hmm. So, I mean, it’s something to think about in certain situations.

1:24:55 I’m not saying walk around with a mask all the time, but think about it in particular situations where you might be in close contact for more, you know, a longer period of Time. Yeah. And, and I was thinking about the grocery stores as the ‘cause even in, in COVID when people were home and the only place they go is in grocery stores, you know, variable, get it there. And I think it’s, that’s what, when people are sick, they go there to get their cough medicine and you’re, you’re in close aisles. So, Wanted to ask That. Yeah. What are you hearing from the schools in town in terms of, um, absentee rates and any things that, um, any information or facts or antidotes that you can share?

1:25:42 I haven’t heard from the schools, but it does seem to be that the most hospitalizations are in kids. Um, so I would think the schools are, are affected, but I, I haven’t spoken to directly to the schools. Oh, so they don’t notify you? No, they, it’s not required that they notify us of the numbers. They’re providing the numbers that they see to the state directly. Um, Oh. But you would think you’d wanna know That if you see an uptake, you might make recommendations. We’re, we’re relying on the state’s, you know, essentially the flu dashboard as they call it, to get all, you know, general information. They’re not getting so granular as marblehead, but as like the Northeast region, these are the numbers that we’re seeing and stuff like that. Because Medford just had a case. They closed the school down a certain school that went, yeah. So there’s been a couple schools across the state

1:26:27 that have been dealing with Norovirus and a couple other viruses where the, the population or the, you know, the absentees was so high that they chose, there’s a lot of times that the school, the school will decide to do deep cleans. Um, they’ll bring cleaning foods or special crews in at nighttime to really, you know, deep clean everything. Um, but no, it’s not required that they notify us at that time. And what about the confusion with, from what the federal government is stating? So what those of us who, how many days do you have? Okay. No, that’s actually my next topic. I, I could go on if you’d like. Um, so, so, um, in health news, so on on January 5th, the CDC overhauled the universal recommendations

1:27:14 of 17 vaccines and reduced them to 11. Um, this was not the result of the, um, of the ASIP committee under CDC, which typically guides the vaccine decisions, but came directly from HHS secretary with a 33 page assessment, um, from two longtime critics of the existing vaccine schedule. Um, so under the new CDC guidance vaccines that are no longer routinely recommended, um, universally recommended Hep A, Hep B rotavirus, influenza, COVID and meningococcal disease. So these vaccines could be administered based on shared clinical decision making, uh, between families and healthcare providers, which many people don’t even know what that means, including doctors that form consent. Um, and when you hear that, it does sound collaborative.

1:28:02 Um, but in, in practice it’s clinicians are already doing these things. They’re discussing the benefits and risks, so any health intervention, um, but this change in policy is concerning ‘cause it signals that now these, these illnesses are less dangerous and vaccination is now optional instead of routine. Um, so luckily at least 17 states, I think there’s more though, um, have announced that they will not follow this new guidance, and that’s including Massachusetts. Instead, they’ll follow the guidance from the, um, American Academy of Pediatrics, uh, which continues to recommend the prior evidence-based vaccine schedule. Um, and currently a a p and 200 health groups have sent a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to look at this and, and, um, make changes to this new vaccination schedule.

1:28:48 Um, and I just wanna read, um, this great quote from our, um, wonderful public health commissioner, Dr. Robbie Goldstein. Um, the decision to change CDCs childhood immunization schedule is reckless and deeply dangerous. It abandons decades of rigorous evidence-based science and replaces clear public health guidance with confusion and doubt. At a moment, we are seeing measles outbreaks, the resurgence of whooping cough and a flu season that has already taken the lives of children in our state. This ill-advised federal action, puts families in an impossible position and puts infants, children and communities at risk. Families count on public health leaders to help protect their children. And we in Massachusetts will not back away from that responsibility. Um, so, uh, many people have lots of questions, understandably. Um, and so I just wanna encourage everyone to talk to their,

1:29:34 uh, physician healthcare provider and look to the American Academy of Pediatrics for guidance. And the, um, mass DPH, um, has issued multiple great materials

1:29:47 And for providing that guidance. By the way, the American Academy of Pediatrics lost $12 million in grant support.

1:29:56 Now, a court said yesterday that that couldn’t be done, but we’ll see if they ever get the money back.

1:30:05 What have we posted on the website? Is there any postings, I mean, any policy, any guidance, any, Um, put in the, the mass DPH? Uh, yeah, We can definitely do that. We can definitely take a look. Sorry. Yeah, there’s a lot of resources That, yeah, I think that would be great talking our, our, our, um, website is a bit rudimentary. Um, but we could, we could certainly put more in there,

1:30:36 But we, we, we don’t have good granular data. That is, if, if the delivery system and the public health system were integrated, we would be able to do much better at putting out information for Marblehead. When, when, uh, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Talks about Denmark. Denmark is a, is a, is a country one, it’s only 6 million people, but also with, uh, u Uniform Health across the board. So they know right down to probably the block in which people live, where the, where all, all the, all the pathology occurs. And it, that that’s the, that’s, uh, the,

1:31:23 the inconsistency in our, in our system that we, the, the public health system, which could use that kind of granular information as opposed to individual information that sees, that sees the, the physician. We, we don’t have good, we don’t have good, uh, information at that level. It’s tragic. Yeah.

1:31:49 So we’ll see what happens. No questions.

1:31:58 Director’s Report. Uh, transportation. Thank you. That was great. I mean, that’s really important. Yeah. Uh, transportation project update. Um, the project is progressing nicely. Um, we have approximately 30 days left to construction, um, for the season. They will have to come, come back to complete the paving, the line p um, and the, I believe the front gate installation, um, the scale has been moved into its permanent location. The scale pad obviously has been completed. The lower concrete walls are completed. The lower concrete pad where the trailer sits has been completed. We are now back and able to operate for our trash at the transfer station and trash that we’re, that’s coming in from

1:32:44 curbside trash truck. Um, so that’s really great for us. For the last couple of months, we have been running to resco, um, Republic has had to go to resco. Um, so it’s a, it’s a large burden that we’re making multiple trips, sitting in long waiting lines to dispose of trash. So we’re now back operational with that. Um, a lot of work is being completed on the scale house itself. Um, and that’s really gonna take the duration of the project. Um, you can see the framing’s complete. The roof is being installed. If, if not completely installed at this point, you’ll start to see siding. And then the majority of the work inside is obviously taking place. Rough plumbing, um, is completed. They’ll be working on rough electrical and all that stuff moving forward.

1:33:30 Um, as far as other additional site work, um, the fence has been in installed along. Um, if you’re exiting the facility on the right hand side, that’s a new fence. Um, they have been Is it in The same, is it in the same spot? Yeah, same location. Okay. So there was some concern that the gate would be moving out. So the way, so it is a funky entrance to the property. Mm-hmm. And so the idea is that we, we need to make sure that the way the gate works is that it’s essentially a 50 foot gate that, so it’s extends 35 feet into, you know, to, to close off the entrance of the exit. And then a swing, a 25 foot swing gate has to swing over

1:34:15 and make that closure. Mm-hmm. So, yes, it does stick out farther than the existing gates that are there now, but that’s the only way we can really, that’s the way it was designed almost all the way back in 2012 for the original transfer station proposal and stuff like that. How much Does that push it out from its existing spot? It pushes, I’d have to take a look at it, but it does push it out feet, A couple feet Length at over, probably over five feet and stuff like that. Yeah. Okay. There was some concern. There is concern from the neighbors on how, you know, is it hindering their access? We don’t believe it is. We are gonna to our due diligence to make sure that we can try to reduce any of that. Um, but obviously trying not to interfere with, you know, operations that need to occur on our facility.

1:35:02 Yeah. But we are gonna take our due diligence to take a look at that. Okay. They thought it was like 20 feet, so Yeah. It is not 20 feet out into the, yeah. Okay. Yep. Um, utilities are being installed. Um, so we have sewer being connected. There’s gonna need, there is a new sewer manhole that was gonna be installed. The manhole was not a part of the plan. There will be a change order for that. We’re going reviewing costs for all that. Um, there is a new drain, um, catch basin and manhole, um, because of topography we need to add another catch basin in the middle. Um, the elevations of the sump sum, both the basins weren’t as deep as we thought. And so because we’re, we’re close to cover, you know, to the, to the surface, we need to add another catch basin,

1:35:50 um, which is in the middle of that drain line. I do have a change order for that. So we need the board to vote on that. Um, so this is the add an additional catch basin between the actual storm gr and the, the existing manhole. And this goes right in the middle. Um, and this is due to topography and stuff like that, and sum elevation. Um, so I, I need the board to approve, uh, the change order for the drain structure. And that’s a total of $5,276. So moved second. All in favor?

1:36:32 Um, Unanimously passed. Yep. Um, so they’ll be working on the utilities. They’re concentrating on the exit gate. Um, so that’s that exit line for residents to leave the facility. Currently they have to exit, uh, out the entrance. We’re trying to reduce that as much as possible. Um, but what we don’t want to do is open it and then have to close it for a couple days. We’re trying to get all that work done and open and, you know, just allow it to continue to flow out. Um, again, the sewers in, they’ll be working on the water connection that should occur over the next couple of days. Um, some signal work, you know, some utilities and stuff like that in that area. And then we’re trying to get that out and so the residents can exit out the original execute.

1:37:18 Um, but we’re making great progress. Um, it’s really nice to have that scale and a new scale pit in front of the compactor to have a brand new concrete pad for that trailer to sit on new wing walls down the road. Um, and we’re really excited to see this new scale house. Mm-hmm. So things are going well. It is our quiet period, so that’s great. Um, and so that’s really the big updates for that project. Um, any other questions? Is k giving it the thumbs up so far? K is giving it the thumbs up about No, it would be, you know, it’s really exciting that K will have really a dedicated scale office. She’s gonna have her own bathroom, so she really doesn’t get bothered by anybody. Mm-hmm. She’ll have really good communication with people checking in, people leaving.

1:38:06 Um, yes, it’s a lot of new technology and new things that she’ll have to learn. Um, but there’s gonna be a video in her com when people pull up, um, that she’ll be able to communicate with them about procedures and getting on the scale. And then there’s a transaction drawer that has another, you know, uh, intercom. So trying to make sure that we have great ways of communication between, uh, the commercial and all of that. Mm-hmm. I, a Question just on, um, yeah, there are boat calls Yeah. That we have seen, you know, when we go up and Yep. Our recycling and everything else up there. What are those? Why? So those were disposed by several residents in town. Um, so they are going through, they, they’ve waited and paid for those. Um, and we’re just waiting for the opportunity

1:38:52 to crush them up, um, and process them essentially. Okay. Thanks. Yep. And the license plate readers are all, yeah. The license plate readers are all up and running. Obviously those have been running for the year now. Um, you know, do you want to talk about that a little bit or? So, Um, I talked to the guys up there. They say that they, it’s all good reviews on them. I imagine right now there’s some, you know, being the New year people 11. Yep. So it’s probably going off like crazy. Yep. Um, so yeah, we are at the new year, so we wanna remind everybody that you need to renew your permits. Um, ‘cause it’s on an annual basis. The sticker. The sticker. Yep. And so, again, you don’t have to have the sticker on your vehicle. The, the license plate reader is gonna read your vehicle in real time and tell us if you have a permit or not. That’s valid. And so that tells, um,

1:39:41 the transaction up, up at top of the hill and he, you know, it, it beeps at ‘em. There’s a red box that goes around your license plate in your car, in your vehicle. Um, and so he can co he will come out and talk to you to say you need to upgrade your vehicle. It’s no longer, uh, working. The one thing I would like to get maybe at the entrance is a sign that says we’re using a license plate reader. Sure. You know, something that just kind of a warning thing, like otherwise, you know,

1:40:12 So there’s no grace period. I’m gonna get beeped. There is no grace period. Haven’t renewed mine either. I’m sure everyone’s going out there just now Tuesday and heading get beep. I thought it’s Tuesday. We’re ‘cause because of the way we’re exiting cars right now. Yeah. There’s not necessarily somebody in that transaction. Not right now. They’re directing traffic. Yeah. Yeah. I thought it took a long time to get the sticker. I’ll tell you. So it’s instant. So when you go on the computer and you, you process it, that you have it already. You just, you’re waiting to receive The sticker, physical sticker Took the two days. So, but that’s not clear. That’s not clear when you go on there. Okay. You could use it right away. Yep. I’m, wait, I, ‘cause I have all this stuff and I’m waiting for the sticker. You do not need to wait for the sticker. So you need to put that On there unless you plan On going swimming at de Row. Yeah. The sticker’s only. Oh, I,

1:40:58 I get it. I understand. But I just want, you know, I, but I think you should put that, you should Receive an email to say this transaction has processed and Well, it said it takes two or three days to process, which was another thing. You think why does I, I can bring you all those things. Yep. It took that long because it wasn’t processed. It should be processed right away. You got my credit card. Right. But I have to verify the information you’re submitted as correct. But why Okay. If, okay, if this is the question I have, if I have a, if my license plate, if you have my license plate, why do I have to put in all that information? I don’t have your license plate. You are providing that information to me. But Excuse me. Your system has the license plate.

1:41:45 No, The DMV doesn’t share the information. I’m not getting it from the DMV. I’m meaning It from No, but I mean from a prior year is what I’m saying. No, but it’s a new year. I’m not pulling that over. So I’d be a good, You don’t pull any of that. I’d be a good example. I moved, so when I went to do it, my old address was in there, you know, even with, with my name. So I to email side. So verifying then, Then Okay. Because I’m, Couldn’t I do the same thing last year? Correct. Yeah. Okay. That explains. Yep. Okay. When I did mine, I went up to the office and did it up there. Two days later it was in my mailbox. Yeah. Yeah. The, I did get the Email saying I was good To go. Yeah. The hard thing with the, the mail in Marblehead now is

1:42:31 that I, if I send a letter out of my office, it’s going to Boston and then back to Marblehead for delivery. Okay. And it takes, during the busy time, it takes about two weeks. Yeah. Good. Yeah. So it, it’s a real inconvenience for us. Um, if I’m trying to get things out on a timely basis, especially if I don’t know who you are, I don’t have an email address and I’m trying to just send you a letter. We we’re in this really slow period. It used to be a couple days. Right. Okay. Good. Good to know. Yeah. Um, curbside collection, uh, contracts, um, we will be receiving, you know, bids tomorrow. Um, bids are due at 10 o’clock. The way the system works is it’s, it’s electronic.

1:43:17 So everything that’s submitted will actually be turned around and become live at 10:00 AM. Um, with curbside collection and trash contracts, we have the revi the right to review all the contracts. This is not a low bid wins contracts. This is a totally separate procurement. Um, trash curbside collection is totally exempt from all that process. I can get bids and go back to the bid and say, Hey, I want to talk about this with you. I think you can go lower. I have the right to do that. Um, so we will take a look at this. All of these, we will evaluate them. We will make, I will be evaluating them. I will be talking to some of them and then I’ll be making a recommendation to the board. Mm-hmm. Um, but this is for curbside collection, trash disposal.

1:44:05 Um, and there’s different parts in that, again, where we put it out. We’re asking people to give us numbers for what we call regular collection. So essentially the way we do it today, we’re looking for collection through auto automation. Um, so that’s a truck that has an arm that comes out the side. Everybody has a standardized barrel. Um, and then we have the third option is automation with recycling every other week, we’ve all talked about this. Um, we believe we know the direction we’re heading in. Um, it’s our understanding that the, what we’re doing today would actually be the most expensive. Uh, the reason why it’s the most expensive is that it’s the most number of employees that you can do. You’re, you have a driver,

1:44:52 you have laborers on the backside, going to automated or automation is technically it should be cheaper than all the other options. Um, we’re also going to get pricing for what it would cost to pick up from all like the, in the business district. Um, so we would have to, we will need to update our rules and regulations, uh, but we will be getting pricing to, to take care of those, um, businesses. They would also be able to put out trash and recycling similar to a resident. Um, and so we will be taking a look at all those numbers.

1:45:27 Um, we’re gonna likely be going to the weekly in instead of the every other. That’s what we believe. Yeah. Um, but we’ll be getting pricing on both. Yes. We will be getting pricing on both. And the pricing is for a 95 every other. Yeah. It Would be for a 95. Every other. Can We do a 95 plus a 35? You could. No, we can’t because we didn’t bid it that way. So you’d have to go back out and get different numbers. Okay. Yeah. Because it would be one thing if it was the same amount that you’re just splitting up over two weeks. But the, the reason why you’re doing, so the reason why you’re doing the every other week with the two barrels is for reduction in costs.

1:46:03 And that’s also, that’s ‘cause that’s so soon not only lower amount but lower trucks. Yeah. So trash would be every week. It’s recycling every other, is that what you’re saying? There is a big option for that, so. Okay. Okay. Just wanted to make sure I understood That. But more likely it’s not. Yeah, yeah. So say I’ve gotten the most pushback on that. Yeah. People want both of them weekly. Yeah. So Just based upon our experience at home. Yep. Um, between trash recycling and composting, our recycling barrel now is the fullest of the three. Mm-hmm. Yep. Mm-hmm. Trash is definitely a lot less than it ever was. Yep. So why wouldn’t we go to a weekly recycling on a biweekly fresh

1:46:49 Because it starts to create rodent issues and build up and stuff like that. Yeah. So we are a rodent community. Um, you know, we do have areas that, and so if you’re not taking care of your trash on a regular basis, you will have more activity. Got it. And Most people don’t compost when you compost. Yeah. All that smelly stuff. Yep. But I’ll tell you too, like, you know, that would be your instance now. And that was mine a couple of years ago. Now that I have two little kids, my trash is actually way higher. And it, you know, in this Yeah, yeah. Going so, so I think it depends on, uh, you know, the way I said five years ago, that wasn’t the case. My, her recycling was over falling and I barely had any trash. And that is not the case anymore. So. Okay.

1:47:34 And again, when we’re, you know, when we continue to talk about trash recycling, we wanna make, we will be now having to, when we, you know, go into this new contracts, um, in this coming fall, we will now have to pay a processing fur for recycling. Currently we do not pay anything to deal with the recycling. That is gonna be a large increase. Mm-hmm. Now, what we wanna make sure that every we’re communicating with the public is that we go by what’s called recycle smart standards. This is the state, you know, across the board. Everybody should be recycling the same things. We wanna make a good product. It’s good value for us. It’s good value for the contractor and it keeps costs down. We wanna make sure that everybody is following the recycle Smart.

1:48:19 We print the recycle smart

1:48:24 diagrams right. On the recycling barrels that we sell currently, when we move to, if we move to the automation and we’re providing barrels to everybody, that will also still be printed on every recycling lid. No, no. When we say we open it up to the business community for a small price, and it’s the same as for residents. So what happens in the instance, say, you know, a lot of businesses have tons of cardboard boxes. Nope. Not allowed. Okay. So how do they, how you, would You exclude any They would be stuck with the same, so they would only be stuck with the 65 gallon barrel recycling also. Okay. So what would be their option for uh, getting rid of those? That’s a hard option because, So we’d have to have some kind of something, you know, like, well,

1:49:11 We, we don’t have To, well we don’t have to, but we should. But we Would, we would like, so the hard thing about that is that trying to come up with a, a, a commercial recycling permit that they could use the, the transfer station is very challenging based on, ‘cause it’s based on tonnage. Yeah. So currently if we sell, you know, a recycling permit, it’s a hundred dollars for commercial businesses to the use of the year. Mm-hmm. We would have to do the calculation and say that’s only really good for a ton. Mm-hmm. And so if there’s a business that’s doing more than a ton, we’re losing money. Mm-hmm. We can’t be losing money to be supporting businesses. Right. So we would have to come up with a formula or they’re gonna have to weigh the recycling as it comes in

1:49:57 and we’d have a, a number for that. Mm-hmm. Which is possible. I think weighing is probably gonna end up being the way Yeah. To go. Yep. Um, but Okay. I’m sorry. Where would you weigh it? So they would come in the commercial side. Okay. They would go across the scale, but instead of dumping in the pit, they would come out back. There would have to be communication with the scale house and the employees in the back, which is not a problem to say, you know, X business is coming up, they’ll be disposing of their, of the recycling, they have paid for it. Mm-hmm. So yeah. All that stuff can be done. We just have to look at themselves. Yeah. And figure that out. I hope you just accept it from Marblehead. ‘cause other people will be bringing it from out of town commercial people. Well, if

1:50:43 They went, if they went not a problem. You know, because actually It’s not a problem until something doesn’t work up there. And then, then you got Yeah. Yeah. Yep. But no, they, if they’re weighing You create work on compress on the machinery and the people that work up there mm-hmm. Who wanna provide it for Marblehead. Yeah. Work. No Marblehead, Marblehead always, Everything sounds good. Everything’s new. Yeah. As it gets older, someone’s off. I heard like the recycling, you’re still doing it separately. Like you do, you know how we put it all together when they pick it up, curbside up there, they want you to separate the stuff. So I Have a co-mingle up there, but I also am separating cardboard out because Yeah. We make more money. Yeah. Like car out When the guys aren’t around, they’re telling me people are throwing stuff in the wrong place. No, no, no. So if we, you know, if no one’s up there

1:51:30 and you got more people busy, you’re gonna create, you see dollar signs that whatever, but they’re gonna contaminate. Yeah. That’s A big problem. Mm-hmm. We wanna get that out there. That, that people should be separating out their cardboard and just Bringing it up. No, because you don’t have to. We don’t. Again, it’s, so when you’re looking at like carbon footprint and all this stuff, really using the, the curbside recycling is the best thing per period because you’re, you are reducing your carbon footprint by having one collection point. Now if you happen to be going up there and stuff like that, it is pretty obvious that you can, there’s a, there’s large open top containers for large pieces of cardboard. People that go there on a regular basis are very familiar with the operations up there.

1:52:16 And you see people kinda have their bags and dump their bags into the recycling and then bring their large pieces of the carload over. Yeah. How many bids are you expecting to bid? So we had a bid meeting and all the large companies, uh, came. So we had Waste Management, we have Republic, we had Gela, uh, we had Wind Waste, we had Capital. Um, you know, those are really, I think Gmail of us here. Um, those were all the big, you know, fortune 500 companies. Um, we believe they’re all interested in it. Wow. So are there any independent, or No. Independent. So Gmail would be the only kind of independent, um, kind.

1:53:03 We had some trucking companies that showed up Viking. Um, so again, with our operations, there’s curbside collections, there’s trash disposal where they’re moving trash from a transfer station to a designated facility, um, with large city yard trailers. Um, and so, you know, waste Management generally subcontracts that out under them. Um, so you had all these other companies, they often try to, you know, network and stuff like that. Okay. And again, in the future, um, in 2030, big problems. Yeah. All the landfills in Massachusetts should be closing. Um, everybody will be moving to rail. Yep. All the big companies essentially,

1:53:49 or at least the top three companies have invested in rail. So Republic, waste Management, cosella all have rail option. So is that something you’ll consider? Um, no, that’s, that’s a, that’s their disposal side of it. Um, this, we’re looking for a five year contract, so that gets us right around that time. Okay. We just have, we just have to remember that once you’re looking past 2030, your numbers are really gonna start to climb. And so nothing will offer a 10 year No, none of them. Would we, when we talked to some of the companies, ‘cause we, we have a 10 year company contract now, which has been very favorable. All of them were like, we won’t go there. Mm-hmm. Or, or you’re gonna see these huge jumps. ‘cause it’s a lot of unknown.

1:54:35 And so it just wasn’t, you know, they’re like, it’s not beneficial for us to do that this way.

1:54:41 So can it, can it be separated that someone could pick up recycling and someone pick up trash or more Than likely it’ll go home curbside? No, it’s gonna be all at once. All at once. Yep. But yeah, you could have, you know, there could be a, a variety of different things. So when you’re talking about recycling, processing and trash disposal, there’s only a couple big processing plants and disposal plants across the state. The processing plants for recycling is very limited. So you have Greenworks, um, are they open? Weren’t they closed? Yeah, they’re open to us. They’re closed for a long time. Yeah, they’re closed for a huge upgrade from September through December. We’re now open for us again. They did a huge upgrade to, um,

1:55:27 work on their plastic recycling. Um, and so they’re working with Coca-Cola and Pepsi to do a huge push to bring a lot of recycling back into their products to say it’s, um, a circular environment. Um, but yeah, they did a lot of upgrades to the machinery. Um, one of the issues right now that we’re running into, so currently black plastic is not allowed to go into your recycling bin. The biggest issue with that is that the optical high readers, is that on the, oh no, that’s recycle. Yeah. Oh no, that is it. Does it say it on there? Yep. Okay. Yep. Um, that when it’s going down the conveyor belt, it gets, blends in with the conveyor belt so it can’t read it. And so it’s a, it’s a, no, it gets kicked out. So they’re trying to upgrade a lot of that stuff.

1:56:12 Again, the way that the plastic market works or recycling it is commodities. Somebody has to wanna buy that material and turn it into something else or remake that item. So, so you were Collecting plastic for a while? We’re always collecting plastic, but The, the like plastic bags and plastic. Yeah. So we had been working with a small company that was working with that. Um, they had such high specs that it was not working, it had to be dry. We’re like, we can, can’t do, we can’t handle that. So that was some of the issues with that. Um, are We gonna be able to go back to it at some point you think? Or are we just gonna leave it to the, It’s gonna be baskets of the world. It’s gonna be left to the market basket for a period of time.

1:56:59 Um, Terra Recycling, I don’t know if you’re familiar with that company. So they, they’re a company that has been in the recycling industry for quite some time. They’ve been known to try to recycle large bulk items, but kind of you’re like obscure items. So they’ll say to you, all right, we’ll collect all your chapsticks containers and if you can gimme a ton of chapstick con containers, I can recycle those. Um, that’s the company that I was dealing with. A lot of that stuff. Mm-hmm. Um, the plastic bags, um, Trex is a big buy or plastic bags and stuff like that. They like to try to buy uniform plastic. So they don’t really love our old shrink wrap and not our kind of what I’m gonna call miss plastic with,

1:57:45 you know, the mixed measurements of the films and all that stuff. That’s, you know, they don’t get as much money as, you know. Um, we could deal directly with Trex if I had a baler and I could sell them bales of boat shrink grab, they would love that.

1:58:03 Um, but that’s it for me.

1:58:06 Uh, is there any additional public comment? It it, uh, the bids are coming tomorrow. When do you anticipate being able to award a bid a month, two months? They have to have time to get your equipment up? No, so they, um, yeah, they mo more than they have to have time to get their equipment up. Generally they have to procure the kids, the equipment. Um, so generally what we like to see is that we like to see brand new equipment dedicated to normal end. Right. Um, so that means it has to be bought built and everything like that. Now it’s easier for these large companies because they already have equipment in the works that they can kind of dedicate to us. They know that they have so many trucks that they’re gonna change over this year. Um, but yes, we need to try to work with them to try

1:58:52 to get them bid bids awarded and they know that they have the contracts. Um, again, so when I, if I got the bids tomorrow and I said, all right, we’re gonna award you the contracts. I still need funding. My contract always says this. The work is dedicated as long as I have funding available to you. So that means every year town meeting, when the funding gets appropriated, the contract continues. If money was not appropriated, I’m not in default to my contract, but they can collect. When do you anticipate them? The new company, whoever it is picking up the first log. So it’s two different dates. So currently my trash disposal contract ends July 1st

1:59:37 and my curbside collection contract ends at the end of September. My curbside collection contract’s so good. I I want to keep that as long as possible. I’m saying, uh, yeah, yeah. I, I want to keep it here. So it’s gonna be kind of two different start dates. Um, so my trash disposal contract would start July 1st and my, um, curbside collection contract would start in, uh, end of, you know, October. Do you feel there need to be some type of public education or whatever, if we make the change, Uh uh. So in the contract, two weeks you’d, well, in the contract it calls out, we’re asking for annual publication to be made.

2:00:22 Yes. We’re gonna have to make publication to say, Hey, we have a new contract again, there’s gonna be some changes or there could be potentially some changes. Um, but if we go to automation, we’re gonna have to get barrels for every home, you know, in marblehead, both trash and recycling. So we’re gonna have to go through that whole process. Um, again, if there is a collection date change that’s gonna have to be made, there’s going, there is gonna be, have to be a lot of notification discussion about that. Thank you. Um, but part of the contract does call out annual education material that has to be sent out to the homes. What they’re taking for recycling, how your trash has to be put out. All that stuff, um, is now gonna be ruled into the contract.

2:01:10 Yeah. And you may wanna publicize, if people have a lot of recycled paper they wanna get rid of, you know, they’ve been saving for years that there’s gonna be a cost of the town. You know, I don’t know if the public buildings, if they have a lot of stuff, I know they shred up a lot of the stuff, but if someone has a, you know, this is the time to do it before we’re paying by the ton, you know, ‘cause it’ll save the town if they put it out the next month or something. Once we start paying, we’re gonna be fighting out. We’re not gonna Yeah. Again, I can only take So much, much material from each household. Yeah. You know, each week. So, you know, unless you’re hoarding tens, tens of tons. Well, I know people that saved a lot of national geographics and stuff. I dunno. Anyone on, uh,

2:01:55 public, um,

2:02:00 I have no answers for that.

2:02:04 Yeah. I get six people online.

2:02:09 Okay. I guess we’ll entertain a motion for adjourn. Oh, when’s our next meeting? 29th or the 26th? That fourth Monday.

2:02:23 Uh, it is the 26th. 26th. And we’re all okay with that? Mm-hmm. I believe so.

2:02:47 So, uh, motion. All in favor? Yep. Second unanimous adjourn. Thank.