Board of Health: May 12, 2026

Transcript captured from MHTV’s Vimeo auto-captioning. No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

0:00 You can see it drive by. All right, you’re good to go. You might need to mute us. Yeah.

0:07 She must have something serious.

0:11 Good evening. It’s 7:03 in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and this is the regular Board of Health meeting.

0:23 Well, first, I think we have to apologize for the agenda, the amended agenda. All of a sudden, some new rules came about listing the agenda, and so you can’t just change it. You have to keep the old stuff, cross it out, or if you add new things, you have to list the date, which is fine if that’s what somebody wants to do, but we did it without notice, so the agenda looks a little sloppy today. But we’ll have it next time.

1:01 Good weather, good time. I think things are going as well as they can in the situation we’re in for the town. My first area of reporting is on our CALM work, Creating a Healthy Marblehead. We are really ready to begin the meaningful part of that effort. We worked pretty hard to do a robust survey. 2,500 people responded. Really great work. We did five focus groups, and our UMass Boston partners have been putting everything

1:48 together for a unified total report for the town. They will add the survey, the public focus groups, and all of the demographic stuff. The state of Massachusetts has a tremendous amount of mostly physical health, less mental health, but an awful lot of physical health in their files, and so she’ll be using some of that as well. So, we expect to get the initial draft of the report somewhere around the third week of May. The leadership council will review that, make certain it’s consistent with where we want to go, and then on the June 16th meeting of this

2:34 board, we will have an open forum where we will present the high-level summary and recommendation from the CALM initiative. And we will begin– I mean, the goal of CALM was to establish a set of meaningful

2:57 resident-reinforced priorities for public health over the next several years. And so, with that final report, we’ll begin to do our discussion of strategic priorities. Our goal is to have the big meeting here. It’d be great if we had an audience and people ask questions and things. But even if that doesn’t occur, we’ll probably go to the senior center, maybe Rotary, various places that we can set up little groups and do questions and answers. But it’s really the time that we want to move forward to be ready

3:42 when after the June 9th election, whether the League of Women Voters thinks we’re contested or not, we will have five members at that time. And personally, I believe we should be able to do a lot more strategic planning and strategic implementation in a five-person board than we have been able to in a three-person board. So, I think it’s a pretty exciting issue.

4:13 Now, it’s absolutely impossible to be in town these days without talking about the fiscal crisis. And I think that the town meeting went incredibly well, four hours for everything that needed to be covered.

4:32 And yet, I think we’ve reached a tipping point that everybody knows that there will not be an awful lot of excess funding for anything in the town for some time. So, from my perspective, we need to be able to figure out how to bring resources into the public health side of the business and do it in a way that’s consistent with the CALM priorities, but allow us to do more than we would be able to do just by asking for additional funds from real estate taxes, because that’s not going to occur. So, there are two ways I think that we can

5:17 get additional funding. W-we can write grants. I’ll report on the most recent grant in a minute. But I also think that we should seriously consider developing a 501 [3] , a nonprofit organization that partners, in effect, with the Board of Health to be able to endorse and encourage and sometimes get funding. I mean, there are certain banks in town that give money to 501 [3] s that won’t give money to Boards of Health. There are several government agencies that expect you to be nonprofits. So, if we have a nonprofit that is in some way parallel to the Board of

6:05 Health in particular, I think we’ll have the opportunity to seek additional funds. Now, the second optionThat we’ll talk about again in a minute, is that we can write grants directly to the state when there are competitions that are out there that we’re eligible for. We’ve been fairly lucky to get some over the last couple of years. This board has, I think, working together, we’ve gotten a couple of smaller grants that have helped us to do several things. So, it will take some time and money to develop a 501 [3] . Best guess that I’ve heard from lawyers is it generally…

6:50 What we would have to do, or what our partner agency would have to do, is define what its goals are. It would have to show independence from the Board of Health and the official town of Marblehead, but it could say, “Gee, we exist in order to encourage increased public health services in the town of Marblehead.” The traditional CDC has had a CDC foundation for many years, that they do exactly like that for the things that the CDC in Atlanta can’t do because of their charter or whatever. For example, when I was in New Mexico, I spent a fair

7:39 amount of time with the CDC Foundation because they were pushing earned income tax credits. Earned income tax credits are for low-income families that allow them to have both state income and federal income waived, depending on how much money they make and how many kids they have. And as we all know, poverty is a big issue for public health and health in general. So that’s the kind of thing that one would expect a 501 [3] to help us with. It’ll take some time, some money, but I think we should begin the process as soon as we have a five-person board, and

8:28 town council might have… We’ll get some advice from her. She won’t be able to be our lawyer, but we’ll look for a lawyer that will help us do that. If there’s not any questions about that.

8:44 Feedback that I’ve received about Paul Tucker’s visit has been positive. Everyone thought it was well-attended. The questions were great, and I think that there was a sense that the tone and the theme that we tried to put for that meeting, that youth mental health is too important, too big, and too complicated for any single town agency, got a T, agency or group to own it or manage it alone. So what we see, not just because of Paul Tucker’s visit, but the selectboard and the school committee are meeting a couple of days a week

9:29 now at Dunkin’ Donuts to answer questions from the town collectively, not separately that might have been done in the past. So I think there’s been… Tucker’s visit was part of it, but I think there’s an awareness that the traditional, very, very structured silos that Marblehead has functioned under for many years is counterproductive, let’s just say. And that I’m going to use as an example, the NAN Project. If you remember in that meeting with Tucker and Jenny Romani, both mentioned the NAN Project as something we should consider. In fact, the Marblehead Mental Health Task Force

10:16 had the NAN Project at one of its meetings, I think close to three years ago, very early either when I joined the board or before I was on the board. And then we brought the NAN Project to the whole meeting of the Board of Health. So we understood that the instincts that were there to build the NAN Project were important and relevant to this town. But at the time, to be honest, and I have to take some responsibility, I didn’t know how to push it beyond the Board of Health. What needed to be done, and if

11:02 something new were to come up like that now for us, I think we would immediately go to our partners in the school committee. We would go to the superintendent. We would go to Julia Ferrer. We would do what we had to do to make sure something significant is out there that would help the kids in town. So, even today on Boston Public Radio, the attorney general mentioned the NAN Project. And again, the difference between the… Tom has said this for as long as I remember listening, that some of the people we bring in to talk to the students, goes right over the student’s head. And the benefit for

11:49 the distinct design of the NAN Project is that it’s peer-to-peer. They bring in kids, 15-year-olds talk to 15-year-olds. And they train them. They understand what’s going on. And they’re not famous. They may not have played for the Celtics or the Patriots like some of the people who we’ve brought in, but they resonate with kids. So the attorney general talked about it today. Our representative talked about it, and our district attorney talked about it, and we were threeTwo and a half years ahead of the pace, we just didn’t get it done. So maybe as soon as we get five, one of the things we’ll do is maybe bringing the NAN project

12:37 back, we’ll co-host with the schools, and we’ll go from there to see if that’s the right kind of thing that we should be doing. It just makes so much more sense to do things together. Okay. Now, the CHIP grants that we mentioned the last time, that we put together a coalition of 10 members in the town that made a commitment for a two-year planning effort to really understand all of the barriers that are in place right now to have the healthiest young people in town,

13:24 mental health people in town. So we applied for this grant. I’m sure it’s going to be very competitive. They originally had said that the money would be available on July 1st. I got an email from the grant office last week sometime that they will begin deliberation in June, and maybe they’ll let us know in July. But we’re still alive, I think it’s still a viable approach, and it’s something I think that we want to pilot no matter what, even if we don’t get the $100,000 we asked for. It’ll be very competitive in the times we’re living in. Okay.

14:11 The Marblehead Cares website. This is a little bit of a flip back to the CALM report. One of the things that was very clear in the survey response is that there were an awful lot of people who wanted to have things in the town, thought they would be good for the town, when we already have them. So the sense is that navigation is really a key issue for getting the fullness. If we’ve got something that does well in town for people, we want everybody to have access to it and to know about it. And, excuse me, we had Marblehead Cares website

14:57 when we had the Marblehead Mental Health Task Force. That went dead. We’ve resuscitated at least the name. We have the material that was on the site when it died, and we think we have a way, excuse me,

15:20 a way to bring it back to where it was and to expand it considerably so that we can

15:31 make sure it’s as user-friendly as possible, particularly for those of us who aren’t particularly gifted in the digital world, and so that people will be able to find things out there when they need to. So we

15:51 expect this will be one of the early successes identified in the CALM report, and we should be able to provide a timeframe when we ought to be up and running again. So we’re making small, finite progress. And then one of the things I think I mentioned here once before,

16:19 one of the little grants we got was to develop a landscape for vulnerable children and moms and women in town. And in order to develop that landscape, we have visited pediatric offices and obstetric offices and clinics. And so we have a sense of what might be there. And when we went to those clinical offices, the physicians and nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists, midwives, all of that, we asked everybody, “What could the Board of Health do to make your practice better or easier?” And uniformly, every one of them said,

17:06 “Run parenting classes.”

17:11 Grandmothers aren’t here today the way they were, the way some of us grew up with somebody coaching our moms and having a grandmother and an aunt and all of that. In a town like this, which is not as opening and welcoming at times, people live a fairly isolated life. And never been pregnant, but I think I know that it’s pretty complicated. Never having experienced it, people need to understand what’s happening to their bodies, what happens to their partner’s body, what is going on in the pregnancy, what the child is going to be like. And it’s not going to be

17:58 an MD-level conversation, but people really don’t understand the nature of how, in today’s world, parenting really does make a difference. And so we’re going to try to

18:17 get together with some different agencies to use some of those grant funds that we have to develop a set of parenting classes for the community.I think that’s my report. If there are any questions or comments.

18:44 Actually, Doug, that leads to a question. When we go to the five-member board, what’s the quorum going to be? Three. Three? Right. Three. Yes. Yeah. So does that mean because they’ll have more members, the three of you couldn’t get together outside of here and discuss- The two of us can. The two of us Yeah. The two of you can. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That’s what I thought, but I wasn’t sure. That’ll make life a little easier. Yeah. Oh, I think a whole lot easier. For us to be hearing things for the first time in a meeting that’s held every two weeks or more- Right … really is fairly inefficient.

19:26 And

19:28 I think it really will make a difference. I see the way the school committee has reorganized itself. There may be problems, but it certainly looks to me like it makes a lot of sense. They have, with their five-member board, they’ve divided into several

19:48 sub-committees. Each sub-committee has two elected members of the school committee, and then it has

19:58 experts or it has people who are interested. For example, one of their sub-committees is the roof of the Marblehead High School. And what they have, they have two members, I don’t actually know who they are, but then they bring in some roofing people who understand the building trades, that sort of thing, to make sure they know how things are going. They’re able to get good projections of where they are, that sort of thing. So I think that’s a pretty smart way of using a five-member board. And then what we would do is if, say, Amanda had chaired a sub-committee on one thing or another, then she would bring a report to this board.

20:46 It would be a shorter report. We would all understand it. We would be able to ask questions of her in advance, and we would be able to probably give the community a little better update on what’s happening. So I think that’s part of, I think if there’s going to be any upside of the fiscal ‘27 crisis, I think the upside is that people are trying to work together and to listen to others out there. And I think, without question, this board is committed to that, and we’ve tried to do that even with three. But I think when we have five, I think it’s going to be even better.

21:33 Thank you. Mm-hmm. Anything else? If not, then the next report is from the associate chair for waste management bills and recovery coach academy. Bills real quick is A-1 Exterminators for rat control at the transfer station, 100 bucks. Agri-Source for grinding and compost removal, 13,600. AT&T for internet, $65.98. Black Earth Compost for the residential food composting trade-up, $2,554.88. Bonsai Logic for the license plate of the year, $3,076.30. Delande Supply for traffic light parts, $9.12.

22:21 Bailey Ward for engineering for the transfer station, $8,616.42. Marblehead Counseling Center for counseling, $2,904.77. Marblehead Light Department for electricity, $1,313.83. Marblehead Water and Sewer, $4,051.99. Mayor Tree for grinding and compost removal, 27,500.

22:51 Michael from the transfer station, there was 100 bucks. I don’t know. Doesn’t make sense. That’s the friend license. Oh. Oh, is that not Mike from the transfer? No, that is Mike from transfer. Oh, it is. Oh, okay. My bad.

23:04 NEWA for a hoisting license, $985. Printer Pro Solutions for ink toners, $158.91. Quadrant Health for doctors, $334. Rexel USA Inc., which is traffic light switch, $17.19. RMG Enterprises, they recycle the TV monitors, laptops, and such, $537.92. Stericycle for the sharps collection, $712.75. Wastequip for the 40-yard container, that’s paid for by a grant, right? So some of it’s going to be part of a construction project, some of it gets paid by grant. Okay. Great. 10,900. WB Mason for office supplies, $74.30.

23:51 Winter Street Architects for the transfer station project, $6,358. And WL French Excavation for excavation removal and disposal, $4,153.34. Then next was the

24:10 Recovery Coach Academy. I don’t know much about this. Sophia from the “Weekly” brought it to my attention. I think it’s pretty recent. Do you know more about it, Andrew? Yeah. Yeah. So we’re working with Michelle Simonds and Gina Rabbitt at the police department. This is the second Recovery Coach Academy that we’re holding. So the idea with the Recovery Coach Academy is that we’re trying to get people in the community trained as recovery coaches. It doesn’t mean that they are going to be acting as recovery coaches, but there’ll be educated people in the community that can help other citizens out.We had great turnout the first time, and we wanted to do it again. And so they’ve been very great, and we’re offering this again. We’re doing this in collaboration with the town of Salem and the town of

24:55 Swampscott. And it’s all free, right? It’s paid for with the opioid funds. Exactly. All right. And I’ll post the link to it online for people to find. But it looks like it’s June and July. Do people have to attend all sessions? They do not have to attend all sessions. Mm-hmm. It’s highly advisable, but they do not have to attend all sessions. Will it be on Zoom? I do not believe so. They’re trying to be in person, and they might have some other things they can do, but yes. All right. That’s all I got.

25:30 So I wanted to address the recent health news, the hantavirus outbreak associated with the cruise ship, the MV Hondas. So there’s been quite a lot of concern around it and some misinformation circulating around online. So I wanted to give a brief overview and then an update of where we are today. So on May 2nd, the World Health Organization was alerted to a cluster of severe respiratory illnesses aboard the cruise ship that was carrying about 152 passengers traveling from the southern tip of Argentina, planning to travel through the South Atlantic. As of today, there have been 11 known cases and, unfortunately, three deaths. So the illness is caused by the virus

26:16 hantavirus, specifically the Andes strain that’s been found in South America. So hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, it’s a rare but serious disease. It begins with fever, muscle aches, diarrhea, and then progresses to severe pneumonia and then respiratory failure. And there is no treatment at this time. Importantly to note, this is not a new virus. It was first seen in the US in about the 1990s. It was discovered in the ’70s. And typically, it’s associated with rodent droppings, and cleaning, sweeping them up, and then exposing the particles in the air. And it’s from deer mice. And this is pretty much all over the US. There’s been less than 900

27:03 cases in the US. And there’s only been one other outbreak before that was in 2018 in Argentina, which we do have some good data on. This strain, the Andes strain, it’s unusual because it’s spread through close respiratory contact, not directly from the mouse droppings, but can be from person to person. But important to note that it’s not airborne like influenza or COVID, and there’s currently no evidence of asymptomatic spread. So, in the prior outbreak that was in 2018, was in Argentina, and it was able to be controlled within a few months with infection control measures and quarantine. So, there’s still reason for caution.

27:49 Hantavirus, it has, unfortunately, a long incubation period. From the time of exposure to the virus to presentation of symptoms can be up to eight weeks. And there were a small amount of passengers that left the ship prior to knowing that this outbreak had occurred. Those individuals now have been identified and are quarantined and are monitored and do not have symptoms, which is reassuring, because we have not identified any asymptomatic spread from asymptomatic patient to someone else. So the World Health Organization emphasizes that the overall risk to the general public remains low. I know we all have a lot of PTSD from our last outbreak of COVID. But there are some important differences to note. This is a known virus, not a novel virus that COVID

28:35 was. This is a small and traceable exposure that they have gotten a handle on. And there’s no spread currently in the community. Seems like the positive cases were all on board so far. So some reliable sources of information, if you wanted to stay up to date, World Health Organization has been posting a lot of good data. The CIDRAP, Centers for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. There’s a great website. Your local epidemiologist, that’s wonderful, and there’s a great podcast, “This Week in Virology.” But I’ll keep posting on it, but so far, it’s very low risk, especially to residents here in the US.

29:25 And then coming up, I’ll be talking about, there’s been a rise in tick-borne diseases, and we’re approaching summer, so I’ll talk more about tick-borne diseases coming up. But in general, the winter respiratory diseases, the COVID, flu, RSV, have all seemed to be down, and just the common cold and allergies.

29:47 Norovirus is still active. Norovirus, yes. It’s always around, and there was another cruise ship outbreak. But it’s only about 1% of outbreaks that occur in cruise ships. They’re mostly just out in the community, but cruise ships are so heavily monitored that that’s where they’re picked up. But yes, norovirus is around. So important to wash hands. Hand sanitizer does not cut it.

30:16 Any questions?

30:20 You do a great job- Of course … reviewing these things. I remember when the first outbreak was many years ago was at the Four Corners. Oh, in New Mexico. New Mexico and that’s where they… I forget exactly how many, but that’s where kind of the whole idea of the mouse droppings came up, and this was 30 years ago, 40 years ago. I remember it just was like, “Wow”- Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. There were cases of these virus, but they didn’t know where it had come from. Yeah. But it was a very heavy rain season, and people were harvesting pine nuts. Yeah. I think, or that might have been the Argentina. But anyway, people were harvesting pine nuts, brought into their house, and the

31:08 mice usually eat the pine nuts outside, but they were all brought into people’s homes. So they went looking for people’s food, entered people’s homes, eat the pine nuts, and that’s how it spread. When I was in New Mexico, the TV movie star Gene Hackman- Oh, yes … he and his wife lived- That’s a very sad story … in a relatively secluded area of New Mexico. She was intact, but he had dementia, but she took care of him. She got the virus and died in the house, was unable to take care of him. And because they were so secluded, he was wandering around the house hoping, wondering where she was, until someone found him dead a

31:55 couple of weeks later. That’s the first time I had ever heard of it. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that’s very sad. Okay. And it does seem that, so in wondering, there’s more news about how this got started on the cruise ship. There were unfortunately a couple that passed. One, the man, the first person that passed, he was visiting a landfill in Argentina. So that was where it was assumed that he picked it up, the virus, there, and then brought it onto the cruise ship. It wasn’t any mice on the cruise ship. There would’ve been a lot more people infected. It’s funny because I heard they said they were bird watching. Maybe he was doing that at the landfill. I’m not quite sure, but he was in a rural-

32:41 No, but it’s got nothing to do with birds. You’re saying it’s mice? No, it’s from the mice. Okay. Mouse. So some of the information that’s out there- Maybe, yeah … isn’t accurate. Dr. Witkop, I was wondering if you could mention a little bit more about tick prevention since nymphs are, this is a high nymph time of year, about picorone and permethrin. I haven’t prepared it, but in general, you want to do tick checks anytime you’re in long grass and wear long socks, and really check everywhere. Mostly ticks are hiding in hair and between toes, and places that you don’t think to look. But yeah, we have quite a few tick-borne diseases to look out for. So I’ll talk about those and the latest on prevention, including, I think you said spraying the yard or spraying some clothes that you’re going to use regularly with-

33:30 Permethrin. Yes. Permethrin’s for the clothes. Picaridin is for the body. Okay. Yeah. See, I thought I might have heard of something new. Yeah. But yeah. More to come.

33:46 Okay. Just some updates from myself. I have a sticker refund. I need a vote by the board to refund Charlotte Moore $100 for a sticker. So I just need that vote.

34:01 We’ll second the voting. All in favor? Unanimous.

34:09 I have a Bloom report. So we’ve been using Bloom for the last, approximately 10 months, I guess it is. This is an analytics report. We currently have… And again, one of the big things that we need to do about Bloom is that we need to do a little bit more promotion, but there’s still quite a bit of good use. So we have 108 active platform users who are using the platform on a regular basis. 26% members are engaged in the Bloom platform. We’ve had a total of 2,737 platform visits, and that’s approximately 69%, or 69% of the people that have visited are looking for free therapy, so mental health therapy and stuff like that.

34:57 Again, this is something that we’re always constantly working on, making sure that the public’s aware of. We’re pushing this out through employees. The school is providing this to their employees, as well as the town of Marblehead. But we’re going to try to engage in some additional resources in pushing this out. Some of the new areas that Bloom is really diving into is

35:21 navigation, healthcare navigation. So if you’re having a hard time finding doctors or appointments, you’d be able to contact Bloom, and they would help you deal with some of that healthcare navigation. So you’ll see a lot more from us continuing on with Bloom. The important thing about Bloom, the way they advertise, is if you sign up, then you’re eligible for four free mental health visits. And then once they know what your needs are in the mental health space, then they can make recommendations to you for where you might go if you need to pay beyond those free ones. And presumably,

36:07 they are partly sponsored by the insurance companies that give the insurance companies some help in

36:18 getting people where they need to be and handling a lot of the paperwork. It goes back to the navigation system we were talking about a little bit before. But, so far in the early… As a physician, the old time physician, private equity, money, and medicine is not what I learned about in med school, let’s just put it that way. But there are times, and certainly in the early marketplace, they can add real value. And so Andrew got us into this early. We were one of the first towns in the north-Shore area that got this. So four free visits to

37:06 understand what your needs are is a pretty significant input into a town, like almost every town, which is undersupplied by mental health professionals. And so we have it, we’ve paid for it out of opioid funds. It’s relatively inexpensive at the beginning. We should use the heck out of it to make sure we learn everything we can out of the system. And again, this is about building a robust system. We have partnership with Marblehead Counseling Center, where residents have access to a lot of mental health services. But we do understand that there’s a wait sometime to get those services, so we want to provide some alternatives.

37:51 Bloom kind of fills that alternative. Again, it’s trying to provide people instant access to therapy or mental health counseling. So when you look at some of the statistics, again, of all those people that are visiting, 45.9% are looking for personal wellbeing. 34, almost 35% are mental and behavioral health. 9% are looking for elder care support. And then the last 8% are just looking for support and coaching. So again, it’s just trying to build a robust system for different healthcare needs. And again, this is kind of falling into telehealth, which is becoming very popular.

38:36 So under the next steps, will they help with promotion updates? Yeah, they will help with promotion. So we will be working with… Our police department has a very active Facebook page, so we can work with Bloom to create more posts that can go onto the police department’s Facebook page. We can work with them to create notification on our town website, pushing out notification to join Bloom. Different subjects at different times of the year to promote joining Bloom and the services that they offer.

39:13 Transfer station project update. As everybody knows, we’re kind of entering the final stages of the transfer station project. We have a couple items that we still need to do. One is the landscaping. So the landscaping was part of the project. We’re going to remove that from the project so we can be done with Deolas and move on from that. So they’re going to give us a credit of $12,000 to complete the final landscape of that area. It’s really landscaping around the scale house. We’re talking a lot of some fountain grass, some little bluestem. Very basic, almost desert-like landscaping up there, and that’s something that we’ll take care of. So we’ll be bringing in some loam, some compost, putting the plants

39:59 in, and then you’ll have a very basic, almost like pea stone mulch that will go on top. Very drought tolerant and stuff like that. Very basic, not high maintenance. But just to kind of finish out the landscaping up there. You had asked about total costs. Yeah. So I just wanted to go over some of that. So the original contract value was $1,590,000. With the change orders to date, we’re at $1,657,274. Some of the last kind of items that we’re still reviewing, the largest one being ledge removal. So in the contract, we had estimated

40:45 50 cubic yards of ledge to be removed at the unit price that they provided. We’re reviewing those totals right now. We have a slight disagreement with how they came with their totals, but we’re reviewing a change order from them currently that totals $48,251. So once we have that final review, that will come back to us. We have a couple other little punch list items, but we’re pretty close to the end on that. Okay. These numbers are pretty close, Mike? Yeah. These numbers are pretty close. Yep. Good. Again, the striping, so we need to complete the striping, so that’s the line painting up there.

41:25 So again, we have several different stages of the project. We want to tie the front into the back and a little bit towards the swap shop. Saturday is our busiest day up there, with as many as 1,300 to 1,400 cars on a Saturday alone. Parking for the swap shop can be limited, and we always had it designed to add increase to parking kind of on that road as you’re exiting on the left-hand side. So when we complete the striping up front for the scale house and the commercial side, we will be adding some striping in the back for some additional parking spaces. It will also kind of include a walkway or a painted walkway over to that swap shed area.

42:13 But this will allow us for some additional parking areas for the swap shed on Saturday.

42:20 There was an area that wasn’t very clear. I think maybe it was during the fire when people were directing down. Directing down. So the lower area is where the trailers are. Mm-hmm. So obviously, if we have to close off the IF up front and there’s an emergency like that- Mm-hmm … generally you get directed right back out where you came in. Mm-hmm. And we have done that several times during construction. So that’s generally how it goes. If somebody happened to come in, I believe the front entrance was actually closed at that time. But yeah, you might have been diverted down, but you shouldn’t have been diverted down there at that area. Again, if residents were in the facility, they would’ve been diverted right back out Green Street. No, I was thinking it was the

43:07 work when they were responding to the fire. There was some like- They weren’t going the right way or something? Oh, so again, we’re looking at emergency response and stuff like that. Yeah. We had firefighters that were actually walking down the riprap slope. We will be meeting with them and making sure that they understand how the facility works. We want to make sure that they understand how they can disconnect the trailers. So those trailers are physically connected to the compactor. They need to be disconnected before the compactor or that trash trailer, the large 18-wheel trailer, can be moved off that compactor. Those are important pieces to it. So we will be doing emergency preparedness with the fire department to just go over some of those processes. If you did have to attack the fire from the top

43:53 side of the compactor, there is a walkway that’s going down. It’s better for them to come there during the day to have a great understanding of the ins and outs of those areas before they ever had to deal with a fire there, where it’s smoke-filled and stuff like that, and you can’t see. Mm-hmm. So we will be doing some work with them to do some emergency preparedness on that. Okay. Yep. All right. As long as my phone math is correct, our actual cost was about 4.25% over the estimates. So that’s- Pretty good … pretty good. Yeah. Pretty good. A couple little other things that we’ll be doing up there. So up top, we will be adding a dumpster right next to the scale,

44:38 so that if we are in construction demolition and I have a resident that comes in and says, “I need to get rid of this chair,” not a problem. We can take you right away, and the chair can go right in that dumpster. Or if we’re closed due to some unknown reason, for maintenance or for a mechanical issue, and somebody’s like, “Hey, I loaded up my car. I need to get rid of this stuff,” we’ll have a dumpster right there, and we can get rid of some small loads. Mm-hmm. So that dumpster is on order. We also have a new dumpster going in place for the bulk shrink wrap, right where it used to be. These two dumpsters are slightly smaller than a 30-yard dumpster. They’re a 22-yard dumpster. But these will be in those two locations all the time, and that way you will be allowed to kind of flip-flop

45:24 between MSW, some C&D material if it’s small amounts, but that will give us some flexibility. Mm-hmm. The other thing that we’ll be upgrading up there as well is that we currently have a camera system. We use a software called Milestone. It’s got servers in this building. We’re moving away from servers in the building to online, so cloud support. Everybody uses servers in the cloud. We’re moving to a system called Verkada. So you will see a bill for Verkada to move over to that system. So that’s software and cloud server support and stuff like that. It’s kind of all part of this construction process, getting us to where we need to be. But yeah, we’re looking forward to the completion of this.

46:11 And again, we have other pieces that we want to complete in the future. We want to complete that swap shed area, our new swap shed, and we have work to be done on the siding of the compactor building. So siding on compactor being first, or is- I think it’s going to be the swap shed first, I’ll say. Okay. Should we get Gretchen in here? Can we- Yeah, we can definitely talk to Gretchen and see- Yeah … about having her coming in. Yeah. Get some input- Yep … on what they’d like to see. Yep. Yeah.

46:42 The other thing that we want to add in the back area currently is that we use some shipping containers for storage of material. We take used tires in the back. We’re using an old, which we call a gable top 30-yard dumpster. We need to replace that with a kind of closed shipping container. So we’ll be ordering a shipping container. It’s a used shipping container. Estimated cost for that is $6,000.

47:10 Okay. And moving on to

47:17 curbside collection. So on April 27th, the board voted in the fee for curbside collection. Mm-hmm. We will be servicing under the fee as estimated 8,000 eligible units. So eligible units could be single-family homes, two-family homes, three-family homes, and four-family homes. That can be homes or condos, but it can’t be any more than four units per property, essentially. Now, can I– Because, and I hope I didn’t get this wrong, each unit is the same fee, right? Yes. Yeah. Each unit is the same fee. Yeah. So you’re taking that total cost and dividing it out by those eligible units, making everybody equal- Mm-hmm … making it all the same fee. So if you have a three-family

48:06 house, you will have three sets of barrels. Yeah. Not trying to sway any votes, but you’re paying a lot more with the fee if you’re in a condo than you would be- That’s right … if it was in the tax base. Yeah. Yeah. Because you’re paying three times. You’re paying three times, but your taxes are lower because it’s based on your total value- Mm-hmm … versus like a single family home. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Each eligible unit will receive a 65-gallon trash barrel and a 95-gallon recycling barrel. I know the 95-gallon recycling barrel sounds like a lot, but when we began this process, we were debating every other week recycling, and therefore, we went for the 95-gallon

48:52 recycling toter so you could handle every other week, but it’s fine for every week. You can have plenty of extra space. But if we ever want to switch over to every other week, we still will be able to use the same barrel.Or carts as we’re calling them. These carts are the property of Marblehead. They’re not owned by the units, they’re not owned by the property owner. They would stay with the eligible property unit as if owners moved in and out. The other piece about the fee is that there is an opt-out. So if you wanted to opt-out, there’s a form that you have to fill out. You have to tell us where you’re taking your trash, meaning that if you’re going to get a sewage station sticker, you have to check that off. We’ll make sure that you have a current facility sticker, therefore

49:39 allowing us to say, “Yes, you have efficient sanitation disposal,” and we would allow that, and we would go and pick up your carts from you. And we’re allowing people to opt out even if there’s no fee? No. So moving forward, so no fee like- So say people aren’t interested in the carts and are just going to handle the trash themselves. Yep. Can they do that when- So they have to opt out. Right. Yeah. So they can still opt out. Yeah, you can still opt out. Okay. It’s still part of your tax base though. It’s still part of your taxes. It’s still part. Yep, exactly. They can elect not to get the- Again, one of the things that we wanted to make sure is that occasionally carts are damaged, and so we do replace carts now. Again, the carts are the property of the town.

50:24 There’s no cost to you, so if your cart’s damaged, you call us up, we’ll come out and fix your cart. If there’s a broken wheel, a busted lid, we will have extra of those to make all those repairs. Again, they’re not yours, they’re ours, but we will come right out to fix those for you. And they thought the estimated life of these was 10 years? Yes. Because I don’t know about you, Steve, but mine in Salem I’ve had for more than 10 years. What about yours? Lynn opted to take over the barrels themselves. So even though our barrels were still good, we got new ones after about eight years. Oh, really? Yeah. Salem hasn’t- They would’ve gone- No … 10 to 15 years. I’ve definitely had mine for 10 years, and it’s still fine. Yeah. So I think they actually have a pretty long- They do

51:09 … life. Yeah. Yes? I’m not sure. I missed this conversation. Why would one opt out if it’s in the tax? They just don’t want the barrels. If they don’t want the big barrel. Say my house is big. So the only way your trash can get picked up is you have to use the carts. Right. You cannot use anything else. Right. So only the carts- So even if you have those trash cans … will be picked up. So when we set the regulation, you have to use a Marblehead cart to have your trash picked up. Okay. Or your recycling picked up. There can be no item outside of your carts. None of that will be allowed. There’s no overflow bags. There’s no recycling outside of the cart. There’s no boxes outside of the cart. Everything has to be in the carts. The lid has to be down,

51:57 and it has to be secure. We’re doing this for sanitation reasons. We want to make sure material’s not blowing around. This is how we control cost, by knowing the volume that we’re collecting from. I always think that there– I’m not going to out them, but there’s one house I always think of when it comes to this, and it’s in the historic district. It’s attached to the two houses next to it. It’s directly on the street, so there’s literally nowhere for them to put trash barrels. So they would be one of the ones that would probably just opt out and do their own thing, even if it was part of the tax base, just because they have nowhere to put it. So in the Downtown District, we get some customers that say, “Well, I don’t have any place, so I just put my trash in the street and expect it to get picked up.” It does now. It will not in the future.

52:42 They have to have those big barrels. And how are we going to manage that? Yes. How are we going to manage what? I have neighbors who put- So we will go, open up the trash, and I’ll issue them a ticket.

52:55 But what if they don’t– They have to put their barrel out? They have to put their cart out. And what if they don’t? This is automated collection. The truck is coming along, the arm’s coming out, grabbing the barrel, and dumping it in. We will not pick it up, but we will fine them for a sanitation- And what about Old Town? You’re not doing automated. So, right, it’s going to be picked up by manual. So- So if someone puts a bag, you’re not- No … going to pick it up? Nope. Okay, well, you’re going to have a lot more people at these meetings, I have a feeling. So again, we will be issuing fines. There’s sanitation fines. Yeah. It’s illegal disposal. It’s not proper disposal. Yeah. No, it’s going to be noisy to start, and it’s not ideal, but this is the world that we’re in now. I did see a house on Raymond Road, the guy passed on, and they’re cleaning out

53:41 the house, and they’re putting furniture down the street so they don’t have to pay. Yeah. And so you’re going to have people- No, this- It’s- Yeah. And I realize some people- We don’t do bulky item pickup now. Yeah. No, but I’m saying with the trash, I think some people are. No, they will. And some people, I was shocked. I’ve had a few people reach out to me online being like, “Hey, I read what you wrote. Why isn’t this being advertised?” And I’m sitting there like, “It’s been in the paper all the time.” It was. “There’s literally a town meeting. It was everywhere.” So some people, the tow trucks are just going to show up at their house, and they’re going to be like, “Why did no one tell me?” Even though it’s been everywhere. So- It doesn’t matter. Like you- Go tell them. They don’t know nothing about it. What can we do? I’m not going to go knocking on doors and explaining it to

54:28 people. I mean, they’re going to know about it as well. Yeah. It’s- Yeah, no. So when we- It’s a nuisance … yeah, there are going to be some people that flip out, freak out, whatever, and we’re going to have to deal with that. It’s going to be noisy. It’s going to be irritating. We’re all going to have to hear about it. So it’s trying to get the word out there as much as possible. And I think one of them, which you just mentioned before, is if people think that they need the smaller ones, and I’d really stress to people, there are some houses that really, really cannot handle the big ones. If you can handle it for six weeks-But you prefer the smaller one, just handle it for six weeks. Because after six weeks, you can all get the smaller one, whatever-

55:14 Yeah. We have purchased- Yeah … 180 smaller containers. So you’ll get a 35-gallon trash container and a 65-gallon recycling container. Mm-hmm. You get one set of barrels. That’s it. We can’t give multiples out and stuff like that. Yeah. So if you think that you’re on that list, what do you want them to email? So if you know that you’re on that list- You know you’re on that list … you can email me, and I will start to add you to the list, and when we deliver barrels or carts in June, we can deliver you with the carts. Which email address do you want them to– Do you want the health too? Yeah, it could be the health too. It’s health2@marblehead.gov? marbleheadma.gov. At mar– health2@marbleheadma.gov. Yeah. Got a question, Rex? So the old barrels that you used to– The old recycle bins that you used to

56:02 sell at the transfer station, the larger ones, they’re not compatible with these trucks? No. These ones are very specific. They are compatible, but those are not going to be used. You will be getting dedicated carts for this collection. Yeah. The carts all have a serial number on them, a barcode. We will be scanning the barcode and knowing which barrel goes with which house. Okay. So if the barrel like disappears down the street, I can find your barrel and say, “Here it is.” The regulation also states that you must affix your property number onto the barrel on the front of the barrel. No, I understand. I guess the reason I’m asking is, is that we bought one of the larger barrels. It fits into our enclosure. Yeah. These will definitely not fit into the enclosure.

56:50 We have no place except for in our driveway to put these, which means that now we have to street park. Which means that during snow emergencies, we have to find somewhere to hide the barrels temporarily. Well, yeah. I mean, we’re all going to be facing some of that. And still, the 95-gallon barrel has the same footprint as the 65-gallon barrel. Exactly. It’s the width. It’s the same height. So it’s the width of it? Yeah. So it kind of cones out. Yeah. It’s pretty wide. Yeah. Yeah. I have a door that’s this wide that fits those- Yep … barely, I can get the whole- Yep … barrel into. Yeah. And I’ve got a really small trash barrel, so I’m already going to figure out how to figure that out, but I’ll probably just have to put it in the driveway.

57:37 I mean, it’s just going to have to. Yeah. Yeah. And again, this is something that you’ve tried it for six weeks, this isn’t working, you can contact us. It’ll work. I just- Yeah. No. It’ll be visible instead of enclosed. Yeah. None of it’s going to be ideal, but it’s kind of the direction that we’re in, and that’s- It’s cheaper than- Exactly … pretty much anything. And some people talked about like, “Oh, this is– Keeping it this way was only X amount per year.” But yeah, crumbs make a cake, and that’s kind of how we got in our financial situation now, so. And again, we will be using the code red system or now it’s called All Call or something like that. But yes, we can do a reverse 911. When we begin to bring the carts out to all the homes, we will

58:23 be making notification of when that’s occurring.

58:27 Just to clarify, this was different than what I had understood before. If you know that you cannot do- If you live in the downtown districts … You live in the down– Sorry. Yeah. All these correct. You live in the downtown district- Mm-hmm … you know you can’t do a 65 and 95, then you can put your name on this list, and you won’t have to go through the 65, 95 re- We will evaluate your situation. Okay. That’s what I wanted to know. Okay, great. Yep. And do we have the capacity to have customer service answering telephones during? Yeah. Oh. We do this on a day-to-day basis with regular trash. Okay. Yes, it is going to be a very busy time for us. Yeah. But this is kind of where we are. All right, so that’s fee-based. At town meeting,

59:16 the override passed town meeting, so that’s keeping it under your property taxes. Again, carts will only be distributed to eligible properties or eligible units. It’s essentially the same number of units, or it is the same units and everything. However, it is now going to the override vote on June 9th. If the override vote passes, it will now become part of the override and part of your property taxes. Under the fee-based, we would be billing you, so we would be sending bills out twice a year, so biannually or– But they would be quarterly payments. So very similar to your taxes. You get two bills a year, quarter one, quarter two, quarter three, quarter four, and you would have to submit

1:00:03 those on a quarterly basis. Again, for the office, we would be sending out 8,000 bills twice a year and having to deal with that. But again, this is all what we’ve agreed to. Okay. It is important that we have curbside collection. It’s important that it’s done in a sanitary manner. And therefore, we have developed these rings and rules and everything, and we’re headed down this path. So what are you going to do on refunds? Because you keep giving $100 every month. How are you going to handle all these refunds? What would I have to give them refunds? Well, they just- Given out two refunds so far. Yeah. Yeah. So what’s going to happen, like, if someone moves out of town? They don’t get money back. You don’t get a refund for this.

1:00:49 No, I think it’s good because it’s going to cost the town more money to produce it. The refunds for these is that, so the individual bought two $100 stickers, where you don’t need to buy two $100 stickers for the same house. Oh, they made a mistake when they entered it? Yeah. Okay. I thought that- So that’s why the refund … they bought a sticker- Yeah … and they said they didn’t want to use it, they don’t have it down. No. Okay. So once you buy itYou’re responsible for that three-month period- Absolutely … then if someone else takes the house over. Yep. It’s all the real estate signs, I’m saying, so the new people will more than likely take it. Just like your taxes. Yep. Okay.

1:01:27 Any other questions about curbside collection? When they go to– I may have misunderstood this. When they go smaller to the 35, are both 35? No, so 65 for the recycling- Yeah … 35 for the trash. Okay. I see. So it’s always that- Yeah … dropped down. Okay. Yeah. A couple of things. I presume, other than just the newspaper articles and things, there’s going to be some sort of notice throughout the businesses that- Yes … a few of them are kind of in sticker shock. I asked them, “What are you going to do with your rubbish?” “What do you mean?” I said, “July 1st. Unless you made other arrangements, it’s not going to be there.” Yeah. So we will try to make notice to businesses, but they’re not a

1:02:12 priority. No. And we would have to try to get– No. As we’re doing cards and stuff like that, we do know there’s approximately 165 businesses in that kind of downtown district that we will have to make, that they all have to be aware that they will no longer be receiving recycling collection. Well, something that I see probably happening is around town we have a bunch of barrels that Park and Rec picks them up. Yeah, those also might be going away. Really? Yeah. Because they’re going to get trampled and- Well, there’s going to be more dark blue than- So again- The businesses are only getting recycling right now, right? Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So, um- No, I’m just thinking people who opt out on doing the rubbish or something. Oh, I know. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

1:02:58 In the summertime especially, Crocker Park, they need like five barrels. I mean, it’s- Yeah, I think those were part of the cuts, though, when- I believe those were part of the cuts as well. Well, if that’s- If the right passes. The other thing- I don’t know at what level they actually came back. I’m not so sure, yeah. If we do go to the pay thing, it only comes out to be like $5.60 a week. That’s correct. Yeah. So that’s- I think some people would be very gung ho about like, “Oh, I’ll just go to the transfer station every Saturday,” and I think they’re going to regret it almost immediately. Especially when they find out if you don’t sign up, we’ll see you next year. Yeah. So yeah. It’s going to be a little confusing at first, but- The biggest thing is going to be everyone’s going to say, “I have these older

1:03:43 barrels. What am I going to do with them?” So yes, if you have a transfer station sticker, you’ll be able to bring those up. Unfortunately, they’re not an easy thing that we can recycle, so we will be disposing all of those. We’re asking people to try to reuse them around your property as much as possible, or if you have other properties to bring them to. But yeah, that’s going to be the other piece to it. So what are you going to do, like the people, like the Story School next to the funeral home, like you pick the recycling up there now, so- All ends. Yeah. So are these people, like commercial places that put trash out now, like shoes, market, and all that, are they going to go up to transfer station and dump that for nothing? No. And then we’re going to be, I’m going to be paying $96 a ton or whatever it is, or 100 something. So places like anything that’s, the Story School, any of

1:04:32 the Marblehead properties that are owned by Marblehead Housing, except for Broken Road- Right … they will continue to be picked up by Marblehead Housing. So these businesses can’t get a truck and go up the dump and put- No, for recycling, you have to pay for it. So they- They can’t right now … the trash, they can. That’s right. But not for recycling, no. Because some people are going to do that, because I don’t think, some places have dumpsters for their trash, but I don’t think they have dumpsters for recycling. Yeah. We don’t take commercial reci- like large volumes of commercial recycling at the transfer station. Okay. Yeah.

1:05:10 Yeah. The curbside regulations, they’re online for people. They are online, yep. And it has the opt-out form and everything. Okay. Great. Is there a fine schedule? There is. Under the bylaws, there’s also state fines for illegal dumping. Ah. Should probably post that, too. It’s visible.

1:05:39 What you got, Sophia? I have kind of an odd question, and this might have nothing to do with your purview at all. If somebody, and this is a question that I’ve been asked, and that’s why I’m asking you today, but if somebody was renting the house in Marblehead, would they be the ones to opt out of the trash, or would the homeowner be the one? Homeowner. Okay. Yeah.

1:06:07 But what Steve just said was, if they opt out, then they’re stuck for a year. I thought we were going to review. So we will review it, yes. But you cannot opt out seasonally. So you can’t say, “Well, I’m going away for the winter, so I’m going to opt out.” That is not allowed. Now, if you had a case where, I’m out sick for a long period of time, there are special circumstances, or you have new owners that are coming in, we would be able to bring those people back in as if somebody moved into town, or if there was a new property, something like that. Yes, we will review each one. But this is not something that you can opt in and out seasonally or on a regular basis. So you’re going to pay the four bills no matter what.

1:06:54 The people who go to Florida for six months out of the year too- Yeah … they’re going to pay the 12 months either way. They either pay or not pay. Yeah. No, I don’t have a problem as long as everyone’s treated the same. Yeah. People who leave don’t have to submit notice of them- No … leaving, that their barrels won’t be out for- NopeWe’re all set Okay. Are there questions or comments from the audience, the Zoom audience? No. Are there any additional public comments? I just have a question about the $4,000 water transfer state. What do they do with $4,000 worth of- No, it’s for parts for construction. What? Did I do it wrong?

1:07:39 No. Oh. Yeah, no. It’s a bill from water and sewer, but it’s not- Oh, yeah. Oh, because- Yeah … is that like the sewer cap they had to replace? No, it was actually water pipe and stuff like that. Water pipe. I think copper piping and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, that’s fine. Water meter. People want a very high level when they list it. It’s a water meter. I thought it was a water bill during the winter. Yeah, I drink a lot of water but I thought- Okay. So you’ve done the agendas and- I guess, Sophia, do you have a question? Yeah. For the opioid settlement funds that were delegated to the group helping with addiction- Yeah … who, I know the Selectboard approves the funds that are given by Massachusetts, but who actually decides where those opioid funds go?

1:08:26 So there’s a four representative board. So it’s the town administrator, the police chief, the fire chief, and myself. And do you happen to know off the top of your head how much money was allocated from Marblehead to this program? To this program? Yeah. So, it’s roughly $5,200. Okay. That’s all. Thank you. Yep. Gil? So, I did have something. And I actually dropped something off with you this week. Do you want to introduce yourself? My name’s Anthony Mullen. I live at 32 Central Street, 34 Central Street, not 32. Excuse me. Nobody lives at 32. And

1:09:15 this is… Sorry. Oh, yeah. There.

1:09:21 So, we’ve been dealing with a problem with vermin living at 32 Central Street and moving into, if that clears, 30 Central Street. These properties have been abandoned, essentially, for years. These are a family dispute, right? Behind these- There’s a family dispute. Yeah. Apparently, they live in New York. Yeah. Under a trust. The aunt who owns the properties refuses to allow the properties to be sold. However, they are required to maintain the property to keep rodents out of the property, and there are raccoons living in the attic in the first floor that come out of that area and have become a little too friendly with my wife,

1:10:07 who’s actually your patient, surprisingly enough. Oh. I am actually your husband’s patient. So, it’s just kind of a weird situation. So, what we would ask is that someone from the Board of Health come over and look at the property and recognize that they have not been doing their due diligence to keep the rodents out, specifically- Is this the right property? I got some pretty damning pictures here. So that’s- Yeah. Some of them are kind of funny, but- Yeah. No, it’s like- So I was at the property this morning with the building commissioner. I have issued a letter to the property owners- Yeah … to board up the house. Yeah. Actually remove the rodents or raccoons and board up the house. Okay.

1:10:54 I brought the building commissioner with myself. We also spoke with the fire chief to see if there’s other things that we can have done at that property. Yeah. That structure is a concern, and that should kind of be dealt with, but that’s not necessarily a public health issue. No. But yes, we have issued a letter to the property owners to remove the raccoons and board it up. Okay. Yeah, because we are seeing a lot of them. They are now in their nesting period and- Yeah, it’s mating season right now. Yeah, which is why we’re getting a lot more attention. Yeah. So you will hear some very loud noises. You’ll hear some- Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if everyone’s familiar with raccoons in mating season and the fighting that occurs. Yeah. It is very loud screaming.

1:11:41 Yes. Yeah. That’s at 4:00 in the morning. Yep. But we get up at 4:00, 4:30 in the morning anyway, so- … it’s not a big deal for us. But yeah, that part’s not as bad, but the fact that they’re coming in, they’ve actually destroyed two fountains in our backyard and have damaged other parts of our property. And so it’s like, okay, that’s enough of the- Yeah, the hard thing is that we are not a raccoon-free community. Right. So there are raccoons. We do have wild areas. We have trees and stuff like that. They’re native to Marblehead, so we cannot rid Marblehead of raccoons. But again, the home should be boarded up- Yeah … and so they cannot- We have a skunk that lives between the properties

1:12:29 back there. We’re not looking to have him removed. Yep. We recognize that that’s just part of it- Yep … part of nature. It’s that they live in a house- Yep … where they don’t belong. Correct. That’s what we’re really looking at. If they do not board up the house, what happens next? So we issue fines. We’ve taken them to court. Okay. Yeah. Have we done that? It’s 30. Okay. So we have this- Yeah, we have- … time that we- Yeah, we have paperwork- Yeah … and kind of a path to follow to do all this. The only house with painting on it. Antivirus, we want to- No. So they have been compliant in the past. So you can see that they’ve come back out and reboarded areas of the house up. But again, the back is really in bad shape, and they’re able to access the house from that area, and so that needs to be dealt

1:13:16 with. Oh, I know this house. The reason I know about these houses is because my wife wanted to buy one and renovate it, and I almost had her committed when I saw it. It is a very strange situation where- Yeah … you have three-… homes in Marblehead next to each other that are totally vacant, worth a lot of money. It’s on the left side. The family’s waiting each other out. Got you. Yeah. And again, when I’m doing my due diligence for, I’m looking to see if taxes have been paid, everything’s up to date, because I want to make sure that I have the most current address to get actual- Very much the same as the actual- Cell phone number … building. No, they have been fine since the last time we issued them letters, they came out- This is the boarding along- Yeah … right here. It’s just that back area. Yeah. Okay. The most recent step, now they’ve been issued

1:14:02 notification. Yep. And again, the building commissioner and the fire chief will be taking a look at it from their point of view. Okay. Yeah. One thing on that, you might want to- So I could talk to them, but you should also reach out to them as well. I can reach out to them. I just want to warn that we’ve had kids come up to the property. We’ve had kids go up on the steps on the front of the property, which are completely unsafe. Yep. Oh. And technically it’s trespassing by those kids, but if they get injured, then the fact that it’s completely in disrepair, I don’t know who becomes responsible. The property’s owner is always responsible. Owner, yeah. Yeah. So, I do worry about that, especially around Halloween, it seems to be a

1:14:49 popular place to go by. It looks haunted house. We usually go out and tell kids, “Please stay away from those.” And somebody mows the lawn in the back and tries to keep some of the brush down. Yeah. But obviously, there’s certain areas that have grown up already and… But yeah. They pay the teenage woman that’s four houses down- Oh, yeah … to mow all three up and down, so she’s doing it out there, about twice a month mowing it, so.

1:15:21 Wow. In Marble. In the technician. I mean, in Marble, it’s not on the fringes, but it’s okay. Okay. Thank you for bringing this to our attention and timely that you were already there this morning. And ultimately, can we ever get to the point where we, the town tears the damn things down? So the hardest thing is that at that point, you assume all responsibility for the cost of it, and then you try to lien the properties to recoup your money. Yeah. It’s not something the town has done in the past. It’s a big issue. You generally try to find somebody that’s willing to buy it. Pay the taxes and everything, but… That can be possessed. Soon as he said the F word.

1:16:07 From there. Okay. So, yeah. So yeah. Again, but in this case- They just not pay … they’re paying their taxes, they’re current, they’re up to date on everything. Yeah. It is a- I don’t think there’s- … a unique situation. Yeah. There’s a trust that has money in it that pays out the property taxes every- Bizarre. Yeah. I will change it. Okay. Well, it looks like we’re ready for a motion to adjourn. Yep. Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Second. 8:20 we are adjourned