Board of Health: March 5, 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.

0:04 Okay, we’re having technical problems at the Board of Health, but we’re going ahead with our meeting, um, uh, tonight. That’s, um, March 5th and, um, the open meeting of the Board of Health. Um, the agenda lists, um,

0:30 approval of minute meetings of previous, of previous minutes. We received four copies for, we received four minutes of different meetings. Are there comments about them? And if so, uh, may we approve them? They all looked good to me. Yes. Same. So, yeah. You should take them one at a time. Okay. So the meeting mix of November 10th, 2025. Um, Motion to approve. Second. All in favor? Okay. And Unanim unanimously passes. Um, the minutes of November 24th, 2025. Motion to approve. Second. All in favor? Aye. Unanimously passes

1:22 A, let’s see the minutes of December 9th, 2025.

1:28 Motion to approve. Second. All in favor? Uh, unanimously passes. And then the last of the motion, uh, the minutes of January 13th, 2026. Motion to approve. Second.

1:45 Approve all This. Okay. Do you want to take this? We there while? Does that make us caught up through 2025? Or, I, I was looking at, I have to go back and take a look. Yeah, there might be one like in October that was, that we’re missing. And so, yeah. Okay.

2:04 Alright. Um, the chair’s report. Hope will be, uh, short. Um, we get it correctly. We will, we will have, uh, slides and the, we, we have copies for the audience.

2:22 The four issues that I wanna talk about, um, first, well, wellness fair, Roman numeral two. Mm-hmm. Um, was very successful, so thank you. Congratulations to Tom, to Andrew, to Marty and the almost 30 vendors who staffed the tables and demonstrating, demonstrating goods and services for wellness. In the town you had over 200, is that right? Yeah, Right around 200. Yeah.

2:56 It was really a fantastic event. Yeah. Um, there was already talks I got, uh, from a couple vendors about next year, maybe, uh, doing it a little later when it’s warmer and they could do something outside, which opens up possibilities, I guess. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think it does obviously open up possibilities. I think one of the things that people really like is the time of year, because there’s not a lot going on. I agree. Indoor activities, so people can walk the gym and mm-hmm. Meet new vendors and then kind of get ready for new activities in the springtime. Yeah. Or new fitness. I think, you know, a lot of people snowbird though. It does not. Yeah. You miss some snowbirds. Um, but, you know, again, last year we did it in January,

3:42 so we’re trying to kind of capture people with their, you know, new Year’s resolutions and all these things. Um, It was still better in January than it was this year in March. Yeah. Um, I guess I’ll, I’ll have them challenge me with some ideas that they do outside to, uh, if they had anything creative that would really spice it up. Otherwise, um, stick with inside is fine. They do.

4:12 Alright. The next item is, if you got the current today, you will see, um, a, a column there by the three of us. And I personally am very pleased that we have begun to do that. One of the only negatives in my mind about the, the Hulk Calm process was that because of the open meeting law, we had a hard time including the board at at all times, that now that we have results, we can actually share the results knowing they’re going to be presented in an open meeting. So we’re sort of allowed to talk about ‘em under the rules. So we had a column last week under the, in the week,

5:00 weekly news on physical health. And this week we were in, um, the current under, uh, mental health, adult mental health. So we have several others in the queue. Um, if we had the, the slides up, um, um, showing the, the one piece of formal data that’s in this, this column that talks about the level of stress, um, for individuals in town and, um, at, at, at, at different ages o over time. And, and it’s quite clear that today’s world is a very challenging world. And although people had different levels

5:49 of stress, different ages, there’s really no, there are very few people in town that are leading a relatively low stress life. And the quote that I have in this from the surgeon, previous Surgeon General, um, says that these kind of social disconnects that are out there that cause stress in everyone in today’s world, they’re easily

6:21 ex give, given out, expressed as anxiety, stress, and at times, unfortunately, suicidality. And he lists the number that has fascinated me. The kind of stress that we showed, or the, the Marvel head residents say that they’re seeing is equivalent to 15 cigarettes a day over their lifetime in terms of shortening their lives. So it’s a fundamental challenge for wellness, for public health to really try to face some of the issues that are out there. And it, and it won’t be easy, but it is something that at least now that we have numbers and we have people identifying the issues, we should be able to, to move forward.

7:08 So I think it’s a, it’s a really positive thing. Uh, uh, also in there, we quote one of the, the write-ins at the, at the end of, of this, the formal survey, and it says, you know, um, if you’re, you’re aware of the world and you’re not a little bit depressed and a little bit anxiety, anxious, you’re not paying attention. And that’s the reality I think we are today. And it will, we’ll have to work very hard to see how we can help in that context. So that’s where we are in terms of sharing the calm resort results. The, the, the next big issue for comm in the community

7:54 is a set of five focus groups that are gonna occur later in March and one, I guess on the 1st of April. The, there are four focus groups that will deal with different age groups. We’ll have one that will deal with the, the young, 18 to 30, the 30 to 45 or something like that. Um, child raising, uh, period. The next period will be sort of pre-enroll, pre pre-retirement. And then the final group will be those that are retired and are 6 65 70 or beyond. So Kate, uh, Dr. Coyle of, of the UMass Boston. Again, in order to maintain complete confidentiality, none

8:41 of us will ever go to any one of the focus groups. None of us will know who said what about anything. But, but they will, um, be drilling down on what they can find in terms of the debts of issues that, uh, are, are brought up, um, indirectly in, in the, in the survey. So at the end. Oh, there you go. So at the end of the day, we should, we should be able to thank you very much.

9:14 We should be able to have an even deeper understanding of, um, where the Marblehead town health,

9:27 uh, can’t move the slide. But other than that, there we go. The, this is a source of stress column that’s in the, in the current today. And you can see the, in the 40 to 49 age group, the, the group that sees the most stress has 76% of that group is seeing work-life balance challenges. And 76% is seeing stress from raising, raising their children. So one of the things that we’ve taught about, talked about, at least in raising children, is to try to see what we can do about having parenting classes.

10:14 When, when we went around and talked to the, uh, pediatricians and the obstetricians in the community, that was one of the first things that they recommended that the Board of Health could do is help. I mean, in these, in these days when we don’t live in nuclear families, like certainly when I grew up, lots of family, lots of babysitters all around all the time that, that parents can, new parents can use all the help that they can get. So that’s certainly one of the things that I believe we’ll probably recommend in the final report as we move forward. And that’s the kind of thing we’re talking about. We’re talking about here. Alright. The, the focus groups, the four focus groups,

11:00 the young adults is April 1st. It’s gonna be a Zoom, um, meeting. We did that, we did zoom for the young adults because we believe that most of them might be out of town. They may be using their parents’ address at, on their parents’ health insurance, but they’re away at college or something like that. So we thought that that one is probably better on Zoom. All the rest of the other three will be at Abbott, at AB Abbott privately, of course, if it’s not closed, uh, due to the, um, to the budget problems. But it, that was a joke. Certain not have made, uh, reality. Um, so we middle age on the 26th, um,

11:48 in the early evening, um, the pre-retirement group, um, on the 26th, uh, a little later in the day. And the seniors will be, uh, on the day before in mid-afternoon at the library. So with, with those groups, by, when those groups are finished, we will have the two level of, of two levels of data, the 42 survey questions that were mostly checkbox and some written. And then we’ll have this commentary and we’ll put it together and try to get into a, you know, a final report sometime in the late spring or early summer. It’ll, it’ll probably depend on the complexity of the,

12:36 of the, uh, focus group results. But we’re making progress and, um, at least what we, we hear from, um, our UMass Boston colleagues we’re, we’re doing as well as can be expected in, in this context. And, um, so I, I think most of us are kind of pleased that we’ve done this and the data, uh, will ultimately be very valuable for the town, not just the board of health. Okay. The ne the next thing that we are working at, uh, which is important, we, we had the, the Board of Health started the Mar Marblehead mental health task force during the pandemic because it was clear

13:22 that people were quite stressed out o over time. They had developed a website that listed a lot of mental health resources in the community. So you could go on the website and you could, gee, if I need someone, um, for substance use or if I need someone for whatever the website was, was fairly robust. But somehow, couple of months, maybe more than that, that almost a year now, technical problems. We originally thought it had been hacked, but I talked to the person who actually built it, that he didn’t think it was a hacking, it was somehow the ownership of the, the, the name somewhere. But in any event, Joanne Miller has intro who,

14:10 who was working with him to get the site up, um, introduced me to him. I’ve had communications with him a couple of times. I’m gonna meet with him next week. Then he’s prepared both to resuscitate the previous, he, he’s pretty sure he can get all the material that was on the old site. And he, he will expand the capacity, um, of the site because it’s quite clear from the results of the comm survey that a lot of people are asking us to do things that already exist. So the ability to navigate people who are looking for things that are already existing in the town will become a very,

14:56 hopefully a very early quick victory for the calm process and for the, for the, for the board, we, and so we will maintain that, um,

15:08 that website under the, the name Marblehead Cares, which is the way it was named in the, the digital world when it was started. So we’re making progress. Um, finally two meetings from now, we’ll, we’ll probably meet, um, in our normal fourth Monday of March, um, for our next meeting, which will be four days after what we now think the select board will be meeting to propose their final balance budget. Do we believe that’s still accurate?

15:53 Next week they’re gonna talk a little bit about override correctly. I think they’ll be also voted on the balance, what the would be the balance next week. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Well, I don’t think we have to call a special meeting as special day. I, I would suggest we meet at our regular mm-hmm. Time. We will have time to talk about the consequence, what it means to us, the board of health, whatever they decide. So we’ll be able to, to debate and vote on what, what our response is with better preparation and more knowledge. So I think that’s a, a, a good thing. And then that’ll be on Monday, something like the 23rd or fourth.

16:38 Then on Saturday, the, is it the 28th? Um, the finance committee, rather than having four separate meetings, like I guess they’ve done in the past, they’ve decided to have Super Saturday. Um, and all of the, uh, all of the elected boards, I guess will take their time and run through, uh, their budgets with the, uh, finance committee to make sure that they’re comfortable with both. How, how the interface between what the select board is proposing and what we are, uh, suggesting is best for the board of health.

17:24 Do, do, is that, do I have that right? Since, since this is my first time. Yep. Um, okay. So we have this month pretty well set, set up for, for, uh, for that

17:40 also on the meeting of the 24th or whatever that first Monday, the th se fourth Monday, we will, it will be an hour benefit to generate questions because on April 14th, the district attorney of Essex County is coming to the Board of Health. He’s, he’s actually been very, very nice about coming. He, he would like us to have questions in advance, and he would like us to, to the extent that we can get questions from our, our, our audience, our public, and the people who pay attention to what’s happening on the board. But he, it, it, two weeks ago, I think, uh, we showed a one minute video that he did last year, which, which, uh,

18:28 it was no nonsense. This is the law. We expect the law to be obeyed in this town. And, uh, if there are questions come to me, me being the, the district attorney saying that, so he, he’s, uh, he’s gonna, he’s gonna be very supportive of the things that we have been talking about in this, in this, uh, in this board. Now, there has been a tangential question about the town bylaw that is kind of, um, social hosting light compared to the state, uh, legislation. The state legislation is actually a couple thousand dollars

19:13 fine and, and serious penalties, whereas the town bylaw is smaller, shorter, and just a little bit of public embarrassment in 25 or $50, something like that. Yeah. It used to be on Channel 25, they used to call the news people. So it was more, more pretty embarrassing. Well, that’s interesting. So that, but that stopped in 2017, and we could not, this Guy here hasn’t done nothing that’s in there now. Well, for a number of years. But, But to be fair, yeah. He, he came where nothing had been done for several years. That’s true. So he believed he was taking over and being consistent. Yeah. He Wasn’t making any waves.

20:00 I have met with him. He, he, he, he certainly didn’t like some of the adjectives and nouns that Tom used, but he believes that Tom has added value and he believes, I woke him up, that he is a absolutely, he is absolutely committed at the same level that we are. He’s invited to come on the 14th, and he has it on his calendar now. He said, unless there’s some sort of thing that comes up, he will be here and he will work out with the district attorney. So I think that’s, I think, uh, you know, pediatricians are by and large optimists. I understand that. But, but I really do think there is enough momentum both

20:45 from the comm survey, from all of the comments that have made with all the stuff that’s been in the local newspapers, that no one wants to see another tragic accident like we saw in August of last year. And I believe the town, the vast majority of the town is, is committed to that. Yeah. We even had the incident on the Cosway, so we’ve had more than one. Okay. But, uh, I, I went off on a tangent a little bit. There is a concern that’s been raised, nobody knows, or at least I can’t tell who raised it first, that there’s a question. When the, when the town bylaw was passed, I think it was 2019 when the town bylaws was passed.

21:33 No, it was much earlier than that. 95, 19 95. Um, they took it to the, to the then attorney general of the town who gave it her or his imp Prada. But somehow other ca case cases have existed or come to be known over the past couple of years that might raise questions about the constitutionality. I find that’s hard to, I’m not a lawyer. I find that hard to believe that somebody’s gonna stand up, pay a lawyer, good money to go to court and say, I have a constitutional right to give a 15-year-old alcohol in my house. I mean, that’s, that just makes no sense to me.

22:18 But in any event, we have asked town counsel to Reeva re reevaluate the, by the early bylaw. Now she’s a little busy with a couple of other things that, you know, are out there, but she knows that April 14th, the district attorney will be there and she will try very, are to get that, get that done. So basically on the 14th, we’ll have the chief here as the, we’ll have the district attorney as our, our guest. We hope the chief will be here also as our guest. But in e either case, the, the district attorney will be asking questions about things and, um, and, um, I think we’ll be able to make, uh, real good progress about the way forward.

23:05 Okay. Any comments or questions about that? Yeah, I just wanna say Paul Tucker used to live in Marblehead before we became the police chief of Salem. And he’s a very accessible person. He’s a very dedicated officer. He stopped with his wife on the Beverly Bridge when a guy jumped over it, uh, was gonna jump over it at night. And, um, he’s a very, very, uh, hands-on person. Mm-hmm. And I trust him. Mm-hmm. You know, when you, you’re relatively new to town, you bring up somebody’s name. Yeah. Most people say, oh yeah, she’s great, or he’s great. Very few people get a hundred percent right. Every person I have mentioned, the fact that the district attorney is coming is willing

23:52 to say basically, maybe not in your words, but exactly the same thing, great guy, fair, open, honest, and will give you a straight shot. Mm-hmm. So he, and just on the telephone to me, he’s just been absolutely amazing. Yeah. So I think I, I think we’re making progress in this area. I think everybody is pleased to see that we’re moving along. And hopefully we will have, um, things pretty well, um, outlined to the entire community. Well before the prom, the senior prom and graduation parties, uh, begin to occur. And even Dennis King’s former boss too. I don’t know if you’re aware of that before he was District attorney. I, I have learned a lot more about all everybody than

24:40 I what I wanted to know. It’s a small world. Yeah. But nonetheless, that’s, that’s ‘cause what I did when I was talking to Dennis, Dennis said, great, I’ll talk to Paul and we’ll work together. Right. So that’s a, that’s a bonus for, for everybody. Yeah. No question. I’ve Dealt with the blot guy that was the district attorney before this guy, um, were on the same channel most of the time. Um, I talked to him about people going through the court system. I mean, he wants to do the law the way the law is. Um, there used to be a cop of Marblehead, Dick Fullton. He used to be the prosecutor over in, in court. He used to handle a lot of things without going to court. Go talk to the people at home with their parents and try to keep it outta court sometime.

25:27 And, um, the only thing is Paul Tucker likes doing things. We don’t agree a hundred percent, but I think he’s a fair person. So, you know, I think he’s a fair person. Anyway, on the March 24th of March, our next meeting, hopefully we’ll have enough questions that I can send to the district attorney’s chief of staff, and we will have a good meeting when he comes on the 24th. You Gonna invite the selectman already? Course. Um, I’ve talked to, to Dan and Dan, uh, says, if the chief is coming, um, assuming certainly we’re gonna treat the chief politely. All right. We treat all of our guests politely. Uh, he said there’s no reason for him to be here. Okay.

26:13 Okay. But I will let Dan know that. We’ll let the, well, I Just thought, ‘cause this affects the whole community, so I know What I’ve let the chair chair, not the one, one person, the chair of the school committee know. Yeah. Um, and, and so Yes, because We should make this look nice for Paul Tucker, too. You should have a few people here that the, if you really wanna do something, you, you should show, you know, that the town’s trying to make a commitment. Um, I don’t want to commit him, but Jimson said he was very interested. Oh, good. Yeah. That’s what I, even if they just had one person, uh, just because, like I say it, it shows people look at that mm-hmm. You know, if there’s other public officials there, the more

26:59 the, the, the more things that, ‘cause they have all kinds of programs. And I, I, I don’t think the town’s ever participated in, I’m now on his mailing list. He has mailing lists on more than public health. But all of the public health things that I see that, that, that are out there, he’s making incredibly logical, oh, You’ll get along with him. Fine. You’ll be on the same page. Straightforward, uh, thing. So, anyway, I, I, it, you know what? I like to see us make incremental progress. Yeah. I don’t wanna fight with the police chief. It, it’s just like, um, you know, I understand he didn’t wanna make a lot of waves and stuff like that. They’re not too sure that maybe someone, maybe him in his capacity, if they thought there were issues

27:45 with that, he should have brought it to someone’s attention and looked into it. Um, because these things keep, keep Happening. But, but, but we’re past it. We are moving, oh, no, we wanna move on. Yeah, yeah. We move forward. Yeah. And move forward. And, and as far as I can gather, everyone involved has a positive future outlook that is as common as it can be in a diverse society like ours. No. So I’ll say I agree with that. I think it would make a big statement if every select board member came. I, I, I think they should be invited. I don’t care what No. I, I open. He’s one open invitation is one person I think you should invite. And if they wanna come, they come. If they don’t wanna come. But you tell ‘em that Paul Tucker’s coming from the district attorney, he’s not sending someone.

28:30 Right. He’s coming. He, he’s the top dog there. That, that the town should show some support and welcome him in open arms. As far As, well, I think it’s, it’s also the opposite. If we were to invite the entire select board, and I were to tell the district attorney that the entire select board, the five of them’s coming to visit with the three of us, then he’s got a bigger audience too. So maybe that he Loves bigger audiences. Yeah, of Course. He’s a politician. Yeah. He, He, he, um, yeah. Well, look, No, I’m just letting, we’re Making progress. We’re doing it. We’re doing it with respect and, and with an eye to the future. But I read something in the paper about, is it you and swamps get thinner combining,

29:16 or did I, do I have that wrong? No, That’s different. Okay. That’s, um, the police chief, and it worked with Andrew. And, um, a Andrew’s parallel in Swampscott, there are two people. One is, um, uh, Gina, um, Gina Rabbit, rabbit who works with the Marblehead Police, and she’s called a jail prevention person or something. Diversion officer. Sorry. Jail Diversion. Diversion. And there’s a similar person who used to work with Lynn and Lynn, and now consults with swamps constitute I missed Tuesday session, but I’ve gone to the first two. They have the, the, the seminar program is called a, a,

30:04 um, addiction and Recovery. And they go through, um, the real challenges of having people who are addicted to substances in a family. The first session, they had about 26 people on, on the Zoom. And I would guess about 10 were family members or loved ones in some way who had someone who’s very, is suffering from, from real substance abuse challenges. And they, the, these families, these loved ones were asking, how can I do things? And I was very impressed by the two coordinators of that program. They, they come across as one, knowledgeable, as sensitive,

30:53 and as, um, a a as thoughtful and caring as you could. So that’s a program that, uh, the Board of Health could never really do that. We don’t have that kind of experience. We don’t have anybody in the health department that’s like that. So it, I think it’s great that, that the chief did that. He’s got the people who work for him. It’s being paid for by, um, WWW. Which, which fund did you, are you using on this? Uh, that, So the Gina Rabbit, um, the training for that was used for the opioid settlement funds. Um, perfectly appropriate. Yeah. Uh, we have BS a S funds, um, that started this, that promoted, um, creating this fund

31:41 to use for the training. Um, and through the BS a s, we also have been working on, um, I can help training in the schools, other campaigns, training to get people to understand substance use. Um, and now the BS a s group is also working on a positive community. You wanna give us the acronym, the BS a s acronym? Uh, give us substance abuse in Massachusetts. Okay. So again, we’re making baby steps, but we’re going in the right direction. The, clearly the comm survey said that substance use for a adults and children and young people is a major problem for, major issue for this town. And we have to work together.

32:27 The three of us, when we’re joined with two more in, in July, we’ll have five. It’ll be a little bit easier to have more people involved, but I think we’re making progress. Yeah. I’m aware of a lot of suicides in this town. I’m aware a lot of, uh, heroin overdoses, um, and especially people on the neck had issues with their kids all over town. They had issues, but the ones that had more money and weren’t around as much, um, uh, you know, it’s really, really sad situation. But I don’t know if it’s any bigger in this town than other towns. Um, I’ve been down in Springfield in Southwick. I’ve taken people to Mercy Hospital in Holyoke, Massachusetts to a detox there. And, um, I, I went to the Agawam Police

33:15 and they said, oh, we got no problems here. And, um, Well, fortunately, this town is the only one. The board’s responsible. Yeah. Oh, no, no. What we’re gonna focus on this. Oh, no, no, no. I understand that. Th this is over the, over the years. Yeah. You know. Um, Okay. So yes. Um, considering how many people might show up for this, uh, April 14th, do you have a, considering a plan B for a different location? Boy, it’s pretty crowded. Yeah. If you recall at one of the, uh, finance committee meetings that was here, going over people’s budgets, including yours, standing room only, just something To think. The brown school’s got a nice setup up down there.

34:01 And what do you think, Andrew? I have to, you know, we, we don’t really have the brown school’s not really open to us as, as you see is some of the other places. Um, I mean, we could talk about using, we could potentially use the library. They’re not open at nights generally. Um, so we would have to get special, But the library’s not big that, that room down there should Have a whole second floor. They don’t have Zoom access. Ah, yeah. So you’d have to be in the slack door meeting room. Don’t be the only located, this is No bigger than this. Well, I think suggestion of invite the entire select board makes sense. Why don’t I start there? Yeah. And if we get more than one select board member, then we might think, and, and, and if we get anybody coming from the schools, then we probably have

34:47 to start thinking about multipliers, but Then make them aware that Paul Tucker’s covered Oh, Oh, of course. When, Yeah. Dennis King, they see they’re not coming. Dennis King. They see all the time. We could have it here. Paul Tucker, uh, I’ve been to places with him that there’s normally quite a few people. I mean, if you, if you’re gonna make this thing serious and show that the town is concerned about it, I think, you know, I hope some of the people that have kids come here too, some, some of the residents that have kids that had issues and stuff, um, you know, you, you put a thing in the paper that you’re gonna have this. And Paul Tucker come and, uh, because some people, if you try to talk, uh, you said you had a good relationship with Dennis Gang. I’ve talked to him about a few things.

35:32 Well, we’re not on the same page. I don’t have a good relationship with him. So It’s, well, I don’t know. That may be pushing it. We are both working very hard. That’s good. That’s what you should treat each other respectfully. Oh, I, and with a common vision. Okay.

35:50 Um, actually, I, oh, one more, one more. We got, uh, I got a notice, uh, from, uh, Caitlyn Coyle, our, you, you, uh, mass Boston partner on Friday, I think last week. That even with all of the challenges that the state is facing financially, they have opened up, uh, an opportunity for what is called the Massachusetts Community Health and Healthy Aging Fund. And they’ve offered a request for proposals. And all along the whole, the whole purpose of calm was to identify things about the town that needed to be done, set up a list of priorities,

36:35 develop a strategic order of what we wanted to do. Um, and clearly with the rest of the financial problems that the Tom faces, we’re gonna have to generate our own money. So this is an opportunity. We’ve only had it now for two, three days. And, you know, we had the other meeting last night and all that, but absolutely, I’m pretty, uh, uh, I never want to guarantee, but I think we will make a proposal by the 31st. And, and we’ve already begun to start talking which partner we might wanna work with, and where, where we, how to, how to go. So the, the, the, the grant opportunity is at two levels. They will give town like us that are starting, uh, up

37:21 to $50,000 a year, one or two years to do the planning. The, the, uh, uh, try to develop a, a, a a, a real plan rather than a wishlist. And so if we could get that, and if we do well on the plan, then over time you can get a couple hundred dollars, a couple hundred thousand dollars a year to do the things that you might wanna do. Now you cannot use it, you cannot use the money for capital. You can’t build buildings, or you cannot do fewer research. It’s for programs. It’s for programs and mostly for people. Right. But nonetheless, the opportunities are there. Even if we just talked a little bit earlier that

38:08 I think we can do this one another way, but let’s use parenting classes as, as an example. If we, if we just wanted to run parenting classes for all the vulnerable kids that might be born into Marblehead, or born in, in Salem Hospital, Laura and Lynn or whatever, and we put together a program and we could get funded for it, we should do it. Yeah. What about even like Don January, that used to be the head probation officer over at Lynn. I, I think he’s retired. He has a son. But, um, these are like diversion programs and stuff. So, um, you know, the other one is Terry McDonough has done a lot for this town. When that 13-year-old kid Yeah. Uh, unfortunately, we had a ceremony over the beach.

38:56 I didn’t see, I don’t know if the Board of Health was there. I was over there. They had a candlelight vision visual. And I was really sad that those kids didn’t have any support. I was, especially from the police department, I was really, and on top of it, during that funeral, I don’t know if you realize it, the wake, they had a, an Essex County sheriff, uh, crossing people down on Elm Street. That, that I was offended. I think the deer officer from the police department in Marblehead should have been there, that knows these kids that are in school currently. Uh, and, and, and they had, um, you know, to, because like I say, you want the kids to have a re a good relationship with the cops. Not a bad relationship. That they can go to them if they’re in need. Um, and, and what I’m saying to you is I think we need

39:44 more involvement with the police, with the children and the young people in the stop. In a good positive Way. Yeah. Okay. Uh, well, you brought, brought up some good ideas, but maybe we’ll let you chair the meeting on the 14th. Oh, No, no, no. You, you, you’re doing a great job. Um, compared to what’s gone on here in the past. Well, any of that, the experience, I mean, I, I, I feel so lucky that one, the two of us get along. Right. The Three of us. That’s nice to see that. ‘cause this old board didn’t Yes, believe me, I sat talk about it. That’s Why I didn’t come. That’s why I didn’t come here. I won’t mention any names. I’m happy it changed. You drove off. One of the most, Mr. Petty must be happy. It’s changed too, I would think.

40:30 But in many of it backwards. Okay. Here, here we are working together. We, we we’re different people, different backgrounds, but we share a common Yeah. But you’re very dedicated. Uh, we, we chair common love of this town. I’m absolutely amazed. I, I went home last night from that meeting, even though it wasn’t a, a positive meeting. There were no champagne clerks opened last night, but none. I thought, I’m in shock. There Were some thoughtful people making smart comments to try to solve a very difficult problem. So this is a town worth believing in. And the fact that the three of us with different backgrounds, different in interests

41:17 and all of that can come together, start writing columns for the newspapers and having, I get a lot of static for letting the audience talk so much. Right. People think I knew that. But that’s exactly the way public health should work. Public health is a community response to, to, to help people help the town become healthier. So we have to listen to the town. Well, if you don’t listen to the town, they’re not gonna come. You know? And I know very few come, but that’s why, because a lot of these boards now, they just have public comment. They, you know, the selectman had a slogan. We get it done. I don’t know what they’re getting done. Well, look, I, I, no, I’m, I gonna jump in with negatives.

42:04 We, the board is, the board is committed to be positive. Whatever happened in the past, we can’t change, but we can change the future. But I’m saying to you, if parents have problems, they like to have a place to go and talk to people and vent. Yeah. And, and, and there’s not really, I, I’m not aware of any resources. My Email address And My Facebook messenger that’s, trust me, it’s full. Well, when we visited the pediatric offices, they believe they provide some of that service for this town. And they love this town too. Yeah. Um, and oh, the Marvel Lights Counseling Center’s a great resource, but I don’t know if a lot of, if everyone’s a knows, um,

42:52 because not everyone has a million dollars in this town. When you talk about stress, I know a lot of elderly people that their spouse passed on 20 or 30 years ago, they don’t have much money left. They wanna live in their house. And when these tax, when you, when you say you’re gonna assess people another 250 and the, the taxes are still going up, I know they’re gonna have programs, but, uh, some of these people don’t even want to ask for help. They’re, they’re too proud. Um, Well, we shouldn’t, they shouldn’t have to ask. Part of the reason we did the survey was to ask them privately. We now, they’ve now given us answers. They gave us 493 written answers to the last question. What do you want the board health to know? So we’re gonna try to do our best to take at least some, we,

43:40 we can’t lay sidewalk. He, he knows how to do Mason. I, I do not do Mason. My father was a stone cutter, but I don’t Mason. But sidewalks, somebody else will do. But we will work at making kids healthier, as healthy as they can be in this crazy world. We’ll, we’ll will deal with the things that boards of health, public health professionals and volunteers should be doing. But anyway, we, we, it’s, it’s, the night is supposedly Storm. We’re gonna move forward, but thank you for all your input. We’ll make Sure you’re in the minutes. Al, Go on. Oh, No, you don’t have me input You. You’ll get this, the big slot on the MTV tomorrow.

44:25 I’m surprised both the local papers today, or the Salem News and the item. I thought we’d be on the front page. We weren’t mentioned at all at that bead last night. Oh, so it, so it’s really sad. No, No, no. Current online. Oh, oh. But it’s not, so maybe the papers, maybe they’ll tomorrow way. Oh, There were, there were, see, I’m not online. I do everything the old fashioned way. Come here in person. And I look at the papers every day. So I go, wow. These people, the, this was breaking news last time. I mean, I thought we would’ve been on the front page of the sale of this. No, The, the, uh, at least the current was by 7 30, 8 o’clock In independent was like, Oh yeah. Two minutes after the meeting. Oh, He’s amazing. But Will doesn’t mess around. Yeah. He knows his profession.

45:10 It’s a good thing that we have those people, um, Want me to read some bills? Yes, I know, I know. I can, I can give you names of people. They’re gonna tell me that. Uh, we let, we let the, our public, our visitors, no, That’s good. Someone else is watching, you know. Alright. Um, I might need a little help on one of these, and then I’m gonna make a comment about one. So if Amazon, uh, capital Services, uh, for just other disposal stuff, uh, $680 27 cents. Andrew Petty, MHOA. So Mass Health Officers Association. Okay. There’s a six month membership, 60 bucks, um, blacker compost, residential composting pickup, and replacing bags.

45:57 $2,554 88 cents. Bonsai. Is it Logic? Yep. It’s logic. Yeah. Um, that’s the license plate reader. And that’s what I’m gonna comment on. This thing is cool. I actually sat in the little building, uh, you know, what do we call it? The high? Yeah. Yeah. The booth. So it’s at the top of the hill. The reader is at the bottom. And when you look, there’s a, there’s a, a screen right there. And if they’ve paid, it shows their license plate and it’ll, uh, be green if they pay. So it’s really obvious. And if they haven’t, it’s red. But the really cool thing is it’ll tell you how many times that person that hasn’t paid has come in. Oh. So there is no stories after a while. There is no like, oh, I, you know, I haven’t gone

46:43 around to it, da da da. And, um, you know, that’s huge. So we’ll make it known that there will be one Saturday when I start, when I, uh, stay out there and, um, I’m watching the monitor. And then I go out and, and get the p because you know, there’s always a grace period. You know, forgiveness, January, February, we’re in March now, that’s over. You gotta pay. Um, I’ll be out there and if no one knows my history with the Red Sox, you cannot outrun me. So can they pay there on the spot? No. Is there any from their phone? You, yeah. You have to go online to sign up. There’s not, you know, there’s not a computer there for them to sign up. And it said there’s a delay, right? No.

47:28 So once you go online, it’s approved. It’s instant access. Yeah. You don’t need to wait for the sticker. It kicks it right to the computer. So when you drive in, it’s gonna either go green or red. Yeah. But it’s someone that’s approving it that’s going on the registration. Yep. On a regular basis. They sign up right then and there. We won’t. But like, obviously if you sign up right then and there, like you’re talking to the attendant, so Yeah. The attendant will listen to you and stuff like That. You also get an email receipt that you at least submitted. Right. Okay. So like, knowing that, you know, you, you have that sent to you. So that’s, that would be great. You Go upstairs into it too. Yeah. When, um, it’s incredibly simple, but yeah, I’ll be up there, uh, checking at some point, and I’m not gonna say which day. So it’s, How many stickers have we sold? Uh, $254,000 worth of stickers so far. Pretty good.

48:18 Yeah. So by next year, are you gonna try to just have it for the board of health? So the people that It’s No, that has to be Over to the Beach. It has to be a town meeting decision. No, no. But you, you, why don’t you sponsor an article? Uh, because we, we gotta wait. The I, the park and rec is probably gonna be doing the same. Um, so we’ll do them the courtesy of letting them set up where we can make a nice, clean break between the two. Well, we’ll, we’ll start the spot. Do they Still take cash over that little booth? I haven’t been over there for years. I don’t think they, they don’t take cash anymore. Yeah, because I, Yeah, they do take payment. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, because I, I don’t, I don’t believe any, they don’t take $5. I, I don’t, I think we’re a cash free community at this point. Yeah.

49:04 Yeah. Because I don’t believe I, I’ve seen other areas. I’ve been to the convention center in Boston, uh, and they were taking cash and not all the cash was being turned in. That’s, yeah. That’s always a concern. Um, So Yeah. No, but too, If you make it too easy, yeah. I, I want the money to go to the town. Um, but yeah, no, if you haven’t gone in, just go to, in the booth up there. The, the boys are very nice. They’ll let you in and then, uh, take a look at it. It’s a cool, it’s a cool thing. It does make audible sounds and stuff like that. So there’s a noise it makes for a red, you know. Yeah, Yeah. But is this equipment stay in there all night? Yeah, of course. I, I’m just thinking down, down the cape. I don’t know if you just read, they put in monitors for the beaches and about a month. Yeah, we got cameras everywhere On it. Someone, someone vandalized

49:49 Barrel time. Very expensive. We got, we got cameras up there all over 24 spin. Yes. Yeah. Now we’re good. Um, but it’s very cool. So check it out and then go say hi to Kay after. So, um, Boston fire extinguisher for fire extinguisher, 60 bucks. Uh, Donovan equipment for repair and maintenance parts. Uh, $677 45 cents. Any security LLC, that’s, uh, the intercom. Um, is that for case? Yep. Yeah. Okay. Um, That, that is a very high tech, same thing, you know, know we’re moving to the high tech. So that intercom, um, is a video intercom. Mm-hmm. It actually has facial recognition, really. Um, so as the drivers come up, um, as they have accounts,

50:38 it should begin to remember people and know exactly what account they’re associated with. That’s, um, and also will kind of flag us. So if somebody’s walking by in that area, it can be prompted to say there’s somebody in this area for us. Again, that area is also under 24 hour surveillance, um, with a camera feed that goes back to the police department. Mm-hmm. Uh, but yeah, we are moving into the new technology for cameras. No, that’ll be really good, uh, for identifying the cars that don’t have all their advertised on the side. Um, Fisher Auto Parts for, uh, parts and maintenance. Uh, $9 57 cents Granger for, um, electrical control box for the license plate readers. Um, $82 65 cents.

51:23 Haley Ward for the engineering firm for the transfer station. $2,000 Home Depot for disposal area maintenance supplies $568 38 cents, marble and Counseling Center for Psychological counseling, $4,117 85 cents. Marble had light department, uh, for electricity, $1,565 80 cents. Me, tele and Costa for legal. $903 NAPA Auto parts for antifreeze. $14 91 cents. Republic Services for trash collection, $338,739 and 37 cents. Um, Stericycle, uh, that’s Sharp’s collection. Um, needle. Yeah. $712 75 cents. Uh, uh, you had some expenses, needles, 97 bucks.

52:11 Yeso. Yeah. Yes. That’s from their little patent transfer station. Uh, no, they triangular cards for the com survey. Oh, okay. Yep. It took us four months to get a Lot, um, T-Mobile for telephone. $66 65 cents, United Construction for, uh, repair and maintenance on non way vehicles. $518 82 cents UTECH for the mattress recycling. $3,180 Verizon for internet access. 1 68, um, 99. Waste Management of Massachusetts for trash disposal. 2,700 and WB Mason for office supplies, $141 70 cents. And lastly, Williams Scotts for, um, the rented trailer,

52:57 which we should assume stops. I think there’s one more bill with that. Yeah. 2050 $8 64 cents. Um, we already talked about the wellness fair. That was next. Don’t mind. So I think I can skip that And go to Amanda. Um, so you have a few things from, um, updating health news and, um, infectious disease trends. So, um, there were two measles cases identified in Massachusetts residents. Um, one individual was exposed out of state, um, and remained out of state during the infectious period. The second case involved, um, an unvaccinated greater Boston resident who had recently traveled internationally. Um, and the state is handling any exposures. Um, and so, so we’ve only had these two

53:43 cases in residents, and Their numbers are small, but it just reflects the larger outbreak that’s occurring both nationally and internationally. Um, and serves as an important reminder, uh, to get vaccinated and, and how important that is in preventing disease spread. Um, And then just a quick reminder that people born, um, uh, earlier than 1957 are presumed to be immune, uh, due to Prior exposure. Um, but those Four in 1957 or later, uh, who do not have documented immunity, should receive at least one dose of the MMR vaccine, um, With two doses recommended for higher risk groups, healthcare workers, college students, and international travelers. Um, and children should receive their first dose at 12 months, 12 to 15 months, and then their second dose from ages four to six.

54:31 Um, and, Uh, vaccination not only protects individuals, um, but also helps to prevent life disruptions since unvaccinated individuals who are exposed and to stay home from work, from daycare, um, and other public activities during their, um, incubation period. Um, And then, uh, looking at our, um, respiratory disease trends. So seasonal flu activity nationally remains elevated. So seasonal influenza activity remains elevated. Um, flu A is decreasing while B is, um, incr A is decreasing while flu B is increasing. Um, but flu A is still accounting for about 90% of cases, but, um, in general, in most years, the vaccine covers, um, influenza B, um, better than influenza A.

55:20 Um, so that might be helpful as the, as the vaccine season continues. Um, and then here in Essex County, viral activity is moderate for COVID-19, um, low for influenza and very high currently for RSV, which, um, respiratory syncytial virus, which primarily affects children under the age of four. And, um, just to speak on some new prevention tools, there’s a monoclonal antibody that’s currently out that’s recommended for infants and young children entering their first or second RSV season, which typically runs from October to March. And there’s also an RSV vaccine from Pfizer that can be given during pregnancy, uh, between 32 and 36 weeks gestation. Um, which helps protects newborns after birth.

56:05 And really only one of those is, is recommended, uh, either or. Um, RSV is the leading cause of hospitalizations amongst, um, US infants. And, um, current effectiveness data suggests about, um, reducing hospitalization by about 70 to 80% in those kiddos who are vaccinated. Um, so we’ll keep an eye on these trends and, and I’ll, I’ll speak up if there’s anything changing coming in the future and any additional guidance by the, um, the state DPH. That’s All I, um, the only other piece with that is that we do want to remind people that they should have a good understanding of their vaccination history. Um, and so it’s great to be able to go onto your portal

56:51 and take a look at your vaccination history. Mm-hmm. Um, but some of us are a little bit older, might need to contact their primary care physician, uh, to understand their full vaccination history. Um, but as we do have some of these diseases around, it is good to know. Um, so you’re not in a panic state wondering if you have a measles vaccine, um, and you’re rushing to contact your primary care, we suggest you do this currently or when time is kind of on your side. Mm-hmm. Because you, I think like you do have stuff to 72 hours after exposure to get vaccinated. Yeah. But that’s the, the stress no one wants. Correct. Um, so it’s a quick, easy blood test of a titer. Um, if you’re born after that 57 year, yeah.

57:34 Uh, transfer station projects. Uh, so at this point, the scale house is complete. Um, we have a small punch list going for interior work. Um, the company will be coming back in the springtime, uh, to complete a lot of site work. Um, you know, obviously we’re very excited to move into the new building. We’re very excited to see that trailer leave. Um, that was a great day for all of us. Um, again, you know, people are getting used to new traffic flows. Um, again, there is some site work, quite a bit of site work that needs to be completed. Um, that will have curbing in lines and, um, intercoms, um, painted lines for helping you to get it back onto the scale or backing up onto the scale. Most likely that scale would get painted bright red

58:19 so people know what the target zone is. Um, you know, there’s now merge signs. So as you’re driving out of the residential area, there’s flashing lights. We just wanna remind you to take a look for traffic. Um, there will be signal lights for people using the scale. Um, but we’re very happy with the work that has been completed so far. Um, but again, we still have quite a bit of work to do as far as site work goes. Um, and that will be done in the springtime. Um, I do have a few, um, change orders that I wanted to bring to the board. Um, we do, we will have a continual, we are taking a look at a change order for ledge removal, um, which is part of the project. It gets paid up by the cubic yard. We just want to make sure that we have the exact quantities before I bring some of these numbers back to you. Um, the first one for this, um, is that they need to install

59:08 a breaker and a wire, which is a convenience outlet for the new heat pump out back. Um, this is required by code. It was not part of the plans. Um, but it is required for code. Um, and that is a $532 change order. So I need a, a vote of the board to approve change order number 12 for 500. Motion to Approve. Second. All in favor? Aye. Unanimous pass. We only had a couple change orders. So what, what was the total like 30 grand? Yeah, we’re at like, uh, I don’t even know if we’re there yet. I think we’re more at the 25, close to 30. And the, and the main number was what? 1.159. I mean, that’s pretty good. Yeah. So you’re gonna have a couple more. Yeah.

59:53 That ledge is gonna be a large one. Yeah. Um, again, ledge. So rock. Okay. Long, very hard. Rock, you know, big pieces of it and stuff like that. Not holders. Yeah, exactly. Blue Rock. Yeah. Um, the next one is, uh, PCO number 10. Um, so when we entered into the project, there was water and sewer connected to that trailer. We needed to disconnect that and part of that was having a service that brought water and removed the sewer. Um, so this covers that cost. Um, this was agreed to, so it’s a, a change order of $3,380 to deal with the water and the sewer that was associated with the trailer during that time. Uh, motion to approve Second mayor, aye, unanimous approval.

1:00:46 Um, the last one is that originally we had, so you have, um, communication lines that are coming into the trailer. Communications lines are, um, cable, phone line and stuff like that. Originally the design was for them to come overhead. We’re trying to make things robust. We want things to be underground so they’re not in, you know, site views, they’re protected. Um, so we decided to put all the communication wire underground and conduit. So if I change order for that, so that’s $5,301. And that’s PCO number 14. Okay. Motion to approve.

1:01:26 All in favor? Aye. Unanimous pass. Sounds good.

1:01:34 Um, but again, you know, they have quite a little bit of site work to complete up there. Um, and again, I will be coming back with a few additional change orders. One will be for ledge, we just have to kind of go over the quantities and stuff like that. Okay. Um, but very excited to see that project moving forward. Um, so that is a huge piece for this project. Um, kind of like remaining projects up there would be to redo the signing for the compactor building, um, which would include a kind of a garage door on that. Mm-hmm. Inc. And install on a few large spans to exhaust dust and then the completion of a swap shed at some point. Mm-hmm. That would be the two other large projects. So Those. I, I know the swab shift wasn’t included. The, the pit surrounding was not included in the version.

1:02:20 Correct? Yeah. So can we get, when you get the finish, the change orders, can we get the percentage difference from the estimate that we had to Yeah, I can take a look at that and talk to the, the architects for the project itself or for the, the residing of the, um, building, No, uh, the project itself that we, that we originally Yeah. We can take a look at this portion of the project. Yeah. I can take a look to see what we have for estimates and stuff like that. Yeah. Because I think the town would be, you know, it’s coming in pretty close to estimates. Yeah. And so that’s a nice change and I think people would like to hear that. So that’s, that’s good. Yeah. That garage door will be done this round. The, that garage door will not be done this round. No. That’s part of the reiding of the compactor build and stuff like that. But We’ll, we’ll get a change order for that,

1:03:06 or that’s, no, that’s a whole other That’s no due. The cost for that. That cost is pretty substantial. Yeah. A new project. New project. One, one at a Time. One at a time. We’re trying, the, the whole reason why we broke it out this way is that we kept trying to go for a project that kept coming in over budget. So we wanted to take smaller bites of the apple as we moved along. We wanted to be able to accomplish items, move forward, save up money through our waste revolving funds, continue on to do that. So this is, this is basically being paid for by commercial in addition to what was received from the settlement. Yes. And there’s no going to town and getting tax dollars, so, which is, That’s correct. And that’s kind of the, our philosophy with doing these projects is that we are running some commercial operations up there

1:03:52 taking commercial waste. Mm-hmm. We’re collecting those fees. Those go into the waste revolving funds. Were you able to use that fund to obviously pay for commercial waste disposal, a few employees, and then some upkeep of the grounds and stuff like that? So, big projects like this, we wanna be able to continue to do this. Mm-hmm. Um, moving forward, we’ll be using the waste revolving fund to pay for carts. So toters for all the homes in the community for curbside trash. Um, these are ways that, yes, there’s a little bit of inconvenience of us running commercial, taking commercial people in up there, but this is kind the way back to pay back for the community for allowing us to do that. So we understand there could be some inconvenience with that, but there is a benefit for us doing all that work up there and allowing all these people to come in there.

1:04:38 Mm-hmm. Um, with that, I will move over to curbside collection, obviously. One, One quick. Yeah. Do we have a plan for, um, the swap said, So we have a plan. We need to reevaluate that plan and try to make it as simple as possible. Yeah. We have an architect plan. It’s very similar to what we have now as far as building shape and like that we would want to try to find something that’s very basic. You would want to do a very basic slab on grade and put a very basic, um, you know, barn type building on that. Um, we do have conduit for power out there, um, but we should also look at potentially, um, getting some kind of solar panels on the swap shop. So it’s essentially self-sustained.

1:05:24 Can we, can we bring Gretchen in? Um, Yeah, we can bring her in talk Yep. Talk about it and then talk about her needs. She, she, she runs, she runs the swap shop. She runs the swap shop. So it’s all volunteer. Yeah. So definitely hearing There are not bathrooms up there. No. That would be nice to Have, unfortunately That it’s knocking out Yeah. Problem. Want have room clean, So Yeah. But not that the, the sewer, like, you know, it was never, we never installed the sewer line all the way up there through the landfill, through the liner and stuff like that. I mean, I think it’ll be pretty simple there. She just needs a, you know, right now they haul everything out. Yeah. And then put it back. But just getting input from her on her challenges and everything like that before anything’s done would be, would be good. So Yeah, you would be looking at like either a two

1:06:09 or three, you know, garage, bay structure, maybe a large overhang to get you out of the weather at times. Mm-hmm. Um, something that she can open the doors, maybe some rolling racks. Yeah. Um, stuff like that. So she can pull stuff out easily, push it back in, close up and walk away for the day. Yeah. Yeah. She’s just like the transfer station people enthusiastic about her job. Customer oriented, just a high, high performing person. A workhorse. Yeah. All over. I don’t use, but I went up just to, because Tom tells me I have to, um, or I have, they’re just so energetic and enthusiastic. It, it, it’s just like the transfer station people.

1:06:56 They’re, it’s just amazing. You’ll Be shocked to how many people go up there on the Saturday. Oh, yeah. So when we’re kind of in our full season, we, we had to go through an engineering estimates for traffic up there. Um, we did a traffic study. We were seeing about 1100 cars on a regular weekday, and we see 13 to 1400 cars on a Saturday. Um, so one of the plans is, is that when we do do the new, um, striping, so, um, you know, road striping up there, we will be adding additional parking for, as people leave the facility currently. Um, there will be new parking spaces for the shop swap shop on the left hand side. There will be painted kind of crosswalks to get you over there. Um, parking for the swap shop has always been the mission.

1:07:43 Mm-hmm. I, I still think we should have a meeting up there. Oh yeah, definitely. That’s the kind of meeting, you know, you were talking about having a meeting with lot of people. Plan a, we, we should tell the town that after all these years and all the resources are put into it, we have really, we’ve turned the corner. Yep. Um, and, uh, it’s really quite, it, it obviously saved a, a, a lot during this strike. Oh yeah. Um, We Are very, very, but it’s a great resource and it’s now really, um, never project, like that’s probably never completed, but it’s really turned the corner. Yeah. So we should have a meeting up there. As soon as the weather breaks. There’s no snow.

1:08:29 Um, so curbside collection for trash recycling. Um, so we’ve done a tremendous amount of work. We released a 70 page RFP. Um, I’m here tonight to kind of talk about the outcomes of that. Um, at the end, once we got bids, we were looking at three top companies. Um, Republic Services, Cosella and Waste Management really came at the top. Um, they’re large companies that have large fleets. They all offer disposal services. Um, they all offer recycling services. Um, the one company that really stood at the top is Republic. When we changed from what we currently have now for curbside recycling, we are switching over to automated trucks. Automated trucks is a single driver using an automated arm,

1:09:18 picking up trash, picking up, recycling, and dumping it into the truck. This is the industry standard moving forward. It is the safest for everybody. The number of accidents that occurred with trash men, trash people that are during collection is the second highest death rates in the country. So moving to automation is what all the large companies are looking at. Now. The large companies wouldn’t even bid on manual collection. Now, when we look at Marblehead, we understand that there’s some uniqueness to it. We have a very dense downtown districts. What all the companies proposed is that they will continue with a quasi manual collection downtown. They will determine it’s most likely gonna be Washington

1:10:05 Street and parts of Atlantic Ave. And that section of town that they’ll be using toter tippers on the back of a truck. So there is a small truck that we use one day a week to do some of our small streets. Um, they will be using this truck to pick up from the downtown distance. Um, so that will be kind of its own kind of collection district, and that will be its own day. When we talk about curbside collection, yes, it’s trash and recycling. Um, currently under our current track contract, of course, we pay for the disposal of the trash. We do not have to pay for the disposal of recycling. Currently, that has been a tremendous cost saving for us. We’ve always estimated it to be about $300,000,

1:10:51 which essentially what it is. Uh, but moving forward, we will obviously have to pay for the disposal of the trash and the processing of the recycling. The way the processing and the recycling works is that you have to pay for the collection. It goes to the re the processing plant. Um, the big companies all own their processing plants. Republic owns the largest, the most up-to-date plant in the area, and it actually is the closest one to us. They just went through a $25 million upgrade. They’re working with Coca-Cola and Pepsi to try to recycle as many bottles as possible. When we, when you look at the com, the complexity

1:11:38 or the makeup of what’s in the recycling, you’re looking at glass, aluminum, plastic, paper, those makeup, what is called blended value. Some items have more value than others. Aluminum cans have high value glass bottles have low volume value or negative value. They’re very heavy and there’s nobody wants them. So when you add everything together, it creates what’s called a blended value Republic through their processing ends up with a greater blended value than these other companies. So there is some return on, as long as the market

1:12:23 of recyclables is doing well, we might see a little bit of return. But you start at that $125 a ton, and you might see something coming back. It all is market driven. Mm-hmm. So again, when we’re taking a look at the prices, we wanted to know the price for automation for curbside collection of trash. We wanted to know the price for the automation of curbside collection of recycling. We wanted to know the cost of disposal for the tonnage of trash or per ton. We wanted to know that the costs were of processing, of recycling. We wanted to know what it was gonna cost to pick up the trash and recycling at the schools. We wanted to know what the cost is, what’s the price, the price of collecting the trash and recycling for the town buildings.

1:13:10 We wanted to be able to spread everything out and know the cost of each one of these things to help us understand the complexity and the overall budget that we’re trying to look at. Before it was all really pushed into larger numbers. We wanted to break that down so we could say, this is the cost of this, this is the cost of that. Maybe we don’t need this service. Maybe we don’t need that service. Um, some of the other numbers that we got, um, was curbside collection of leaf and grass. Um, we offer currently seven weeks. We’re asking for eight weeks, four weeks in the fall, four weeks in the spring. Again, we want to be able to say, Hey, is this something we can afford? We knew we were going into tough economic times. Is this something we can afford?

1:13:57 Is this something that we can afford? Um, the other pieces is that, again, we will be getting carts to every resident that is part of the program. We estimated it to be 8,000. So there’ll be 8,000 trash carts that will be given out. Each cart has a barcode, and we know that when I give my your cart to you, Amanda, I will know your address and the barcode associated with that. So if your cart disappears and it ends up down the street, and I found this random cart, I can scan it and say, oh, this is Amanda’s cart. I can bring this back to you. Um, with that, sometimes they, we often get calls to say, Hey, the trash company damaged my barrel. We will be taking care of any maintenance for these carts.

1:14:43 Um, so if you had put this number out, again, we ask for the costs, tell us what the costs would be for that. Um, we got those numbers. Again, we’ve chosen to not use the company that we will be doing that in-house. It’s a great savings. Um, but that’s some of the things that we’ve taken a look at. Um, again, so when you wrap all this stuff up, we wanted to know the cost of doing recycling every week. And we wanted to know the cost of doing recycling every other week. Um, and a lot of that came out about when we had the strike. You know, is it possible that we can collect recycling every other week like they did during the strike? I think there’s a lot of people that feel rather not have that happen, but there is a cost to that. So we can pull those costs out and know exactly what the difference is if we do it

1:15:29 weekly or biweekly. Now, again, so you can kind of pick and choose. So even though we’re entering into a contract, don’t look at the bottom number. I can even these, because I copies short looking.

1:15:47 You’re gonna be able to say, I’m gonna take obviously the automated MSW and I want to do weekly recycling, and I have numbers for this year and I have numbers for all the way through the next five years.

1:16:01 The one thing to remember is that everybody talks about CPIs and the community price index of, you know, general pro, you know, products and stuff like that. Trash collection disposal has their own CPI. It tends to be about six to 7%. So you’ll see the percentages on everything about, um, increases in stuff like that. So again, we wanna know long term and see where we’re heading, what the cost increase are and stuff like that. Um, where exactly am I looking at here for the weekly and buy? So if you are, so the first page, so this is the bottom, this is the second page? That’s the second page. Yep. So the first page would be the top left hand side, rsgs for public services.

1:16:48 Yep. Automated MSW automated what MSWs? Yeah. Um, municipal solid waste. So that’s, so that’s the trash automated trash. Mm-hmm. Automated recycling Weekly. Yep. Automated recycling every other week. Okay. Um, manual. MSW, which you’ll see no bids. That’s a big difference between Yes. Work and waste management. Yep. And again, everybody cuts it different ways. So you can’t necessarily take a look at it this and say, this is the price compared to that. So you have to be, there’s a lot of things that go into it. Um, so the pricing is what, so it’s not really for them to see, it’s really for you guys to take a look at it. It’s public. Yeah. Yeah.

1:17:33 Again, we’re looking at the costs. Um, there’s A, there’s a million wait, 1.3 difference between weekly and every other week over five Years. Yeah. But again, But You have to, You have break it down. Yeah. So the difference comes to per household, per year, uh, $29 and 50 cents if you go from every week to every other week. And when we met all the people I’ve met with, there is zero appetite for every other week. Okay. Now, I’m, I’m personally good with every other week, but I have got so much pushback from every other week that I was a little surprised. But, um, And one of the things that we did do is that we knew this was gonna be a big discussion point.

1:18:19 So when we’re purchasing our barrels, the recycling barrel will be a 95 gallon barrel. Mm-hmm. Therefore, it will take care of your weekly, but it’ll also take care of your, of every other week. So originally when we talked about we were gonna buy a 65 gallon recycling barrel, but if we ever chose to go to that every other week, we were gonna have to provide people with a 96. And so what we decided, what was encouraged was to buy the 96. Give that to people to use for either every week or every other week. You can’t switch mid What? We’re not gonna give People the option To. You do not get the option. We’re gonna decide. Yeah. We will be deciding. You can’t Switch mid contract. You cannot. Okay. So it’s all, yeah. And once you opt out

1:19:04 and we’re not gonna talk about that stuff. Mm-hmm. We will have other discussions about, you know, programs and stuff like that. Um, but yes, you also have to figure that if we’re doing every other week, there’s gonna be a large amount of material that’s coming to our facility. Mm-hmm. That takes processing. That also takes manpower. So you have to figure all those things in. Um, so yes, there is a savings, um, and sometimes those savings are great, but there’s also a cost to those savings. ‘cause you’re gonna have to do trucking and all of that stuff. Mm-hmm. The schools, it was great to be able to pull out the, what the actual cost of the schools. And when you look at the schools, the way Republic did it is that that’s the total cost. So that, so when I do school, dumpster totes, MSW,

1:19:53 that’s the cost of collection and disposal. Mm-hmm. So there’s 500 tons of MSW at the schools that are part of that, that I can pull out of my total MSW on my other disposal sheet. Mm-hmm. So I know exactly what that is. Mm-hmm. Um, and again, it’s a different truck. It’s not gonna come back to the transfer station. It’s going directly back to them. That’s also a cost savings for us. ‘cause that’s a cost savings, knowing that I’m not paying for that. Trucking. The recycling, again, um, that is for both the collection and the disposal of that material. Again, we track everything. We know how much material is being picked up at the schools. Essentially they’re tracking it.

1:20:39 So again, you’re taking a look to say, all right, this, again, we don’t have to deal with the cost of that recycling processing and stuff like that. That’s the total pro price to it. Um, the municipal dumpsters, again, that’s the price to collect and to dispose. Again, that material’s not coming back to the transfer station. Um, and municipal, um, re to, its recycling. Again, that’s the total cost of this. One of the greatest things, when Republic came to us and talked about some of the things that they could do, they talked about, so when we pick up all the trash curbside, it generally takes two dumps. So the truck goes out in the morning, fills up, comes into the transfer station, dumps goes back out, fills up again, and comes back into the transfer station.

1:21:26 So we are paying, you know, obviously they’re bringing that into us. We’re paying the disposal fee to get that out of there. Uh, obviously it goes into a, you know, 80 yard trailer, but we’re paying the tonnage for that, plus the trucking. But their offering offering is that they will dump the first truck with us. So the disposal fee that they’re using for the, which includes the trucking and everything, is $123 a ton. Um, right now we’re, we’re about 1 1 27, 1 31 number. So it’s a decrease of what we’re paying currently. That second truck is gonna go directly back home, and they’re gonna dispose of that with no transfer. And so it’s gonna get disposed at $110 a ton, 2000 tons that, so there’s 4,000 tons

1:22:14 that is being done currently. Curbside. So 2000 will be done at the 1 23, 2000 will be done at the one 10. That’s, again, that’s another large savings for us. What, what time would you estimate they dump? We are trying to figure that out right now. Okay. We understand the question. Yeah. So one of the great things about Republic offering this is that I’m now saving 2000 tons at the transfer station that I can use. In other ways, what we’ve always talked about is increasing our commercial side and trying to figure out ways to increase the c and d side. With the way we do this is that I will have 2000 tons additional capacity, and I could potentially really open up my commercial

1:23:00 c and d facility. I could CD construction, demolition material. So now I could take in trash half of the day or MSW half of the day, and I could take in c and d half the day, or you could, you know, you could have hours and stuff like that. We wouldn’t want to try to understand how much material is out there, or we could make adjustments. But what we’re looking at right now is what time does that trash truck come in? Could we do CD first thing in the morning? Could that get us to 11 o’clock? Is that best for our customers? Yeah. Or does it need to be in the afternoon, which is best for our customers? That is something that we’re taking a look at. And right now we have a question about the Republic to say, Hey, what’s the average time that the truck dumps at the facility?

1:23:46 And so that will help us make that Decision. I made some calls on that just, just to see what guys were, and I, I, I thought they’d want the end of the day, but they said the beginning of the day would be better for C and D. Yep. And they explained why, and it made sense. So, Yeah. So we just need to understand what time that truck comes in and I need to be able to dump that truck right away and get rid of that. Yeah. The other piece that’s really important about this contract is that when we, that large tractor trailer leaves the facility, it goes to another facility, a landfill, um, a waste of energy facility. They’re often waiting in lines, um, that the average weight right now is at least an hour. With the Republic contract, there is no more waiting. The truck will enter the facility.

1:24:33 We all call it the Disney Pass. So you go straight to the top, you are no longer waiting in line, and you can turn around so your turns are much more efficient. So again, with this contract, we’ve asked for four trailers, where currently we have three. The idea is that we could potentially do two as MSW and two C and D, so you could always continue to run. But again, for the trash disposal, I’m no longer gonna have to wait in line. And so these turns and the distance to their facility is less than the distance we are operating to Wheeler, greater Sau, August, or to what was proposed with Cassela and stuff like that. So that’s another win. If we happen to be doing maintenance at our facility

1:25:20 and I need to close down the compactor, I can bring my roll off truck with all the trash to their facility, and again, we will be paying the $110 a ton. Again, I do not have to wait in line. So I’ll be able to make quick trips with the recycling when I’m hauling out of the transfer station. We’re making runs to Dan, to Greenworks and Peabody where we often go. Now again, it’s much more, much closer. And again, we’ll get kind of preferential treatment. So these are all things that we’ve all weighed into. Um, looking at costs, obviously of that second truck location of the facility, efficiencies of the waiting time, the blended value of the recycling, um, the tonnage at the transfer station, gaining those 2000 tons, gaining the five thou, 500 tons,

1:26:08 that’s coming outta the school systems. So technically I have 25 extra hundred tons that I can now play with to either do more with commercial and stuff like that. So again, it’s a, it’s a benefit to us and how we run our operation. Um, with the c and d, there is a little bit higher cost of disposal. So the state of Massachusetts, through mass, DEP obviously, um, landfill closures are all coming. We have no space. They really want c and d construction, demolition waste to be recycled. Um, right now we’re limited to how much tonnage or really we, we limit loads by cubic yards. Um, we often get complaints about that. If we operate c and D trailers, there will be no limits. We will be able to take as much a large load as possible.

1:26:55 Um, the disposal costs for c and d is $175 a ton. We charge, yeah, we charge 320, but that will be the disposal rate. Again, my understanding is that they will be running to, um, Peabody disposal. They will be offloading that eventually that will be put onto a rail car and trucked out of the state is my understanding. So again, we’ve spent a lot of times talking to everybody trying to figure out all the different options. Um, again, we will be buying carts for everybody. We will be using the waste revolving account to buy these carts. Um, again, yes, that is a large number. We will be financing that over five years. Um, it’s about $210,000 a year.

1:27:41 It’s $904,000 of carts if you bought it today. But again, when you’re financing, it’s a little bit larger number. Um, but again, with this, I think there’s a lot of different options. We tried to look at a lot of different scenarios. Again, we wanna try to expand our business. We wanna try to provide the best service, the best price. Um, and obviously I think we’ve done that with, um, taking a look at these numbers, going through this RFP process. Again, we will be able to do a lot of planning. We have numbers for the next five years. Um, and so at this point, my recommendation is to go with Republic Services. I understand we did go through a strike with them. Yeah. People do need to understand, I know it was hard for a lot of people. We did have trash trucks in town every

1:28:26 day compared to other communities. Yeah. We do work with these guys really well. Um, they have a route manager that’s in town every day that we’re in constant contact with, dealing with picture, you know, any kind of issue that’s out there, Hey, my trash got missed. Well, where are they? They’re late on this. We’re always talking to them to send them back, try to correct the issue. Um, I’m obviously often hearing from them and, you know, I start to hear from my guys. I start to hear from them around six 30 in the morning to see what’s going on for the day. I wanna know about anytime there’s a, a truck breakdown, we need to know what’s going on. That way we can communicate out. But again, my recommendation is to go with Republic Services. Uh, the, so there’s obviously a sour taste with them over the strike, which,

1:29:13 but the difference in money is, is big. But as Andrew said, which you guys, you know, I don’t know how much you knew about this, um, Amanda, but Andrew and I had talked a lot, um, in the past about the sorting floor. So that’s like the future of transfer stations where, and that would be up in the back. So, you know, what this kind of does is in my mind, yeah, it buys you time because Mass DEP is really cracking down on construction and demo materials. So now, you know, eventually the, it’s gonna be like where if you don’t have a sorting floor, you ain’t taking, you know, construction and demo. So we’re staying in front of that. And this will give us an opportunity to kind of like, even like reputation wise Yeah. Like people knowing like, oh, Marblehead takes it,

1:29:59 even if it’s only a portion of the day, and then maybe three years down the road, you know, you build, you know, um, a sorting floor in the back, which are I think are pretty inexpensive for what you need. But, um, but you don’t need to do it right away. So you’re kind of like really at the forefront of That’s Yeah. That was a game changer for, Yeah. One of our concerns has always been how strict is mass, CEP gonna get about this, you know, convert, demolition, construction, demolition material. Mm-hmm. Right now we’re, you know, it’s going to waste, you know, waste energy incinerator, you know, they’re a little bit more, you know, we’re following the guidelines, let’s put it that way. Mm-hmm. Guidelines can change. We’re coming to, we’re getting closer and closer, closer to 2030.

1:30:45 They’re gonna get more strict and more strict. So this is putting us, again, making sure that we’re staying on the right side, trying to stay ahead of everything. This is gonna provide potentially additional revenue for us, but also additional outlets for our customers, the people in town to make sure that they can also always get rid of their commercial de construction demolition material in the correct way. Mm-hmm. Excellent. So, um, Um, what about offering the pickup of trash for businesses in town? Yes. So businesses in town, so we have approximately 174 businesses in the, kind of the downtown districts. Um, part of the program going forward is that we will be offering, um, those businesses curbside collection, um,

1:31:33 for trash and recycling. At this point, the idea is that they could purchase, they would have to pay monthly for a trash and recycling, uh, barrel. And again, it would be a 65 barrel gallon barrel of trash and a 95 gallon barrel of recycling. Would that come out of the revolving count for businesses? For what? The, for the barrels? The barrels? Um, we can talk, no, most likely you would pass on all those costs to them and you would also, I would recommend that you charge them a hundred dollars a month for those services. Okay. Um, so that is, you know, again, it’s a great thing. One of the things that everybody needs to underst stand moving forward is that all items have to be in barrels. There’s no longer pay placing

1:32:18 anything outside of the barrel. Nothing that can get collected outside of the barrel. So you can’t put your cardboard boxes next to the barrel. So there are some businesses, again, we could not take from food, um, food establishments because they have other regulations about how often their material has to be get collected. Um, but there are quite a few businesses that can be participating in this program. Now, I know there’s a lot of factors in deciding, you know, figuring out, which I don’t even wanna talk about now. ‘cause I figure it’s part of the, I’m still assuming the trash collection is gonna be part of the Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. Um, where did the a hundred dollars cut number come from? It’s like an average cost out there. Um, you know, when you’re looking at the actual service behind it, us billing them, dealing with all the stuff, um,

1:33:04 it’s very easily to say, we’re gonna charge you the, the, when you’re looking at the numbers for, um, trash disposal, you’re right about $123 a ton. Um, you know, just looking at the solid numbers from if it came into our facilities and stuff like that, and $125 a ton for processing. Mm-hmm. So right then and there, you’re just doing some basic math to say this is a very reasonable number for, um, businesses that would have to take on if they had to do it privately. I’m sure it’s gonna be much more than that. Yeah. And again, the board’s gonna have to take that up. We we’re gonna, with moving forward to automation, we have to do a regulation change about curbside collection, um, proper placement of barrels, the fact that we’re moving to all this stuff. So again, this is not,

1:33:51 this isn’t the final decision on those numbers. Right. You got, you know, this is just my recommendation at this point. Mm-hmm. Um, you can do some research into that and come up with a number that seems reasonable, but to me, having somebody pick up your trash and recycling for a business at a hundred dollars a month is very reasonable. Mm-hmm. Questions? I know it’s a lot, but are, are we voting on Yeah. You should vote to, yeah. To enter into the contract with, um, res Republic services for both, um, curbside collection of trash recycling, um, disposal of MSW and the processing. And recycling and it’s 5% increase yearly. That’s standard. That is standard, yeah. Yep. Like I said, it’s generally six to seven.

1:34:38 Do they stick to that 5%? Because I know, like, you know, in the past when there would be an extra payment, like you’d get other payments being like, whatever was overtime for drivers or whatever. We don’t see any of that stuff. So we are not getting, getting any additional, we just pay, so like, you know, you’re gonna pay $621,308 for the year for automation collection at MSW and they just divide that out, um, by 12 months. Okay. So there, there would be no, this, this would be the bill. That is the bill. Yeah. So that, that’s the bill for MSW collection. Um, you know, depending if you went for the weekly automated collection, 6 2 1 7 9 2, that’s the number for recycling collection.

1:35:23 Now, when you get into the disposal numbers, that’s all based on tonnage and the processing. And recycling is all based on tonnage. Mm-hmm. What’s the leaf fee? Leaf? So that’s week. So yard waste weekly per weekly, uh, eight weeks. Um, so $96,000, $12,000 a week. Um, you Can’t compost that. We do compost that. So all that comes up to Okay. That all that comes up to the yard waste. Um, and we work with a company called Agri Source. We compost a little bit on site to have it break down to what we call, it’s like truck ready. Um, I don’t want to be trucking out really light leaves. I want to be pushing on a load that is filling up a truck.

1:36:09 Good. Got good weight to it, but leaves marblehead, we don’t have the capacity to do, um, leaf compost beginning to end. It just doesn’t make any sense. I don’t wanna, yeah. And I, again, I don’t want to get into thi certain things, but would Leaf collection only qualify for people that had barrels? Yes. Okay. Let’s leave it at that. Yep, Yep. And it’s a little bit, you know, bring It, just bring it up to the train. Of course. Yeah. If, if you see it, yeah. Yep. It’ll be good. Yep. So again, you know, our regulation states, um, it is leaf and grass collection only. Um, and it’s has to be in paper bags. Mm-hmm. And that’s all been due to weight. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

1:36:55 I’m not scared of that 5% number either. Let’s say there was anything geopolitical that was gonna create inflation by limiting oil. And So with that, there it all, in our contracts, there always is a caveat on fueled costs. Alright, There we go. Yeah. So there always is a fuel cost. It’s like, you know, call up right now. Um, there is always an adjustment for fuel. Mm-hmm. That’s Why it’s helpful to have a more local Plant. Yeah. Yeah. That is a big piece to it. Yeah. They don’t fill up here at all. Do they? They Do not fill up here. There go. I didn’t think so. Obviously they have a huge number of trucks and so they’re buying a fuel, much Larger quantity than, yeah. Okay. Um, do you want a discussion?

1:37:41 No, we discuss, yeah. Okay. We need a formal motion with dollars or We don’t, you just need a formal motion. Because what will happen is that they’ll generate a contract. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, and so then eventually we’ll come back. We’re Approving you to move forward to develop a formal contract with these needs. Yep. Okay. Yep. And one of the things that we have talked about is that, again, to try to save some money, we’re gonna use their attorneys to start the contract. Our attorneys will review it afterwards, but that way we don’t not have to spend time putting the basic contract together. Um, again, they will develop the basic contract, it’ll come back, we will developments the way it has to fit our formulas and our standards, but they can start

1:38:27 and we can kind of take all their work and kind of massage to where we need to be, that it’s another cost. S mm-hmm. Sounds good. That’s the other thing I was thinking is that with the, with the bad taste and with the strike, it’s unlikely it’s gonna happen again. So it’s That’s correct. Mm-hmm. The others could go on strike in The moment. So there’s only one company. Anyone can go on straight. Even, you know, as much as people said like, oh, let’s bring it in town. We had a teacher strike, you know, like municipal workers can go on strike as well. Yeah. So it’s Every, It’s, it, it may be illegal, but everyone can go on strike. So there, there’s no one that is strike proof, you know, unfortunately. But what we’re proving is independent of any decision that’s made at the select board

1:39:13 town meeting or, Yes. So even when you sign the contracts, all contracts state subject to appropriation. Yep. Okay. That was gonna be a question. So When was new contract start? All right, so Theoretically This contract is gonna start July 1st. Okay. And how long is it gonna be for another 10 year? One or five years? Uh, five years. So the issue with that is that due to the fact the large number of landfills are gonna be closing in 2030, um, and nobody was willing, willing to go past those numbers. Yep. You’ve done a good job. Um, how are you gonna handle

1:39:59 the distribution of the barrels? Thousands of them. Yep. So the company that will be distributing, so we will be purchasing barrels from a company called re rig. Um, they handle the distribution. Um, what we have to do is that I have to work with the assessor’s office to give them the list of homes that will be distributed to. Um, and so we only service single family, two family, three family and four family homes. Mm-hmm. That’s in our bylaws. That’s where we come up with the number. Um, but that will be the distribution list. We do need to do some fact checking on that list. So we will put that list together. Um, and then technically we will go out and verify before we hand out a silver.

1:40:45 That sounds like they do win. Um, you’re gonna have the ability for people to purchase extra barrels. And so when I place it in, I buy two extra sets of barrels, just it’s my convenience. I pay the money 325 bucks a year over there. Um, so that is something that the board is gonna have to take under advisement. So we, it’s, it’s a potential. Okay. We’re trying to get as close to that 8,000 as possible. So we would say, but we wouldn’t go the other way. We would not go the other way. Right. Yeah. What’s the other Way? Being like, if you have a three family and you only buy two that’s of berries. Like, So no, you, no.

1:41:31 However, for some of the lar like, you know, if you had a four family and there was, you know, eight barrels out there, Republic did say that they could potentially work with us to maybe offer them a larger units or something like that so you could potentially reduce Gotcha. The number of barrels out there and stuff like that. Okay, good. Yeah. But we would, again, this is fully controlled. We know what barrels can be picked up. You know, there’s no outside barrels that can be used. Uh, now I may have under remembered wrong, but I thought this, our current contract was up in the fall. It is, But be, if you go with Republic, it would go earlier. No, I, so the issue is that because of the economics, that’s where

1:42:19 Yeah, because of the economics. I’m gonna have to start potentially July 1st rather than waiting to, um, the October 1st. So that would’ve been regardless of any, whichever company you used. No. Again, this will be a cost savings because I’m able to get a credit. No, but I mean, like it regardless, like if, if it was waste management or it would still be in July. Um, so Yeah, because, because of the financial situation. So it, it, it would depend on how it, it plays out. Okay. Um, you know. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, The, I, the hard thing is that right now I have a disposal contract that starts in July 1st, and I have a collection contract that starts October 1st.

1:43:05 You know, I can deal with it, but it’s lot easier if they’re married together and I have similar dates, I can make it work, but I get that. Yeah. Okay. I’d make, I’ll make an motion. A motion to go with Republic. And do we have to pick on the weekly or file? No. Nope. Nope. You’re just entering into a contract with the public services for both the collection? Yep. The processing and the disposal. Okay. I’ll make that motion second. Um, all those in favor of the motion on the floor hand, uh, it’s unanimously passed. Go easy press on that. It’s for public. All right. Says a Dante. Well, I’ll talk to you a little bit more about your collection.

1:43:50 Mentioned the mini truck that they’re gonna use on the congested parts. Gotta be in town every day anyways for one way Streets. Yeah. Where I have one way streets, one side will do this and the other side it’s, yep. And we get in when we get into the nitty gritty a little bit more. Um, I did visit with the Home Works director. I, I’ve met with a lot of different people across the state about curbside collection. Um, I did recently meet with Danvers how their program works. They have a fee-based program. Um, but how they do their carts and stuff like that. So when we get into the nitty gritty of certain things, I can bring some of that stuff. Mm-hmm. Um, just so everybody knows, we will be purchasing, um, their 96 gallon carts. Um, they’re very similar for recycling.

1:44:38 I don’t know if everybody’s familiar with the recycling barrels that we sell currently. It’s the same company. Very big, sturdy blue. It’s called Pepsi Blue Container. Um, it will have a marblehead stamp on it, on the lid. Has the recycled smart, what they accept stamp right in it. We do it now. Um, they’re great wheels, but yeah, re rig will be distributing those for the trash. It’ll be a 65 gallon cart. Um, same statue wheels lids attached. Um, and it will have a marble heads stamp. It will have two arrows in the front, says trash only. Um, you know, point this point out these, Will they both be the same color? No, they’re blue Ones. They have Green. Um, so

1:45:23 they, the recycling’s gonna be blue. The trash is gonna be black. Same. Um, the idea with that is that if you ever did go to a green barrel, which is like yard waste or kitchen waste, that should be green. So I’m trying to stay within that. I like the imprint. Yeah. ERs don’t last. No, the stickers do not last. So everything has to be imprinted. These are all heat folded. Um, we’ve had really, again, I’ve used this company for at least eight years now. Very happy with the barrels. Very sturdy. I haven’t had to replace one. Again with automation, you can have some issues and stuff like that. We will be able to replace wheels and lids. Um, so I will be able to do the maintenance and stuff like that.

1:46:09 That’s a pretty large cost savings for us to do the maintenance. Do you have pick up four spare Maris? Yeah, I do that. I have, I have a, um, chip container that I in and we can’t pick up the old barrels we’ll have, we cannot pick up Yeah. The old barrels station. Yeah. So we will work with re um, with Republic about how to recycle those. The best problem we’ll have like a will we have like a day or two or there’ll be any Yes, no, there will be a day or two. We will figure that out. Again. Um, we understand the inconvenience of it, but yeah, we, the collection, it, it’s a drop off. They, they do not provide the, the pickup because when barrels come, they come all stacked up. Yeah. And so you unstack ‘em, there’s actually a, you know, know you can buy a special forklift to pull ‘em like, you know, a fork set of forks to pull ‘em off. But you unstack ‘em, you put the wheels on

1:46:56 and you close the lid. Um, so, you know, the volume of picking up barrels is a lot different than dropping barrels off. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, the only other thing is that what we want to do, because we’re entering into this and we’ve always, we never really talked about it, is that we wanna do, um, education on an annual basis. Um, part of the RFP, um, we did create these flyers that we should be setting out. Um, so we will be looking at, do we have, you know, is that, you know, so it’s $6,000 a year, um, for the annual education that could be provided by, um, Republic, or is that something that we, we can be doing in house? Um, and so we, we will talk about that later. $6,000 for fam for family. For every 8,000 family.

1:47:44 No, $6,000 for flyers. For all 8,000 homes. And

1:47:54 You still be sticking up the rubbish like at, uh, feral court and the elderly. Yeah. So that, yes, we will. Um, they’ve always been part of our curbside collection programs. We consider those residents. Um, so yes, we will. It might be done different there. But are They paying a fee? They’re gonna have to pay if we, we haven’t, we’re not even at that point yet. Okay. But this thing about going to, We’re not even at that point yet. Picking up some of this commercial. We’re not talking about that Alice. Not, it’s part of the budget. Oh. So the commercial, like where we would be picking, I said, well, You just voted tonight. You mentioned these things. It doesn’t mean you’re gonna pick up commercial for a hundred bucks. I mean, I have Some. No, they have to set, they have to set new regulations for curbside collection

1:48:40 and that would be part of it as well. Okay. ‘cause I Authorize them to That’s we still a contract. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Then it has to all be approved. Oh, okay. Good. Can’t wait till the last minute. No. So once left, things occur in the next couple of weeks, we will now start to talk to legal about setting the regulations. So I could, I will provide the current set of regulations to all of you so you can take a look at that. And then obviously, um, there’ll be updates of, you know, again, it’s gonna be barrels, it’s gonna be, um, recycling bids. Yeah. I mean all that’s part of it. But again, um, now that we have these barrels and we’re providing it, it’s a little bit easier. You’re not losing lids. You know, it is a better program to go in this way. It is a much cleaner way.

1:49:25 Um, you’re not gonna see recycling technically blowing down the street. ‘cause all lids have to be closed. Yes. On a windy day lid can blow open. Um, it doesn’t happen very often, but it could. Um, but again, it’s better than people using open top boxes and stuff like that. So. Yeah.

1:49:46 Um, Next meeting. 24th or Monday? Is it? Uh, Yeah, It’s the 23rd. The 23rd. Yes. I can’t attend then if we could change that. Yeah. So let’s send out an email and, and come up with a new date, but, okay. Um, Well do we, what do, what do you think we’re gonna be doing? Going backwards or earlier? They, I Can do The, the select board that’s going to make the final decision. You think that’s gonna be now next Wednesday? They kind of said, right. Yeah, that’s what they said. The 19th, whatever that So we can we Flexible? Yeah. I think it’s gonna be next Wednesday. I think they have to get on that. Yeah. Town meeting is not far. What about the 16th? That’s

1:50:34 two weeks-ish. Week and a half. It’s 11 days from today.

1:50:42 What day of the week is that? It’s a Monday. Monday. A Monday. Why, why doesn’t everybody think about it? Yeah. Let’s you, we just send out an email for this. I’ll check the town calendar.

1:50:57 Yeah. Because we need to have some time to make the questions for the district’s attorney. Mm-hmm. So I guess we can do that without a meeting. We can do that exchange, but, okay.

1:51:13 It’ll be nice to get back on a regular schedule. I think everybody likes the regular schedule for planning. Nope. I know it’s seven 30 that we usually do. I don’t mind the seven, if I don’t mind. Seven. No mind like seven. Okay. Um, The school’s just, uh, delayed two hours for tomorrow. Yeah. Take too. Oh, I know. I just noticed that there any, uh, questions? No Public public comment. You guys did your comments earlier? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You, I’m not seeing any exceeded out. No hands at this point. How many people on, on board? Four. Five

1:52:06 Standing. Motion of adjournment. One last comment. I want to thank Andrew for all the hard work you’ve done. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a tremendous amount to go through. Yeah. No, it’s, it’s impressive. Ball start. Thanks. Absolutely. No, you know, I do think we ended up in a really good place. Yeah. Um, you know, I think I’m excited about some of the c and d stuff. Yeah. I’m excited that we can kind of explain some of the costs when we have it. Everything’s broken out. Um, you know, I think we’re headed into Yeah. I think That really. Yeah. But you tell a school everybody. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. Okay. Motion to adjourn. I second. All in favor? Aye. Okay.