Board of Health: April 14, 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.

0:02 7:00 PM on April 14th.

0:07 Mayako and I are delighted to see the room full at the Board of Health meeting. The reason for the full room is tonight we’re going to talk about what the board thinks is a very important topic. How can public safety, public education, and public health work together to improve the mental health of young people in our towns? Many of you know we finished a comm survey, and mental health and substance use of young people was second in the survey only after sidewalks.

0:54 So the town cares. We feel we have that franchise, and we’re delighted that people are here to hear our guests. I’m going to try to run a tight agenda. I will try to introduce the topic and the participants in less than 10 minutes. After our district attorney provides some background, we’ll get some responses from Chief King and Superintendent Robidoux, and then, as we usually have in our Board of Health meetings, public comments and questions. So, hopefully, the comments will be directed at the conversation that’s been introduced rather than individuals on their own.

1:41 But, in any event, we look forward to tonight, and we’ll finish up five minutes talking about what next steps are.

1:52 My perception of the reality and why we’re here, this is a town that’s extremely proud of its strong volunteer-oriented self-governance structure. What? 375 years, it’s done pretty well with fairly independent boards, commissions, committees, councils, and departments. However, my sense is the challenges of youth mental health are sufficiently complex and sufficiently interrelated that no single town agency can actually deal with the entirety. And we’re far better off by working together.

2:38 I’m a pediatrician, so I tend to put kids’ pictures in my slides. The way Marblehead has run for 375 years, we would call in pediatrics parallel play. Shoulder to shoulder, but not mind to mind.

2:56 Kids that are playing in the same room, but not necessarily focusing on the same thing. Conversely, what I’m hoping we can move to, when major facilities within the town begin to work together and develop a set of common goals, then I think it’s very clear that we can make Marblehead an even better and safer place to raise our children. We need clearly to move beyond the opinions that we’ve generated from the past and deal only with the future on what we can do

3:42 together on making it better for… I like adults as a pediatrician. I’m married to one. But, I spend most of my time thinking about the welfare of children.

3:57 One slide on this board, public health is what we do as a society to create conditions in which everyone can be healthy. Many of the town organizations and agencies routinely contribute to increasing public health. The Board of Health has a couple of unique responsibilities, I think, in that public health space. We organize and communicate a great deal about public health knowledge and science.

4:33 We bring residents together,

4:39 as we are tonight, to try to discuss public health issues. And perhaps the most important thing about the board is that in July, after the town election, we will go to five members. I think we’ve worked pretty hard to try to begin to tell the town that public health is at least as important as the transfer station. But we will go to five members, and we will be able to do many more things in the public health sphere that will be relevant to the town.

5:23 The two panelists tonight, probably everyone knows. Chief King has a strong background in law, criminal justice. As a recovering academic, those things are impressive, to me at least. I’ve talked with him often. He’s very committed to child-friendly policing. He may bring that up in his comments tonight, and he shares some of the public health thought in that he believes that education is the driver of prevention. Superintendent RobidouxHe arrived during a very stormy period of the town, including an 11-day teachers’ strike.

6:11 And the Board of Health, after the pandemic, knows what it’s like to work in a place where trust is a challenge. And John has really done, in my mind, made great progress in building and reestablishing the trust in the school system. I happen to have a graduating senior five weeks, four weeks from now, and he’s got a fantastic education.

6:40 And I’m just amazed at some of the things his teachers have done for him. And I’ve gotten to know John on the Calm Leadership Council, and he’s clearly a strong advocate for students, parents, and teachers.

6:56 Our distinguished guest, and the reason everyone’s in the room, is District Attorney Tucker. Now, I must confess, I was on the board for more than a year before I realized we had a district attorney. That’s a good thing. After a conversation with Dennis, I realized, hey, we had a district attorney. Maybe I could introduce myself. And I gave him a call, and lo and behold, he answered the phone. And in a relatively not so brief conversation, I became aware what

7:38 almost everybody in town realizes, that our district attorney is an honest, effective civil servant and a decent, caring human being. And that’s a very, very rare combination today. He knows Marblehead well. He was previously chief of police in Salem and was our state representative. So, Mr. District Attorney, we welcome you to the Board of Health. Thank you for drawing such a great– And we look forward to hearing your comments on how we might better work together, what you’ve seen in the 34 municipalities of Essex County. What’s the secret sauce?

8:24 Well, hopefully, we can share some of it tonight. Thank you all for being here. I just want to recognize my good friend, State Representative Jenny Armini, who’s here. I’m a big fan.

8:36 And from the office, my chief of staff, Shannon Lucas, is here, and our chief of public information, Mike Feldman, is here as well.

8:46 So just a little bit of history about what brought me here tonight. By the way, I do know Marblehead well. I lived here for 10 years, from 1991 to 2001. And I miss the town. I have great affinity for the folks here, so thank you for the invitation. So what got me here originally was Chief King had reached out, and there was a small group of citizens who were concerned about some things that were happening. And I’m sure you all share those concerns. Marblehead certainly has had its share of tragedies. And unfortunately, sometimes tragedies can be the catalyst to try to do some good, and I think that’s part of the reason why we’re here. Megan Sweeney, Jen Shaffer, Dean Kuznik, Dan Fox, and Chief King came over to see me at the office. We had follow-up meetings, and then

9:32 that became the catalyst that brought us here today. So thank you to the board. If anybody were to ask me why the Board of Health, why not the Board of Health? We’re here because exactly what we’re talking about is making a healthy community. So I salute the board members for getting this together and pulling us all together. So I’ve been asked to speak on a couple of different things. I’m going to make a bit of a brief presentation on something called social host liability because it’s come up. Should we wait till we get back on? No, you’re on. Okay. So, the topic for tonight is public safety, public health, and education, and that’s incredibly important. It’s also timely. It’s April, and one of the seasons that I worry deeply

10:18 about is prom season, graduating seniors, and what can we do to make sure that we provide that healthy environment that all of us want, and particularly the Board of Health that’s brought us here today. So the issue of social host liability is something that maybe not everybody understands. So there’s two parts to it. One is that you have a town bylaw here in Marblehead, and it’s been in place for many years. It was approved by the attorney general. In my estimation, this is just one person’s opinion, and I’ve talked to Chief King about this at length. The Marblehead town bylaw, I’m sure when it was put in place, was effective. It most likely probably did the job it was expected to, but I think there’s some

11:05 deficiencies here. Whenever we have a bylaw that carries with it a fine or some type of a penalty, and we measure that up against the mass general law, the question is, which is more effective? So under the town bylaw, in my estimation, it is not as effective for what we’re trying to accomplish as is the state general law. Reason being, the bylaw carries with it a small fine. It’s generally not public. There’s no deterrent effect. If somebody simply is hosting a gathering at their house of minors, there’s alcohol that’s present. There’s other issues that are collateral consequences that happen when young kids interact with alcohol. And to me, although the bylaw is well-intentioned, it doesn’t have the impact, to my view, that the mass general law does.

11:53 One of the questions that came up, and it’s been asked a few times of me, of what’s the piece in the bylaws andIn the Mass General Law around knowledge, how much do you have to know, and where does it have to take place, this activity, this underage drinking? So under the current Social Host Law in Massachusetts, there’s four parts to it. One is that somebody knowingly and intentionally allowed minors to possess alcohol on the premises. So two parts to number one, knowingly and intentionally allowing the alcohol to be possessed by minors, and that premises is either owned by the adult or it’s under their control. I’ll also add one more piece that a lot of people don’t know.

12:42 Juveniles can also be charged under Social Host Law, because there’s no cloak of immunity that because somebody’s underage, that somehow they get a pass on this. So we’re talking about criminal offense here. Knowingly, intentionally furnishing or allowing minors to possess alcohol on premises owned or under the control. That’s one. Two, the people are under 21. The people in possession of the alcohol are under 21. Three, it is in fact an alcoholic beverage. And four, the person in control or who furnished it had to know it was alcohol. If those are present, then liability attaches. I’ll also add that in addition to criminal liability, there’s also civil liability. There are dozens of cases across the Commonwealth where I think

13:29 parents, thinking they were well-intentioned, allow kids to drink on the premises, and that goes something like this. “I know they’re gonna drink, they might as well do it here in my house where I can control it.” Bad idea. There’s a term called harm reduction, where sometimes it’s the feeling that if you allow an illegality to take place, that somehow you’re shielding folks from a worse fate. That will never fly with us. There is not any situation that I believe that it will be okay for adults to furnish alcohol or allow it to be possessed thinking that they’re being well-intentioned. The penalty is stiff. It’s up to a year in the house of

14:15 correction and a $2,000 fine, either or both. That’s a strict penalty. And all we have to do is prove that the people under 21 received it by the adults or the juvenile, and the other pieces of the elements would fall in place. Now, what can the police do? There’s a couple of things. I checked with Chief King. I’m gonna touch on a few things, and then the Chief can fill in the rest of the gaps. When the police are called or they become aware of an issue where Social Host Liability may be in play or it’s an underage party, the police do not need a warrant to enter. And the idea is, and the courts have backed us up in Massachusetts, that if the police had to go get a warrant, which sometimes takes between two and four hours, the harm that could take place in the

15:03 interim might sometimes be incalculable, and there’s no turning back the clock. If there’s a breach of the peace, if you as a neighbor find that there’s loud music, there’s kids out there on front lawns, there’s drinking, there’s breach of peace activities taking place, the police can interact. If there’s evidence of some type of malicious damage or if there’s destruction of evidence, the police can act. The bottom line is that the police have what’s called a community caretaking role, where they have the ability to take action. And what the courts have said is the greater the harm and risk, the greater action that the police can take. Now, there’s numerous cases across the Commonwealth, as I mentioned. I want to highlight one, just to show what’s happening, what the reality in this case

15:50 is. There’s probably dozens just like it. There’s a 2016 case in Massachusetts. It was an underage party in progress. The adult parents were not home, but they came home in the midst of the party to find an underage party where minors were in possession and drinking alcohol. The parents started to drink with the kids. It gets worse. After they were drinking, one of the girls at the party became violently ill and asked to be taken to the hospital. The parents refused, and in fact, the mother in this particular case, was a nurse, and they refused to take the child, and she was very, very ill, and finally she went home the next day.

16:36 Now, there’s a case where the law actually had to have a stronger reaction. Not only were they charged with Social Host, they were charged with reckless endangerment of a child. Extremely serious case. In this particular case, the husband made the comment that he thought he was doing the right thing, that it was safer for the kids to be there. Never a good idea. I want to add one more piece to this, and that’s something under what you may hear or are familiar with, and it’s called the Good Samaritan law. There is a carve-out, an exception in the law, and this is important, and it’s an important message for the young people of Marblehead. If somebody is incapacitated by alcohol, a person under the age of 21

17:23 who may also be drinking alcohol and may be in possession of alcohol, if they call for help, if they summon the police, if they summon a parent and try to get some help for that person who’s incapacitated, they will be immune from prosecution. That started out in the law when it had to do with drug overdoses. We saw so many people leaving their friends behind. They were overdosing. They were afraid of their own liability. So here, this has been added in Massachusetts, and if a person is incapacitated, a minor can go and get help, and they will not be charged. Now, there’s a limit to this as well. It does not apply to adults over 21. It doesn’t apply to an adult who hosts the party.

18:09 It doesn’t apply to an adult who furnished the alcohol.When it comes to the actual person who’s incapacitated, if they’re unconscious, if they’re in medical distress, if they’re likely to suffer some type of further physical harm, and they have a friend that’s underage, that friend can come forward. I think that’s a message that really needs to be shared. I can remember when I was living in town here, I was driving home from work in my police car, and I saw five kids running into the woods from Lafayette Street in Salem into the area where the tracks are that leads to the trail into Marblehead. Lead Mills, we called it in Salem. And it just didn’t look right. It was 12:30 at night. It was about five degrees out. I got out of my car.

18:55 I still had my police radio, called out. I went in. Most of the kids took off, and as I’m walking, I found a young person, one of the group, unconscious on the ground. Mm-hmm. They left him behind. Fortunately, we were able to summon an ambulance. I got a call the next day from the parent thanking me. The kids had left him behind. We’re hoping that this Good Samaritan law would preclude somebody from leaving their friend, and I think it’s important to get that message out. One of the things that the board had asked me to speak on was the success in some of the programs in other municipalities, so I put just a small grouping of things together. Lynnfield has something called the Substance Use Coalition. I’ve been over. I’ve spoken to the group. It’s a partnership collaboration between the town of

19:43 Lynnfield and a 501 [3] group. They have some grants. They have resources. They have programming. These are the type of collaboration with the town and the folks, the residents of the town. I think that’s something that we might be looking to do here. Gloucester. I’m a big fan of what Gloucester Police do. Their school resource officers are amazing. What they do on an everyday basis, connecting with the kids. They run a gaming program after school. All the kids are at the gaming, the computers. They’ve got kids with intellectual disabilities. They’ve got kids on the football team all coming together. It really is quite a sight. And they’ll have dozens, sometimes

20:29 upwards of 100 kids all at once, on this whole gaming string. They have a program where they take kids out fishing. I’ve been out there. I’ve actually caught a stripe, the first time in my life, when I went out with the Gloucester Police. They bring out three or four kids at a time. And what they’ll do is, it’s not just about fishing. It’s about four young people at a time with two police officers on the police boat fishing. And it’s more than just catching a fish. It’s that time building and bonding. Around prom time, they’ll do a program. I go every year. I go and speak to the graduating class at Gloucester High School. It’s an amazing group. I speak, the superintendent, the principal, and

21:14 there’s a woman by the name of Gail Sullivan. Right, Sharon? Gail Sullivan? I think. Kathy Sullivan. Sorry. Kathy Sullivan and her husband. A very sad story, but they give a glimmer of hope when they talk to the kids. The Sullivans lost their daughter to an alcohol-related accident. She was at a party. She had too much to drink. She wandered off, went into a swamp, and drowned in a very, very small amount of water. When her mom gets up to speak, you’ve got the entire graduating class of Gloucester, you can hear a pin drop. And trust me, it resonates.

22:00 The good news is, one of the things that I’ve done since I’ve been DA, I’ve given out what we call After-Prom Grants. This year, we gave out almost $40,000 in grants. Non-competitive. All the schools had to do was write us a letter, tell us what you want to do. Gloucester, they do a taco truck. They have entertainment after the prom. This year, working with your principal, Principal Carlson, she applied for the grant. We gave Marblehead $3,800, and she will have the Sullivans speaking to the senior class. She’s the woman from Gloucester. It’s impactful, and for anybody here that had parents of high school seniors, I’d be curious to hear your take when the kids come home.

22:46 It’s extremely impactful.

22:51 Another group that I want to bring to your attention, I have some literature that I’ll leave with the board, is a group called the Nan Project. When I was at the State House, and Rep Amini is familiar with them. Again, it’s a family who suffered a terrible, terrible tragedy. The family lost their daughter, Nan, a 22-year-old, to suicide, struggling with mental health issues, just some of the exact same things that Dr. Mascal was talking about. They have taken that tragedy, and they have moved forward with the Nan Project. They’re doing amazing work. I’m actually meeting with all the North Shore school superintendents next month, and I’m going to introduce the Nan Project to them and hope that they participate. I’m also looking to do some

23:37 funding for them as well. They do peer counseling. They train peer leaders who then will become the peer counselors in the schools. I would love to see all of the local schools pick this up. I’ve met twice with the peer counselors. They are an amazing group of young people. They will connect with your high school students. Just a minute on the mental health issues, and this is something that’s really important to me in the job that I have.

24:08 Post-COVID, I don’t think that we still, a couple of years outHave seen the top of the tidal wave on mental health coming out of COVID. There are so many things that happen behind closed doors, domestic violence, dysfunctional families, issues that go beyond, but we may not see them. And I think what COVID did was put that further behind the shadows. I think we’re still seeing some issues coming out of it. The problem that my office has is that the capacity of the mental health counseling and what we need to run my juvenile diversion program has been outpaced by the need, and we’re struggling. I’m going to talk in a minute about my juvenile diversion program.

24:53 But one of the things that’s a key piece when I try to keep young people out of the incarceration system, out of juvenile court, is everybody has to get a mental health counseling, and they have to meet personally with the counselors. That’s important. Even if they’re not manifesting any signs, we still think it’s an important message. The other piece of literature that I have here is the Mass Partnerships for Youth. There’s a woman, Margie Daniels, that runs it. She’s amazing. I was just at Essex Tech about three weeks ago when I spoke to a group of about 125 kids from all over the region. It’s a leadership program that MPY does. They have resources. They do training. They do events. They do counseling. My suggestion would be to have a

25:41 point person that taps into working with Margie at the MPY. Absolutely amazing and a lot of what they do I have in the documentation here.

25:55 Health and safety, school culture, I am always very impressed by what our school folks are doing. I’m a public school kid from kindergarten through Salem State.

26:07 What educators are facing now, I think is unprecedented. I see Stephanie Kelly here, we’ve done quite a bit of work with at Salem Charter.

26:19 Teaching at its very core has been the same for 150 years. But what we’re asking our educators to do on a daily basis goes well beyond anything, I think, even just a few years back, and they do an amazing job. One of the things that I participate in personally is something called the Community Collaborative Initiative, the CCI, and we have representatives from my office that run. We have a juvenile justice unit. They run the CCIs. They are in the schools. I was at the second to last one here in Marblehead, met with the Marblehead leadership team. The Adjustment Council is the folks that are seeing the kids on a day-to-day basis. I try to make at least one from every school district in Essex

27:07 County, at least one, sometimes a couple. And I think people would be very surprised at a couple of things. One is how well our educators know your kids. They know the kids, they know what’s going on, and they know how to fix it. They know how to address things. The other issue I think that may surprise you in some small communities where you may not think that there’s either gang issues, drug issues, other substance use issues, vaping, you may be surprised at the level of what we’re seeing at these CCIs. And it’s something that we redouble our efforts every day in my office. We have a really hard-working team. We’re in the courts. We’re in juvenile courts. We’re in the classrooms. Another resource as Marblehead looks

27:56 to continue conversations that we’re having. In my office, in the Essex County DA’s office, juvenile diversion program is very robust. I inherited a great program from my predecessor, John Blodgett, and I like to think that we’ve brought it even to the next level. Our goal is to try to keep kids healthy, safe, and for as long as we can, out of the juvenile court system. We know a couple of things, not only anecdotally, but looking at statistics. We know that the longer that we keep young people out of the judicial system, their chances of their success exponentially grow. We also know that the opposite is true too. If somebody enters the system as a 14 or 15-year-old, chances that they will recidivate go way up as well.

28:44 We work really hard to try to keep kids out of the system. Now, having said that, unfortunately, sometimes there are times when somebody does something that’s so consequential that if there’s a victim involved, if there’s injury involved, we have to put them in the system. But all is not lost then either, because we always have an eye toward rehabilitation and trying to help those folks. And frankly, sometimes we will have to get somebody into the system because they’re floundering on the outside. There might not be enough parental or guardian support, and sometimes the only way that we can mandate treatment for them is to get them into the system, and that’s something that we work hard really every day. The other piece I wanted to mention, and some people may be familiar with this concept, and some may not, it’s the concept of restorative justice.

29:33 Restorative justice has been, I would say, one of my top two or three initiatives that I want to get behind, whether it’s finishing up this first term or however long I stay in this job. I think it’s the wave of the future of how we handle young people, right up until into early adulthood. The concept of restorative justice is to repair the harm that somebody has caused. I’ll just give you a quick anecdote. This is not an Essex County case, but it came to my attention when I was a state rep. There was a break-in at a very small hardware store. It was in Arlington, Mass. And two kids went in, broke in. They spray-painted the walls. They broke a few things, caused some

30:19 damage, and leftWhen the owner came in the next day, he finds the damage. It was run by him and his wife, one employee. He had to send the employee home for the day. Couldn’t pay him because he couldn’t open. Ended up having to get some supplies, had to fix things up. The police department found the two young people responsible. They told the owner, “We found out who it is. We’re going to charge them.” And the owner said, “I don’t want them charged, but I don’t want them to think they got away with it.” So they did what’s called a restorative justice circle, where these two young people met with a mediator, facilitator, and the owner of the store, and they had the opportunity to sit across the table from each other. And the owner of the store had the opportunity to tell these two young people the

31:04 impact that their actions had on him, his wife, their employee, their business. And the two young people had the opportunity to say, “I’m sorry,” and to say that this was the worst thing they’ve ever done. And they asked sincerely for a second chance. That’s a successful restorative justice. We had one recently in Salem. We had a young person that pulled a false alarm in our Essex Museum Place Mall. Fire department had to come. They had to clear the store out, stores all around out. We found out who did it. The restorative justice in that case, the young person spent a day with the firefighters. The deputy chief brought him up to the stores where he had to go to each of the stores and apologize to them. That’s a successful restorative justice. It doesn’t always work, but the success rate is very, very

31:53 high. I’ll also just add just a bit of a caveat that we can’t do restorative justices for every type of case. It’s not appropriate for any type of sexual assault. Generally, it’s not appropriate for any type of physical violence or domestic violence. But we will look to see what’s the best outcome for these young people. I hired a full-time restorative justice coordinator, a gentleman from Lynn, a James Runner. James is a football coach at Lynn Tech. He coaches track. He has a hip hop dance team, and he connects with kids like nobody else. He was up in Georgetown High School a couple of months back, and I don’t know what he did, but they called a couple weeks later, asked him to come back again, the principal. He’s connecting with the kids. Another great resource for us.

32:42 Just in terms of other things we do beyond what you might picture a regular district attorney’s office is, it’s not always about prosecutions. In Lynn, we’ve run flag football camps during school vacation breaks. We have a Dominican DJ named DJ Luz from Lawrence. We brought him to Salem. He does music mixing. We had a group up in Lawrence. We bought them all sound mixing boards. He taught them how to do it. We had a young lady come in and teach them aesthetics for some of the young females up in Lawrence. We just had them in Salem during the last school break. And I mentioned we did a learn to swim program in Lynn. We found that there were many, many first-generation

33:28 immigrants that came here to this country, don’t know how to swim. They want to go out and be with their friends. We had some drownings and some near drownings. The crowd that we had come to learn how to swim was overwhelming. And on the last day, we had the state police come to Lynn Tech. They went in the pool. They showed their gear. They talked about water safety. This is where I think this board is going. It’s about healthy communities. It’s not a one size that fits all. It’s all of these things together. I’m going to close with this. I did want to just mention the police response as well. Police officers have an extremely difficult job. I was a police officer for 34 years. My son’s a detective sergeant in Salem. I worked shoulder to shoulder with Dennis for a couple of decades in Salem

34:15 before he came over here. Much like educators, police officers’ job is more difficult today than ever. The difficulties they face, we talk a lot about mental health and wellness of teens. I talk also a lot about mental health and wellness of our first responders. When the police officers come to a situation, it’s in Marblehead. They go, there’s a high school party going on. They have to come up. They may have to get in the house. They will, I’m sure, take whatever steps in the community caretaking role are best suited for that situation, whether it’s calling a parent, whether it’s bringing them to the police station, whether it’s putting them in some type of protective custody.

35:00 And I think that the conversations that you have had around holding parents accountable, I think has been strong, and I think that’s part of the reason why we’re here. There has to be a message. If you want to call it a zero-tolerance policy, so be it. But there has to be a message. And going forward, I hope that you’re able to incorporate a lot of what you’re going to hear this evening. But also know that there are people willing to help. Community members, since a couple of the last tragedies in Marblehead, I’ve heard from Marblehead residents, some who I know and some who I didn’t, reached out, and the common theme is they feel

35:46 like something has to be done, and they want to help do something. So I think that’s what we need to collectively capture, and I’m so enlightened and optimistic that so many folks are here that care, and I’m sure that for every person here, there’s dozens more for representing each one of you in their homes that want to do something as well. So, okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

36:16 I think alphabetically, we go to Chief King. Great.

36:21 For the record, when Paul and I first met, I didn’t need glasses to read. But I do now. And I also did take a lot of time and effort to just gather thoughts and maybe clarify some approaches, philosophy, and operations that we do at the police department. So if I’m giving you some specific stuff, I apologize for that. But good evening, and thank you, Chair Mazzaro, for inviting me. Our conversations have been enlightening. Oftentimes I say that I talk to people, and I disappoint them. I feel like probably Tom and I have talked a couple of times, and I’ve disappointed him. But what I knew and what I know he knows about me is

37:09 that we care about the wellbeing of our young people in town and everybody in town, and we’re willing to work together even if we don’t agree entirely. So, I appreciate the opportunity to speak about underage drinking, the drinking culture, the social host law, a little bit about our local bylaw. These are important issues, and they deserve a thoughtful, honest, and balanced discussion. District Attorney Tucker really did a great job talking about and laying the foundation for many of the topics, from starting with really the

37:43 crime of furnishing and social host to a little bit about our own bylaw and how that develops and the like. But to reinforce, and this hits a lot what the DA did, the Massachusetts social host law makes it clear that anybody, any person who furnishes alcohol to someone under 21 or allows underage drinking on property they control can be held responsible for the consequences. Marblehead’s local bylaw complements that framework. The DA and I have talked a lot about the enforcement of that bylaw as well. Together, they are designed to prevent dangerous behavior, reduce harm, and reinforce the shared responsibility adults have in protecting young people. So there is that shared responsibility that this very discussion that we’re talking about is important.

38:30 I understand the concerns that have been raised in recent public discussion about how these matters are enforced in Marblehead. I also understand the emotions that come with these conversations because they’re touching on parenting, adolescence, accountability, community trust. Personally, I have parented myself three young adults through these difficult times. It’s not easy. And even if you think you did it all right, you probably didn’t. I know I had many discussions with my kids, and I’m certain that I didn’t get it all right. As the chief, I want to be clear about my philosophy. I do not believe criminal charges alone change the trajectory of a young person’s life. Consistent support, timely intervention, clear expectations, and measured accountability are what make the difference.

39:17 Our goal is not to criminalize Marblehead’s youth. You’ve heard me say this before. Our goal is to guide them, protect them, and intervene before poor choices become lasting consequences. That does not mean we minimize the seriousness of underage drinking. We know that alcohol used by minors can lead to impaired driving, sexual assault, injuries, fights, alcohol poisoning, poor decision-making, and long-term health and safety consequences, and we have had our share of tragedy in this town. We also know that what is often described casually as teen drinking culture can normalize very risky behavior. I hate that term, teen drinking culture. The DA are completely on the same page on that, that it is never okay to

40:06 allow that type of behavior. When that happens, adults have to step in, not later, not after repeated warning signs, but to be effective at the earliest point where intervention can still matter most. Because they’re kids. As I said, parenting adolescents is not easy. Anyone who has raised teenagers or worked with them closely understands that adolescence often comes with impulsivity, peer pressure, secrecy, immaturity, and at times, behaviors that are both typical and not so typical. And if you’ve worked with our juveniles, and I have for a long time, and many people in this room have, that is exactly what we’re dealing with. But parents cannot ignore red flags. Parents cannot choose deliberate indifference because it’s the

40:54 easier path. But I truly believe this, in the end, parents can make the biggest difference in that young person’s life. The most effective prevention does not ever begin in a courtroom or a police station. It begins at home with awareness, involvement, boundaries, these are tough things, and the willingness to act when something does not seem right. When enforcement becomes necessary, and I appreciate the district attorney breaking down responses and what we are typically doing as a response to these type of calls. Some things that I have reinforced with my officers and my officers in charge when I read a report after, because I know it

41:39 may not seem right, but I’m not out at 12:00 midnight or 1:00 a.m., responding to these parties. It’s my officers, my OICs that are. So when enforcement becomes necessary, our officers have an obligation to do it fairly, professionally, thoroughly, but in the interest of the safety of the child, and that includes bringing in parents, that includes perhaps other things. As a result of these public conversations, and I do believe that over the last several months, we have had some, and I’ve taken the time to remind all officers, and again, supervisors, the need to complete careful, well-documented investigations when responding to reports of underage drinking parties or gatherings. So as the chief, I do have a lot of different things that I do,

42:25 and I hate to say this, but oftentimes I refer to myself as a police officer as days foregone.I have a lot more administrative duties that I rely on to support my department and the people that work for me so that they’re effective. That’s what I’m doing. I’ve arrested tens, dozens, hundreds of people at underage parties and summons and brought them to safety. But for me, that is not necessarily my role anymore. So when we have this discussion about how I support, and I revisit it, and I’ve told many people, including our select board members and the members that are here today, that I appreciate the fact that

43:11 when I’m asked for an answer on what we’re doing, it does force some

43:18 discussion on could we do it better. And so I appreciate that. So that experience, has it reinforced, I’m just going to go back a little bit to some of the philosophy, that not every bad juvenile decision should be answered the same way. Not every response has to begin and end with punishment. Young people need structure, accountability and consequences. That’s a theme that I’m going to keep on saying. But they also need support, direction and opportunities to change course before they become defined by one poor decision. I always told them during presentations or discussions that I led, and I led for many years within the Salem Police Department, the very topic that we’re talking about, underage drinking, and drugging. And I would say, in front of a couple of hundred middle

44:04 schoolers or a couple of hundred high schoolers, that it’s not okay to drink or drug. And I think that sometimes, even in middle school or in high school, that was the first time they had ever heard that, and it struck me. But I would also say, because you have to say this, even if you have, or you still are drinking or drugging, it’s not catastrophic and I’ll help you. Why is this clearly important, the intervention? Because statistically, we know that the longer the person waits to do their first drink, to take their first drug, the less likely they are to develop a substance use disorder. And so getting young people at an opportune time can really change the trajectory of their life.

44:51 One of the more meaningful examples of work that I did was working with juvenile probation, juvenile judges in Plum Youth Promise, through the On Point program. And so what Paul won’t tell you is that he’s given me many different things to do in my life. He’s assigned me tasks. He assigned me to go to Hawaii. Imagine that, how terrible that was. Remember that conversation. Dennis, I have this really interesting probation model that we’re going to become part of, and I’d like you to be the lead for us in Salem. And it was an innovative program that ended up being developed statewide. And he said, but the caveat is you have to go to Hawaii to train as a start to see how they do it in Hawaii.

45:37 And I said, that would be terrible, but I’m going to take on that role. That was not a role that I was fond or bold on. But On Point is another area that the DA and I have some work on together. And it was really reflective of a juvenile justice approach that centered on accountability, engagement and redirection rather than simply detention or deeper court involvement. And we did make a difference in those most at-risk juveniles in the city of Salem. They were on lines, and we kept them straight on the path rather than going one way or another. It was designed to give young people a chance to be addressed early, surrounded by adults and system that expect better from them while still offering a pathway toward the better choices.

46:24 That kind of initiative reinforces something I strongly believe, the best outcomes for juveniles come when communities respond early, consistently, and with purpose. I was also, again, fortunate in Salem to work under the district attorney, and during that time, he signed me a number of important roles, not just going to Hawaii, and responsibilities that shaped the development as a police leader. He trusted me with meaningful work, expected sound judgment, and helped reinforce an approach, all of which you heard him talk about today, to public safety that recognized the value of discretion, intervention, leadership beyond simple enforcement. He was and is a mentor to me, and that mattered. It helped to shape the way I think about accountability,

47:10 prevention and service, especially when it comes to young people. And we are very fortunate that he’s here tonight. He is invested in the entire Essex County, but in Marblehead, he really cares about this community. That brings me to our schools. I’m just going to talk a little bit about the work of our school resource officer, Sean Sweeney Jr. I strongly support the work of our SRO and what he’s done in the schools to establish trust, respect and relationships with students. That role is most effective when it’s built on consistency, credibility and communication, and our SRO has done that well. I think that if you asked the members of our school community, from the superintendent to the principals to every worker, they would say that the SRO in Marblehead

47:58 has done incredible work to build trust and build relationships so that he can be effective in guiding them, not in a discipline role. If you didn’t know this, in 2018, they took out the discipline of SROs or any school resource officer. So discipline is not even in the curriculum of SRO anymore. It’s actually behavioral health and intervention and recognizing mental health issues and substance use disorders. That’s what it’s about. And so for him to be able to– and if you talk to him now, he does quite talk like somebody that is a behavioral health expert. But because of those relationships, he often has the ability to defuse situations before they worsenAnd when discipline or intervention is necessary, he

48:43 understands the importance of applying it proportionally and appropriately. And I spend a lot of time talking to Sean about these issues and about our young people in town. So having served in that role for the past three years, Sean has acknowledged that this type of activity does exist. He does think that it’s perhaps– Everybody always compares their time from when they were in high school, and he does say that, “It was much worse when I was in high school.” And so I have to be able to, I’m a stat guy, like, how do we do that reasonably under certain measures? But he does keep me abreast of certain things. He also supports reasonable measures that help create a positive school culture that reduces some of these things further. I share that view.

49:30 The goal is not to overstate the problem. It’s not to ignore it. It’s to address it honestly, responsibly, and early enough to prevent escalation. School culture matters, adult presence matters, and trust matters. And the relationship built by an effective SRO can prevent situations from becoming larger problems for students, families, and communities. And I want to point that out because we do have informal methods that we are trying to identify before something happens or a party goes, in that- Yeah … Sean is really, at least on the level that he’s interacting with these kids, that is trying to deter or diffuse and perhaps identify the consequence. We should also be honest that there’s a difference between youthful immaturity and

50:15 dangerous conduct, but one can become the other if adults don’t step in. And I’m almost done here. A strong community response requires schools, parents, police, public health professionals, that’s why we’re here, local government, we are seeing that as well, all working together. That’s how we reduce harm. You’ve heard the DA talk about reducing harm. That’s how we do it. This is how we create a healthier culture, and that is how we send the right message to young people, that this community cares enough to intervene, expects better, and will not look the other way. So my message tonight, brevity is not my thing. Together, all the stakeholders here working together is what will change the culture. That means there are times we should enforce

51:02 the laws around underage drinking, furnishing alcohol to minors, reckless endangerment, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, or minor in possession of alcohol. We should support our bylaw when applicable. We should insist on thorough investigations and fair treatment. We should support parents and parenting. We should support our schools and the work of the SRO. We should support the Board of Health in your efforts in educating and funding worthwhile initiatives. And we should continue building a community culture where underage drinking is neither normalized nor ignored. That’s how we protect young people, that’s how we support families, and that’s how we serve Marblehead well. Again, I took some more time to give you some thoughts of what goes into the thinking behind

51:49 the operations of what we’ve been doing. I hope that you’ve appreciated some of it. I’m sure many of you have questions, but please recognize the common themes that the district attorney mentioned, and that is that to reduce harm, we all have to work together, and the cases that we encounter are very individualistic, and how we handle them can really change trajectories. In doing that together, we’re better for it. And I’m very fortunate to have the team that we have. I’ll say that in Marblehead, this team, the school team, the police department team, I’m telling you that they do outstanding work that often goes unnoticed, and it’s hard to measure, because if you don’t see

52:37 it, right? Absent it, then you don’t sometimes know. Okay. Thanks.

52:50 I don’t know what this says, but when I started in Marblehead, I didn’t have any gray hair. It comes heavy, and I didn’t need these, but here we are. So, I just want to share my thanks to the Board of Health and DA Tucker and Chief King- Mm-hmm … and all the folks who are involved in gathering this group together. I think it’s important to have these discussions, it’s important to share our thoughts, and it’s important to move forward. So I’ll share some of the things we have in place based upon the data and ongoing discussions we have. But what is most important at this juncture is that we have begun truly meaningful communication and collaboration with the community and are creating important partnerships with the schools to address student safety through a team-based approach. Moving forward together is our district’s motto, and this forum is just one way

53:36 to demonstrate how we lead by example. Our joint letter that the three of us put together is an important milestone in demonstrating that commitment and that collaboration. We are working towards being proactive here in Marblehead versus being reactive, and I think that’s a very important distinction. There’s been a lot of discussion in the short time I’ve been here, and I think we’ve made some good strides forward. Is it okay if I share the letter that we- Yes, go ahead. I think it’s important. I shared this out to our school community today, and it will be sent out in different forms, but I thought this was a good opportunity to read the letter for the folks that are either online and in the room, and I thank everybody for coming today. This is great having this many folks for this important discussion. So the letter reads, “Dear Marblehead School

54:22 students, parents, guardians, faculty, and community members. As prom and graduation season approaches, Marblehead Public Schools, the Marblehead Police Department, and the Essex County District Attorney’s Office are joining together to ask every family and every student to make safety the priority. These milestones should be remembered for celebration, accomplishment, and community pride, and not for the preventable harm caused by underage drinking, impaired driving, or unsafe gatherings.”We’re asking parents and guardians to speak directly with their students before prom night. Please know where your student is going before and after the event, who they will be with, who is supervising any gathering, and how transportation will be handled. Clear expectations, active supervision, and a plan for getting home safely remain the strongest tools for prevention.

55:10 Students should understand that there is never a safe reason to drink underage, ride with an impaired driver, or stay in a situation that feels unsafe. The right decision is to leave, call a parent or trusted adult, and seek help immediately. The late-night phone call is always better than a dangerous decision. Massachusetts law prohibits furnishing alcohol to anyone under 21. So-called social host violations are not minor matters, and they create serious safety risks for young people and can result in criminal charges, as we heard from both the DA and chief. We urge all our parents, guardians, and residents to help keep our community safe by not hosting underage drinking at homes, parties, or gatherings. Rather, parents and guardians are asked to support a safe,

55:57 substance-free hosting environment for our students by setting clear expectations, supervising gatherings responsibly, and making certain that no alcohol, cannabis, or other substances are available to teens. Our shared message is simple: celebrate responsibly, look out for one another, and make choices that ensure every student returns home safely. Working together as students, families, schools, police, and community partners can keep prom and graduation season focused on the achievements our young people have earned. Sincerely, Superintendent of Schools, Dennis King, and DA Paul Tucker. So I think that’s an important message, and I thought it was important to share that. Just for some further discussion, a lot of what DA Tucker shared,

56:44 the resources shared, we do utilize a lot of those resources already. And I think there’s other resources that I’ll share here tonight just to kind of explain a little bit what we do as a preventive measure, but also so that we can look to those resources for things that we haven’t yet bought into and kind of enhance what we have. Marlboro Head Schools supports all students and cares for their well-being in a holistic way. We work hard to not only address their academic needs, but also find ways to support social, emotional, and behavioral health needs. Sorry, health. Because we know that when students are healthy and at their best, they are ready to learn. For years, Marlboro Head Public Schools has integrated evidence-based prevention programming into high school and in

57:30 age-appropriate ways at the lower-level schools, focused on addressing factors that make our student communities more vulnerable toward or protected against substance use and mental health issues. We collect data to share with students, staff, and community members and analyze the data to help inform decisions on how we can best support our students. And I’ll share two tools that we use, just two of the ones that we use. There are others, but the Substance Use and Related Risk Factors, it’s called the SURFF survey, is conducted annually at MHS, Marlboro High School, and provides a set of data points that outline the current strengths and areas of growth for our youth and help determining what resources and programming may be needed. We also administer a screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment, also called the SBIRT screening tool, which helps to identify students at risk for

58:17 substance abuse and alcohol use. This is administered initially in grade seven and again in high school. So there’s some good tools that we have that we collect data. And that data, a lot of the questions are like, “That’s great. You do the surveys, you collect the data, we talk about the data. What is that and how does that inform us?” So, some of the ways that we’ve used that data to be put to use in the schools, and I think this conversation is great because some of the things we have in place will be enhanced by these ongoing community discussions. So, these are just a few items. Again, just thought I’d share some bullet points here. Groups and initiatives that we have that are created. So we have actually two different student safety committees. One is created that is a school administration

59:03 and union members, and we meet regularly throughout the year. And we talk about student safety in general, how safety incidents are reported, how do we address them. We talk about restorative justice or restorative practice and what does that mean and what does that mean for students in schools. Looks vastly different than criminal restorative justice. But those are things that we need to continue to talk about. Because realistically, restorative practices in the schools are really about like, Johnny might have made a bad choice in the classroom that disrupted the classroom, and how do we address that in a way that has natural consequences and natural discussions versus just bouncing them out of school or giving them a suspension or a detention or anything like that. We have those conversations. And those are things that we’re really trying to integrate into school in a little

59:50 bit more ongoing, consistent way. So that’s important. So we have that student safety committee. We also have a committee that Chief King and Chief Hellion sit on, and the principals. And that’s more of a community-based, the Tower schools there, the charter schools there, myself, our facilities, our technology. We have a whole host of folks. We meet throughout the year. We talk about not just facilities safeties, but we talk about how we make sure that we’re keeping students safe and different ways we can do that. So that’s really important. We have a health and wellness committee that I chair. And again, we meet throughout the year. We do things like look at the health and wellness policy, and it’s not just about what good foods we should eat, it’s also about our mental health and well-being as students. So that committee’s been very active in how do we

1:00:38 address student needs in different ways. We have an anti-discrimination committee. That may sound like, well, what does that have to do with health and well-being? Well, that’s how do we make sure that students can be advocates for themselves. We are providing resources and support and staff that may be being discriminated against. So it falls under the mental health andSocial, emotional well-being of students and staff. And then the student-run coalition that’s fairly recently coordinated at the high school is called the Magic Coalition. That’s student-run, and they’re really looking at how do peers support peers in making sure they feel like they belong, and that’s again, around social, emotional, mental health, well-being. So those are some of the groups that we have in place.

1:01:23 A lot of the surveys and data that we collect inform our PD and our training. So we have a lot of updated sessions that we put in place, including multicultural population, professional development sessions for educators. We added that in this year. Social emotional well-being sessions for PD. We added a social emotional learning program called Wayfinder, and that’s integrated in all the schools. That really speaks a lot to how we address social emotional learning in the classroom, and it carries over to the home as well. There’s a lot of resources, as DA Tucker mentioned. There’s some further ones, a community service agency we tap into. Cartwheel is an online counseling for students. That’s something we put in place, I think maybe at the end of last year. And that’s really a good place for students to be able to

1:02:09 tap into some counseling that they may not be able to have access to otherwise. It’s an online kind of in-the-moment counseling services for students. We have community mental health and social support resources. We have a whole spreadsheet of different resources that are in the community for access for our staff and for our administrators. So when things are popping up or bubbling up or how do we address certain issues with students or staff or resources in the classroom, we have a whole bevy of areas that we can go to for different avenues around mental health and social emotional learning. And we also have a substance and mental health awareness document. It’s also a shared document, and there’s a list of resources for

1:02:54 our admins and our teachers to access for our students. DA Tucker mentioned Kathy and Chris Sullivan. They’re coming to speak to the MHS senior parents on the fourth at 5:00. So thank you for funding that. That’s very important. I won’t go into it further because I think you did a great job explaining it, but we’re really excited about that level of intervention from folks that have lived it. And as I know in the 10 years I’ve been a superintendent in other districts, those kind of conversations with students are very impactful to hear from folks that have been specifically and personally affected by tragedy. And I’ve heard a lot of good things about Kathy and Chris Sullivan and the work that they do, and I’m really excited for the parents and the

1:03:43 students we’ve invited to come to that on May 4th at 5:00. So it’s right before the town meeting. So for those of you guys that get there early, you get little VIP parking. So please take advantage of that. And then we’re also working on how we bring in speakers during health class. So what was talked about a little bit tonight was sometimes when we get to students, it’s a little bit late. We’re talking about having senior parents here in this discussion and seniors. We need to start having conversations about earlier in the grade levels. And that becomes difficult because parents a lot of times don’t want us to talk to their students about drugs and substance abuse when it’s earlier grades. But realistically, we’re seeing a lot of

1:04:28 poor choices being made in fourth, fifth, sixth grade and up. That’s not atypical these days. That’s a sad state of affairs. We need to have the conversations earlier and often. So I share that with you. So we’ve heard from our students, we’ve surveyed them, and we’ve asked them, what’s the best way to share this message? And what they’ve told us over and over and over again, it’s not just having a speaker necessarily coming in and putting all the kids in an auditorium and talking at them. Kathy and Chris Sullivan, that’s a little bit different. It’s a targeted audience, and that would be very impactful. But to say, “Hey, we’re going to pull in all the middle school students, we’re going to talk at them about something,” doesn’t seem to be the way that they want that to happen. We want it to happen in smaller groups. So we’re really targeting our health classes, which for a lot of these

1:05:13 conversations, and I think it’s more well-received that way. And kids in that more intimate setting or in advisories, we have those conversations so kids can actually ask questions and not in the middle of a big auditorium. So we’ve been working on that. So I’m really including that. Then we have partnerships, obviously, with the Board of Health, Marblehead Counseling Center, Task Force Against Discrimination, Marblehead Racial Justice Team, overall community organizations that we’ve partnered with and really have ongoing conversations. North Shore Educational Consortium is a great resource for us. They have clinical services, they have community wrap-arounds. They have what used to be called Recovery High School. We are rebranding that. It’s now going to be called North Shore Phoenix Academy. So they’re rebranding it because it was really about students who had substance use and abuse,

1:06:02 and it really migrated into servicing kids with more mental health issues, because as we talked about earlier, the mental health issues have been much more prevalent than I think they used to be, or at least on the forefront. So North Shore Recovery High School, part of NEC, the quick consortium, has kind of rebranding moving into next year. And I think that’ll be helpful to our students who might need some short-term kind of interventions for both mental health and/or substance and alcohol abuse. So that’s very helpful. We already partner with Massachusetts Partnership for Youth, so that’s great. And I think just continuing the conversation so we can partner with parents and caregivers in all of these things, in all these areas, it’s hugely important to me, and I think it’s hugely important to all the folks sitting here. And realistically, the community

1:06:47 folks that have kind of organized this

1:06:52 moving forward has been great to see evolve because the schools can’t do it themselves, and the police can’t do it themselves, and the Board of Health. So the Partnerships, the collaboration are really important for us to get to a point where we’d be, again, being more proactive than reactive. So I’m excited about the work, even though it’s work that we don’t always want to talk about. We don’t want to talk about mental health a lot. We don’t want to talk about substance abuse and alcohol abuse, but we have to. We have to have the conversation. We have to make sure that people are, they may feel uncomfortable, but they have to be okay about being uncomfortable, having conversations that will help prevent tragedies and help keep our kids safe. Because realistically, that’s our number one priority, all of us. I’m a lifelong educator and an educational leader, and

1:07:38 students are first, and everything else comes after. So I’ll end on that, but I’m happy to have further conversations, and I thank you again for the opportunity. This has been great. Really pleased about this. Thank you.

1:07:57 Well, the Board of Health tradition is really open questions and comments. We don’t have a microphone, so speak up. Sorry. And then, of course, I don’t have a voice for once in my life. Mr. Tucker, you made one point that I was unaware of, I think a lot of people are unaware of, and so I was hoping to reiterate it. So right now in town, we have what I’d call almost an arrogance with half a dozen families where they’re just repeat offenders. They’re hosting the parties at their house. They don’t understand consequence. They don’t care. And the volume of the houses, the level of people there. Even the way their kids now talk to some of the police officers is so wildly disrespectful,

1:08:44 something I never would have imagined when I was a kid. I had a healthy– I wasn’t afraid of police officers, but if I was doing something wrong, I was. But you had said that police do not need a warrant to enter an underage party. Can you elaborate on that? Because that’s new to me, and I think a lot of those parents are acting as if that’s not real. I think most people assume that the police need a warrant to enter. And it goes back to something I said about the police having what’s called a community caretaking role. If there is something happening in the house, and the list was, and this is not an exclusive list, if there is some type of health issue going on, if somebody’s intoxicated, if evidence is being destroyed, if property is being destroyed. The greater the risk, the greater the harm, the greater the police have the

1:09:29 opportunity to go in. Now, once they’re in, they can address the issue that they see in front of them. They can’t go opening up drawers or opening up closets or looking for kids that are hiding. That’s a real thing. Yeah. So yes. So they can go in without a warrant. The key is, and this is actually a model headache from many, many years ago, the key is it has to be immediate. If the police come and they see an action, they have to take action then, otherwise, they lose the ability. There was a case from many years ago, way, way back, where the police waited almost three hours to take some action, then they went without a warrant, and the court said, “Well, if it was that immediate, you could have gone to get a warrant.” But the fact is that now, and the police officers, they know this. They need to know what the Fourth Amendment limitations are. And unfortunately, we’ve seen, and I’ve seen it where

1:10:18 parents think that they’re advocating for their minor children and are going to fight the legal battles on their behalf, and they’re simply wrong about what they’re arguing about. The police know the law. We know the law. The police have the opportunity when circumstances arise that action needs to be taken, that they can enter the house without a warrant. Thank you. Can I add to that? Yes. The police chief will add to that. So it’s very fact-specific as well. Credible, reliable, corroborative information that’s in front of you has to be presented, right? So our search warrant, we’re not talking about that. But we really have to have something to act upon for that community caretaker. So these are concepts that there

1:11:05 is never a black and white. It’s always case-specific. If you give me a fact, I’ll give you a different answer, and I’m sure the DA would do the same. And so if we described a party where people were on the front lawn, there was alcohol, there was some obvious signs of alcohol, underage, putting these things together as a response, the officers are going to be able to let the facts push them where they go. And so it’s not quite as black and white when you’re there. It’s very much based on the facts that’s presented. And I think, though, to the point that people do often confuse, I know this because at least 100 times it was said to me as a young police officer, “Where’s your warrant?”

1:11:50 And I would say the things maybe not as articulate as the DA did that allowed me access to make sure that there was not a disturbance, there was a caretaking. We used different terms 25 years ago. But they were the same concepts. And so often people are confused by that. And it’s very much part of the case specific. And I think that as we have these conversations, I’ll go to a 30 second after, right? This is what I would say is an after, is that to Tom’s point, if there are identifiable police responses timely, many times these come a week later, right? So somebody says, “There was a party at,” call it Beach Street. I’m just making up numbers. A week later, what are we going to do, right?

1:12:37 It has to be timely. If you’re calling in, and I know that that puts sometimes neighbors into bad positions and the like, but if you’re calling in something timely, we can react timely. If you call in something that is later after the fact, it’s almost impossible to do a fact-specific investigation on some of these things. So, I would reiterate that to the point of identifying some of these areas that we may see numerous calls to, we’re connecting dots.In a way that if they’re there, we’re going to connect them. Yeah. I just want to add one more piece to it. Dennis made me think of something. But just to put the last point on the warrantless entry, something has to be in front of the police officers of some immediacy, some

1:13:22 urgency to it, and I think I gave you four or five. If you get to a house and there’s really not a lot going on, couple yeah. Of course, then in Salem, we had what we used to affectionately call the Big Yellow House in Salem, which had about probably six bedrooms and about 48 college kids with speakers in the windows. And we’d go to break up the parties, and the music would turn down, and you could see probably 80 or 100 people in there. You knock on the door, and they say, “Open the door.” They said, “I’m here alone.” You’re not. You have to open the door. And if they didn’t, we could make some entry. The other piece that we used to good effect in Salem, Tom, to your point about repeated calls, we had an ordinance of a keeper of a disorderly house. And if there were repeated calls there, we could document that.

1:14:07 That works really well when the owner of the building lives elsewhere. You put them on notice that you’ve had repeated issues there. Charge them with keeper of a disorderly house, you get their attention. And that was just a little follow-up to that. That is a Mass general law, keeper of a disorderly house. And in the city, we created a city ordinance as a supplement. It’s a little bit easier to bring them into the system, and it was incredibly effective, especially around college-related housing. Okay. Quick question, and one in the back. In the front. For Mr. Tucker. Yes. But I’d like to hear the responses from all three of you. You’ve mainly addressed alcohol availability, and I would just like to have you address briefly how that also

1:14:55 relates to illicit drug availability. There’s now 21 and over, and 20 and under that applies in those cases. Right. Yeah. Same consequences. Yes, it is. And very good point. I’m glad you brought that up. We’ve concentrated mostly on alcohol because that’s what’s been before us. One of the things that we are seeing, with unfortunately deadly consequences, is something called fentanyl, where young people are taking what they think is either a Xanax or some other pill form drug, an opiate, and it turns out to have fentanyl in it. I’d say in 90-plus percent of the overdose deaths, and I get reports on every death in Essex County,

1:15:40 90-plus contain fentanyl. But the same rules apply as well. I think it’s a little easier because you can see the evidence with alcohol. You’ve got the bottles, the cans piling up. We worry equally as much about pills and drugs in general as well. So yeah. Can I add to that, too. Cannabis is growing rapidly as the drug of choice in young people. Tremendously. And it is less regulated than alcohol is, so we have no control over that marketplace at all. And the cannabis industry was very smart about talking about recreational cannabis. That term has been eliminated from the public health

1:16:26 vocabulary. It’s now called adult cannabis use. But nonetheless, most people still think it’s the drug of choice that’s safer than alcohol, and it’s not always, or not rarely. It’s rarely mixed with fentanyl. But cannabis is a big problem out there, too. And I believe Massachusetts general laws do apply to cannabis, right? It does. And to your point, Doctor, also I saw a study in Colorado that when Colorado legalized it ahead of Massachusetts, visits to the emergency room by juveniles went up in the tens of thousands in Colorado. I think we’re seeing this here. It’s a tremendous problem. And the number of psychotic breaks- Yes … in the emergency room-

1:17:12 Yes … have gone up at the same level. Yes. And can I just add two quick things on that? So there are people in this room, Wendy Kent, Gina Ravich. Gina is our clinician from the police department. So we have a mental health clinician that responds with officers, but also does eight hours a week towards substance use disorders, opiates, and the like. So Gina does great work. She’s back there. I’m always trying to get her more work. But I also saw Wendy in the back. So here’s what you need to do and know, is that the marijuana use is a significant issue amongst our teen population in general. And people really do need to look at the statistics, of which I know you’ve put out, Tom, and that Wendy talks about all the time, that it is

1:18:00 not just something that should be taken lightly. And there should be intervention if you’re seeing it in the same way that we’re intervening on some of these things, because the statistics are quite staggering. I think that- Right, Wendy? I think the difference, though, is because we don’t have a breathalyzer for the marijuana. Yeah. And people, the other kids’ idea is they’re like- Yeah … “Oh, well, it’s legal, so it’s okay to smoke it.” You know what I mean? And that whole mindset is just propagating, and that’s not important at all. It’s a real corruption. In the back. Yeah. I’d like to shift this conversation from law enforcement to mental health.

1:18:38 First, I’m a clinical psychologist. Before I became a psychologist, I was a high school teacher. I taught biology and chemistry for four years. Kids confided in me. I heard a lot of terrible stories. I decided I’m going to become a psychologist, so I can work with kids. Unfortunately, I had to make a living, so I ended up not working with kids. Mm-hmm. Instead, I ended up working with corporations. For over 30 years, I owned an EAP company. I’m currently a vice president of training at an occupational medicine companyI’ve done over 1,000 public presentations in companies about evidence-based mental health topics, respectful

1:19:25 communication, and substance abuse. So I’m much more interested in what’s going on curriculum-wise in the public school. Because

1:19:37 I do these kinds of programs in companies, and they’re typically well-received. Programs that have to do with evidence-based mental health treatment, programs that- Why don’t we get the answer to that- Yeah … and hear what mental health activities or communication might be in the schools. So it’s alway- And Julia’s here as well. It’s always tricky business, right? Because mental health encompasses many aspects, right? So what we have, I guess I would start with, we have several psychologists that are on staff in our buildings. We have several school adjustment counselors in our buildings. We have school counselors, we have guidance counselors. And they meet regularly and they talk, they discuss, they have conversations about what, not just professional development needs to

1:20:26 happen, but how do we have conversations with kids and where those conversations need to happen, and what are the curriculums? So I mentioned earlier, Wayfinder is one of our social emotional learning curriculums that we have in place. And it works a lot better at the elementary, the younger levels. The high school students, we’re getting there. It’s a work in progress there. But, I think as we continue to continually have the conversation and break down the stigma that’s still, I think, fairly obvious and fairly out there for mental health. The more conversations we have, the more times we discuss it, and the more resources that we make available, it will get to a better place, right? And when we talk about resources, we talk about funding. We talk about funding, I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole here, but the

1:21:11 funding piece is real, right? How do we make sure that we have those resources in place? How can we get the proper curriculum at the proper grade levels is really the challenge, right? So we ask educators, we ask parents, we ask administrators, what is it we think we need and how does that dovetail with our health curriculum from Massachusetts, because there’s specific things we have to follow. And how do we add resources in as supplemental pieces to the learning curriculums already in place. So I don’t know if that completely answers your question because it’s such an off topic, but- Great question, great answer. Let’s move to someone else who has other questions. Thanks, Tom. I’m Wayne Stalk. I’m also a psychologist. I’ve done a lot of work in public health.

1:21:58 First of all, congratulations to the Board of Public Health for the survey, the comp survey that you did. You’ve got a lot of data. Now you’re trying to figure out where to go with all that and how to work with it. I appreciate the input from the panel, in terms of all the various activities that you’ve been engaged in. My suggestion, and it could be that you’ve done this already, and apologies if you have, is to take a project focus of what projects are out there. The three of you on the panel listed off any number of interventions that you’re working on. I call those projects. And so you’re looking at where you’re going, but you also want to take a look at what you have. And

1:22:44 whether they’re siloed or networked, whatever they are. But what’s the baseline? I spent about 10 minutes on the computer, less than that, five minutes on the computer before I came over, in terms of looking at evidence-based interventions for a community like Marblehead and came up with about 10 ideas of projects that could be done. So my suggestion is project focus in terms of defining what those interventions are going to be and- Okay … good luck. All right. One of the items for next step is the last part. Jack? This sort of dovetails on that, which is, Paul, I know you have, I think it’s 32 cities and towns.

1:23:31 34, yeah. 34.

1:23:35 I heard somebody say that the kids say that we don’t want to hear a speaker come into our school or that that’s not effective. What is effective? What are you seeing out there that is reaching the kids with a positive message? Yeah. So I would say some speakers, I don’t know if anybody’s seen Chris Herron speak about- Yeah … amazing. Everybody listens to him. So he’s an effective speaker. He may be the outlier. And I think, John, I think you’re right about sometimes just talking at kids. To me, the most effective thing that I’ve seen is when you train the trainer and their peer counselors, kids listening to kids. It works in police work. Police officers who are in some type of mental health distress listen to other police officers, kids listen to kids. And some of the things that we talked about already earlier tonight,

1:24:23 there are programs out there, whether it’s kids talking about mental health, substance use, whether they’re talking about discrimination, racism, there are good models out there. And I think if the trainers and these folks are allowed to come in and speak with a group of selected leaders, and the educators know who the leaders are in the school, and I think it starts to spread organically from there. I’ve seen the peer-to-peer counseling, I think is most effective. Well, then you spoke about man, right? Yes. It seems like it’s the people that are closest to the fire that have the most impact. Is that- Very good way to put it, Jack. Yeah. I agree. Yep. Yes, please, in the back. Hi, I’m Jean Lampkin. I have a two-part question that goes to do you have the

1:25:11 resources and the agency to use the resources?So you spoke about a bylaw in Marblehead that is different, or whatever, from state law. And if you could speak a little bit to, does the law enforcement have the choice to figure out which laws to apply? Does one of those constrain the other? Should we be thinking about adapting or refining that bylaw? If you just have a minute to, what does it mean to have them in conflict? And then I’ll calm down. There’s an elephant in the room, so I’ll just say, do we have the resources in school and safety public departments- … to fund all of the things that we’re saying in this holistic thing we need?

1:25:58 Or are we going to turn around in, I don’t know, a week and a half, and discover that a lot of these really important tools are going to disappear? So I’ll take the bylaw piece and let you guys two do the resource?

1:26:12 We can delegate, right? We can. So the bylaw question’s a really good one. Big difference between the two. The bylaw carries with it only the possibility of a minimal fine. It generally goes off into the ether. Once the person pays the fine, nobody knows about it. Sometimes it’s an overhead, it’s the cost of doing business. They’re going to have a party, they’re going to pay their fine, and that’s going to be the end of it. There has to be a deterrent effect, and Tom spoke, I think, right on point. When it’s repeat offenders, when it’s the same folks all the time, some of these people will be very fine. Let me give you an anecdote. If you get a parking ticket and you can pay $50 to park in a lot, but if you stay in the street, you’re going to get a $20 ticket. You’re going to stay in the street, you’ll pay the ticket, and you’ll be done with it. That’s the bylaw. The deterrent effect

1:27:01 for the Mass General Law 138 carries with it a potential of a year in the house of correction. Now, nobody’s getting that the first time. But the repeat offenders, a judge might actually get tired of seeing somebody, and it comes with it the possibility of a $2,000 fine. My suggestion is, and I would leave it to the police because they have good discretion and use it appropriately, it’s an either/or. But if it’s a problematic issue, I would stick with the Mass General Law. I’m not sure there’s a need to upgrade your bylaw. It’s worked fine all these years. If that was the feeling to use it, that’s fine. But I think it’s an either/or. What I’m talking about is sending a very strong message to parents, adults, and guardians. Don’t do these behaviors, and you won’t have to be involved in either one of them.

1:27:48 Resources, gentlemen? That’ll be a quick answer to that. So where we are is- How many resource officers? Huh? Uh, resource officers. So, our SRO, as Chief King aptly put it, is a humongous resource for our children and our students in the schools. And that’s one resource that I think if that goes by the wayside, we’ll have an issue with that, right? Funding in general, just for professional development for things that we have to purchase for resources. If that goes away, that doesn’t help us move forward. It helps us to continue to be reactive instead of proactive. So those are two things. When we start getting into further cuts around staffing, that certainly will make up the last part of

1:28:35 the bad equation, right? So, we need the resource, we need the funding to be able to not just maintain … I’ll just speak to the schools. Not just maintain what’s in the schools, but how do we move forward and how do we make sure that we’re doing better, right? It’s very hard to do with resources that get cut. And so the part of the messaging that has gone around the school resource officer being eliminated as a result of a budget without an override is factual and operational. So, if we do not pass the override and the budget as it stands stays in place, I will go down to 30 officers. And we live in a town of 20,500. We have 30 officers.

1:29:21 Salem has 45,000 people with about 95 officers. So we’re going to go down to 30. So operationally, I need to take the SRO and put him into my operations, which is patrol, which is the main part of any police department in any community, so that I can cover my shifts adequately. So that’s why that particular cutting down of a number results in my SRO. It’s not my SRO is being removed as a result of, it’s because of the operations. I think that maybe people are getting the messaging on that, but that’s how it works. And then if you’re looking at the tiers, tier one brings us back to 31. And for all purpose,

1:30:07 that would likely result in the SRO. I wouldn’t have to pull for an operation coverage. Okay, great. Is there anyone else who has not spoken or asked questions yet that is interested? Okay. I was rude to you, or at least you thought I was being rude to you. You have another question. No more comments, please.

1:30:29 Yeah. I just want to know, I’m in the back row, so I had a hard time hearing you. I guess I’m more interested in the curriculum in psycho-education. Because a lot of the problems with mental health … Let’s face it. The majority of kids are not getting in trouble with the law. Majority of kids are just trying to be normal, trying to figure out what to do that’s right. As you all know, you could be a straight A student and have serious mental health problems. So, it is kind of mysterious and creepy. There are things that can be taught, though, that can be part of a standard curriculum.

1:31:16 I- Which are evidence-based, which are very current, which remove the mystery from mental health. Because the four components to mental health, there are social determinants, which to a large extent, that’s what we’ve been talking about, which the rules of our society, where you live, the parenting. Yes, okay, I hear you. But the other three are emotions, behavior, and your thoughts. So really, to my mind, an effective high school psychoeducation curriculum would, to some extent, talk about those three domains. Thoughts, feelings, behavior. So I’m curious, we can talk afterwards.

1:32:03 Yeah. We can get someone to kick off via email. They call me. We can have a much more in-depth conversation for sure. Yeah. I think there is a lot going on that speaks to your question. I think we can- I can add a few. Another first comment or question. A little of both. So totally appreciate everything that you guys have shared tonight, wrote down a million resources, and the messaging around prom graduation. Also thinking about summer. So summer in Marblehead is another world. The arts festival is an amazing time of year. It’s also like a full town party of public drunkenness from adults and children alike. I’m wondering if there are any plans yet to do any similar messaging proactively about safety coming into the summer.

1:32:49 Yeah, I think that that’s an important– I think that

1:32:54 that’s a big culture thing that I don’t know if I’m going to be able to have the biggest impact on whether or not people in Marblehead are choosing to drink or not, and the like. But I will say this, the messaging as it relates to behavior around underage drinking, will definitely be reinforced. I’ve learned a couple things in these meetings. Evidently, I don’t get invited to them, and they’re probably closed, but graduation parties go through September. And Jen told me that. And so if you’re hosting one, we’re asking for you to keep all of these in your mind as you’re hosting them. Because I think that, like anything else with

1:33:41 a light on it, there are going to be more calls to the police department, I would gather. And that response is going to– I always tell people, you’re never– A lot of people don’t like the outcome. When I’m off duty and people are like, “What should we do?” I’m like, “You’re never going to like the outcome when you get me involved.” I’m going to tell you that the light, if it continues to shine, and people continue to call timely and bring out activity that is unlawful and illegal, it’s going to put you in a bad position, and ultimately put us in a position where enforcement is going to be even more. Does that make sense? Now we have two members of committees that are involved. We have a school committee member and a select board member. Do you want to add to what we’ve

1:34:28 heard here? Just listening. Select board member. I was wondering if one of you Jim, you go. No, just here to listen. Oh, okay. That’s okay. Well, and I don’t want to take a lot more time. Jen Shafter, Marblehead School Committee. Just want to thank all the panelists, and really thank Tom McMahon, who was sort of ground zero on this, I think, starting last summer. And there’s been a lot of folks who might not agree on a lot of things, but when it comes to this, we agree we want our children safe, and healthy, and alive. And so I appreciate everybody coming out tonight, and I appreciate our folks on the panel and on the Board of Health as we come together as town leaders and town adults to keep our kids safe.

1:35:16 Yes, please. Here to listen. So thank you all.

1:35:23 I will say that since COVID, the DA has invested an awful lot of money in mental health, especially for youth. And we’re going to try, even in these ridiculous budget times, to keep that going. And all of our communities have benefited from the increase in funding. I would like to give a special shout-out to NAN, which I’ve wanted to bring to Marblehead for a long time. Swampscott uses it. And it is that peer-to-peer model that is so effective. I’ve actually spent time in Swampscott with the model, and it’s very impressive. And I think, and this is around mental health, not around substance abuse.

1:36:09 As the DA said, there’s no substitute for peer-to-peer modeling. So I also want to thank you all for being here, and for hosting this, and for giving us this opportunity, because it’s incredibly important. So thank you. Representative Armini, you have 40 constituents that will be telling you to favor the DMH funding to keep- Yes … it here. minority came

1:36:38 Wendy, you spent a lot of time in this. Do you have any comments? Not at this time. I really came tonight because I really just sort of wanted to, because we’re doing a lot of work in Marblehead as well. Okay. And I just wanted to- I promised the DA that- … when I used to teach executive education, adults learn best in windows of 80 to 90 minutes. We’ve reached that point. And, if there aren’t any additional questions, I think this was absolutely so much better even than we had hoped. Thank you for all coming and-

1:37:25 Thank you all. Try to say the grace.

1:38:00 Right,

1:39:37 so just have a couple updates and stuff like that. So transfer station project update. We’re back into construction. We have approximately two weeks left of construction. They will be installing curbing. They’ll be completing paving, and then striping. They’ll also be doing some work on the compactor building itself. Those two front columns need some repair work. The lower sections will be cut off, and new sections will be welded on. Mm-hmm. So we’re back into construction on that. There will be some traffic flow issues up there. Starting today, as residents come in Green Street, they will be diverted back out Green Street. Mm-hmm. For Saturday, they will be able to exit out the regular way. So that will open back up. They’ll be able to exit out of Woodfin Terrace.

1:40:25 But we’re excited to see the last two weeks of construction. Curbside collection update. Bins will be delivered in the month of June. We will be delivering to approximately 3,006 homes for two-family, three-family, four-family homes. Again, we’ll be doing the public hearing for the regulation on curbside collection fee and all that stuff at our April 27th meeting. I have provided a draft of those regulations. If you guys have questions, you can fire those off to me, or you can wait till the hearing. We’ll also be setting the fee for curbside collection that night. We will also be discussing some bulk items for disposal at the transfer station. Really, this is to ease operations and ease for

1:41:14 residents, so you can get rid of a couch, a chair very easily. You don’t need to use the weigh and pay. I did have a few people when I was in the historic area, in multi-family houses. Yeah. I didn’t ask them, they bring it up to me like, “We don’t need one for every unit.” So like, how would we handle that? They’re going to have no choice but that. They’re going to have to have one for every unit. Okay. Because otherwise, I won’t know whose trash it is, and they’re limited to one barrel. Yeah. And so it becomes problematic. Mm-hmm. Now, just because I said that doesn’t mean that we can’t– If there’s two neighbors that are agreeing to doing this, we can figure something out. Yeah. Again, the regulations are going to state no trash can be outside of the

1:42:00 barrel. Right. So they couldn’t say, “Well, it’s me and my neighbor sharing, so I left a bag on top.” Right. They’re going to get a ticket right away. Yeah. Sure. And the same goes for the recycling piece. Mm-hmm. We have ordered a set of smaller bins for those areas for homes that cannot. But again, we’re asking people to try the barrels out for a period of time and then come back to us to see about replacement. But again, those are a limited number. Yeah. But they can, two of those units, they could opt out, and then they could share- That’s well, it’s that- … as long as they’re not overflowing. That’s if it’s- No, they cannot do that. So that’s where things start to get problematic. So if we find out people are sharing bins, it becomes problematic because of

1:42:47 fee reasons and everything. If we start to see neighbors crossing streets sharing bins, it just becomes problematic for some of that stuff. Okay. But if it’s all contained. I understand, but like for the whole program and stuff like that, I understand, and we just don’t want to be encouraging that. Mm-hmm. Because we will start– So if we start to find houses, so when you opt-out, you have to tell us what you’re doing with your trash. If we start to get complaints about people having additional trash at their homes or not keeping a sanitary property, we will be ticketing those people. Mm-hmm. Because we have no choice. Those are, you know-So this is where it’s really important that we want to make sure that everybody maintains sanitation

1:43:33 in Marblehead. I do think, too, to your question, Mike, so like I own a multi-family house in the historic district. Yeah. There’s three units. We wouldn’t need all three, but they’re not going to be asked. Yeah. It’s me that’s going to be asked. They come to me for the barrels. So when we will be delivering, and this is an opt-out program, it’s not an opt-in. So in the month of June, when we deliver, I have a list of all homes and all properties, single family, two family, three family, and four family. When we do the two, three, and four, we will be labeling them as, 46 Peach Street A. That will get a label. That way if you live in a four-family and there’s four units,

1:44:20 you’ll know which barrel is yours. There’s a barcode on it. It gets scanned, and that gets to you. And so we want to make sure that you have it. Because if there’s issues with those barrels when they go out for collection, I’m scanning the barrel, and the ticket’s going to that address associated with the barrel. Mm-hmm. So as far as the contract goes for curbside collection, we operate under 30B. Waste Management does not want to lose the disposal contract. They have submitted additional proposals as a reduction in cost for disposal. It is a potential of a $32,000 savings a year- Okay … or greater.

1:45:05 So they have proposed that they would offer $16.52, or $116.50 per ton for disposal. Waste Management is a combo between 10 and 123. It gets you to the 116.50. Again, when you do the math, the curbside difference is $16,250 difference. Total is about 32,500. I have let Republic know that Waste Management wants to try to continue this. I’ve shared their proposal with them. I need to wait till I get a response back from Republic. We are allowed to continue to

1:45:49 negotiate until we have a signed contract. Mm-hmm. This is a really hard one for me. I work on handshakes and stuff like that, so this is difficult, but it’s in the best interest of the town, and so I have to work forward on this. Yes. So I was hoping to have a response back from Republic today. I have not. So we’ll take this back up at the meeting for April 27th. Okay. So, the other piece is that Waste Management is offering a lower rate for C and D material. So we’re also looking at that as well. So there would still be a separate trailer- Yep … for C and D. There’d still be a separate trailer. All right. That’s- Yep. That helps. Again, I’m trying to look at everything and ask all the questions. Again, we’re trying to get the best situation for Marblehead.

1:46:37 Okay. So we will come back. I did promise Waste Management that I would bring this up to the board tonight. I did talk to council about this, so I want to do that. But we will be coming back and, because I haven’t heard back from Republic, I have to give them the opportunity to respond. So we will take this back up on April 27th. Again, April 27th, we’ll have that public hearing. I’ll go over it with Tom, how to run the public hearing, but we’ll go through the regulations. People will have the opportunity to ask questions. The board will vote on the regulations, then the board will set the fee. We’ve talked about the fee set for regular homes and then the reduced rate. So everybody kind of think about that reduced rate a little bit, and we can come to an agreement.

1:47:23 And then there’s a couple just bulk items that we’ll discuss for the transfer station. Mm-hmm. Will that meeting be in here? That meeting will be in here. Will there… There will be plenty of room.

1:47:36 So the way the curbside collection is being paid for is either going to be by fee or by override vote. So there’s two opportunities. Just because we’re voting the fee in, that does not necessarily make it, that’s going to be the end-all be-all. But we need to set the fee before we get to town meeting, so everybody has the understanding of what the fee could be, or the fee comes to essentially the same amount. The other piece is that we have written the language in the regulations for curbside to collection to include some businesses. There are approximately 165 businesses in the downtown district, so we will need to set a fee for them. We would only include businesses if we don’t have enough

1:48:23 residents- Mm-hmm … to kind of bridge the gap. But if it’s just going to be under the override, it’s just going to be residents. If it goes to fee-based, if it stays fee, that’s where you could entertain adding some businesses in there. So again, think what a fair rate for businesses would be. It would have to be both for, you have to put out both trash and recycling. It can’t be one or the other. It has to be both. Mm-hmm. I would recommend 50 and 50, so a total of $100 a month. But again, we should all do our research, look at other communities, see how they handle it. I know some of the businesses in Salem are charged. I’m sure businesses in

1:49:10 Lynn are charged. So let’s do a little bit of research and be prepared for the meeting. Yeah.

1:49:16 The last piece I have on here is the FY27 budget, health, and waste. At the warrant hearing- Mm-hmm … the finance committee was a little concerned about the waste revolving account and making sure-We’re able to cover some unexpected costs. So I have submitted a letter requesting the waste revolving account. The top budget would be $1.3 million. So I have sent that off to the select board. That has been voted and approved. Again, we don’t have to spend all that money, but that does allow us some flexibility if costs are a little bit higher than what we expect. The only piece, again, we have a lot of information to get us where we are for the numbers.

1:50:03 The one caveat right now is fuel. In the contract with Republic, you can have fuel surcharges based on diesel pricing. Mm-hmm. So because of what’s happening in the world right now, we might see a fuel surcharge for diesel. So that could add some costs, and we have to deal with that. Mm-hmm. Besides that, I will be on vacation next week. As always, I’m always available by phone. I won’t be checking my email a lot. I’m always checking text messages and stuff like that. So if you want to talk to me, please feel free to text me and we can talk. It’s not a problem. Oh, we had a small trash fire up at the transfer station. I need to remind everybody, they need to be very careful what they throw away

1:50:50 into trash. So again, prohibited items, propane tanks, any engine with gas, any lithium batteries. So these items- … lithium batteries, propane tanks can be collected any time. There are some minor charges for them. There is no charge for lithium batteries. Lithium batteries are very

1:51:14 explosive. They can catch on fire very quickly and start fires. It’s always been a concern for us. Propane tanks, same thing, a little less of a risk. It’s harder to catch a propane tank on fire, but there is an explosion factor to it. Engines. We do have a metal drop-off bin that’s available to residents. Any engine that’s dropped off or into the metal bin has to be free of gas, oil, anything. The engine essentially has to be clear. So yeah, we did have a minor fire up there, but great response from my employees and the fire department. We had minor damage to one of our trailers. And that’s about it. Where are lithium batteries?

1:51:59 Where do you- Lithium batteries can go to my office upstairs. Yeah. Or you can give them to the employees. They go in the universal shed at the transfer station. The universal shed is lithium, mercury items, and stuff like that. Now, maybe this is just an agenda item for next meeting, town meeting. That’s somewhere you’ll want to speak. So yeah. We will. I would be prepared to speak for the article for the override for trash. Mm-hmm. It’s going to be very basic. We have been asked to put on, or the town has been asked to have an article for curbside collection costs. We can go through those costs. We can answer any questions. Again, so the way it’s set up is that it is $2,298,000.

1:52:47 And so that will be voted in the first year. This is a general override. This is not a debt exclusion, so this lasts forever. So you would take the 2 million and 298, you add the 2.5%. You still have a gap of 2.5%, you would find that other places, and you would continue on. So that number should allow you to continue to operate for the next three years, potentially for the next five years under the contract. Mm-hmm. You get that maybe two and a half from the revolving fund? That’s undecided at this point. It’s not a huge number. Mm. But yes.

1:53:26 It’s about 55,000. Andrew, when’s the automated curbside? So automated curbside- That’s September? It’s going to be a slow rollout, so they could begin it, yeah, end of September. Again, we’re going to the fee structure starting, would be starting July 1st. Carts will have to be started to be used. We’re hoping that people will start to use them right away. There’s no reason for that. But they will be mandated to be used starting July 1st as well. So all curbside trash and recycling will have to be put out in your cart. Per the regulations, that will be the start date. But the actual automation, so it’s going to depend a little bit about timing of when the trucks are going to be available.

1:54:11 Oh, okay. Yeah. In the downtown district, they will continue to operate as they are today. That’s a district that we’re not going to be able to use automation for, so they’ll just continue to collect the exact same way.

1:54:25 What about one-way streets? So one-way streets are, most likely what happens is the driver gets out and moves the barrel over to the other side for the automation collection. Okay. Yep. A lot of work. Again, we have all our streets. We do have what we call the small truck that we can continue to pick up on some of these small one-way streets. Those will continue just as they are today. You’ll see guys on the backs of the trucks and picking it up. But again, they all have to be in carts. Mm. Again, the whole idea with the carts is that it’s going to promote a really clean environment. We do have rodents in the city , so there’s going to be less trash out for rodents to get to. It’s going to be a controlled environment. So again, I leave my carts outside, I never have any issues with

1:55:12 rodents getting into them. And the same for the recycling. Again, we’re trying to create a clean environment. We don’t want to see items blowing down the street coming out of recycling bins. A lot of people use open-top containers recycling. All the carts we have have wheels and have lids attached. With the new moving forward after July 1st, if you have damage to your cart, you would call us, we would come out and repair your cart.At no cost and something like that. The cart’s the property of the town, and will always remain the property of the town. We’re simply allocating the cart to the user. We do know that we will have a lot of people trying to get rid of old barrels. We recommend trying to reuse those as much as possible.

1:55:58 With a transportation permit, you’re able to bring those up. We will have a collection area for that. Mm-hmm. It is nearly impossible to try to recycle all those carts. There’s a mixture of so many different plastics. The companies that we’ve been trying to work with are saying it’s just really not worth it. So it is unfortunate that we’re going to this, but we recommend that people try to use them in other ways or give them to friends in other communities to reuse them.

1:56:25 Okay. The cart should last at least 10 years. We’re giving them a 10-year lifespan.

1:56:33 That’s a bit. Oh.

1:56:37 Any public comments? Yeah. I just, question for you, then. I enjoyed the other day seeing you. Yeah. Mm-hmm. While I was out gathering signatures for people, I had several people ask me, “What is the benefit of the clothes bin up there?” This one person in particular, she tried to talk to him. Was cleaning up. She left him with the impression that he was able to take it. I said, “No, I don’t think that’s it.” It’s state law. You’re not supposed to put it in the regular rubbish. It’s less tonnage for us, and I believe the town gets a penny or two a pound maybe for it. We actually make five cents a pound. Okay. I had no clue. Ah. And it’s a similar thing for the books. Yeah, it’s a similar thing for the books. Yeah.

1:57:23 We do considerable amount of clothing tonnage a year. Yeah. I will bring the numbers next time. I want to say I did 50,000 pounds of clothes. It’s considerable- Mm-hmm … amount of tonnage. And obviously we get paid on a regular basis. CRMK is the company that we work with. They work with the, um, Young Girls and Boys Club and making sure that everybody has good clothes, and stuff like that. So it’s a good organization, but we get a considerable amount of clothing up there. So again, clothes– And again, there’s actually a used rag market in the state of Massachusetts. We buy used rags for all our garages and stuff like that, so we have used rags for our machines if we’re checking oil,

1:58:12 cleaning stuff up. It’s really important. That’s another way to recycle items. So just because you think you don’t want to wear it anymore doesn’t mean somebody else doesn’t. Mm-hmm. That’s all of that education we got to work on. Yes. I mean, but it’s there, so But thank you. Okay. Can you donate shoes up there? You can donate shoes, yes. You want to tie them together if possible. But remember, too, even singles, there might be somebody out there that wanna wear the single. Yeah.

1:58:45 And that’s everything I have. Okay. Any other new business? No. Motion to adjourn? Second or motion to adjourn. Standing order to adjourn.