Board of Health: February 4, 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.

0:03 It is 7 0 2.

0:09 It’s 7 0 2, and we’re about to open the February 3rd Board of Health meeting. Uh, first item on the agenda is, uh, for the chair to make this report. And I wanna start off talking about the, um, calm wellness survey that creating a healthier mar marblehead go through this quickly. Some, most of you hopefully know this. We submitted invitations to do the survey, survey to every registered person in the town, which was 16,792. Ultimately 2,550 filled out the form. Another a hundred re sent it in, but sent it in blank.

0:58 15% of the response is, according to UMass Boston, our partner, a pretty good response they had. They had bet that, not bet, they have suggested that we wouldn’t get more than 10%. So certainly the Board of Health is grateful for everyone who took the time to complete the survey. The survey consisted of 43 questions, which were curated by the team of six people who live in town and try to customize it for the town. UMass Boston gave us a template of about 50 questions, and we probably, we went through every one of them, eliminated some, added some, and tried to make it, uh, as representative

1:45 of the uniqueness of the town as possible. All 43 of the questions required. Box checking. Then I’ll show a little bit of that in a minute. Several questions. 21 questions, um, had additional write-in opportunities, and most questions had multiple parts. 20. Question 22 might have A, B, C, D. Okay. And so we now have significant data, um, and especially the comments, uh, Dr. Coil at UMass both and said the Marvel headers were as prolific in commenting as any group she’d ever seen. I think that’s a com That’s a compliment. And this is the way we got the data presented.

2:34 We got the question under the title. This is a ques one question under, under a subu subunit. So the question was, do you have concerns about underage substance use in Marblehead? And you can see we’ve, uh, given the answers, um, according to the age deap. And so, um, what is noticeable about this, this, these, and I chose these because they were somewhat extreme for the age 40 to 49 group.

3:20 Uh, 93%, 83% of the responders said they had moderate or high concern about substance use in teenagers in the town on the far right column, all ages, even the, the, the all ages average together. So the town was really quite uniform, and 43% had moderate concern, and 43% had high concern. So again, 86% of the town, um, suggested that substance use in the town, uh, was, uh, significant. And this was all before all of these surveys were in, well

4:08 before the, the debate over social, uh, hosting and all of that occurred in the press and in this board. So I would guess those numbers would be even higher at this point. The, the one of the sub-questions that surprised I think many of us was the next one. This is again, under 18, um, 85, basically 85% of the town felt that bullying was a significant issue for kids. I mean, you read about that a lot, but I hadn’t heard much about that in our schools. My son, who’s about to graduate from the high school,

4:54 doesn’t talk much about what happens in school, like any 18-year-old. But, uh, we had not heard it, but this is a, a big issue there. Um, in the, in the, the last question we asked, uh, was, if you had your option, what would you want the Board of Health to know? And, uh, I think some of these answers are, it, it, well, one of the little answer is that most concerning issues regarding wellness in marblehead are teen drinking and loneliness in the elderly. And then another one was underage drinking and drug drug abuse and family alcoholism. Again, many questions, many comments

5:39 to the board about this. But then the next one, the board should focus on health department issues like restaurant safety, disease prevention, and stay out of social engineering. I was trained as a chemical engineer. It’s a big jump from chemical engineering to social engineering. But, um, I think most of what social engineering that I may have that I bring to this, to this board comes from being, um, a hospital-based physician that people, kids died in PICU and NICU where I worked, and they died a lot because of poverty, segregation

6:26 and lack of support from their community. So if that’s made me a social engineer, I’m fine with it. But Disease prevention, when you’re addressing alcoholism, that’s prevention disease. Mm-hmm. The next one is, is similar. And I, I really do think some, some of these are funny. The board of health should stop concerning itself with emotional issues that are not part of its traditional role. And get the basic ri basics right. First, just focus on the physical aspect that concerns us. Trash pickup and disposal, keep our environment clean and healthy is all the board of health should care about. Deal with the physical constraints, contaminants, trash,

7:13 hazardous dog poop, illegal bump dumping, and noxious fumes. Now we got 392 of these kind of comments. Most of them were serious, but there were, uh, we were, we were called, um, what, uh, uh, we were woke. We were woke to do this and all that. And then there were some really nice ones. Thank you for under 300, taking the survey and helping the community. It’s a wonderful community. We have complex issues and we, we need to, to work to make the, the community stronger. So that’s the background. The next step will be focus groups. During March, we’re gonna try to run

8:01 at least four different focus groups. That will be based on one of the age quintile, uh, ops and WW We, the Board of Health will, will never see any primary data E even the people who have been helping us in the leadership council. Part of the reason we went with, uh, UMass Boston is they have experience in doing these kinds of surveys, and their experience includes the ability to keep privacy and confidentiality at the highest level. So Caitlyn would, is very uncomfortable even sharing primary data.

8:47 She goes through everything to make sure that, that we, we never see anything. And so we will not know anything more about the focus groups other than we may re recommend people who may participate in them. But the, the way Dr. Coyle expects to typically open these kind of things, the hope is that a focus group will allow her and therefore us to get a deeper understanding of the complex issues in the town and examine how those issues might impact our community. So she ti she did did this in our meeting the other day, was telling us how she begins these issues, these, these focus groups.

9:32 And I, I think it’s a really great question. If Marvel had wanted to become a place where everyone, regardless of age or background could achieve greater wellness, what would need to change open-ended. And then she’ll direct, particularly the one age group or another into the questions that the age group has already said they might be interested in. And then she will ask what programs or resources, um, um, would support you as you, as an individual, as you try to achieve or maintain your wellness. So I think we’re all looking forward to the results of these drill downs to add to all of the checkbox

10:21 and short comments that we have. And then by the end of March, we should really be able to write the, the report to the town and hold an open forum and provide, uh, as much information as we possibly can. And, and it’s been, at least I am surprised at how much information we have. It’s really been amazing to see it, but it’s, uh, we’re, we’re really grateful for the town, um, the way, uh, it’s been done. Okay. Uh, question, can You speak about the focus groups? How they, if people wanted to participate, how would they do? So if people learn more about It? Well, if people are interested in focus groups, um,

11:11 they can contact us. Certainly. What we’ll try to do is give, uh, Dr. Co Caitlin, uh, a list of 20 or so names, like, tomorrow I’m gonna meet with the ministerial group, and I’m gonna ask them if they have people in their congregations who might be suitable for say, the 70 to 80 group. And then they would give us that name. We might not know them, we might, and then we will give them the Kailyn and she will break it down, probably working with one or some of us to get it down to maybe a 15th, uh, group. And her plan is, uh, 90, 90 max, 120 minutes to sit

11:57 and go over, um, probably two or three teen issues. If, if, for example, she has a group of, of that’s in the, uh, family, uh, uh, a having, having children, child raising age, asking them, what is you, what are you learning about bullying in your community? And if they know a lot about the bullying, what could we do to make it better? So that’s, I’ve never done one. I’ve never participated in one. It’s, I think it’s been a real interesting situation. We do have one person on the, our little task force who’s very gifted at this, uh, of qualitative research

12:44 and has done surveys herself and has worked with them. So she tends to, to speak to Caitlyn. And, and, uh, it’s been a, it’s been a dynamic. I, I, I think it’s so frustrating to me that the two of you can’t sit in because of open meetings. I mean, drives me nuts. But in any event, okay, that’s, um, the report on Calm Next, my report following up, um, I, I did meet with the Chief of Police. He and I have exchanged, we, he and I have exchanged, uh, um, EE emails and we’re planning to meet again, either the end of this week or next week. And I, and I really remain optimistic that we’re moving toward, um,

13:29 a better place than where, where we started. Um, at the last meeting, I showed the printout on the left hand side. It was all I could find by Google searching for, um, social hosting in the state of Massachusetts. And it was a one page, uh, printout, which I thought was quite good. But we said we would, we would try to find, uh, anything that was closer and maybe relevant to us. And it did turn out that I eventually found something from our own da. And it is interesting that Lee, uh, blander, who was on, I guess the call the last time she actually did too. And we both came up with, um, a video

14:18 from the Essex County, uh, district attorney. Oops. How do I make that allowed? If some alcohol or a juvenile provide or serves alcohol or allows to be served on premises of they control, there is personal and civil liability. A couple is being charged for allegedly hosting a party where hundreds of minors were drinking, two teams were taken to the hospital for alcohol poisoning. I think we’ve seen too many of these cases where some uses alcohol and what they think is a controlled environment and either have some type of injury, an accident, sometimes fail, or they leave the body and make a faithful, terrible decision to drive.

15:06 It’s never a good idea to allow juveniles to drink on your property at premises that you control and have something terrible happen to them.

15:20 Technical confusion. And this is, this is a three page document that comes from, uh, district Attorney Tucker’s office. Uh, so we, we, we now have this, when one of my exchanges with the, the chief was that he had mentioned that there was a group that had mentioned, had met in the, and Paul Tucker’s office. And I suggested that maybe Board of Health should have been there and took it upon myself to call the district attorney to suggest that. And, um, surprisingly, he answered the phone. So we had a great conversation. And, um, he’s very committed to schools and young people,

16:09 and he agreed that one, we would be on his, his, uh, invitation list were issues regarding health were to come up. Um, and, um,

16:27 he, he actually, I mean, he didn’t say he would be happy to come, but he suggested that maybe having some time with, uh, the, this, him visiting here and talking about issues. And I, I’m kind of the only one on the audience and in the room, certainly in the room who’s old enough to remember him, of Paul Newman movie called Cool Hand Luke. And there was this, there was, I actually don’t remember much about Cool Hand Luke, but I do remember this comment. And it was in graduate school. A lot of people would say, what we’ve got here is a failure to the comm to communicate. And what I mean by that, after I met with the, the had conversation with the

17:12 district attorney, um, and saw the quality of the output that he was making, I called the schools. I called John Roberto, the superintendent, and I called Michelle the principal of, uh, um, Marblehead High School. Neither of had seen that video and the District Attorney in that, if you, if you could have heard it, it said he was specifically doing it as prom time was coming up. So basically we have everyone that’s well intentioned who wants to do the right thing, but somehow we didn’t connect. Exactly. So I have spoken to, to Paul and to his chief of staff that they will include the Board

18:01 of Health on any mailing that goes out that has anything to do with health, not just, uh, teen Health or any, I mean, they, they had on this other, this document related to this one. Um, they had, uh, domestic violence. They had all sorts of things that are in the broad umbrella of Board of Health interest. So Hugs very happy that we would be a recipient of it. And I could commit to him that I will make sure that the people I know that need to get it will, will see it. So hopefully we can move forward, uh, with all of the elements in, in the town that, that the number of, as, as I showed earlier, 85 plus percent

18:48 of the town believes that the board and the rest of the town should be dealing with these kind of issues. Okay. Alright. Um, well, um, last week, the police chief, um, and, and with Andrew’s name on the, on the flyer, uh, introduced a, an Addiction and Recovery series. Um, we would’ve normally have done that differently. Andrew would’ve run it to the board, and we would’ve tried to know about it in advance. But it was a snow day. We didn’t get to see it that day. I checked in on it last night, and, um, I think it’s very, very worthwhile. Um, there were 26 people enrolled, or, or, or participants

19:33 and two sponsors. Um, Gina and Michelle Gina’s from our department, and Michelle, I think is from Swamp Scott. She had worked in Lynn the way she explained it. But anyway, this is a, this was a, a meeting that the Board of Health would be pretty stretched to do. So it’s, it’s quite valuable. Of the 26 or seven people on there, at least half, maybe more, were, um, in the, as a addiction assistance community, they were hospital based. Some of one or two were hospital based, but most of them were in the nonprofit environment

20:20 or the work worked to help people in the, in, in the throes of, of addiction. And the rest of the audience, clearly the ones that spoke up were individuals who either had family members or contacts, people that they cared a lot about. And they were struggling to, to how to encourage people to get into treatment for their addiction. And that would be a stretch for the Board of Health to do anything like that. So this is a, this is a great a, a a a, uh, addition to the, the toolbox that we have in the town.

21:05 And I have to say that the two, the two, um, mentors, uh, the, the, the, the sponsors, um, were absolutely terrific in showing their, what I would say trustworthiness. They, the, uh, most of yesterday was just interacting among the various people. Not a lot of science or things, but what both Michelle and, uh, Gina showed is that they cared an awful lot about people who were going through it and who, um, and, and the, that they, they must have said 10 different ways, each of them, of how they can be trusted to,

21:54 to maintain total, uh, confidentiality and privacy in this situation. ‘cause it seemed that that’s what a lot of these families were asking about. So basically the way the board generally runs is when some of us want, when Tom makes up the, the wellness fair for February 28th, he runs with it, but the board endorses it. Mm-hmm. So I think that this is what we either ought to endorse with our heads nodding or vote on it, whatever. But I, but I think it really is an addition. It’s, we, we have committed as a board to bring as much science into the conversation about, uh, public health and prevention in the town. And this is a great step.

22:39 So, um, I’m, um, I’m comfortable with that. Do we need a, do we, I think everybody agree or questions? Yeah, No, I’m totally fine with that. I make comments on other things, but that I’ll, I’ll, yeah. Yeah. And there, there’s gonna be six of, is This a Zoom meeting? Yes. Yeah, that’s every other Tuesday. Start starting last night. Okay. Four, five more sessions. And, um, How is Word getting out about it? Um, all I know Not well. ‘cause people were emailing me about it and I was like, All I know is that Lee Blander of the current got a flyer from the Chief of Police

23:25 and asked me what was going on here. And I had never heard anything Andrew had done. So, yeah. So we can post this, put this on our website, town website, um, and we can use our email blast to push this out to the community. That would be great. The whole community may not be at the detail of addiction that they’re gonna, but, but in any event, yeah. Anyway, one more, one more tool in the toolbox. And I think it was, it was very positively, uh, positively done. Um, Connecticut put on the town’s calendar. I I can look at that. I, I don’t know. A lot of people check that. Yeah.

24:11 So I don’t know if the town’s calendar has, that would be a perfect place for it to be on the calendar. Originally. That was the whole idea behind the calendar. But it seems like the calendar tends to be just, well, I’m gonna say meeting, so that would fit into it. So let me look into, it’s not always timely. I know that. Yeah. Let me, let me look into that and see if I can do that. Think it would, and The police chief May, police Chief Dennis May be working at it maybe after last night. Well, he wasn’t on there. Uh, is that I could see. Uh, but, but he, he certainly, I’m sure got a report today. Um, but, but in any event, I, I think it’s consistent with what this board believes ought to be done, is that we ought to be providing as much positive

24:58 and truthful information in a world where misinformation is causing enormous damage in, in public health. That, that these two, uh, professionals really seem to be working well. And it’s wonderful that there’s a Zoom link so people can log on anonymously if they’d like. Right. They still listen. And, and that, that was one of the great things that came of COVID, unfortunately, is Zoom. Um, so a lot of great substance use, um, applications turned to online. Um, so you have AA meetings that you can zoom into anytime at this point. Again, you don’t have to turn on your camera, you can just sit there and listen. Um, that is one of the benefits, unfortunately, of COVID.

25:44 There were at least two people I think who list their name as iPhone. Yeah. So they were, and there was, there were several people who really were just said they must, they had close people that they were, were very worried about. And they, they kept saying, uh, they’re afraid to talk to anybody actually. Uh, anyway, um, okay. So Has this run before? No, this is brand new. Um, so we were able to provide training to Michelle and Gina Rabbit, as well as several other police departments on the North Shore,

26:29 um, through BS A S. So BS a s, we have a grant. They were able to provide the training for these people to do this. And then that kicks off to be able to do other training like this type of, um, trainings.

26:44 I think that we’re certainly, I’m only better prepared to work on the other end to try to prevent the risk of addiction and prevent this, provide the science of, of that. But this on the other end of, of people out there who were in trouble, um, it this fits into what we think we wanna end up doing in comm is develop the navigation strengths. There were lots and lots of comments in the comm survey when they were writing that said, boy, I wish Marble had had X, Y, or Z. And the people who know Marblehead, like, uh, you know, um, like Andrew and Jack

27:31 and others say, we have that, but nobody knows about it. And the mental health task force used to have great website, um, of resources. We actually had, um, a refrigerator door magnet that was maybe eight and a half by five with all the different phone numbers on, but one Marblehead mental health test force has gone to the, uh, uh, counseling center, but their, their website was hacked and we really haven’t been able to get it back up. So we really have to, we have to make that work. I was reminded last night that these people, that 15 or 18 professionals on that meeting last night who were working with Gina and Michelle, were, were, were resources out there

28:19 that should be available. Yeah. So we, And and that is a priority to get the Marblehead Cares back up, get it linked to, um, Marblehead Counseling Center to have a vast resource for navigation for both substance use, you know, of elder care, a variety of different issues where people need help trying to find really good resources. Yeah. I’m definitely waiting for that to get up. I have stuff to do on there, but, Well, I would like to, to even go a little further than that in our, the Board of Health website, the way the charter committee is able to do it, we put a lot of our material on the charter committee, but like, I’m trying to do a column now where I have two

29:05 or three very recent medical journals that have graphs that really need to be seen. Right. And it, it, when they could come out in the newspaper, it’s not quite as good. I want a, a curious reader if they’re at all curious about what I’m trying to talk about, to be able to go to our board and pull up the original figures. Yes. The Graphs really enhance. We’re not ready to do that yet. So that’s gotta be, that’s gotta be, since comm will not have any, a lot, a lot of money with all the trouble in the, the budget of the town, um, to do new things, we’re gonna have to find those that are the least expensive. And building up that navigation infrastructure ought to be,

29:53 uh, ought to be doable. Okay. Well that, that’s my report. If there are no Quest, no further questions there. Uh, I have a couple, and I commend you on meeting with Chief King. A couple things I’d wanna bring up that you could probably discuss with him. Number one, I’ve tried to discuss these with Dan Fox. He has no interest in working with me on it at all. Well, I may, I’ve got an appointment with Dan on Good on Monday till, So we’ll take, we’ll take the Chief’s quote, uh, where he said, many situations require careful investigation, documentation, parental engagement in wherever it is appropriate, and arrest or diversion occur. When enforcement is warranted. We pursue it through criminal complaints and local bylaw citations. So one thing I’d note is I’d given the names of streets where these irregular occurrences,

30:40 those parents have not been engaged with. So if we’re gonna say parental engagement, you gotta actually do it. And if you did it, they’d probably never do it again. Because having a cop show up, especially the chief of police on your doorstep, and be like, Hey, we’ve heard about what’s going on here. We got an eye on you. As long as you’re not doing anything, we’re all good. That would go a long way. I bet it would never happen at that house again. So let’s actually get the parental engagement going on. ‘cause it it, if it’s that many houses and it’s that regular, it’s definitely not happening. Um, Andrew, do you wanna give the concern you raised yesterday? Do you want me to? I think you should now or mm-hmm. One other thing, we, Andrew and I talked about that. Mm-hmm.

31:27 And with everything going on in Minneapolis, the whole issue of any sort of security people knocking on doors will probably not be as well received in Marblehead. It might have been. I mean, I’d see if there was an ice agent knocking on your door, maybe it’d be less well received. But these are officers that most people have known their whole lives. They’ve always been a part of this community. You’re not coming there to deport anyone. You’re coming to have a conversation to be like, Hey, this is what we hear is happening here. Like, we can’t be afraid to engage with the community. Correct. And that’s, and I mean, otherwise it’s just anarchy out there, you know,

32:12 you’re not doing anything wrong by having a conversation. And that’s, you know, I wonder if you have to have an active complaint for him to go though. Not just, oh, they exist. I, I know one of the houses where the parents that live there are calling the cops on their kids and nothing’s happening. I don’t know. That’s very complicated. Yeah. Issue from, But I’ll say, so there was, in it actually in, with regards to mentioning that, so I, I think everyone here is aware that there was a recent party in December, um, where there was a re release form given out that people signed that release form holds zero water. You know, I’ve showed it to lawyers and they were laughing at it being like, oh, your kids will not bring any alcohol. But they we’re not liable. No. If a kid gets struck at your house,

32:58 leaves crashes, you’re screwed. That release form was a joke. It certainly were false. So what I did, um, obviously I knew, I knew the, I was given the release form by, I can’t even tell you how many people. And, um, I went and talked to the neighbors the next day. I know the cops were called that night. Um, the party quieted down and I went and talked to the neighbors and I was like, I wasn’t, and they go, we were picking up beer cans the next morning.

33:23 I’m talking to the neighbors, I’m doing the investigation. No one else is doing it. Like, and I’m not saying you guys, I’m being like, that would be a police chief’s. He knew about the release for me, knew about all of it. Well, we, what we had do we, are we are, we represented the town. Yeah. The town has to move together. I I’m, I’m, I’m gonna meet with Dan, I’m gonna meet with Yes. No, but obviously I can’t bring up these things to you. Yeah. On our own. Yeah. On our, and you know, I’d say even, you know, as sad as it is, you know, there was a death in town related to one of these houses. And no citation. They know the house. There was a settlement outside of the courts. There was still no citation.

34:10 This is the August incident? No, No, this one was a couple years ago. Oh. Not even a citation that resulted in a death where they know exactly where he was before.

34:21 I mean, to say that I, I don’t know what needs to, I don’t know where the line is, where we say we take this seriously and, you know, like, like I said, the minor thing I did, going to a couple neighbors and be like, Hey, I know there was a party there. What do, what do you have to say about it? And their frustration, because it’s a regular occurrence there. Um, and then them telling me what they did, you know, but I’m the one communicating with them. Right. Again, though, like, you know, we need, we do need the police department to do the investigation hundred percent them to do that work. Yeah. That, that is on them. So it, it’s hard for us to make comments about what happened outside. And, you know, we, we need to deal with facts that we have before us. I, I do think it’s a great idea to bring the, the district attorney here.

35:06 You know, I, I think it’s great that we had that video. We need to get that up on our website. If he could come to a meeting and we can have some of these discussions where you can answer, I’ll Have a police chief come in. Yeah. I mean, I, I don’t Paul f**r up. Don’t Believe me. I it wouldn’t be on the table in the town. Mm-hmm. If you hadn’t brought it up. You’ve taken a lot of heat. A lot of people are in your style points. ‘cause people are watching. I can’t go anywhere without someone complimenting me on it complimenting me. So as much heat as anyone thinks I’m taking, it doesn’t exist. I’ve had one person send me an email being like, you’re bringing up important issues. I wish you had done it a little differently.

35:51 And I responded back and be like, well, actually I took this step, this step and this step before I did that. Well, One, one email. But everyone, I go to Home Depot parking lot, I can see it when, when they’re walking. I’m like, I don’t know this person, but they’re looking at me. And then they’ll be like, are you Tom? And then it, it happens. So it’s, But I, I believe that Marblehead is like most human communities and people have to come together and trust each other mm-hmm. To make progress. Yeah. And so you, I think you, you’ve been the initiator mm-hmm. That, that I, there are times I have thought about bringing in, uh, a book about, uh, Sam Adams, the, the revolutionary that came out last year. You’re a little like Sam Adams. Yeah.

36:38 He Didn’t get along with John Hancock. He didn’t get along with Huntington, I guess was one. But you know what, and a lot of people complained that he was wasting a lot of teeth throwing it into the harbor. But you know what? He was Right. Eventually. Yeah. That’ll Be after me. And so we just have to, we we have, we have to do it at several levels. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And, and you can be the town crier, and I’ll try for a little bit to try. I have all the faith in the world in Utah Town Diplomat. Yeah. No. Have I have me hold me responsible. I have all the faith in the world in, in you. You know, I, I wish, there’s a lot of things I just set out that I wish, and I wish the select board chair would take it seriously, and it b it baffles me.

37:26 I think that I,

37:30 it would be harder for me if I disagreed with you to admit to you that you were right than it would be for me to work with someone else to, to negotiate in the middle. So let’s give him a minute. Let’s see, let’s just see. Um, he responded for, for Dan and Moses to want to talk to the Board of Health about the responses that we got for calm and certainly this one. Uh, with all that are going on with them, I think we have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they want Marblehead to be better too. Mm-hmm. And we’ll just make that happen. What if we set up kind of like an underage drinking task force

38:16 with people from each board? We did. Didn’t go well. So what Didn’t go well? The slide board wanted nothing to do with it. That’s where this all came from. So when Dan said, I didn’t talk to any select board members, it’s, it’s factually not true. I met with Aaron Nunan and Alexis Singer. It’s just, they wanted nothing to do with it. And that’s why the, this is why, like, I didn’t come outta nowhere and just be like, I found out something. I’m gonna scream it. No, we tried to go the, the that way. What about The school committee? They were there. They, they’re on board. I the parking lot’s on board, you know, but what can you do when the one body that’s on board,

39:01 but that’s not on board, is the one that oversees the enforcement? Well, But, and that’s not all sub board members. I know at least one’s on board, but you need free. So, But again, the select board’s different than the Board of Health. Mm-hmm. And the police chief is different than us because the police chief is defined by the Massachusetts constitution. Yeah. Whereas our, our board is defined by Massachusetts Constitution, but the three of us are nothing. Yeah. And Andrew doesn’t appear anywhere. The director of, there’s one sentence in the bylaw that says you manage the transferation and there’s no,

39:49 but that doesn’t mean that we can’t work together. Mm-hmm. Um, look, um, I I, I was a young radical for a while. Yeah. That faded. No, I, sorry. I’ve told you, I have all the faith in the world in you, and I try to hold back as much as I can, which isn’t very much a lot of times. But, you know, at, at the end of the day, you know, it’s one of these things. And you know, I’m giving, I’m, I’m, I am holding. Believe it or not, I am holding back at this point, you know, I made my huge stink before and then I’ve backed off. But, you know, at the end of the day, and these are things I’ve said to Dan himself, is that you, you know, one day I, I’m fully conscious

40:36 of the world we’re in, in that my name is Googleable. My kids are gonna Google my name one day, and I want them to see that I took the right side of this. And that’s, and that it’s not just looking out for them. It’s, they, they have to see that I was, I was a good person fighting for the, the, the, their best interests. He doesn’t see it that way. Whatever. Um, but, you know, I, I’m obsessed with my kids and I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna look out for them as much as I can. So if anyone thinks that, you know, let’s just, you know, and I know you, I know you guys don’t think this way, but I’m saying if anyone outside of this room thinks that, like, ah, we’ll just give him some time, he’ll go away. Not a chance. That’s not in my nature. That’s not in my DNA.

41:23 So it’s, uh, so they should, well, I do think we’re all on the same side of the issue. It’s Probably, You’d be shocked, you’d be shocked at the conversations I’ve had people that don’t think it’s a problem. Select board chair. He’s, he’s quoted in the meeting minutes of the meeting with the district attorney as saying, we don’t wanna change the culture of Marblehead. What does that mean? That, that that may have been a misreading. Well, he said it to me too. And he said it in other places. Well, He said, yeah. And what does that mean? We’re talking about social hosting. What the hell does that mean? There’s, getting underage kids drunk has nothing to do with the culture of Marblehead, and it never will. And it, it has absolutely nothing to do with it.

42:10 And I mean, if that was our culture, then kids dying would be considered collateral damage to making, to keeping our culture. And that’s insane. I mean, maybe he should, he should choose his words more carefully. But he said it in multiple areas where it’s just like, you gotta be kidding me, man. You know, I, I’m a terrible person. I, the last book I’ve read, I think a lot about that book. The last article I’ve read the last time I’ve had a conversation. I think a lot. Dan gave a very poignant, um, presentation at the Remembrance ceremony the other day that was held through the Holocaust thing. And between, and part of the reason I, I’m excited about the opportunity to meet with,

42:58 I think Dan understands what the town is. He, you may have ruffled his feathers, I think that’s probably fair to say. Mm-hmm. But, you know, you can, you’re, you’re good at that.

43:11 Um, that doesn’t make you wrong or Anything else. I know exactly what. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and You know, I, I just think it’s too important for us not to try every way we can to get the largest number of people committed to what we all agree. Mm-hmm. And one of the focus groups clearly will be spending time on getting the, another group of the town, another set of spokespeople to, to say the same thing. No one, I don’t think there’s anyone even as badly as I think of many people in the, in, in the,

43:59 in the, in the national scene right now, there’s no one who wants to see a child die. And I think the other piece that’s our responsibility is the education piece. And one of the things that we need to be talking about a hundred percent is that the longer that you can abstain from alcohol, the less likely you are gonna have an addiction to it. And that’s a big piece that people need to remember. Mm-hmm.

44:23 Yeah. No, in, but it’s not even linear those years. Correct. It’s not Highest. Yeah. It’s just like the newborn in Ute, the, the, the, the, the fetus in utero the last couple of weeks, if mom does binge drinking, the baby is really fetal alcohol syndrome was defined when I was a resident. And I remember you, you know, training on those babies and seeing what was going on. We now know that I was idealistic enough all those years ago thinking that once we understood it, and once we put those little signs on beer bottles, this would go away. Well, it hasn’t gone away. Mm-hmm.

45:10 Addiction is a very bad thing. Yeah. And we have to, um, we have to do everything we can use every tool we have on the human interaction platform to try to get the, the unanimity on, on this, uh, statement. And, and I think that the district attorney, uh, this written document, the video, my conversation with him, all of that, he’s, he’s certainly willing to help us. No, Paul Tucker’s great. Uh, no complaints. And I will say, um, you know, when I know we’re waiting, ‘cause there was a while I was trying to put together a speeches thing where, you know,

45:55 people affected by tragedy could speak in front of people. And it unfortunately didn’t work out just because people were afraid of public speaking. Correct. Which I get, I’m afraid of public speaking, believe it or not. And so, And let alone public speaking and telling your very delicate story, Yes. But if we can get that website working, I think I can get a lot of them to share their stories in written form. And I think that’ll help go a long way in this, because they are real marblehead stories. So I don’t know when we’ll get that website un pirated, but, um, you know, that’s kind of the plan for that from my side. Well, what can we do? ‘cause we actually sued some money. We if, Yeah. So Terry, um, Susan and I are supposed to be meeting, unfortunately,

46:40 Terry’s had had a death in the family, and so she’s had to step away from a period of time. Um, but, you know, we were supposed to meet and really tackle the navigation piece of that website and trying to get that map. Marblehead cares. So I will circle back with them to see, Hey, can we schedule this meeting at this point and try to get that up and running? What is it gonna take? And I’d love to know what kind of presentations are at the high school for students. So we’ve had, um, they’ve had several different presentations over the years. Um, that is one piece that is always hard to find really good new presentations that we haven’t seen. So at, at this point, we’re not hearing of any real, like, so we’ve had Mark Wahlberg, we’ve had, um,

47:25 you know, mark Wahlberg kid? Uh, yeah. The, not, yeah, it was like the Walburg story and stuff like that. Oh, okay. Okay. The Mother’s Against Drunk Driving. We have not, we’ve had Dr. Pody from Western Mass come and speak. Um, we’ve had, I’m trying to think the last, Chris Haring. Chris Harring spoke, has spoken here twice now. Mm-hmm. Um, we haven’t had, we haven’t seen any advertisement or publication on any of the mad, um, presentations and stuff like that. I’ve seen a high school prevention program. So they, they have, they might have programs that high schools could buy and stuff like that. Um, I thought what we were talking about more is like speakers that are coming to speak about these issues. And that’s a very dynamic piece. Um, and it is, sometimes it has to be done in a very,

48:13 you know, really good way where you’re connecting to the kids. We like to try to do it both during the day at the school and then a night performance for either parents or kids that aren’t in the districts, um, or go to private school. Um, so generally that’s how we’ve been taking a look at things. Um, but there is a, not a, when was the last time ran something like that? I’m trying to think of when Chris Herring was, it Was like a year ago. I, I mean, I communicate after I communicate with him after, because I was telling him about what I was doing then the thing is like, you be interested in coming back, you get it. It’s Big. So it’s this, but this, that, that approach may not fit with current kids. Correct. Chris, her is an amazing story. He, you know, he was on the Celtics, you know, and it was, he lost his whole career for it.

48:59 The problem is like, it, it’s an amazing story. You can watch the 30 for 30 on ESPN on it. It ain’t relatable to you growing up in Marblehead. You know, it’s just, we don’t have guys going to the Celtics or even all, everyone dreaming of going to the Celtic. It’s just, it, it’s a great story, but you really gotta be, you gotta kind of make it as someone that grew up here and went through it, like you gotta make it relatable to like, this is what happens here. You know, like, and so, you know, that’s why I love, you know, if you can get local people, you know, obviously we we’re gonna have budget constraints too across the board that includes the schools and these things are, they’re, they’re shockingly expensive. But, um, sometimes private funders will come in and do it, but if you can get local people, they’ll do it for free.

49:48 You know, that’s, that’s the game changer. I think

49:55 One of the comments that Dan made at the Remembrance is that it’s a quote from EE Eli, the Nobel Prize winner that was, that wrote about the Holocaust and all of that. The opposite of love is not hatred. It is disinterest. And what I see in young people, the comm survey, we did everything we possibly could to try to get the 18 to 30 group. And you can see fewer than less than 2% of the available population out there. Whereas the 70 year olds, 25%.

50:44 Um, we have to listen to what’s out there to figure out how to approach the younger people. Yeah. Different. And that’s why I say like, and unfortunately I had to go through it where yeah, we blew off everything when I was in high school. Tell us whatever you want in one ear out the other. And then it happened, you know, and then that’s when your attention as a student, like that’s when it hits you. It’s like, holy s**t, this just happened right here. And I knew that person. You know, and it was unfortunately, that’s what grabs the attention, which is why I’ve been so focused on trying to find things that are relatable to Marblehead. ‘cause Yeah. I mean, I went through it, so it, yeah.

51:33 And those people that you asked, would they, would they be okay with the option of, of videotaping them and then showing that I’d start, what I’d start asking them with? I mean, they all think it’s fantastic idea. They, and that it’s just most of them had a problem public speaking. And what can I really say to that? You know, I totally get it. These are terrible stories. You know, they’re extremely painful. And if you’re afraid of public speaking on top of that, it’s just not gonna work. But if, if they’re able to put it in writing and maybe put a picture, put a picture that’s, you know, Or, or Not, because it’s still a powerful story. Yeah. You know, it’s someone from our computer. Yes, exactly. Sometimes I do think remain anonymous and stuff like that.

52:18 Yeah. I, I know I can get a lot of them to do that. It’s, but then we need the outlet for it, which was hopefully when we get marveled cares going, if we can put a link on there being like, you know, real Marblehead stories or something like that. Um, you know, there was a handful of them willing to speak, but it just wasn’t enough to take up a full event. Um, so, and then, you know,

52:45 You’re, you’re from my experience, you’re absolutely right. The closer to the individual, the more it’s gonna sink in. Mm-hmm. My two younger sons, one was lacrosse player, one was the soccer player. They were at a party one night and one of their soccer teammates and one of their lacrosse teammates took her car, fell off a bridge, and they both died. Mm-hmm.

53:14 Andrew’s probably 40. Mm-hmm. And he is never in a car with, after having a beer. Yeah. Yeah. And, and nor has Mike, but the two, the two sons. Yeah. They were so hurt by the loss of their friend. Yeah. And they, they fed each other and they fed their community. And you’re, you’re absolutely right. That’s how we, we have to figure out how to somehow do that. Yeah. But it doesn’t start with blaming anybody. No. And no, I know that, and this is obviously that, that portion of it I’ve been working on for a couple years. I had, you know, a couple of Tom Day, um, Laney, they, they were huge house Mark Lavonne,

54:01 and we were, you know, we were making good progress. And then it just came down to people just being afraid to speak and just, yeah. And it’s like, You know, You might, even if it’s just, if it’s just being afraid to speak and not being afraid to tell the story, I, I actually thought they just didn’t wanna be personally embarrassed about the story. If they’re willing to share the story, we can mask, we can, I mean, I can’t, but it, it’s possible technically to do all of that. Yeah. No, I mean the, it was, yeah, no, and I think there are ways to do it. You know, it was just my initial ask and, you know, when I initially asked the people that I had, and that was kind of like, I really wish I could do that,

54:46 but I’m afraid to speak it is like none of ‘em thought it was a bad idea, not one of them. And it was like, but you know, it’s, I, I hesitated to pressure, you know, even though it Yeah. Even though I’m extremely close with someone. Yeah. It’s just like, it is very can’t. Yeah. So it’s, um, they have to be fully ready and it’s, it’s hard. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I can talk, I can talk about my relation to those people that I knew all day long, but it doesn’t sink in like a, a brother or sister or a parent, Perhaps somebody like James Maroney, you must know him. Mm-hmm. Yeah. He’s low key, easygoing guy. If he did like a one-on-one interview with a couple of them, did a little piece on it,

55:31 that might be better than possibly in front of a hundred people or whatever type of thing. Yeah, No, I like that. He’s a good guy. He gives me, Yeah. So I talked to the people I was working with about like, um, Laney and Tom and, um, and most, you know, when we kind of had that, came to that crossroads and then we saw the opportunity for the website, I talked to ‘em about kind of like, well, what if we just do a slow approach Yeah. And we put it in writing first. See how that takes off. Yeah. And then we see if we can build off that. And that was kind of, you know, rather than diving right into like a speaker series, we’re like, okay, let’s try this. Get people comfortable, you know, and it’s, it’s, it’s hard.

56:17 I thought it was gonna be a lot easier to, but it’s, it’s not so No, it’s, it’s never easy little I read. No, no, no. I mean, yeah, it’s What little I know. But the higher the affluent community, the higher the stigma associated with Yeah. Weaknesses. Michelle brought that up very clearly last night. She has worked in Swamp Scott. She had worked in Lynn first and now she’s working in Swamp Scott. And, and, uh, Marblehead. And she said it was a whole lot easier to get people to talk about addiction in Lynn. Yeah. Because it was bad work, but part of the No, No, no, the state, the stigma’s real when I talked to some

57:02 of the people that was, that was a concern. And, you know, it’s, it stinks because, you know, um, you know, when I point I point to myself, it it, because, you know, I, I was fortunate air quotes, to grow up with a cousin who was constantly in jail for drugs. So I didn’t try drugs because I had real world examples where I saw how messed up her life was just being in prison all the time. So I didn’t, and I tried to say this like I was a unicorn, you know, like 90% of the kids, maybe not in high school, but it, when they get back from college, that’s when it hits. So the ones that that tragedy strikes it, it, it, it’s, the stigma shouldn’t be there

57:49 because they’re just the unlucky ones. And that’s really what it comes down to. Well, it’s Gonna be, yeah. From my perspective, it’s gonna be even worse because of the screen time. These, these kids don’t have the friends that you had to help shape your thoughts. Your, it, it, it, they are more loners than The three generations. I get that. Yeah. We represent than it’ll be harder for them to learn from their peers, which clearly is the best way to learn. C clearly there, there’s a whole school of, of psychologists that’s saying that one of the big problems is kids don’t play the way we play. Mm-hmm. Uh, where you learn to think of get up the next morning

58:34 and still get along with the person you battled with yesterday, that sort of stuff. You don’t do that when you’re on video games or social media. And it really ramps up. I know, you know, you get the stats back from the high school and they’re low and things like that. I’m sure they were low when I was in high school too, but as soon as people get back from college, it’s whatever they learned in college and then it comes back just like a tidal wave in this town. Um, you know, I mean, it is, it is also interesting on the, on the other side is that it seems like this generation is the drinking less than millennials. Correct. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And like the alcoholic, the non-alcoholic beers are becoming popular. All like the, the non-alcoholic spirits and um,

59:23 and the kind of prioritizing wellness. And so that’s, that’s a nice culture shift that I, I hope keeps going. And I, and I wonder about the, the, that these kids are generally more isolationists and on their phones a lot more at home. And maybe that’s protective against a lot of Yeah. Maybe heavy drinking. That’s not what you want either. Um, but, but I think Tommy brought up a good point about how, or I’m not sure which, which Tom, uh, but now we, we might need to approach this generation in a different way. Um, and maybe more like social media and, and TikTok posts, I don’t know. But, um, but coming, coming to them, I’m Already on Facebook. I’m not going on TikTok to talk to people. No, but, and I’m the same way. But that’s the millennial thing. We gotta approach the, um, the newer generation.

1:00:10 Um, so just something to keep an, keep an eye on. But One of these curves that I’m trying to figure out how to show a problem is an, a massive study of three issues. Phone use from Australia and girls are off the chart for getting into trouble. The more screen they use, boys

1:00:37 actually get in after 12 or 13, get into more trouble with no screens. And the psychologists think it’s because they’re isolated. They don’t have anyone, any human to talk to, and they don’t have the screens as much. So they’re really, Did they look in the, uh, uh, anything about like, was it into what screens they’re looking at? I suspect, I, I hate to sound sexist on this, that boys are way more into video games and stuff like that. Well, I, pornography. Yeah. So, so I don’t know. I don’t know what girls are looking at all there. Are they just scrolling through tiktoks or it’s, I, I don’t know, but, uh, The Australian paper didn’t go into details,

1:01:24 but there’s another again, uh, but anyway, at Least some, some of the gaming systems are at least social. No way. Yes. Yeah.

1:01:35 We, this board, this team is committed to not giving up. Uh, yeah. I, I believe, I believe the vast majority of the town is rooting for us not to give up. And so we just have to do what we can incrementally each may, each meeting. This is a, this was not, the conversation wasn’t on my agenda. Mm-hmm. But this is, if we didn’t have open meeting law, we could have this conversation often and come up with some answers rather than have to try to do it in one out. But in any event, you all know how I feel about open meeting.

1:02:22 Um, and, and, uh, next year, um, this year, it’s a good conversation and I really do believe

1:02:33 that the town clearly come told us that the town is with us. Yeah. For everyone who thinks that we ought to be out there just cleaning out dog poop, there are she that believe we should be dealing with substance use in the town. No one said they wanted to be driving the heavy equipment at the transfer station. No one. I should, I Didn’t see any of the Scott pipe. Yeah, I, I should have wrote that. Alright, well we’re Got a couple of questions. Uh, the focus groups, are those gonna be closed or open? Closed. Okay. And they’re gonna do it like a day. Well, What do you mean? What do you mean by closed? Just a small group. It’s Gonna be a small group. It’s not gonna be like a Zoom thing. No, no, no, no, No. It’s gonna be an in-person, small One. One or more

1:03:19 may be zoomed among the 12 people. Exactly. About the Close. It’s not gonna be private. It none of us won’t be there, there won’t be no social media law. This is covered by, uh, uh, UMass Boston’s, IRB. Would you be doing those second those up you think for days or evenings? ‘cause that might really make a big effect. I who could be There. I think it’s gonna depend on the population you’re trying to attract. So if, if you’re going for the senior population, it’s probably gonna be days. If you’re going for the young parents, it’s probably gonna be evening. Yeah. And the last thing, you Know, if you go to the, the 18 year olds, we think a lot of them are out of the town, even though they have the main link address in their parents’ home. That’s almost, in my mind, that’s almost certainly gonna be Zoom.

1:04:05 Absolutely. I agree. And have we planned to do a report at town meeting on the whole survey? OO originally, that’s what I thought. But Andrew has suggested, and now that I know a little more about town meeting, we only get three minutes or something like that to talk that we are gonna do a special, a session, an open session for Comm W whether we use high school or w however we get together and try to get as many people, we we’ll publish. If the focus groups end on the third week of March, we, our little group will meet to try to start writing the report early in April. So hopefully by mid to late April, we will have a almost a polished document. I think UMass Boston is committed to May 1st

1:04:52 or something like Yeah, something very, yeah. So, so we should have that out to the public, through the newspapers and through our, our distribution. And then hold one or more forums. If the Rotary wants to have us back. If, if, uh, we, we wanted however we want, um, we will, we will be talking about it. The more you can get it out, the better it’s gonna Oh yeah. We might, we’ve spent the money, we’ve spent the time. We might as well have everybody understand it. Me favor a actually, the, the, the column last week, I wasn’t sure anybody would care. And I think I got more comments like on the street, like Tommy gets, but different, um, about that column. ‘cause people were happy to see that we’re,

1:05:39 people are getting used to you now too. It makes a big difference if they see it repetitively right at the beginning to trust, trust me. Yeah, I think that’s right. It’s a huge difference. Yeah. Well, anyway, again, I think what Calm told us is that the Board of Health is going in the right direction. And we, in order to bring as many people along with us as possible, we have to be as diplomatic as we can be. Even given, uh,

1:06:15 I can tell you hindsight that my first employer after graduate school, Dow Chemical, wrote that, that university telling them not to hire me because I was, uh, a radical in the streets and picketing their, their chemistry. And fortunately at that time, the University of Wisconsin said, we believe in free speech. And they, they didn’t fire me. But, so I I I’m a lot older than, than this Tom. And so, but I, I certainly sympathize when you, when you know, when you believe in your heart that something is right,

1:07:01 sometimes you miss politically political correctness. If, if you can do it without it, you’re better off. If, if you miss it, maybe you can come back and bring it back. It, it just, we just have to trust each other. Um, there are fewer bad people out there, I think, than bad acts. And so we have to get past one or two or half a dozen bad acts and realize that underneath that person probably has some stress, some difference, and ultimately in the right circumstance will join us. That there, there’s no, I don’t know what else to do.

1:07:48 I mean, what else? Especially with what’s going on in, in Washington, we, we have no other option other than to, to, to do nothing, which is immoral, I think, across the board. Um, anyway,

1:08:11 give town charger in there too. Um, Tom c Turner is hung up right now with reviews of part B by or draft B by the select board and the town council. And last week we had, uh, somebody from the Collins Center. So I haven’t presented that, uh, the wording for the Board of Health provision yet. And I, and our next meeting goes on the 12th, but even then, I got something from the chair yesterday. I’m not sure it’ll even be then. Yeah. And I, I obviously had hesitation the last time. The word that gave me PTSD was reasonable, and it was, and strictly because, and, and obviously this is no nothing on you guys,

1:08:58 I assume you’ll do it, is reasonable, I think would have a reason. Like, you have to say your reason make sense, right? So when they did the mandates the last time, and a member of the public said, can you tell us what metrics you’re using so that we can understand where you’re getting this from? And it was a mute and saying, we’re not required to allow you to speak. That’s not reasonable. And like, so if you have something you need to do, you know, even though you don’t have to, I guess because of the state law, it reasonable means just give a reason. Say, this is why we got to this. We’re, Well, actually, that word is in upon bylaws, uh, at least according to, I, I haven’t looked myself, but according to the notes on, on the Board of health, um,

1:09:45 section in the charter committee, uh, Sean had written, that’s exactly the way the down bylaws represented. Okay. But reasonable. When I asked Andrew when I first came, Andrew had said they felt that the schools and the social, uh, mandates were to protect the hospital. Yeah. So essentially you’re, you’re trying to protect the ho the the population. Yeah. So at that time, you, we saw, so as the, the state was dropping off their mandates, our numbers of COVID were skyrocketing in the North Shore, uh, surrounding communities were continuing the mass mandates. Yeah. And because of those reasons,

1:10:30 they felt it was reasonable. I get that. And so that’s what you’re looking for. Yes. You want us to say, because we’re seeing these spikes in numbers. Correct. ‘cause we’re seeing, we’re trying to protect the hospitals. We’re trying to protect you. Yeah. You wanna make sure that we state Yeah. And the, the re you know, the reaction, this Board will do That. Yes. I, and I have full faith in you two, but I’ll say like, because you might not have been aware, the reaction to it was that complete distrust from the public. Half the businesses were absolutely not following it. And they were just saying, go screw, we’re not doing any of it because of the, they felt disrespected. You know, you had one member in Florida, you know, contradicting herself left and right when she was talking and you know it, so then to come back and also, you know, when it was ending the word,

1:11:18 it’s just you, you gotta be completely honest and, and give the reason. Like, even when it ended, they were like, oh, everyone was so thankful. Not true. You know, if everyone was so thankful, two of the members wouldn’t have requested that a police car stay in front of their house 24 7. So actually did happen. But Because we were getting bomb threats, we were getting threats against our lives. I, I get it. But like, but I, and I think We were coming to work every day working 12 hours and plus a day trying to save the public. No. And, and you and people Were still threatening to kill us. No, and this is nothing that you did wrong, Andrew. So it’s like, no, this is nothing you did wrong. But all that all the board had to do was say a reason. And that’s reasonable. And that’s what, and that’s, and I’m telling you, the pullback from the, from the community, because I mean, you guys don’t know,

1:12:05 I think Andrew does know. I went to virtually every single business and talk to them during it when I was running. And I was like, what’s your reaction? You know, what did you think? And like, I talked to literally all, But again, like when we were putting these mandates in place, we’re trying to protect the Public. It has. Yeah. No, I get it. I get it. But we can’t say, because I told, because I say so, you know, like, that’s not good. You wouldn’t do that as a, you know, really a pet. You tend to give your kids resource again, You’re fortunately past that. Yeah, no, I’m just saying I think that it was the word that triggered me, and that’s why we, we Are trying to convince the town that the board of health is worth trusting. Yeah. I mean, if I, any Decision that we make, we should explain our reasoning and exactly we’re doing it. And, and why we wouldn’t pursue alternatives. And so Right. A hundred percent. And that, that was what was missed.

1:12:52 And people may not have always agreed, they might not agree. What do, they might not agree. Yes. But that’s, that’s what was missed the last time. And it’s literally why I’m sitting here. So it’s, You know, and You’re adding value sitting here. Yeah. So good. Important to learn from what was done in the past. Well, in retrospect, yeah. In retrospect, we applied a lot of the Spanish flu of 1917 to come around children. And the pediatrics community didn’t fight. In hindsight, as hard as we probably should have to remind everybody that, uh, that early data on COVID kids were fine. Right. But it was More to protect elderly, Much more the teachers. The teachers. Yes.

1:13:40 And their, their family members as well. Yeah. They brought it home and they had mild symptoms. They could still spread it. Right. So we saw had Huge of death, Germany and Sweden and others did it. And, and anyway, look, we, we, let’s solve tomorrow. We had trouble with tomorrow’s problem. We, right. So you guys know the word I had a problem with? That was the word I had a problem with, you know.

1:14:02 Well, it is, um, why don’t you move on to the wellness fair. Well, I’ll throw out Bills first, super quick. Um, a one exterminators for rats and control at the transfer station, a hundred dollars at and t for internet access, $65 98 cents. Haley Ward, uh, the engineering firm for the transfer station, $3,332 87 cents, me Tellerman for legal, uh, $516. Michelle Simmons, uh, recovery Coach training. Um, I don’t know if you wanna talk more on that. That’s the opioid training. And that’s Michelle Simmons. Um, okay. Yeah. So that’s 2034 30, I’m guessing that’s paid for with a grant. That’s the Yeah, It’s opioid money. Yeah. Pete’s Tire Bar for tire replacement. Um, $563 Quant Health for doctors, uh,

1:14:50 three $34 RMG Enterprises for the company that recycles TV monitors, laptops four $3 26 cents, Verizon for internet access, $168 99 cents. Um, well, that’s fair. Going well, didn’t mean to do that. Um, we’ve got about 15 or 16 people that I’ve reached out to. I’d probably say 30. And I only started that a week ago. I advertised it online. I don’t know if you were advertising it anywhere else. Did you shoot it out anywhere? We’ve Shot it up, but we sh we will take another look and push pushed that out Again. Um, so I’ve gotten about half the people have responded are gonna come enthusiastic about it and a couple new ones. Um, so it was great, man. Yeah, I’m looking forward to that.

1:15:36 I’m gonna keep, you know, pushing to get more and more. Um, but I think it’s a good start, you know, um, and the raffle prizes Tom was saying are, are very good. Okay. Tony, if you’ve never sat in my Bruins tickets, it seats you’re missing out. So just come. Um, and then, so that’s that, um, the transfer station in Marblehead employees, this was a suggestion made by Mike Hu and I think it has legs so long as it’s feasible. Um, so what he was suggesting, and I think this is, um, considering budget constraints in the town I to attract talent, I kind of like this idea where that you could, out of town marble at employees

1:16:22 could purchase a sticker. I would say first, if, if this was something that we could do, I’d say only a primary, not a secondary, um, you know, full price, but it’s just something, just a benefit. Uh, you know, where yeah. You could purchase a sticker as a Marblehead employee, just a primary, and you could have access to the lower area of the transfer station. I can’t imagine that a ton of people would take advantage of that, but maybe it’s a little perk that Michael Hall must have heard someone that was interested in itself. So, So if the board is interested in that, yeah. I mean, it could be some potential additional revenue. Um, so the primary, and then I would just need, um, a copy of your registration and a copy of your, um, like a payroll stub.

1:17:08 Okay. Um, and we would be good to go, You guys. Yeah. Any questions about Yeah. It’s, it is another benefit to employees. Yeah. So, you know, I I I do think it’s, it, it’s, you know, it’s a good idea. A Lot of the responses on calm would like the beach separated from the transfers too. Yeah. So the, the way the beach has gets separated from the transfer station is it needs to go back to town meetings. Yeah. So got brought together a town meeting, needs to get separated at town Meeting, and we’re too Late for that This year. Yeah. Too late. Too Late for that this year. But I think it’s also, I I, I’m pretty sure the park and rec is gonna go in the same direction of a license play reader, and if they did that, it would be a lot easier after that to bring it to the attention of the town and, and see. Yeah. So it might be a year or two away, I’d say. But,

1:17:54 Um, and, and one of the things, again, we are in some fiscal constraints. Um, you know, obviously we just sold stickers, so we’re not changing prices at this point, but we always do need to analyze the costs of our stickers and, and the cost of some of our, you know, permits and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. Um, it, it’s really like the permit fee is, is a good level and stuff like that. You have to kinda say, all right, this is what it’s gonna take to, you know, support that permit fee, um, for the, the transfer station permits and stuff like that. Um, I think that’s something that you could easily go up on and stuff like that. But again, we have to analyze the cost of running the transfer station, the money coming in, the cost of the employees to make sure essentially that we’re covering the cost of it. Yeah. The problem. And I mean, the problem with that is you just don’t know when people buy a sticker,

1:18:40 you don’t know why they’re buying it. Correct. You know, so that’s Separate. The majority are buying it for the transfusion. Yeah. I, I would, I would think so. But it’s So you, if you are able to separate them, then you have those numbers Yep. Down exactly where they need to be. You know exactly what you need. You, you almost become similar to the light department, you know? Right. In a way. Yep. Where, you know, you’re not trying to exceed, like make crazy profits. No, We’re, we’re looking just to cover our costs. Exactly. You know, for, for the residential side. Yeah. The commercial side, that’s kind of, that’s a slightly different, we have to cover costs, we have to cover our equipment, we have to cover buildings. When we’re looking at the residential side, we do need to do some of that, but we’re really looking to cover the cost of the disposal Yeah. Equipment and stuff like that.

1:19:26 Yeah. I’d like to imagine that when we’re done with all the transfer station projects, swaps at all that stuff, some of the com you know, the commercial revenues in the revolving fund might make sticker prices lower. It, it’s potentially, yeah. Potentially, you know, depending on, you know, You’re kind of subsidize using your commercial business to subsidize marble headers. Right. The idea has always been that the, the additional revenue from the commercial side should be used, you know, for the, the facility. So yeah, we’re able to complete, you know, we’re, we contributed a million dollars to help com to finish this phase of the project right now, now we’re probably not gonna need to use all of that. So we will have additional money left over. But again, we want that to go to the swap shop and to the compactor building. Yes. These, we, we need to keep that money invested in

1:20:13 that facility. And that’s the idea of that. And, and yeah. And I understand at times it’s a, you know, the commercial guys can be in the way of the residential. Yes. The whole idea with this project is separate them out. But there is a benefit to having, allowing us to do commercial up there. Um, moving forward to this coming year, we will be using some commercial dollars waste revolving account money to pay for bids for each whole household in Marblehead. That’s like the next big piece for us to be using money and stuff like that. My perfect dream world is that the commercial subsidizes marblehead so much that you get a sticker just for being a Marblehead resident. That’s my perfect dream world. But, so to get as close to that as possible, and right

1:21:00 Now with the combined beach and transfer station, do we get the whole cost of the No. So we, We understand, so I, so I understand what’s coming in from my side. So I see, you know, the permits, the purchase for, for the transfer station when they’re purchasing through us, there’s also revenue that’s made by, at the beach when people go there for day passes and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah, it, it’s impossible for us to separate out, like, you know, if that person’s just buying it for the beach, I would say not. But if they were, would we lower the price? No, we would not Transfer. Okay. No, because right now we are taking the full Yeah. We, We are, we price the sticker based on the transfer station. Really? Okay. The future people, Future people wanna separated, think it Less well, the fu The future world.

1:21:47 I don’t think it would get there eventually, but like I said, the future world, if you can get there, is that right? The commercial subsidizes so much because you know exactly what your costs are, you make it up with the sticker, and then if the commercial ever gets to a level, that sticker just keeps coming down. So, And then when we look at it, when I’m looking at it, um, I’m not like, so the curbside trash, I can pull all those numbers out. We track all the pounds, tonnage. I know the difference between what’s coming in like curbside versus what’s coming in at the facility, and I know what’s coming in from commercial. So I have three pots of like trash coming in, curbside, residential town, and then commercial. Mm-hmm. I’d suspect that if, if they were

1:22:33 to separate the first year, you’d probably have to keep the transfer station as is and then you’d know exactly where you need to go. Correct. And that’s, yeah, but you need, you, you’d have to play it safe for the initial year to, to know exactly who’s doing it.

1:22:53 But yeah. So, all right. Do we have to vote on that for the, so, And then we can make it happen? Yeah, I would vote. Yeah. Yeah. Let employees make A motion that let employees, um, living outside of town can buy one primary sticker at full price. Same as Marblehead residence. Second first. All in favor? What do I All in favor? Yeah. Okay. I think that will be great. Unanimous.

1:23:26 Okay. Associate chair for health. Community health. Yes. So, um, just a few health updates. So starting with, um, respiratory illnesses. So it looked like we were tracking, uh, downwards the last few weeks in the, um, amount of, um, flu tests for respiratory infections that we’re testing positive for flu. But now it looks like we’re a little bit up again. Um, but it’s still, uh, there’s still a significant amount of infections out there. I think we’re down to moderate instead of high. Um, and yeah, it’s down. It’s about 18%, um, positive for influenza currently of the respiratory specimens. Um, think our last meeting, it was in the thirties, um,

1:24:12 and it had gone down to 16 or 17, and now it’s up to 18. So we’ll, we’ll kind of see how it goes. Um, and the other, uh, infections, COVID is, is kind of sticking around 5%. RSV is kind of at six going up. Um, uh, but so we’ll see, but hopefully, so we think we’re past the peak, but we’re still not out of the season yet. Um, there have unfortunately been 52 pediatric influenza deaths this season. Um, but 90% of those are in unvaccinated, were in unvaccinated children. Um, and the CDC estimates that, um, and this is, this is data from about a week or two ago that there have been, um, 20 million influenza illnesses and 11,000 deaths nationwide. Um, influenza A still tends to be the predominant strain,

1:24:59 but B but B is increasing. Um, and in, in past years, the influenza vaccine hasn’t been as effective for B strains. Um, so, um, I’ll just to say it’s, it’s never too late to receive your flu vaccine. I mean, maybe in May you could consider not, but we’re still in flu season, so anyone who hasn’t gotten it, it’s still a good idea to get it. Um, and then, um, COVID, although it’s, it’s tracking up a little bit still, cases are still on the low end, but, um, we have some effectiveness data that just came out about this current, um, COVID vaccine. And it’s about in the fifties percent effective against ED and urgent care visits. Um, but was amazing. Uh, this just came out in a JAMA article, um, yesterday

1:25:44 that, um, in last year’s COVID season, the vaccine was 80% effective against death. Um, so, uh, pretty great still vaccine. And, um, the other thing that was doable was that, uh, for what I hear functions, people get the vaccine, and then we usually say in two weeks the vaccine is effective. I hear a lot of, I got the vaccine two weeks later, I was sick. But it’s looking like for this season, the vaccine is reaching its full potential in about four weeks. So, um, if you have a trip coming up in four weeks, this is a good time. And just to note, that’s why we recommend starting vaccinations early around September, October, you for when the, so you can be fully vaccinated for the peak. Um, so, um, there’s, uh, no new avian influenza related deaths

1:26:29 and no person to person transmission. So that’s some good news. Um, and then I just wanted to know, so there is measles surging around the country, measles outbreaks so far in 2026, there have been 588 confirmed cases, um, the largest outbreak, uh, to date in South Carolina. Um, and 94% are outbreak related, not coming from other countries. It’s, it’s, you can track ‘em from previous outbreaks in the country. Um, last year, the total number of measles cases was 2,267, the highest it’s been since it was eliminated, um, in 1991. Um, and 93% of cases have occurred in individuals who were unvaccinated. Um, luckily Massachusetts has not reported any measles cases

1:27:17 to date, uh, but with rising numbers, um, and then the World Cup in the summer, it’s something to look out for. So, um, certainly if you’re, if the MMR vaccine is very effective, and if you haven’t gotten two doses, you wanna talk to your doctor about getting those two doses or checking your vaccine status. Um, and just to note that measles isn’t like a flu illness. It’s, um, highly contagious. One person affects 15 to 17, I believe, um, and hospitalization rates, depending on the outbreak or anywhere from 20 to 40% as it would compare that to flu, it, it’s about 0.1 to 1%. So it’s very severe illness can cause encephalitis years after the infection, um, and most dangerous to young kids.

1:28:04 Um, and that’s mainly why we, why vaccinate, um, to protect our vulnerable populations, our elderly, and also young kids and those who can’t receive the vaccine. Um, so, um, and then just to speak about, uh, some new data on the shingles vaccine, which you can get over 50, um, that there’s some promising data of reducing dementia, um, that it’s about gives you a 20 to 32% risk reduction. And in an era where we can’t do much, there’s some of you could do, but in terms of dementia prevention and treatment, um, this is pretty amazing. And, um, thinking that, uh, the, when you do get, um, reactivation of the, um, chickenpox herpes zoster virus

1:28:50 that it, the, the inflammation it causes in the body might lead, lead to cognitive decline. It’s not quite understood why, but, um, another perk of getting the vaccine that’s about 90% effective in preventing severe illness of anyone who’s had shingles. It’s awful. Um, so Very, Very, very awful. Yeah. I just got my first, um, shot the other day, so Great. Yeah. Great. Um, and so, so another plug that vaccines might give more, produce more benefits than we know. So, um, and I think that’s all I had and just to, um, I really enjoy kind of recent, uh, researching the latest news, but if anyone has any questions or things that they read that they’d like me to speak on, I’d love to hear. Um, sounds good. To guide where to, to talk, talk.

1:29:39 Um, so just to kind of continue on, so, um, we do work on public health emergency preparedness. We have a coalition on the North Shore, it’s 15 communities. Um, we have a working group for, we are calling, it’s called in Massachusetts, the 40 Days of Celebration. Um, so we have the World Cup, the US two 50, the tall ships, um, essentially 40 days of activities going on in, in New England. Mm-hmm. Um, and so yes, we do have a working group, um, for public health emergency preparedness. We will be talking about measles, we’ll talk, be talking about foodborne illnesses. Um, and yes, one of the hardest thing about measles is that if you do have a case come through, so if we had a case that came through a coffee shop, we literally have to post a nurse there the next day to say, we’re aware

1:30:25 that there’s a case of measles that came through here. We need to notify people if anybody would like to be vaccinated, we can do that immediately.

1:30:35 And those kids who have not been vaccinated have to stay out of school. Yeah. They would have to go through the whole protocols of, um, isolation and all that stuff. Yes. Mm-hmm.

1:30:48 Can, can we plan on doing a bigger session on, uh, now that we, we brought it up. I mean, do things that are gonna happen this summer? We should, we, the community should be aware that we’re gonna have more international visitors. It’s gonna be interesting to see if we’re gonna have more international visitors. We’re definitely gonna have more Tariffs. Yeah. We we’re definitely gonna have more, uh, at least national visitors For the Risk is for the risk right now. Um, so yeah, with within, you know, obviously during the summer we have an extreme number of tourists that come into Boston. Um, so there’s always this heightened risk and stuff like that. We are always trying to look at public health emergency preparedness either, you know, we could be doing a tabletop exercise on a measles outbreak.

1:31:37 We could be doing, looking at one for a severe weather event, um, that where you have high water that has, um, inundated the southeast sewage es six sewage districts, and we all don’t have, aren’t able to have, um, sewage or we have an issue with our public water. Those are all the things that we look on at, on a regular basis to try to make sure working with our partners in water and sewer highway police departments, you know, it could be, um, the Harbor Master just building these relationships so when something does happen, it’s easy to call them and say, Hey, I need some help. This is what’s going on. And so, yeah. We can talk about that a little bit more.

1:32:19 Well, I was living in Botswana when South Africans hosted the World Cup, and it was on week and, uh, it was three hours from my house to the stadium. So, um, and there were several Swedish surgeons, surgeons at the local hospital, and we, it’s just absolutely amazing. Yeah. It, it is, it, it’s probably for the, for the world like Super Bowls in multiple places. Yeah. When you look at the number of people watching these are, uh, you know, uh, go into these events, it’s astronomical over the Super Bowl and stuff like that. So when you’re looking at those comparisons, it’s unbelievable. Um, so, um, Gillette will have, and they’re changing the name of Gillette for the World Cup.

1:33:06 There will be six matches that will be held there. Um, so you will have teams in the area. All the teams will have training camps. All these teams have a huge fan base, and they will have fan camps. And so we have to be prepared for these, you know, different groups that are coming in and be camped in different areas. Um, and different things can happen in these areas, um, and we just need to be prepared about it. That’s the closest sight to us. There’s gonna, that Is the closest sight to us. Yeah. Yep.

1:33:36 And I believe, you know, when I’m talking about when teams have these camps, these practice areas, I think those are technically the closest, but we won’t have a large fan base there compared to the games and stuff like that.

1:33:51 Is this a segue into the directors report? Oh, are we more community helped up? No, I was just wondering what the America two 50 is America two 50 Don’t know. America two 50. So that’s the, we are turning 250 years old this far Oh, Oh, for our July 4th. Yeah. For our July’s July 4th celebration. Okay. Um, so it kicked off last year with Paul Revere’s ride. Um, there was some, you know, you had the Lexington Concord, you know, the, the shot hurt around the world. You had the reenactment of Bunker Hill and, and Gloucester. And so you’ll have a lot more of those events. Um, fireworks displays are gonna be unbelievable this summer. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, some of the costs that people, you know, the communities will be spending will be astronomical. Um, you’ll, Boston has been doing a to tremendous amount

1:34:39 of drone shows, so changing it over to new technology. Um, so yeah, there’ll be a lot going on this summer. Um, you have the tall ships coming in, you have Salem 400, so Salem will be turning 400 this summer. Um, one of the oldest cities in in America. Um, so yeah, there will be a lot going on. And so everyone’s, you know, excited about the summer. Obviously there’ll be a lot of tourists around, like always, but, um, just things that we need to be thinking about and stuff Like that. And, and, um, people have brought up the state of the bathroom and the harbor. Yep. Is that all running smoothly? Um, I believe we’ve, you know, again, it’s wintertime. There’s some issues with it. Um, it’s open all year round. They, the idea was that it was supposed to be opened year round. Um, you know, our biggest concern is that the state of

1:35:25 that who’s, who’s gonna be maintaining that? How is it gonna be heated so they did it and install heat and stuff like that. Um, I think keeping it clean and, and making sure that it’s, you know, a clean bathroom all the time is the biggest challenge. Um, during the summer, one of the biggest issues is that we do have squid fishermen that use the harbor. Um, they often like to use the bathroom to, to clean their squid. So you’ll go in there and there’s just like, it’s black ink everywhere. You’re like, oh my God, what happened? Um, and so, yes. You know, these are all the different things that you end up having to do with, do You have any outdoor sinks? We do not have any outdoor fish, like fish cleaning stations in that I know of in town. Yeah. Yeah. How would it go about? Well, there’s one down on Village Street, um, so there is a filet station down there

1:36:10 That is really off topic, but how would it, how would we go about if designating that a park and rec then that’s not us. That is not us, no. Mm-hmm. Yeah. A again, like it comes down to funding. And so if you really wanna clean bathroom, you have to put a lot of money towards it to make sure somebody’s going in there, um, multiple times a day. Um, some of the, one of the best countries to look at bathroom cls is Japan and, and the technology that they use to do it and how much money they invest in it. Um, but when you walk into those bathrooms, you’re like, oh my God, this is unbelievable. You’re like, I could out on the floor. Even if it’s a public bathroom, you’re like, all right, this is nice to clean. I mean, some of the new technology for really clean bathrooms is that, I think they even have ‘em in New York, is that the whole thing floods. It gets sprayed down, it all gets drained,

1:36:57 then the next person goes in, something like that. So I know people would hate it, but I really like the ones in Amsterdam where you, you’re standing in public cool guys, you really walk in a circle and then you’re in it. Yeah. And you just see everyone talk to about It. It’s convenient. Yeah. At the landing, it’s been open nights lately. In, in the daytime it’s not the best construction in, That’s generally the fish gut one. So it’s, But yeah, the, it was working at the town meeting that, that would be open year round. Okay. That’s town culture. That’s, Yeah. That’s what we wanna Keep. Yeah. Um, so the transfer station, uh, construction is progressing. Um, we’ve had a few change orders, so I have a few change orders for you tonight. Um, the biggest one to date has been, uh,

1:37:44 the steel plate at the bottom. It’s kind of the loading dock for the trash. Um, originally we were supposed to have steel that came from the hopper. Um, we didn’t have big enough or thick enough gauge steel for that. Um, we had to go out and procure that. It had to be galvanized. Um, so I do have a change order for that. That’s $19,349. That’s the increase. Yeah, that is the increase. Okay. So We’ve only had two change orders so far. Yep. One of ‘em was like five grand. Yeah. The last one was six grand. Yep. Okay. So, so we’re about close to 25. It’s Not that. And so we’ll have a few more. Yeah. Um, that I’ll, I’ll continue to talk to you about that. So I do need a, this is PCO number three. Um, so we need a, a motion to approve the change order of $19,349. Motion

1:38:29 To approve. Second. Um, any objection, but all in favor a unanimous. Um, the next one, um, we need to make sure that the scale house is also a DA compliant, um, which requires strobes for, um, the smoke detectors. So it’s not just noise and stuff like that. It has to be strobes. So we need to upgrade that. Um, there are multiple, so there’s two bathrooms, so it has to be in, in all the offices and all the bathrooms and all the spaces. Um, so that’s an increase, uh, in $730. So I need a motion to approve that as well. Motion Speak. Three. Thank, thanks. Architecture to picked up on, it’s a code issue.

1:39:15 Um, it is a code issue and stuff like that. It, it really comes down to how it’s looked at from the spec and then what they’re able to find is product. And so product generally gets decided at the end. Okay. Yeah. So there’s a couple different ways that you could do the strobes. Um, they can be mounted on the wall. We are trying to find the cheapest way to do it. And that would be a single unit that has the smoke, the co, and the strobes. Otherwise you would’ve had these strobes on the wall and the cost of that was even more. Okay. Um, the last is a return. Um, so we are changing, um, replacing the gutter on one elevation with fascia, um, and deleting rain barrels. So we get a credit of $390.

1:40:03 Um, I need a motion to accept a credit. No. Yeah. Yeah. You don’t accept a, um, so the last couple things. So the two issues that we’re running into right now is that we are working to install a storm drain that we, we have a motion to, to install this new storm drain. As they’re running across, it’s needs to be connected to the storm drain system, which is close to Wilkins Power Station. As they’re running across our driveway, there is a duck bank with power, four power conduits in there that was supposed to be on the upside. So they will need to be dealing with that. Um, so currently the way it works is that you see the duck bank, we, they have to hand dig essentially up to it.

1:40:49 They have to figure out the depth and they’re gonna have to figure out how they’re gonna connect to that, that storm drain with elevations and stuff like that. Um, so that’s one of the things that they’re working on. Now. The last one is that when they excavated for the, um, the scale pit, they did notice some concrete beginning to fail underneath the front two corners of the structure. Um, and then the two steel beams that are in those areas, they were supposed to just get a little bit of paint, some scraping and stuff like that. Um, the structural engineer is taking a hard look at those, um, and assessing those. And there might need to be some work that is completed, completed on that. I don’t have a change order at this time, um, but we will be coming back to you to have discussions about that. Okay. Um, again, we kind

1:41:35 of talked about it at the beginning, very beginning of the meeting. Um, we are at a point where we can open back up for commercial trash. So we’ll begin to do that tomorrow. Unfortunately, unfortunately I need to complete or they need to complete some additional site work, which includes some regrading and the installation of the curving. So we were gonna open up today, tomorrow, and all next week, and then we’ll be closing down to remove the trailer out and start doing the grading and the curving at that time. But we do wanna allow contractors to get rid of some of the stored waste that I believe that they’re holding onto. Um, and trying to get operations back up and running. Mm-hmm. So we will be open for commercial trash tomorrow, um, and all next week. How do you communicate that to our unit? So we have 400 accounts that we have emails for.

1:42:22 So we will email all the account holders regarding that. Yeah. ‘cause we bill all of them. It’s all through email and stuff like that. And that, that is the easiest way to communicate that. Um, and like I said, the trailer is scheduled to remove, be removed on February 18th. Um, we had originally scheduled it for next week. Um, was supposed to be removed on the 10th. Um, but they still don’t have power, um, permanent power in the new scale house. And we’re, we’re not at a point where we can move over, so we had to push that out a week. What don’t we do with the trailer trailer’s? Not ours. It’s just a rental. So it goes back to the company. Oh, yeah. But obviously everyone’s excited to be moving out of the trailer and into the final scale house.

1:43:11 Okay. Um,

1:43:16 and again, you know, just to kind of switch gears and talk about budget, um, well, what About first a little. I know we’re not ready for detail about the contract. Oh Yeah. So, um, you know, we received quite a few bids for, um, curbside trash recycling. I’ve met with three big companies so far. Um, we are analyzing all pricing. Some of them are coming back to us, or I have my final meeting with the third big company tomorrow, uh, or on Friday. Um, you know, obviously we’re looking at all the numbers and, and analyzing what the best proposals are. Um, and trying to figure that out. I will come back to you, um, with a recommendation. We, depe budget is really gonna come into this piece at, at this point.

1:44:01 So next Friday, Tom and I are meeting with the town administrator, um, and the CFO of the community. We will be talking about this contract. They know the cost increase that they have, um, that we have assigned to it at this point. Um, those are true numbers. Um, and so we need to have discussions with them to say, you know, the idea is that we’ve been talking about this trash contract for 10 years. Mm-hmm. We knew this was going up. I I, you know, we came in under the estimate that I had given them for this contract. Even the numbers that we have today. Um, you know, this should be part of the major budget. Mm-hmm. Um, if it’s not, I’m gonna have issue with that because we would’ve gone about things slightly different.

1:44:47 We probably would’ve created our own article just to cover the cost of this contract rather than having it as part of other things. But because of the time in the state of the town, we didn’t have the opportunity to write this article. Um, so we have to have a major discussion with them about how is this getting folded in to the overall budget. So you, you mentioned in there the numbers that are coming in are below It. So the numbers that this town has been using at the state of the town, the $844,000 over last year’s budget budget is correct. Okay. Yeah. That is below the estimates that I had put together that we had been using for the last year. Okay, good. Yeah. So I had, you know, it was over a million dollars. Yep. For the increase. This is, you know, we got it down

1:45:33 to 844 so far. Yeah. Now there’s things, the change in barrels. Yeah. So the idea is that obviously automation is the cheapest way to go using large companies and stuff like that. You’re re it’s a reduction of workforce. So all the companies have said, yep, we can do the automation. Um, again, we talked about having recycling automation collection every week versus the every other week. Um, there is a slight decrease for, you know, costs. If you go for the other every other week in the downtown district, they will be doing manual collection to handle that. That is the best way to do it. We will be going through the process. Um, I went out and counted, I wanna say it was 175 businesses that would,

1:46:19 could potentially be part of the program. Um, once we get kind of past the, you know, this piece of it, we will need to make some changes to our regulations to say businesses can opt in. They’re, once we enter into this new contract, they’re no longer allowed to put recycling curbside for free. They’re no longer, they’re not allowed to put trash out there for free anyways. Currently, there might be some of them doing it, but when we move to the new system, we will be providing barrels to every home in town, you would get a 65 gallons of trash. And depending on the outcome of the recycling, you’d either get a 65 gallon recycling and a 96 gallon for, um, you know, 96 gallon for recycling for the other every other week.

1:47:06 Any other additional material will have to go to the transfer station. Mm-hmm. Um, we will need to set up for the businesses, we will need to set up a pay structure. So if they wanted to pay on a monthly basis to use the trash recycling, they could do that. We just need to talk about would you have to opt in, opt in for six months? Would you have to opt or it would be monthly. Mm-hmm. Um, probably the easiest is probably the six months, maybe the year. But we can discuss how that would all work. We also are gonna need to assign a dollar value per item, you know, for the trash for the cycling that you would charge them on a monthly basis as well. Um, and so, you know, that’s kind of where we’re headed with all of this.

1:47:52 Um, we may, I have to take a look at our solid waste regulations. Curbside, we probably will need to make some few minor adjustments because we will be assigning barrels to everybody. And the way the barrels work is that we will be buying them from a third party. We get the best deal. There’s no throughput. Um, so they’re like, the main companies aren’t buying the barrels and they get to charge us the 10%. We’re buying the barrels directly. This company will distribute all the barrels. They will all have QR codes on them. So I live at, you know, 29 Smith Street. There will be a QR code assigned to that barrel. We know that barrel is 29 Smith Street. So if Mr. Smith’s barrel disappears from Smith Street and I find an extra barrel over there, we can use a QR code

1:48:38 and say, Hey, that’s, you know, that’s Mr. Smith’s barrel. That’s where that went. Um, we had put in the RFP to look at, um, damage. So maintenance of the barrels. We are gonna do the maintenance of the barrels. Um, it’s just not work worth paying a company to do the maintenance and stuff like that. We are gonna buy extra barrels. We’ll have them at the transfer station. If there’s issues, we’ll have extra parts. So when we’re talking about issues, if you need a lid, we can replace your lid. If you need wheels, we can replace your wheels. If your barrel’s damaged, we can replace your whole barrel and we will analyze, you know, it’s just easier for me to replace your whole barrel right now. I’m not gonna deal with your wheels and your lid and stuff like that. So we’ll take that on. So that’s not gonna be necessarily an added expense.

1:49:25 So I’ll ask, you’re, you’re a hundred percent correct that you’ve been very vocal about this coming. Even I spoke about it two years ago at town meeting. Yeah, yeah. You know, you came in under, it’s coming, it supposedly looks like it’s coming in under the cost, you know, using the waste revolving to cover the barrels. It seems like everything you’re doing to make this cheap, to not affect town budget is being done. Yeah. Or to give pre-warning. Yeah. So the conversation that that’s not about like, well we just can’t afford this. Right. It it, So it Well, it is because, and it’s, it’s more about, so originally the number,

1:50:10 the estimated number that we were gonna be short by WA was my understanding was $6.8 million. Yeah. We hit the state of the town and now the number’s 8.5 mm-hmm. And so that’s a, that’s a large difference. Yep. Um, and again, we had talked to them because we had heard some rumors that, well, you know, the trash contract might be, you know, need to be part of the override. Like no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. We’ve been talking about this for 10 years. Yeah. You can’t now say, well, this is an unforeseen cost. Like Right. We’ve been talking about this, you know, That that’d be career suicide for them to do that. Right. So we, we need to have that conversation and just see where they are. Okay. Um, and have this understanding, just say essentially saying what we’re saying,

1:50:56 no, we’ve been talking about this. You don’t want to do that. Like, and they might just say, well, we don’t have any choice. And so again, this is, sorry, this is the select board? No, this is just the town administrator and the, the, um, she’s financial officer. Okay. Okay. But again, the select board is gonna be the one that’s gonna have to decide how this budget is gonna be cut. That’s the body that has to decide. And again, they’re gonna have to hear from all the different boards and understand all the different issues. And it’s not as easy as they think it is. It’s not just about public safety, it’s not just about police and fire. They need to understand that there’s state law that says you have to have a public health nurse.

1:51:41 You have to do food inspections, you have to do beach testing, you have to do sanitation. Those are state requirements. That stuff goes away. You can’t technically open your beach. So you need to be very, very careful how you look at this budget and how you decide who’s gonna work and who’s not, or what employees are gonna be cut. We’re making a lot of money at the transfer station these days. You couldn’t just say, we’re not, we’re gonna afford, or, you know, we’re gonna close off Saturdays. It’s like, well what’s the revenue loss? People not buying stickers because we’re closed on Saturday. The flip side is, you can’t close me on the Monday because I have Crip side trash occurring and I need to be open. Mm-hmm. I also have a commercial side

1:52:26 that I’m making revenue on too. And you, you’re gonna be, you’re hurting your bottom line as well. Mm-hmm. And so all these little pieces go into it and they have to be, uh, have full knowledge of all that stuff before they make these decisions. I don’t know at this juncture how you could, could, I mean, it’s a basic service that a town provides. All the notice in the world has been given and it’s as easy as that. Yeah. I mean, Yeah. So Unfortunately there’s gonna be a lot of hard decisions or they’re gonna have to be made. Or the issue is that, so when you go to town meeting, you have to present a balanced budget. Mm-hmm. And then you can present the override items,

1:53:14 but you have to present a balance budget. It wouldn’t come back and say, no curbside collection, we’re only doing transfer station. We can’t hand. So because we’ve gone through the strike, we know exactly how that is. Yeah. We can’t handle the volume. Even during the strike, I still had trash trucks out there collecting trash. I can handle the trash volume that comes in. I can’t handle the recycling volume. I can’t handle, I couldn’t handle 8,000 people a week coming into the transfer station. You, it’s, See, it’s not, it’s not just truck volume, It’s traffic. It’s not Yeah. It’s traffic and all that stuff. Yeah. You know, even with that, the, the employees got so burnt out so quickly because what happens is that those bins full up, they,

1:54:02 they need time to change ‘em and people just leaving trash on the ground. And so at the end of the day, it was just coming out and so it was taking us hours and hours at the end of the day to clean everything up. And so it, So some OT was paid. Oh, yeah. Right. The Yeah. Anyone questioning where the OT was clearly wasn’t paying attention in the summer to the strike. So it’s like, you know, so yeah, we, we can handle the, the volume of trash that’s coming in, but I can’t, and, and we had to hire waste management to do additional running for us for cur for the recycling. So there was a significant increase in cost because of that of event. And so you would, we would need to be fully prepared to try to analyze what those costs are. If you were to say we’re gonna close down curbside

1:54:48 collection, it, it would not go well.

1:54:52 I, I hope, I mean, that journal leader should know that, but I the select board and they have to know that. Right. Yeah. So that’s really the biggest piece is like, you know, and that’s, that’s my biggest concern is making sure that everybody understands for our two departments how vital they are and what the issues were would be if we had, you know, if there weren’t budget cuts and, and what kind of effects there would be there, it would be catastrophic. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, we meet with Thatcher and Alicia next week. Yep. We ultimately will meet with the fin call. Correct. But do we ever have a presentation to the select board? No, we don’t have a select board department.

1:55:37 So the select board could come, They’re gonna vote on this budget. Yeah. So they, they have to figure out what this process is gonna be between now and town meeting to analyze what they need and what they need to cut. It is gonna be a very difficult situation. Now don’t tell me he didn’t know this was gonna happen. Yeah. That’s the hardest part. It’s like, I mean, Alex’s been talking about it forever for the finance. Yeah. The, this is nothing any, I mean, Yeah. This is not a surprise. Yeah. The surprise is that how large the number is, the surprise that we need an override is not a surprise. Mm-hmm. Because Alec has done a very, very, the,

1:56:22 the ham has done a very good job. Oh, he’s Been vocal about it too. I’ve heard him say it a ton of times. Yes. So this is blindsiding Alex, Like all of ‘em are really good. Guy sat next to her too. Yes. Yep. Yeah. Um, so yeah, the way it usually works is that we go through the state of the town, um, and usually state of the towns early in the month of January. So if you have to deal with any issues because of the financing, you would have a period of time that you could write articles. You could submit those articles. Um, and then we would have our budget hearings. So we would have our small budget hearings with our liaison from the finance committee. Um, they tend to be the same people, so they get very familiar with your budget. Um, and then you would have your presentation before the finance committee, or they actually vote to approve your budget to go forward to town meeting.

1:57:09 Um, and then you go to town meeting. Um, that’s the process. Um, obviously we’re gonna see a very different process processes here, but what that is, I, I don’t know what it’s gonna be. I don’t know how they’re gonna figure out what employees are, are, you know, do they give a price per household? If they Yeah. My understanding that, so you, when we look at the trash, we use 8,000. So I think if you use, you know, if it, if a a $10 million ride, I think that would approximately be like 1200, 12 or $1,400 per

1:57:51 Yeah.

1:57:53 Obviously, you know, it, it’s a, it’s a tough economic time for a lot of people. Um, prices are higher, but, you know, when you look at state averages, state taxes and stuff like that, we do, our taxes are, are on the lower side. Mm-hmm. Again, it, it is a tough financial time for everybody. Yeah. Groceries are up, all that stuff, so mm-hmm. It is hard, but again, you know, spent a lot of time trying to put together an RFP for the trash that was very clear to all the bidders so we could try to get to the best numbers. Um, you know, we’re trying to meet with them to make sure that we both understand where their numbers are, um, and we can, you know, analyze and try to figure out what the best situation is for our lab.

1:58:46 That’s everything. I have

1:58:50 Public co. Anybody on Bob who wants to wish us well? Yeah, nobody that has a raised hand. How many people are on? Uh, there’s three right now. There’s, well, I have somebody that’s, see

1:59:08 Alexa, go right ahead. Hi there. Oh, I don’t know if I can put my video on. Um, but hi, I’m Ika, I’m a new reporter with the Marblehead current. Um, I just wanted to ask really quick, is there somewhere where I could find your minutes after this meeting? Uh, yeah. We, you, you could email me and I can get minutes. I can also provide, um, videos to the meetings as well. Okay, excellent. Okay. If you contact MHTV, you can actually subscribe to any meeting that’s recorded and they send them daily. Oh, great. It’s So select board school committee. Ours Fin com. Fin. Yep. They, yeah, I guess they do. Yeah, just that’s something helpful if you Want. Okay. Yeah, thanks for that. And then also I was just wondering, um,

1:59:54 because I can’t see the, like all of you guys, um, who is the person? I guess it would be to the right. I can see your brand. I’m the, I’m the best looking one over here. So we just, yeah, I’m the opposite.

2:00:09 Is there a way to shift though? I said no. I see. So I just wanna make sure I have all of your names. So Andrew, you’re directly in front of me and then, oops, my screen’s gone away. Amanda, I look like Rory McElroy. Oh, Hey. Oh, I see you all. Oh, hey. Okay, great. Great. Okay. Um, thank you. And that would be it.

2:00:34 Oops. Oh, sorry. Um, I think I’m still muted. You’re all set.

2:00:45 I accept the motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. I moved. So second. All in favor? Aye. The standing mode of the jury. I’m no longer Here. Alright. Uh, good conversation. Mm-hmm. Oh, our next Big time solutions. See, uh, our next meeting is scheduled. I do these, but I held back on these, which that’s Do I do hold back some. Right? So our next meeting is supposed to be the, uh, yep. 11th. So we’re pushing that out. No, when people push back, We’re gonna skip that one, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then the next is break Week. I send you more diplomatically. We might. So that one in the 23rd. Appreciate it. I appreciate It. Yes. All right. So

2:01:30 I will send out an email tomorrow about meeting dates. Okay. ‘cause we were gonna s mix, skip the next one and then meet. That would be then would be the fourth Monday, um, which I believe actually is a holiday, so we’ll have to figure out a time that we want to leave for that one. Okay. That’s the third Monday, the holiday. But the, the fourth Monday is, that’s the 20. Okay, so the 23rd you said of February. Mm-hmm. Okay. So the next meeting will be the 23rd of February,

2:02:01 Either now that you’re using the kit again. Yeah. Does that mean one of the little mini compactors is gonna go back to cardboard? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Y worked out Really slick for a While. I know, but I was getting, I got frustrated today that it wasn’t cardboard. Well That happens overall. They do super job. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I need that to be ated. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately a lot of people are getting

2:02:31 Content. I know. It’s So whose board is together? I’m with you guys. I believe in you guys.