Board of Health: August 10, 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 I’m green, right? So everybody’s going to turn their mics on. Gotcha. Okay. This is live. They could’ve got money if the thing was running. Recording. And then we just let it sit. Then we got plenty of money. That’s live. That mic is live, so when people get up to speak, they should speak into that mic. But yeah, we should be good to go. Okay, it’s two minutes after 7:00 on the 10th of August in the year 2026, and I’m opening the Board of Health for its first open meeting in August. And we have an agenda, but we have two items that are going to run ahead of the regular agenda. We have an introduction. So I’d like to bring up our new public health- You want to come up for just a minute? Yeah. Yeah, come on up. When good things happen to the board, we like to flaunt them.

1:08 So I’d like to introduce our new public health nurse, Emily Smith. We’re very lucky to have her. She has a lot of great experience. She even goes back as far as actually helping us during the pandemic with COVID. But we’re really excited to have her. Do you want to give a quick introduction, then? So Emily comes to us with a nursing and academic background. She has a doctorate in nursing practice and education. She’s taught several courses that I think I taught a long time ago, but I’d love to take again. And she’s done virtually every type of nursing practice and is able to relate it to the public health environment. So I’m very happy that all of my colleagues are here, but this was a surprise and really a great opportunity to have another person who can debate some of the issues that we should be talking about, about public health. So thank you very much for joining us. No, it’s a pleasure to have her in the office. She fits in really well, and yeah, it’s been a little while since Tracy has left. But it’s great to see Emily’s face every morning, and it’s a great connection. Welcome.

2:40 Thank you. Thank you. Good to see you. Thanks. Thank you for coming in. Okay. Kristen’s on her way, so she did not get the memo about the- Okay. The second pre-agenda item is a discussion that you want to lead, Andrew? Yeah. So I have the owners of 220 Humphrey Street, and they have– Do you want to come up to this table and discuss together? I know you’re a little mic-y. You can co-break the mic. So I’m one of the trustees. I’m David Cowder, retired physician. Carolyn Perlow, another trustee of the building. And we’re here to talk about the decision that Marblehead has made regarding recycling. For the past 20-odd years, we’ve been putting our little recycling bins out in the street, and they’ve been collected as always, until the new change came with the new recycling bins, and we were told that because we’re more than four units, Marblehead’s not going to have recycling for us. We think that’s an unfair decision for several reasons. Number one, we’re taxpayers just like everybody else. Our average, we’d spend probably, I would say our taxes are $100,000 a year for the town. It’s probably a little bit more than that, but that was just a rough estimate. But a number of regular apartments. We’re 20 units.

4:11 Our units are probably– We pay more taxes than some, probably less than others, certainly. But I don’t see the rationale for having the discrimination when it’s the same thing as we put just the barrel out in the front at the curbside like we always did. It’s no different than anybody else. We pay the same taxes as everyone else. I also know that some of the other towns, at least according to the property manager that we have, she says that other towns besides Swampscott and– other than Swampscott or Marblehead, don’t charge for recycling for multi-unit dwellings, and it just doesn’t make any sense to us. We’re even willing to pay for an extra barrel so that we could have two or three barrels, just to have and just put it out, just like we always do. We were told at one point that they would do our recycling for $160 a month, but financially, that really doesn’t make sense because we’re just the same as anybody else. We just pay the same taxes, and we’re no different. It is not extra work for the town because we put it out on the curb like we do all the time. And it just did not make sense to us as to why we should be discriminated because we’re just 20 units. Do you have your own trash contract?

5:42 Is that what- Yeah, the trash contract is with Win… I think that’s Win whatever it is. Waste. Yes. We pay for that, and what would happen is the recycling will just go in the trash, and I think that’s a waste. I agree. I can tell you, knowing positively, that Salem does charge multi-families because I pay the bill Okay. Although there are towns that absolutely do. Okay. I just paid it the other day. All right. But I think we benefited before from getting free recycling based on the previous deal, so that we got to just load up. And Andrew, I think, has come up with a way to- Yeah, so- Sort this out, which I think if we can help out as many people as we can to get involved, then while it’s staying- Well, it seems like we’re being discriminated because nobody else gets charged at the present time, although this may change for trash and recycling. Mm-hmm. And it seems like that our building is being discriminated against because we’re 20 units, and we might have two barrels. Whereas in the wintertime, we may only have one barrel. But the thing is, it seems that since you’re not charging individual homeowners for recycling, it doesn’t seem like it’s fair for us to be charged $160 a month, as that was the offer that was made. Well, I wouldn’t say it was intentional, like, let’s- No, I’m not saying it was … Andrew knows the better of the contract logistics, the why.

7:16 Yeah. So when we looked at the contracts, originally we were really only supposed to be picking up trash and recycling from single family homes up to four unit condos. Again, we were not paying for the recycling disposal at that time, or processing fees. So the contractor allowed us to push material in. We serviced businesses in the downtown district that we no longer service either. But when we were headed to a new contract, we needed to make a decision and call out who our customer base was going to be. We chose the essentially 8,000 units, which is single family all the way up to the four units. If you want to include all these other condos, you have to include those in the contract, and that would be a much larger number. Mm-hmm. So the number of units served would be much greater. And so that’s how we come to our dollar figures. Yes, we can offer recycling collection. Originally, it was for a trash and recycling barrel, be a 65 gallon trash and a 95 gallon recycling would be $80 a month. They’re asking for two. What you could do is you could say, “We will give you, rather than since they already have trash service, we could do the two recycling barrels at that $80 fee a month.” $80 each? No, total. Total. Yep. For all of the units? No, just for two barrels. That’s it. Oh, okay. Now they’re sharing amongst- If you want to do a unit, we’d have to do it $80 per unit. Okay. But he’s only asking for two barrels.

8:48 Right. Of 95 gallon. Yeah. Yeah. Of the 95 gallon. I’m sure you- Right. Those are the bigger ones. Those are the bigger ones. Yes. The one that a woman fell into the other day. Nice to point that out. I think that’s reasonable to do the- Yeah. I mean, I’m all in favor of it. If you want comparative numbers, like my two family in Salem, I pay $54 a month for a two family. Trash and recycle. Yeah. Well, I think the trash is included. I need to call them to get the specifics of it. But I know that’s the bill I pay for a two family, and very small units. That’s something that we- Yeah … would certainly bring to the rest of the board and discuss it, now that we understand more as the actual economics of what you’re paying. Yep. Then it does make more sense, what you’re talking about. And then so- I have a question. Yeah. If we were to approve one way, let’s say we approve this request. How many like condos would there be? What impact would it be? Would we have to go back to Republic and sort of modify our contract? Or are there financial terms of the contract that you know of that would tell us what we are paying for these extra units? Yeah. So we’re paying attention to that 8,000 unit service.

10:19 We’ve had several opt outs, so we have room to kind of backfill in. Yes, there’s not a lot of large condo units. There’s not a lot of 15 units and above. But, again, you’d have to deal with this on a case-by-case basis. But we could treat them almost like a business. We had set this up for businesses to be $80 a month for both the trash and recycling. But you could easily do this since he has trash disposal already at their condo. We could switch it out so it’s two recycling containers. All right. I’ll get back to you. Yeah. And then we’ll discuss it. But it seems like a- Yeah … fair remedy now that we understand the economics. So the board should just vote to approve allowing the 220 Humphrey Street the option to purchase or to pay on a monthly basis the $80 for two 95 gallon recycling. I’ll make the motion to allow the- I just, I have one question first. How much wiggle room do we have? For what? How many of those 8,000 are opted out of? I’d have to count the total number of opt outs. Guesstimate. Several hundred at this point. Okay. Yeah. Carry on, Tom. I’ll make the motion to allow 220 to purchase the two recycling bins. I’ll second. We definitely do have to be mindful, too. I’m sure Andrew knows this. Some people opted out, they’re going to regret it and they’re going to- Right, we might have people opting back in at some point.

11:50 Yeah. And who does the payment go to? We would set up a business account with you so you could pay on a monthly basis online. So we would direct the inquiry to you- Yeah … through the request? That’s an answer. That’s an answer. 5. That’s an answer Wait, but I was just on the Zoom call, and I can’t hear Andrew. That’s why I came down here. Oh, yeah. You don’t have a mic, and there’s one here. And so for the recording, it might be helpful to… I came here because I couldn’t hear you guys at home. Oh, okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. And so you guys have been talking to the mics. Thanks. Sorry to interrupt, but- No, it’s fine. Thank you. So the motion is made. Is there a second? I’ll second. Okay, motion is made and second. Is there any discussion? Well, Andrew, do you want to look further at your numbers? No, I’m good with the numbers. He’s going to take it back to his board, they’re going to discuss, and then they will contact us if they want to move forward. Okay. Proceed to vote? Yes. Okay. The vote is four zero unanimous. Thank you very much. Move forward. Mm-hmm.

13:06 Okay. Okay, we’ll move back to our regular agenda. In part because we’re in the fancy room tonight, I didn’t bring slides to show. But I do have a handout if you want the kind of things that I’m going to talk about in the slides. But what I’m planning to do as chair for the next number of meetings is to try to spend as much time talking about the COM priorities as I can, and what we’re trying to do to take what we’ve learned from the COM report and put it into practice as much as we can. And I’m going to do that around three elements today. One of which we haven’t talked much about here in this session, but I would like to propose that the Board of Health sponsor some classes in parenting, and that was totally consistent with what we learned from the COM survey, that this is a town of high individual and social stress, and one of the major factors of stress is caregiving, and particularly parenting aspects of caregiving. And we’ll come back to that. I want to talk about that one of the other high priorities of the COM report was we have to

14:40 communicate to the town better about what we actually have in the town already. We were quite amazed at how many people answered questions in wrote. We had 40 pages of write-ins in addition to the 43 questions in the COM survey. And they were thoughtful write… There were maybe five that said, “Stick in your own lane and pick up the trash. Don’t worry about anything else.” But the rest of the people were really trying to think through what we were asking. And they seemed to be unaware of all the great services that are already here. So what I’m calling navigation and information, we’ll talk about that because I think that’s a key issue. And one small element, I had a session last week, I volunteered to meet with Barbara Roy, and I thought it was a pleasant conversation. And at the end of the conversation, I thought that, “Gee, as a public health guy, I want this meeting to be talking about public health issues as much as possible.” I hope we don’t have to talk about barrels forever. But there are people who really need to, want to ask questions and all that. So

16:11 Barbara and I talked about my having office hours. Just our state representative does it here, not that the Board of Health chair is anywhere important as Jenny, but if we would set up a time of an hour, or she has a 40-minute Zoom, that’s perfect. 40-minute Zoom or in person, sit and talk, ask questions. And does that make sense to the board? Sure. I have the time, and I live nearby, and I love to talk. So it’s really a treat for me. You’re elected. Sorry? You’re elected. You’re the best one on this committee for that particular job. Talking too much. Yeah. No. You enjoy that. You’re absolutely right. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. Well, I’m a recovering academic. I only have five people to teach tonight, but what the hell? But when should I do it? Is it an evening thing? That would be a little uncomfortable for me, but I would love to do it at 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning for an hour or for 40 minutes. But how many working people, are the working people that we should be listening to, should we try it for a couple of months and see what we get? I think you

17:44 volunteered to try to get people to placate us for a little while anyway. I think that we can drum up some interest. Hi, everybody. I’m Barbara Roy. Good to see everybody. I think we can drum up some interest, but we need to know what some of the issues are, what some of the things that we can talk about. We can talk about anything, but let’s not only talk about barrels. Okay. I got the message from your email. And, I can’t stop people from wanting to talk about it. There’s some miserable people out there, and they’re going to want an ear from somebody. They totally can go off it. They want an ear, they want people to hear. And our job here, if you’re going to be in it, we’re solving it in the windshield. Like, let’s look forward. How can we learn from this experience? How can we do a better job for any situation that might come up? Okay. I think communication is the best thing. Okay. I can speak for my colleagues, that every one of us wants to hear. We all, when we talk about what’s going on in this board, we talk about what it means for the town. We have people with various lifetimes in boards. I’m a short-termer, but I’ve come to love this town and the way it works. And I believe in the volunteer self-governance in a lot of ways. I do also believe that to make something like that

19:15 work, there has to be leaders and followers, and you have to be an active follower, too. But like tonight, we’re meeting here tonight. Probably not very many people in town know, one, the Board of Health has changed its meeting from Tuesday to Monday, and certainly I didn’t know we were meeting here until Andrew sent us some information, when? Friday? Yeah. Okay. If we ever get back to having a good audience in the Board of Health meetings, it would be nice that they had advance notice. We have to figure out, over time, how to get there. Okay, but I think I hear my colleagues saying you don’t mind my having… And what I would say, maybe the Tuesday after the Monday meeting, we can talk a little bit. I don’t want to meet before, because I won’t know what’s happening. And can we try a 10:00 morning time? Maybe you talk to people you know that’ll come a little bit, and we’ll see how we go. Or would it- I think we change it up afterwards. Do it in the morning, and then the next month do it in the evening. Or- Well, I don’t like changing, because then you have to communicate the changes. What about 12 o’clock just for- No … those people who do work and maybe- Yeah. My comment was just going to be maybe if you had time for two hours a week,

20:47 maybe once in the morning, one day a week, and then the afternoon another day, just for people who are- Yeah … who are working. Or offer- It strikes me that that’s very optimistic to think that we’re going to have that many people at one time. I want to come to try. I feel bad for people who want to come and- Why don’t we do morning after the first meeting in the month, and evening after the second meeting in the month? I think we need- We’ll have to figure out memory … a memory mnemonic so people will know. We’ll have to figure out the evening because we’re not- You got the governor of your own old state had a good mnemonic. Yeah. We’ll have to figure out the times. The daytime is fine. Obviously, the office is open and stuff like that. Anything after the hours is going to be- That’s okay. Yeah. Could you open it though? Well, maybe the evening one we’ll just do on Zoom. Yeah. That may work. And there could be one- Then I can stay at home. And there could be one other board member, and if there’s no- I was just going to say, it shouldn’t all be on you. But- Well, yeah. Andrew, it would be come time, you could come. If I could guess- And if somebody tells me- Right … they’re going to ask a question about something, that has a legal implication, I’d ask you, or a primary care, I’d ask. Mm-hmm. Okay. We buy that. That makes sense. We’ll at least try it. And let’s figure out how we can announce it, but we’ll start it in September. We won’t do it after the second meeting of August.

22:20 Okay? Maybe we’ll have a working meeting with a little team that you want to put together. But whoever is listening, this board and the people on it, and the director, I know well enough, personally and professionally. They care about this town and the people who elected them or hired them to be here. And there’s clearly a concern that that’s not true. How do I say it? This is really not a power play.

23:03 You feel empowered in some ways, but you- No. And I think certainly after last meeting, I came away with the sense that people felt like maybe we weren’t being open and forthright. And I think one of our goals, just talking to people, I think we all want to be as transparent as possible and put as much information, and make it publicly available, as we can. We’re here for the town, as you say, and we want to get the information out there and available to people and we’re thinking about ways to do that. Well, I do think about the barrels, that Jack Ettridge in the town meeting is right. I think everything that needs to be said about barrels has been said. Maybe not everyone has said it. So let’s- We’re not through with the barrels. Wait till you go to the automatic pickup on the side. The barrels are not over. Okay. Yeah. All right. Okay. Then finally, after we come back on some of the information stuff, we want to talk about substance use and mental health. Those are the three calm priorities that I’m going to try to coordinate and- … discussion. One of the great blessings of having five members on the board, we should be able to talk about issues

24:34 and really have a different perspective as we go forward. And maybe if we have a greater perspective, it’ll automatically end up impacting a larger percentage of the town. So I think we can try to make that work. And the final one of the COM is substance mental health. Okay. So the parenting classes. The Board of Health has two small grants called best practice grants that came from the lieutenant governor’s office. And the two grants are, one, to develop a landscape for vulnerable women and children in our town and region. The second one is to support mental health services and activities and try to do it with as much reduction of stigma as possible. So we have those two little grants, and so we have a little bit of money. When we started doing the landscape, I was working with Professor Abeda from Salem State, who’s a social worker. We visited the two primary pediatric services that serve Marblehead kids, and we visited the chair of obstetrics at Salem Hospital and the obstetrics practice

26:06 over near Whole Foods. Okay? And we asked them. They all said nobody from the Board of Health has ever talked to a doctor as a Board of Health member, and now we have three docs on the board. So we’re making progress in some ways. Okay, so what we asked them, “What can we do as a Board of Health to make your practice for your patients easier and better?” And we did get some fairly creative answers, but the one that struck me was that all three of them agreed, help the new moms and dads get used to their baby. Teach parenting classes. And so there is a parenting group in town that we know some people who have gone and liked it a lot. We’ve spent a lot of time talking to them. And so we put together the proposal now is to do a totally free four-week session prenatally before the baby is born. And the reason for that is the firm that exists now talks about after birth, and they talk about the baby themselves. But if you read the COM report, boy, it’s the

27:40 mom that has the stress, not just the baby. So let’s work on what we can do. We can anticipate perhaps sharing the about to be moms, have them come with their partners, have them understand probably the mental interaction that could occur between partners when they become, all of that sort of stuff. And I tell you, I am amazingly impressed by the sensitivity of the two people we’ve been talking to. Their goal is to, in my mind, my words, to be a grandmother that many moms today don’t have nearby. My first 10 years, I was a first child of a second-generation family, and my mother’s mother was within a block of her for 10 years. So she had questions answered all the time. Very few people in today’s world in a place like Marblehead have had that. But what we heard from the Marblehead parenting group is that they have 10 or 15 moms in their room, they meet for four sessions, for 60 to 80 sessions, and at the end of those four sessions, the group becomes a little community. They trust each other. They go to coffee together, and when their baby is crying, they call the other one

29:13 and say, “Is that bad? Should I worry?” And so by and large, that service seems to be very able to fill community space voids that I see is out there. So we have the funding to be able to make it free. By the way, what’s the best guess for how many babies we have born? Yeah. I was wondering. 164 last year. Okay? And you would have to assume that at least a half might have an older brother or sister, so they won’t be new moms. So we might have an audience of somewhere half of that. So if we get four groups over the year of 10 to 12 about to be moms and dads, we should be able to have an interesting cohort. Professor Abeda is going to put the- The program through her IRB at Salem State University. And so she’s going to study both the responses of and the outcomes as much as we can from the families. We hope that the outcomes will be as positive as I thought I was hearing from the people who work there.

30:46 And, that way we probably can get additional funding to make it go beyond the little grant that we have. So does that make sense? We’re okay with that? And, I just think that it’s a vulnerable time in couples’ lives, and anything we can do to make them feel more confident, to be consistently supportive of their infants and their partners, we ought to try to do. Can this program also include a check-in call after they’ve had the baby? Pardon me? Can this program also include a kind of check-in call by whoever’s running the program after they’ve had the baby? We could do anything like that, sure. Kind of a wellness check. I think that’s something- That sounds like a great thing for the IRB So we also have a regional nurse. We also have a public health nurse, that, yes, we can do some of these post-birth visits. So I’m actually wondering if there’s a way to loop in new adoptive parents as well, because they are certainly as stressed as anybody. Oh. Well, I was going to ask about eligibility. You’re mentioning vulnerable mother or parents, but what determines them being able to attend these four sessions? And it’s not that far, yeah. We have other interfaces, too. What do we do if some nice mom comes in from Salem? Right. I mean-

32:16 How many moms can be in a group, maybe? Well, they like 10 to 12. And just one, or if we have a lot of applicants, can we run two? Well, we would plan on running- Four … four or so o- Yeah … over the year. But no- Okay … they’re willing to do it, and if it’s overwhelming, we could. I don’t think there’s any way we run out of what money I have in that grant. We can do it. We ought to do it right. And that’s exactly what I wanted to hear. The phone call at post… Right. Now, what we also hope, that maybe some of the moms, or about to be moms, who take the prenatal class will come back and take the regular class. Mm. Okay? So yes, but we ought to be able to do that. Yes, we ought to be able to deal with any… Well, but we ought to make it for new parents. But it’s Laurie’s question, it can be- But that’s your ask. It’s right. Right. I don’t think we’re going to check income, or I think it’s going to be open to all moms. Right. Right? Just- The one we’re sponsoring? Yes. They just have to live in Marblehead. No, absolutely. I could not figure out a way to just pay for vulnerable families, and I think this is better anyway. Yeah. This way, everyone who wants to come to the class and is planning to become a parent in the next,

33:48 in my mind, and I was over-voted by the team, in the next three months. As a neonatologist, being pregnant in fourth month is still a high-risk time, and so maybe you don’t want to do that. Mm-hmm. But they said, “Let’s just anybody who wants to come, come.” But in any event, so I don’t… Yes. What about recruiting at public housing? Those are moms who are largely of color, so they automatically have much worse birth outcomes than their not white peers. And much less likely to be plugged into sources that the other- Right … parents are going to. May have. Of course. Like we were just saying- It’s a fantastic idea … I love to talk. They invite me down, I’ll come and talk to them about the program. And we can set up if you think- And the outreach staff are great … if you think there’s enough people there that we could have a session there. I’d have to ask the team if they would do that. But we’ve been talking to two of the senior people, but they apparently have a bunch of subcontractors they work with. That’s a great idea. So let’s just do it. But yeah, if we have a direct connection with the outreach staff at- Yeah … Marblehead Housing, that would be great. We do have that connection, don’t we? Yeah. And she could tell us how many- Yep … people were pregnant- Okay … at any given moment. Well, this should be easy. We should be able to help

35:22 anyone who’s… Look, anyone who doesn’t think parenting is a challenge needs help. They’ve never been a parent. Sorry? They’ve never had kids. That’s right. I thought it was easy. All you had to do was love consistently. Okay, so- Can I say a couple things there, Tom? For all my grandkids, except the ones in Switzerland, I don’t know what they did, we went to prenatal grandparent classes along with this. Oh, yeah? And after they were born, the same type of thing for follow-through. I know some of my tenants in Lynn have gone through similar type of things. Where are they? Pardon me? Where did you have grandparent classes? I’ve not heard of that. Well, it depends on where it was. Okay. Some were at Beverly Hospital. They did them at Salem Hospital. Salem Hospital. At the old Union Hospital years ago- For us … they did it there. Okay. It sort of depends. Well- Usually it was the obstetrician, the pediatricians’ group that got together to organize it. Okay. The other thing I’ll mention is- I’ll bring that back to- There’s a lot of grandparents that are essentially raising babies I can think of several people I know- Right. I mean, it’s a real- … that are in their 60s and 70s and- People are addicted to snap and there’s a big need for it It’s surprising. When I was in New Mexico, we had one county, which was a well-known drug county, 70% of the kids were being raised by grandparents. So yes, I understand that completely. I’m in favor.

36:52 I’ll bring it back, maybe the first of the year. Let’s do the two. I’d like to have the first one before the weather goes bad, maybe late September if at all possible. And then if there’s enough, we’ll do it in October and November, and we’ll just see what numbers we get. Perfect. Okay? All right. Well, that’s the parenting. Information sharing. I spent a hour with Peter Schlack, if that’s the way to pronounce it, this morning. He’s the guy who drew up the original Marblehead Cares. For everyone, Marblehead Cares was a website that came out of the Board of Health during the COVID period, right? And everyone was keenly aware the mental health consequences of COVID, certainly when it started. So the Board of Health started Marblehead Cares. They started Mental Health Task Force, which started Marblehead Cares. Well, somehow, I don’t know the dynamics, but you have to own the franchise for a name and a website. What are the terms? But we somehow lost it. It dropped off the digital space. Somebody else tried to take Marblehead Cares and sell it back to us, apparently.

38:22 But we didn’t buy it, so it went back in free space, and so now Andrew owns the title. And his office is committed that we’re going to keep this up. We met this morning. It’s on a platform which allows us now to make it grow. And so I’m not the generation that’s going to make a platform like this dazzling. So we need some help to work with Peter, because we’re going to go on, on the slide, I show a little picture of what the existing Marblehead Cares platform is. It says Marblehead Cares, and then it has pictures of the boats and the harbors and all that in Marblehead. And then it has major primary categories. Who we are, what we talk about, contact, and then under them are pop-ups. And I need help, and Peter needs help, in understanding what pop-ups we want to have. I would love, for example, to have a CALM pop-up so that anytime somebody has a question about what’s in the CALM resource, that they will be able to go and… I’m happy to say that the first

39:55 two documents are on the resuscitated Marblehead Cares platform, are the two CALM reports. So we’re going, and that’s where we’d put a notice that there will be free prenatal care or prenatal classes for parents. That’s the kind of thing we see on there. Now, Andrew made me think a lot today about, because this will be a real Board of Health facility, we have to probably review, and Peter re-emphasized that too. We can’t just let everybody who wants to use Marblehead Cares do it, because they could say some things that are wrong, or nasty, or disrespectful, or something like that, and it’ll be our responsibility. So, we have to figure out… I’d like to hear the board, how do we do something like that? Would the board be willing to review something, look at pop-ups? Peter is willing to come at our next meeting and show us the architecture and structure of how to go. Is that worth a half hour- Yeah … of the board time next month? Mm-hmm. I’m a little confused though. Are you talking about a Facebook group or just the website? Because how are people on the outside going to-

41:28 We have the website. Yeah. So how could people get in there and make changes? Can you speak up, please? Yes. I’m sorry. So I was just a bit confused about the pop-ups and how other people can get in there and make changes. Whoever is opening the portal, if it’s me, they send this to me, say, “I want to put this on there,” and we- Oh, okay. People can put input as to- Well, who do we want the input to go through? I’m just saying that the board is going to have to own this. So maybe when Peter comes next time, we can talk about mechanics and operation. Joanne Miller clearly was his board contact during the whole time. She met with him. She left the board, and I took her place, so that was two years ago. She spent a lot of time with him on how to make it look good. And one of us, or some of us, or someone maybe who wants to work with us could do that We are thinking of trying to… There may be a volunteer, or there may be somebody out there in the Marblehead space who might be willing to help the Board of Health go and deal with all the public health information that’s out there. And we could use somebody like that to work with

43:01 Peter to make the stuff legitimate, and then have a coach or two from the board. But it would really be great if by the time school is ramping up, that Marblehead Cares is up and running. Great. And so if it’s okay, I’ll ask Peter to come to our August 24th meeting and give a visual presentation or do it virtual. But it’s not as complicated as you might think, because he walked me through it this morning, and it really is kind of interesting. And then he sent me an email about how the various categories need… This cannot be a search engine. Search engines are much harder and they’re much more expensive. But, the Council on Aging has a magnificent weekly mailing that they send out, but I don’t think it’s digitized at all. We ought to be able to digitize it and maybe have a Council for Council on Aging space on the board. And I’m going to talk to Lisa. I don’t know for sure how we would do that, but that’s the kind of thing we’re talking about. Make sense? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. So I don’t see any objection. Any- Can I ask, who’s Peter?

44:32 Peter Schlack. But he- He runs a… Flat Rock Creative. So he’s an IT web-based developer. He’s got American- And are we- We went to him because he wrote it. Is he a volunteer? Is this his job? No, we’re paying him to get the site up and running. Okay. I feel better about asking him to do things- Oh, yeah … that way. That’s better. Yeah. Well, that’s why I introduced the grant at first. We have more than enough money in the grant to be able to pay, certainly not a legitimate wage. Yeah. But, it’s an honorific, but he’s happy, and he knows that we respect what he’s doing because even the young amongst us probably couldn’t do it without. Okay. I just want to say, he grew up in Marblehead, and he’s done a lot for the town that people aren’t aware of. And he’s a very person that’s easy to get along with, so I hope you use his talent because he’s very talented. Yeah. We’ve all seen stuff that he’s designed. Yeah. Every time you come into Marblehead, you know the little Marblehead bulletin board? Peter did that. Yeah. And his last name’s Schacht. Schacht? Schacht. There’s an L in there. Like shock and awe? No, it makes sense. Yeah. It’s marble- Okay Yeah. All right. Anyway. Okay. So that’s Marblehead Cares. Maybe if we can find

46:06 an information curator, someone who can look at the literature… I happened to listen to Boston Public Radio show on PBS Radio, Public Radio in the morning. And they bring in, I think her name is Catherine Gergen Barnett from Boston Medical Center. She gives some of the best explanations of what’s going on in the public health and primary care world. And I send some of them to my colleagues. But we could get maybe somebody who would be interested making that kind of collection, making them visible. We certainly would want to put all of the things that Amanda does, the report on tick-based diseases that we did, those kind of things. There should be a certain space for that. Do we keep it for a year or whatever? Okay. And Peter, that’s piece of cake for him. It’s just automatic. When you’re with someone who you know really knows at three levels below where you’re talking, you feel comfortable. And that’s where he is. He’s a down to earth person. Yeah. Yeah. Just since this is not a social media page, you could maybe do it where you update the website

47:37 once a week, and so if anybody from the Board of Health wants to put something on the website, it has to be submitted by, if you guys pick Tuesday, it has to be submitted by Thursday morning so that somebody can review it Thursday, Friday, or Monday, and then it goes updated Tuesday at 3:00. Does that cover us? Something like that. That kind of thing covers us? We would have to take a look at like what’s- Yeah. Just- Again, we’d have to figure out who’s actually posting it to the website. There’s some things that we need to figure out before we can agree to any kind of schedules. Okay. Yeah. Move on? All right. Finally, we talked last time about an idea that I had after we invited the district’s attorney to one of these meetings to why don’t we just repeal the not very often used and very weak Marblehead bylaws? The chief of police is opposed to that. He has a good argument. The Marblehead Counseling Center invited Dennis and me And a couple of other people to a meeting on Friday, and it was great. We all agreed that the key issue is that people don’t know that social hosting is such a big problem. They clearly don’t know why that, again, kids who drink before they’re 21 are going to have,

49:09 on a statistical basis, less gray and white matter than kids who don’t drink. And so those sorts of things. Marblehead Counseling Center wants to be involved. I think that we can put together a group of people that are very interested in substance use of youth, and we have an article in the town meeting, whether it be just to modify what we have or to repeal it or whatever. If we can get everybody in town or everybody who goes at least to the town meeting to be thinking about substance use for youth, we have made progress. And so I think I mentioned that Dennis knew that Julie was an attorney and was going to call him, and I- I have a meeting scheduled with him this week … So we’ll be hearing. And he really wasn’t on a list. “Oh yeah, I got to talk to Tom.” But he was interested in talking to a doc with a legal background. So I think that this will go very well. So that’s the other information thing that I have. And that’s all around social host? Sorry? It’s all around social host. Well, that’s where it started. Okay. So-

50:40 Just for one minute, the grant that we had that went into CHIT, and I looked back to that funding source. That funding source was supposed to be $20 million, and they expected to give 20 grants with an application pool of 80. It ended up being $4 million, and they had an application pool of 182. So the fact that we didn’t get it was no surprise to anybody, but we ought to try to build a consortium- A coalition … a group of like-minded people to try to work on, I think it’s similar to work that you’ve done about the, it used to be SAMHSA, but it’s now CDC- Drug-free communities … Yeah, drug-free community. What would it take to make Marblehead safe from drugs for all of our youth? There are barriers. There are transportation barriers. There are probably economic barriers. There are all sorts of things. And that grant was asking for funding to look at the barriers with a 10-member coalition to look at the barriers. And we can do that without the money that was in that grant if we get people interested. So I think this going to town meeting just to have a discussion of it one way or the other through some

52:13 article could be the beginning of that. Okay? All right. Unless there are any questions or comments about mine, we will move on to the associate chair for community health. Oh, no. Before I introduce her.

52:40 Dr. Gergen Barnett on last week, she’s primary care at Boston Medical. The governor has apparently just signed an executive order requiring insurance companies that do business in Massachusetts to move their funding from a miserable 6% of all of their funding to primary care to at least 10% by some dates. And I don’t want to embarrass Amanda at all, but I can tell you, my practice was at the other end of that stick. I was an ICU doc. By the time a kid got to the ICU, four or five pairs of eyes like Amanda saw that baby and knew the baby was sick. So all I had to do was to try to keep the baby alive till some of the smart people got in in the morning. Amanda’s primary care, the primary care pediatrician sees 100 babies a day, and 95 of them are going to be fine. Probably 99 of them are going to be fine. They have to have the sensitivity, they have to have the multilevel and analytical capacity to

54:13 judge the parent, to judge the baby, to judge what’s going on in the environment, to make the decision about who goes to the next level of care or not. And to invest in a couple of percent of the funding we have in the state, to invest more of that in primary care. I absolutely know I could never do primary care, because I’m too much of an ADHD type guy. I was good at some things in the ICU, but that was not one of them. So I think that if you hear about that, you should support it. We should all encourage our representatives to support that approach. I couldn’t find it today, but I remember a paper that showed, I think it was diabetic. They randomized diabetics into three levels of care, one primary care doc, one an internist, and one a subspecialist endocrinologist. The outcomes were not very different for the not terribly sick people, and the primary care doc was a whole

55:45 lot cheaper than the subspecialist endocrinologist. It was an old paper, maybe not valid, but I think instinctively, the primary care people who know their patients and get to know them well, they are the friends of public health. They are the people who are going to be, as Amanda shows us every time we meet, they are going to take the public health science, the biological science, and apply it to the community as a whole. And so, I would like the allowance, even though Andrew tells me I’m not allowed to be political up here, I would like to talk about medical economics every so often about issues like that, because that’s where I live, and especially now that we have a public health nurse who speaks the same language, we should be able to provide some interesting things for you. Mm-hmm. Okay. So now, please. Okay. Thank you for that wonderful introduction. So, just a few updates. So rates of COVID are still low, but they’re rising, possibly because it’s been a while since most people have been sick or have gotten vaccinated. But the good thing is, every summer that passes, the severity seems to go down, but it is still with us. So, just a reminder to people over 65,

57:18 they should get two shots a year. So if you haven’t gotten your spring vaccine yet, you should do that, and then there will be a new ‘26, ‘27 vaccine coming out likely later this month. Cyclospora test positivity has been slowing, which is a great sign. And although there have been, I think it’s been about 147 cases in Massachusetts, that’s not more than what we typically have, so we certainly haven’t seen a spike in cases here. And it does seem like that it’s still the lettuce as the culprit. And unfortunately, two people in Michigan have passed away. They were immunocompromised and it was likely from dehydration impacting their underlying conditions. And then, we’re in peak West Nile virus season, and there are more infections this year than in prior years. You still want to take precautions, using bug protective, EPA-approved sprays and not staying out late at night, no standing water. But I will be having more in-depth updates about, I want to be talking about as we get into the school year, school vaccination rates in all of our elementary schools, as well as flu vaccine, and then soon COVID vaccine updates coming soon. I’d love feedback if anyone would like to hear about certain topics during our meetings.

58:45 Any comments? Things that you’d like to hear in the community health perspective? I’ll just ask about the flu. Is the oral vaccine still going to be available plus this new one? Did you say oral or old vaccine? No, they just came up with a new one and I’ve been hearing some things. I normally always get it, but what I heard today, I wouldn’t go get the new one. Why, because it’s mRNA? Is the one that I got last year going to be available? Well, there’s the mRNA vaccine. The new one is for 65, but they recommend, I’m 66, so they’re going to recommend the new one. I think there should still likely be the typical high-dose flu vaccine. Is I would prefer to have one- But I will let you know … I’ve heard. I think that new one just got- Not being satisfied. It seems like this new one, what they were saying, was rushed through when it was approved, and there’s something in there that was in the COVID thing. And I’m- It’s using the same technology … I don’t know if it’s true or not true, but I have had no issues with the ones I received in the past. Mm-hmm. So I just want to know. So like, if I go to a place, I can say, because I don’t know what the one was called that I had last year. I normally have it done every year. Yeah. So I think that the high-dose flu will still be available- Okay … I would suspect. But that’s a great thing to bring up, is the new mRNA vaccine

1:00:16 and talk about it. I’ll certainly look into it more and talk about it next time. Okay. Because I just don’t want people to recommend it unless we really know. We just had a hearing on the COVID thing, and some things are coming out. I don’t know if they’re true or not true. Mm-hmm. But one thing that they were recommending it for pregnant people, and now I hear, I don’t know if it’s true or not, there’s knowledge that it could affect. So I’ve received that. Well, the COVID vaccine, it’s still highly recommended in pregnant women, and it has not been shown to affect either the mother or the baby. Well, at one time, what I’m saying to you is when the government was telling us to get it They knew something that they told pregnant people to get it, and that they claim over the last few days that they knew things that it could cause them to have issues. So I’m a little concerned about that. I haven’t heard anything about that, and do you know what your source was where you’ve heard this information? Well, I just heard it on the news. Ah, okay. So I don’t know if it’s true or not true. Yeah. But again, I sort of get a little leery. Like I said- Maybe sometime we’ll take five minutes- Right … talk about mRNA. Yeah. Fair. There’ve already been two Nobel Prizes on this whole technology. It’s absolutely amazing. But anyway. I also think that really educating people on getting the news source and getting the whole story.

1:01:47 I came in at the end of an NPR piece on the new COVID vaccine that’s coming out, and I walked into CVS and I was like, “Hey, when are you going to have the mRNA?” And they were like, “Oh, not till fall. Not for a while still.” But I had heard enough, right? But I didn’t hear the whole story, and obviously I got confused, and I’m a pretty educated consumer. So how do we make sure that people get good information and understand it? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that includes what we talk about, but also I think it would be helpful to post- Yeah … articles on the- Yeah … new vaccine on our website and- Yeah … maybe on social media. See, I think that that is the primary role of the Board of Health- Mm-hmm … is to educate. And show where we’re getting our information from. Help people work at being healthy themselves. Yes. Do we have any idea what our percentage of people who opt out of vaccines for their kids? Oh, for MMR? We have school vaccination data. Yeah, we have school vaccination data. It’s very high. Last year we were at least 96%- Right … which is for herd immunity in all of our schools. Yeah. So I’ll talk to the, um- So we are the highest in the region. Mm-hmm. But we still always have to do education on it. But it still has been falling. Okay. I think that’s all I have. Great. All right.

1:03:17 Sneak peak. I know I’m complaining- Quick … and you’re talking about the barrels all of a sudden. No, no, no. Welcome. Quick bills. A1 Exterminators for rat control at the transfer station, 985 bucks. Amazon Capital Services for other disposal needs, $411.81 cents. AT&T for internet access, $65.98. Black Earth Compost for residential food composting, $1018.88. Bonsai Logic for the license plate reader, 7,500. FNS Hardware for miscellaneous building repair and maintenance, $21.56. Home Depot for area maintenance supplies, $49.96. Marblehead Light Department for electricity, $1,621.79. Michelle Simmons, recovery coach training. Okay. Uh, $4,541. Relevant Systems, they provide food service inspection software, $2,640. And Stericycle, the pickup of the sharps collection for medical waste, $712.75. And WB Mason for just office supplies, $157.66. What’s the residential composting? Black Earth. But like- So up at the transfer station- The bins … we have multiple bins. Yeah. Okay. Yep. That’s… So that’s the collection service by them. Director’s report. So last meeting I handed everybody a

1:04:51 copy of the draft regulations for kratom. If everybody’s satisfied, we can move forward with that. So what will happen is that I will send those over to our legal department. They will collate it, and bring it, fold it into our tobacco control regulations. Once I have it back from them, I will notify the board, and then we’ll post a hearing for that. I have to post a hearing two weeks out, so we’ll make sure that aligns with one of our meetings. But I do want to make sure, is the board ready to move forward with this? So yeah, I would take a… It doesn’t have to be a motion, but is the board ready to move forward with this? Yeah. Yeah. So I will send this off. No objection. No objection. Send that off to legal and have them fold that into our tobacco control regulations. Yeah. Like I said, I’ve got a couple of- Yep. Yep … I’m happy to shoot that to you later. Yeah, you can shoot that to me. Yep. Curbside collection documents. So last time we talked about warnings. Yes, there are warnings on the barrels and stuff like that, but we talked about safely moving your cart. Important, close the lid before moving the cart. But we have put together a document that kind of addresses this. We will be posting this on our website. It will be with all the other curbside collection program information. It talks about how to put out your trash barrel, how all trash has to be in a trash bag inside the barrel. It talks about recycling. Recycling should be put in your barrel loose.

1:06:21 But yes, all these documents will be posted there. But yes, we will have that one page for the warning to talk about moving your cart safely, making sure that the lid is closed before moving that cart, and stuff like that. And all that will be in the Board of Health subcategory of Marblehead Cares. Yes. We can connect everything to all of that. Yes, exactly. Emergency preparedness. So Marblehead Health Department is part of a coalition on the North Shore. We’re actually called 3D. We are a part of 15 communities on the North Shore, where we work on public health emergency preparedness on a regular basis. We receive a large grant from CDC, the US government, on an annual basis that funds employees and helps us To make sure that we are prepared. Again, we are looking at mass vaccinations, but we want to remind everybody about other emergencies that everybody should be preparing for. So, it is coming up on hurricane season. Technically, it is hurricane season. So we will be posting a lot of information from ready.gov about what you should do to protect yourself from a hurricane. Know your evacuation routes. Again, this is all things that you should be having a household conversation, just thinking everything through. Everybody really should have an emergency plan for just a basic fire in their house. If there’s a fire and we have to evacuate, where are you going

1:07:55 to meet? Do you have a meeting point? Do you have that established with your little kids? That should all be well-established before the emergency happens. Does everybody have emergency contact? Yes, everyone calls 911 in an emergency, but what other contacts do you need to make? So just some reminders about that. Again, we’ll be posting a lot of this stuff on the website. Ready.gov goes through a whole list of different emergencies. So a lot of times we think about them seasonally. Right now, we’re in the summer. You could be having a heat stroke or a high temp concern about, would technically be considered an emergency. It could be a water break. It could be any of these little things that you need to have a thought about what you’re going to do at your house. The other thing that came up recently was air quality. And again, we’ve had an air quality event in the last couple of years. Again, we’re not recreating the wheel, but we want to make sure that there is information out there that people can go to on a regular basis, that’s easily accessible to them, and they can understand what we’re talking about. For air quality and particulate pollution, we recommend the website purpleair.com. And it goes through all the different concerns, from the very basic that you have good air, to moderate air, all the way down to hazard, and explains all the different steps, what you should do. It even gets into outdoor activity guidance for schools. So all this stuff will be posted on the website.

1:09:27 Again, we’re not recreating the wheel. This has all been put together by the EPA. But when these events come up, we are going to be referencing all this information. But again, there’s other things that can be on the ready.gov. You should be prepared for a snow emergency. I used to live in Colorado. We lived out in the middle of nowhere, so you had to keep a sleeping bag in your car in the case you got stranded on the side of the road. These are the things that everybody should be thinking about. If we do lose power for a long time here, yes, we have a really good power company, and usually we’re only out for a couple hours, but what is your backup? Is there a storm event? Is there a sump pump running? Are you going to have a flood in your basement if your sump pump turns off? These are all the things that we want to make sure everybody has thought through. So we’ll be posting a lot of information about that. Transfer station tour. Yep. About emergency things. Yeah. Could you walk through, we have a town email, or a board email system, but you have to sign up for it. Yeah. So it used to be called Code Red. Now it’s called Regroup. But the way it works is that you have to be proactive. You have to say, “I want to be part of this system.” You have to go onto the town website, go into Regroup, and choose to get the reverse 911 call. And where would that be on the- That’s on the very bottom of the page. Okay. Again, there’s other aspects of the website.

1:10:57 We want you to sign up for our list serve. You can sign up for Board of Health information. Anytime there’s a beach closure, a trash issue, a delay, we can push all this information out to you quickly if you have signed up for this stuff. So we want to make sure that everybody signs up for the information they want, but yes. The new company is called Regroup. We need everybody to re-sign up for all your 911 or reverse- Wonder if it’s worth posting that on the Marblehead Cares site as well- Yes … just for another entry point. Correct. Yep. So yeah, we want to try to capture everybody anywhere they’re there to say, “Hey, please remember to get notifications regarding different issues.” And the last piece, yeah, transfer station tour. So we did want to set up a board transfer station tour. My recommendation is either first thing in the morning, some of us are up there at 7:00 in the morning. It is not as busy, so we can walk around. We can take as long as we want. You guys can ask questions, kind of show and tell. Or it can be towards the end of the day. 3:00 is another great time. We can do it during lunch. Obviously, the facility is closed during lunch. But yes, this is something that we’ve wanted to do. And so we need to schedule this. Cool. And again, I can send out an email, and we can figure out a time and a place to do it, or a time and date to do it. I would just recommend, I would wait for this, and I heard it was on the agenda.

1:12:28 I would like to have it before you have a regular meeting, for the fact is that people that work from out of town, if they’re interested, there’s things available out there that I didn’t even know, recently I’ve been able to see, that change things. So, if you want the public’s input, plus I think you should be proud of what’s happened out there. And when you try to go up there on a Saturday or something like that, it’s a zoo. You’re lucky you don’t get hit out there. So if you want people to look around, it would be a lot safer. And I thought we were going to do it during the warmer weather, not when it’s 100, but before a meeting. And then you can have your meeting wherever you want afterwards. Wait, is this a tour for the board or for the town? No, for the taxpayers to show- Is that what it is? The tour is for the board. But we can talk- Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. The tour is for the board. But yeah. But we can talk about tours for- Here we go. I’m down with what you’re saying. Yeah. I just don’t want to get confused here. No, it’s a good idea. Well, it’s not- A good idea … listed as a public meeting. Good idea. No, it’s a- It’s a different– Let’s not make it- No, it’s a good idea. I just didn’t want to confuse it. Oh. Yeah. You can do a site visit but no- You can go out to the site more, the public, to show what the final- Yeah … completion was of it. You know, you okayed the mines and you’ve always been doing something. Yep. So I’d like the public to see it, but if you try to go up there on the weekend, if you just try to back out of a spot or cross- Right. Yeah … from the s- it’s really a dangerous up there. Yeah. So on a Saturday, our estimated high traffic flow is

1:14:01 1,400 cars, on a Saturday. Our regular weekly traffic- 6,000. Yeah. Our regular weekly traffic is about 1,000 cars a day, too. Yeah. Yeah. Appreciate it. Is it possible to have a public tour? Yeah, we would have to figure out time and the number of people going. Again, that’s going to dictate when we do it. But yes, we could definitely have a public tour up there. It might not be able to be predictable, so you might just set it, we have room for 40 people, first 40 to sign up, because we can’t estimate who’s going to show up. But I think he’s right. I’ve learned a lot in my time in the dump transfer station in the last two months, and I’ve been telling a lot of people, “Did you know? Did you know?” And I think you want to share the information. Correct. So can you plan that in the warm weather before winter? Oh yeah, we can definitely plan it before winter. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Super. That would be something on a Sunday. Not on a Saturday. Yeah, probably something on a Sunday. We’ll try to figure something out where it’s not during the work week. Something where we can grab more people. Yeah. Thank you. Yep. That’s everything I have. All right. Public comment. Steve. A couple of things. I want- If you want to just come up to the mic so people- Is there anybody online? Hmm. Yeah, Steve- Oh yeah, there’s– I don’t have anybody raised hands, but- I don’t think there’s anybody there. There isn’t, yeah. Something might be good for a public tour.

1:15:33 Get James Moroney to go up there. Yes. He did one, a brief one, for the swap shed, but the real thing for the swap should have been closing it up. That’s when you need all the extra help. That would be good. I’m sure he’d be available. I’m sure we could- He’s getting married in about a month, so maybe not for a little bit, but- Well, yeah, I think that’s a great idea to work with him to put something online so the people that can’t come on the tour can also see it on NBC. I had a couple of questions. The new small dumpster up by the big pit. Yes. I presume that’s for small things that you don’t want to weigh, like a chair or something that we had talked about in the past? Correct. Are you going to have signage someplace saying, a bureau 20 bucks or whatever? So yeah, there will be a sign by the attendance booth. When you pull in, there’ll be a sign there. I know it’s a work in progress. Yeah. That’s something like that. With the cost for the single items. You’ll have to get a receipt and then be able to dump that in the dumpster up there. Okay. Are you having a game plan for picking up– On my walk all the time, I see a lot of barrels that people evidently didn’t read the directions, don’t pay attention to the paper, don’t know what they’re supposed to do with them, and they’re upside down on the sidewalk blocking things. At some point, somebody’s going to go get those, I presume. Correct. So we have another round of barrels coming in in a couple weeks. The little ones, yeah. Yep, so with that, and also any kind of collection that needs to be made. Right. So we have all the email addresses of all the residents that have requested those. So we’ll be sending out an email to them prior to the exchange,

1:17:06 because what we really need to have happen is that, “I want a smaller set. I need to put my bigger set curbside,” and the exchange will take place. Or if you opted out and you still have barrels that need to be collected, they can do that at the same time. Okay. Nope. Couple of things else. I presume we’re going to do a wellness fair again next year. I hope so. It’s super popular. I want to try to– And anyone can brainstorm ideas to make it different. I don’t know. Because you get a little fatigue if it’s the same thing every time. So, I’m going to be talking to someone this week about his ideas on it, but if anyone on the board has any ideas. It’s very popular from– I’ve gone. Yeah. No, I just– Yeah. I want to try to make it a little- I just wanted to make sure, I hadn’t heard anything about it … just tweak it a little to maybe add- It could’ve been in the meet and I missed, so. No, I think it’s a really good event. And so it’s kind of a show and tell event, too. Yeah. It’s a way all the residents can see what the businesses are also offering in town. Mm-hmm. So, again, you might have a busy life. You’re not able to walk around town or understand everything that’s offered. It’s a great opportunity for people to come to one location, and they can see all the different things that are offered for wellness in Marblehead. Okay, and the last two things. I know with Barbara’s help and other people, over 2,500 of the barrels that people no longer wanted have been repurposed. And if you figure those weigh somewhere’s 20 to 30 pounds a piece, that’s 25, 35 tons that we did not pay-

1:18:38 Correct … to have hauled away, which is a pretty good thing. Great. And sadly, the thing I noticed the most about that is people were taking big time advantage of the employees up there, because they can’t be every place, dumping TVs in their barrel, all sorts of crap. It was just very discouraging to see that, but it worked out really very well. Yeah. And the people, I took over 500 of them over to Peabody, and I could hardly get them off my truck, and people were so glad to get them and thankful for. Okay, the last thing I’m interested, are our meetings going to regularly be here now on Mondays, or is this we have to check every week? No. So we are trying– So again, there’s going to be some construction that starts at the Mary Alley- Right … in our meeting space. So we’re going to have to move out of there. That was going to be in September. There was a meeting out there tonight of the Fin Com. We’re going to try to just move here on a regular basis. Okay All right. I like the parking up there personally, but this is easy to walk to. Thank you. Oops, excuse me. Hi, everybody. Barbara Roy. Glad to be here in person, and a couple questions. Four or five. That’s all. So the Board of Health, the town website shows the Board of Health page with meetings scheduled on Tuesdays at 7:30. I showed it to him. He’s going to fix it. You what? I already showed what you shared with me to Andrew. I want it public. It’s recorded. This meeting’s recorded, correct? Yeah. So I want it public, and I want it

1:20:10 so that people can follow up and say, “Has that been done?” Accountability, accessibility, transparency. So, I just want it on record, the town website shows the meetings on Tuesdays at 7:30. So Andrew, will you be posting the correct website or have somebody do that? Yes. Okay. I will take a look at that. And again, we don’t have somebody in our office that’s assigned to that- Okay … so we have to work with other town departments to get that done. Yep. Excellent. And, I was able to work with somebody from the town department, and Thatcher is his name, who’s the town administrator. So the emergency number people were trying to sign up for it and there was a glitch, and I as a concerned citizen, volunteered my time and called Thatcher, emailed him saying, “There’s a glitch. You guys want to fix this.” And somebody did. Joanne helped me in your office, because I called the number. It’s really difficult for me to find information on how to contact you people. That’s one of my sites. So the website, the healthtoo@marbleheadmass.gov is the email. So that’s one email, yes. Yes. It’s one email. And, I had a really hard time finding it. I found it on a document about the trash barrels. It’s not right there on the Board of Health website. I’m thinking for accessibility, for people wanting to contact you, that would be one thing.

1:21:41 Could you add that to the website? So I believe it’s there, but I’ll have to take a look to see where it is. Okay. Please take a look, because under contacts, it’s not there. Also, I would like to recommend that there be emails for the board members. You could have a Marblehead mass email to be accessible. I know I’ve contacted Tom McMahon, but he has said that he will not communicate with me other than in this meeting, and I hope that we can work that out at some point. Barbara, you were pushing a little too hard and we were disagreeing, and I told you to bring it here. But I respond to every single email that’s ever been sent to me. Okay. So let’s- So excuse me, let me finish. I have records of you saying that you wouldn’t communicate with me until I was here. Yeah. And so I’m hoping that we can iron that out. I didn’t start that way. You know that. We had a back and forth. It’s true. You can make your case, but I’m just putting my thing out here. Let’s get to the positive- I’d like to have accessibility … here. I’d like to have accessibility. Yeah. Absolutely. I’ve been trying to set up a Marblehead email for myself, because I don’t want to use Gmail. Anything that happens in my capacity as a board member should be public information, and you should be able to get me. I’m in the process, and the person who handles that wasn’t in today. I don’t know if she’s on vacation or what, but we’re working on it. And I agree with you, that’s the appropriate way to do it.

1:23:13 Excellent, because on the website, it just says, Tom, it says the board members, but no your health department phone number. So that’ll be a great start. I appreciate that. Just a couple other things. May I follow up? So I have- May I follow up? Yes, please. If you go to the school committee, each one of the school committee members is listed, and they have their .gov email address right there. Beautiful. That’s our goal, I think, of all five of us. Right. I’m working on it. Beautiful. Thanks. I’m glad I brought it so I could get an update on that. We’ve been trying. It’s just- One more thing. I understand from being on Zoom, I hear this meeting is being recorded. Are these meetings recorded? Yes. And for what purpose? To capture this, and so anybody can watch it at any future time. Can I access those recordings? Yes. Yep. How would I learn about how to access them? So generally, you would email us, and we can give you access to them. Shouldn’t there be on the website that people have accessibility to these things? Again, we are in the process of, you know. They are on Marblehead TV. They are? They are. Yeah. Yeah. Marblehead TV? Marblehead TV. Marblehead TV. One at a time. I’m deaf. I’m literally deaf. On Marblehead TV, I could get you the exact website, but all of the past meetings from all departments are available to view. On Marblehead TV? They’re only recorded once. So it’s like school committee, select board, Board of Health. There any other ones? I, yeah. And then it’s like random stuff. I think it’s MHTV. Okay. Just let me finish for a second.

1:24:43 So I only find on the Board of Health page agendas, no minutes. For me to get people interested in coming to the Board of Health, I need to be able to tell them what you guys have been working on, what you’ve been talking about. And I can’t hear you, honestly. I’m completely deaf in this ear. Half deaf in this ear. My hearing aid broke last night. I really like being on Zoom because I can hear it better, but I came because I couldn’t hear you. And so, I would love to have access to the minutes. Are there ever any written minutes of these meetings? Yep, so we have old minutes. We’re working on catching up from the last, I think, couple months. But yes, there are written minutes. And so- Would those be accessible on the Marblehead Board of Health page? Again- Along with the agendas? Again, you just request the dates and stuff like that. So it’s on request only? Yes. At this point, yes. We will be moving forward to post them all on the website Again, we don’t have anybody in our office. I understand that. But I wanted it on record that that’s your aim, your goal. That is our goal. Yep. Because if you want public participation, you’ve got to give them something. All right. And so the last one is where can I see the finances that Tom reads out? I heard you say something last week, last month, or whatever, the last meeting, and I wanted to follow up on it, but I don’t know where to find those month- That’s all through the finance department, and so they’ll give you access. So there is a website that shows you open gov.

1:26:13 Okay. All right. I appreciate your time. Did anybody have any questions for me? Tom’s report is in finances. It’s what we’ve spent in the last month. That’s correct. It doesn’t talk about big budgets and all that. That’s right. I wanted to know what the monthly expense was. There was something about mental health, the Marblehead Counseling Center last month, or the last time you read it, and I was curious. I’m just a concerned citizen. I have a right to ask questions about anything, and it just happens that I’m curious. These are all outgoing, so there are some incoming that cover a lot of these. So it’s not all like… I don’t know which one I could say like- Any budget. Yeah. So it’s just one side of it. That’s all. Okay. I look forward to getting more information from you and seeing you again. Thanks. I just have one question. I read in the Salem News recently that the Salem Board of Health, there was a store selling cigarettes for five or six years that didn’t have a permit, so they lost the revenue. I’m just wondering, do businesses in town actually pay a fee to sell cigarettes? Yes. I assume they do. Two questions. Can that be happening in Marblehead? Because it’s happening in Salem, five years according to the paper, so I don’t know if it’s true or not. So we work with a tobacco control agent. They do walk around and go to the establishments. But somebody has to go in, and there can be an establishment that we are unaware of that is selling tobacco. Okay. And I just hope, while we don’t have much money,

1:27:48 and I’m just curious, when’s the last time we’ve gone up on these fees? Because I’ve never heard anyone- I would have to take a look at the last set of regulations where we increased the fees for tobacco. Is it something regulated through the state, or can towns do- No, we have our own tobacco regulations where we set fees and stuff like that. Because I think if you want wellness, I have a feeling that some places are basically trying to get out of the cigarette business. And I’m just wondering, what I’d like to know what we’re actually collecting on revenue, and if it’s worth it to bypass the revenue, or are we getting substantial money from it and not recommend it. Let them go out of town to get cigarettes because it’s a very bad habit for not just the people that smoke it, the secondhand smoke part of it. And you were in the health field. I worked at the Mary Ellen and took dead bodies out at one time, and it’s not a pleasant situation to die of lung cancer. So I think in this day and age, if we want wellness, we should look at that. Thank you. I just wanted to answer Barbara’s question. So Dr. Tom Kruger comes to some of our meetings, and he’s with the League of Women Voters, Tom Kruger, and he writes minutes for us. They’re called the Observer Reports. That’s in addition to the minutes that we take. Yes. So it’s the League of Women Voters of Marblehead, and you can go through and see all of our meetings, and it’s from June- At the League of Women Voters. I have that- League of Women- … website. Yes. Okay. And Observer Reports. And then- Maybe I can get your email before I leave- Sure … and follow up with you. Yes. Happy to. And then

1:29:19 for it’s Marblehead TV. You go to On Demand, and then you can watch all of the meetings. Good information. Thank you. Well, also in the past couple of months, by Friday, maybe before Friday, they will have tonight’s meeting on, I’ll get an email saying the Board of Health meeting is on Marblehead TV available. It doesn’t take them long to post it at all. Thank you. No, we provide the copy to them tomorrow, and then they’ll begin to post it. Who knew? Yeah, because I go and look at it, see if I really sounded foolish, just to make sure how often I sound foolish in any one of the meetings. Okay. No one from the outside have hands. How many people do we have on? There are seven people. Oh, well, that’s good. Okay. Hopefully decent meeting. Everybody thought we made some progress, and we’ll continue to try to be efficient and transparent and all of those good things. Move to adjourn. Oh, I did just want to talk about our next meeting. Yeah. Go on vacation that week. I want to see if you all can do the 31st. I don’t know if that’s possible. If not, you can meet without me and still work. Yeah. I would say that we want to stick to our meeting schedule. Okay. The second and the fourth, and just keep it that way, and that way everybody knows

1:30:51 this is when we are meeting. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. Okay. Well, then I will postpone Peter to the first meeting in September because I would like all five board members to be here when Peter talks about Marblehead Care. 24th. 24th? Yep. Is next, August 24th, Monday. Yeah. Do you have a motion? So you’re away on the 24th? Yeah. Yeah. So the next one after that will be September 14th. Yep. Well, or we can get you, we can come visit Peter with me some morning maybe. Yeah. Can I ask one more? How much does the- How much does a ton of garbage cost for us to dispose of? I’d have to double-check. We’re just moving into a new contract. I want to say it’s about $116. Sixteen? Yeah, that includes transportation and everything. So it goes up. It’s $116. But yeah. That’s pretty good. $2,500. So that’s 40 tons that we move in a trailer and stuff like that is the other thing to think about it, yeah. That’s pretty good. Yeah, it’s really good. Give it to the community. Correct. Yeah. You guys should be celebrating all the community members that pitched in. Not just me, but everybody that pitched in, and your workers were really

1:32:22 cooperative, and I appreciate the space that you allowed us or you didn’t give us, but you allowed us. You didn’t take it away.

1:32:38 I just need a motion to adjourn. So there’s been also, we haven’t decided on meeting times. Did we all agree that we’re going to stay on the second and fourth, or are we going to try to adjust your schedule? I’m amenable to adjusting to because- So I can’t guarantee the space. That’s the only thing. Yeah. I have to go into a bigger pool. So that’s fine, we can play that game, but there’s a lot of competition in this room. Yeah. Then we have to meet in a town meeting, right? Correct. And in order to have- Zoom capabilities. Yep … the web and all that, we have to be. Yep. Okay, so when Mary Allen closes, we better book this well in advance and stay on this. So when does the Mary Allen close down? September. Oh, so we could do one meeting that is on a Tuesday, right? Yeah, again, it’s not going to be here. Right. Could you use the community room up at the community center? I’m not sure what they have for- Or next door open, I know they have some- Yeah, I don’t know what they have for Zoom capabilities and stuff like that either. What about the library? I don’t know what they have for Zoom capabilities either, or like- They have phenomenal Zoom capabilities … and then paying for room space and people keeping it open and stuff like that, it gets complicated. General Health Task Force met there- Okay … several nights.

1:34:11 League of Women Voters meets in the library, and it’s just like this. Okay. Well, okay. Do we want to move our next meeting, or will our next meeting be on the 24th of August?

1:34:32 Well, I’m willing to move it to, what, Tuesday? No, I’m away that whole week. Oh, the whole week. I see. You would be the 31st. I see. God bless. Yeah. Can you Zoom from where you are? Appreciate it. Mm-hmm. You got five people on the board now. She can take a break. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll take a break. I think that’s what we have to do. I will miss you. I’ll have a beefier report for the next session. I’ll have lots to talk about. Your mother would be- You should get away from the stress from your practice on this. Yeah. I’d like to. And then when you come back- No, I know … we can get talking about the barrels again, so it’s good. Yeah. Sounds like a plan. I think talking about the barrels bothers me more than anyone. You took the job. I joined the Board of Health to try to make public health equal to waste and transfer station, and haven’t gotten there yet in two years. Okay. Board of Health, we are moving to adjourn. Rising motion of adjournment. Thank you very much for an enjoyable meeting. It’s good when people are smiling and not arguing with each other.