Board of Health: September 28, 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 So, it’s seven minutes after 7:00, and the Marblehead Board of Health is opening its regular meeting. And tonight we have a guest from the Marblehead Association- Trustees … with trustees of the Marblehead Association of Health Boards. And he has been working for the past 20 minutes working to get the Zoom and everything ready, and we’re ready to go. I need just two more minutes because I’ve got to get back onto Zoom. Okay. Well, let me then make one announcement. I’m happy to report that we have seven families, or seven couples signed up for parenting class that starts on Thursday. Yay. So given it’s new, and given we didn’t have a lot of advanced publicity, we have 160 babies born in Marblehead every year. Recording. If we do this class four times or five times and can get seven to 10 each time, we’ll have covered a third or so of the babies born in Marblehead. So it’s exciting and

1:32 I’m very pleased the way it’s going. The Marblehead Parenting Group is great to work with, and they’ll be exceptional coaches when the new parents, about to be parents, start taking their class. Ready now, Michael? I think so. Let’s see what happens. Okay. Michael is the Director of Strategies and Government Relations of the Massachusetts Association of Health Boards. We’re happy to have him here tonight to give us an overview of, since we’re a new five-member board, we know that the three-member board was really limited in its ability to communicate, because open meeting law as a quorum was then two. But now that we have some ability to talk to each other, with five members, it’s great that we have Michael here to tell us our responsibilities, our authority, and how we can best work with our community to optimize public health in this environment.

3:04 Thank you very much, and it’s a pleasure to be here. I will start out by just saying this is our standard disclaimer, that nothing that I’m going to be doing tonight or talking to you about tonight is intended to be legal advice. I’m here for legal education and for just general board of health education, and if you have any legal questions, you should take those to your town counsel. We don’t have any attorney-client relationships at MAHB. So that said, MAHB is a not-for-profit corporation membership association. We were started in 1982 by the Conservation Law Foundation because they were getting a lot of calls from boards of health asking questions they didn’t know what to do with, so they decided, let’s start an organization that could do that. And that’s where we came from. We’re no longer affiliated with them at all, but we do provide legal education, technical assistance, and trainings like the one tonight to boards of health. I will tell you that in a typical week, I will appear in front of at least one, sometimes three, sometimes four boards in a week doing what I’m doing tonight. We also offer, in the spring, regionalized trainings where I think the closest one to here would be probably the one we did in Danvers last year. But we do the western part of the state, the central part of the state, southern part of the state, and now as of last year, we started adding the

4:35 eastern part of the state. And those are in March, April, and May, depending on hotel availability for us to have our functions. So this is our agenda for tonight. We’re going to talk about board of health authority. We’re going to talk about open meeting law, public records, and then Marblehead-specific issues. And we’ll do some Q&A and some discussions after that. First of all, it’s important to know that local boards of health share a lot of our jurisdiction with other boards. It’s not uncommon to see boards of health meeting with conservation commissions or even Council on Aging, and various other organizations and committees, boards, and commissions in a town and working on some projects jointly. I’m thinking about right now, I don’t know whether or not you’ve had battery energy storage system issues in your town yet, whether anybody’s proposed to do one, but when that happens, first of all let me know right away because I’ll be back. But when that happens, you’ll be working with the Conservation Commission over wetlands issues. You’ll be working with your planning board and zoning people if it happens here. It’s happening now. Okay. Well, very interesting. Okay. So let’s go back to the very beginning.

6:06 In 1797, the state legislature, they were looking around the room saying, “Well, we’ve got to do something about public health. Does anybody know anything about that?” And they all sort of shrugged. Nobody knew anything about it. And they said, “All right. Let’s stick it with the cities and towns.” Well, the towns. They didn’t have cities back then in Massachusetts anyway. So in 1799, the town of Boston had the first board of health, and the first president was Paul Revere. And that order that you’re looking at was signed by the president at the time, president of the board of health in 1779 by Paul Revere, no less. And I got that actually, I got this because I was working on an issue, 1799, I’m sorry. I was working on an issue out in Pittsfield involving the placement of a cell tower, and the board of health stepped in and said, “No, we don’t want that in that particular neighborhood.” And that started some litigation. And the lawyer that represented the people in Pittsfield after the board of health rescinded its order, to make a long story short, was a guy by the name of Paul Revere. And he was telling me, I was on the phone with him. He’s an attorney in Centerville on the Cape, and he had this case out in Pittsfield, and he said, “You know, my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was the first president.” So this was actually on his wall, and he made a photocopy of it, or a photograph of it, and

7:38 sent it to me. So that’s really the first, we’re in a very historic looking room here. So that’s really the very first board of health order in the world because there were no other boards of health anywhere else at that time. But by the legislature saying, “Let’s shift this to the cities and towns,” it was more than just being lazy and it was more than just kind of lateraling the pass to someone else. It was an abdication of their role, which created a special strength the boards of health have that no other board or commission in any town in Massachusetts or any city in Massachusetts has. When you pass a regulation, and we’re going to get into this in a second, but I’ll give you by way of preview. When you pass a regulation, that regulation has all of the power and force of a state statute. So say you and the planning board have the same issue, and I’ll give you a solid example. In the town of Oak Bluffs, which is on Martha’s Vineyard, which is a sole source aquifer, which means that, well, one of the things it means is that if you turn your faucet on and drink a glass of water, that water has at one time been under the high school football field. And the school committee wanted to put a turf field in, and the planning board said no. They said, “You can’t do that because we have to protect our water supply, and we’re not going to approve these plans.” The school

9:08 committee sued and won against the planning board. And if you read the decision, nowhere does it say anything about the board of health. It just says that the planning board- exceeded its authority, and planning boards don’t have the authority to do this. And it never mentioned board of health, and when I saw the decision, I actually called their town counsel and said, “I don’t understand why you used the planning board to do something that was a slam dunk for board of health, and you lost.” And he said, “What do you mean?” So I sent him a little memorandum of law, which he passed on to the school committee’s attorney and said to the school committee’s attorney, “Do your legal research, because according to this, if we issue an order through the board of health, you can’t win.” So the two sides got together, and they negotiated over what to do with the field. Now, that’s a perfect example of one board not staying in its own lane because the planning board never should have jumped outside of its lane, which is planning. It’s not protecting the public health like the board of health does. So

10:23 these are the main places that we get our legal authority from for boards of health. Most of what we do is under Chapter 111, and these two or three statutes that I have in here on this page, they really are the meat and potatoes of what we do. The first one is the nuisance statute, Section 122. Chapter 111, which is where most of our laws are, Section 122 says that the board of health shall. It’s not might, can do it if it feels like it. It’s you shall examine into all nuisances which may, in your opinion, be injurious to the public health and then you have an obligation to examine, destroy, remove, and protect the public health. So if it’s a nuisance, you have to take actions. If somebody comes here in front of you and, during public comment, starts talking about something that you start thinking, “That sounds like a public health nuisance to me,” the board then would take a vote on whether or not you’re going to look at it. And if you do, you can have public hearings, you can just do your own homework, you can have a discussion and determine that right at the desk, right here, on some issues. But if you have reached the conclusion that what they’re talking about is a public health nuisance, which means it could cause disease, could be injurious to the people in town in some way, then you have to take action for that citizen that stood in front of that microphone.

11:53 And then it goes even further than that with Section 143, which is noisome trades, which is not anything to do about noise candy, but that’s not what it means. It’s a trade that really creates a nuisance. So piggeries are the classic example. BESS, battery energy storage systems, that’s another example. Cell towers we thought was an example when it came to Pittsfield, but it’s federally preempted, which we’ll talk about. And so as long as you take action that’s health-based, evidence-based, and really carefully tailored after having a hearing, at that point, your order is enforceable fully. And I had mentioned a second ago about what happened in Oak Bluffs, but Oak Bluffs is just one of a string of complete total wins by boards of health. No court. I won’t say no court. I’ll say the superior court sometimes gets it wrong. And they might rule against the board of health. The judge might say, “I wouldn’t have done it that way. Here’s what I think, and here’s what should’ve happened.” That’s what superior court judges do with planning boards and with zoning and with councils on aging, on anybody who, any other board in town. That’s the way they review it. But if it’s a board of health regulation or board of health enforcement action, the board of health has never been overturned by the SJC, the Supreme Judicial Court,

13:24 or the appeals court. So you lose in superior court, you go on appeal, you don’t lose. And that’s the strength of the board of health, and that comes from the fact that the legislature way back then said, “We’re not going to do this. We’re going to leave it to the cities and towns to do it on their own.” So when we’re looking at laws, the minimum standards are federal. That’s always the most minimum is the federal law. States can make tighter regulations than the federal law. And in the case of boards of health and other boards in town, many other boards have the power to make something more restrictive than the state statute, but the board of health naturally does. It’s part of the fiber of what created boards of health is that you can take any powers, any rules in town, or any state laws, and you can make them tougher. And boards of health do that regularly. There could be some sound issues, and you look to the DEP regulation on sound, and you might want to make yours more stringent than theirs. You can do that. And the case law is that the legislature has given the boards of health the authority to make reasonable health regulations. You are considered the police power because you protect the public health, safety, and welfare. And just like the police department, just like the fire department, they are concerned with health, safety, and welfare, and so are

14:58 you. That’s what you’re all about. So you’re considered by the courts to be a police power, which gives you a higher standard of review. And then we have the issue of protecting public health at people’s individual freedoms, at the cost of their freedoms. That would be masking. That would be you can’t go to school unless you have XYZ vaccines and things of that sort. Now, interestingly, if you have a business interest at hand, the business interest has to yield to public health. The example of that is a public health nuisance case involving an asphalt company in the town of Acushnet, and this company had been working there for years and years. People started to move in around the company. They started getting sickened by the smell of the asphalt. They started getting sickened by the fact that the asphalt plant would start operations at 2:30 in the morning, and they’d start loading trucks at 5:00 in the morning, and the trucks would roll out through the neighborhood from 5:00 until all day long. And the people in the neighborhood finally went to the board of health and said, “This is a nuisance. We can’t sleep. Our kids’ grades are suffering. We’re suffering.” And the company came in as PJ Keating versus Acushnet is the case. The company came in to the board of health, and they said, “We were here first. They came to us.” And the board of health said, “It doesn’t matter to us who came first. You’re making people sick.

16:29 We’re closing you down, or we’re going to give you conditions.” Keating sued the board of health. The SJC said, “No, the board of health is completely within their rights because they have to protect public health, and the fact that people came there after you were already in operation, that doesn’t matter because people have now shown the board of health that they’re getting sick.” And it was the opinion of the board of health that they needed to take steps to protect the public health. So, I think I covered this slide already. All rational presumptions, this is an important one. All rational presumptions are made in favor of the validity. Now, what does that mean? The case Arthur D. Little. We all know Cambridge. Cheryl Sbarro, who is our executive director, as some of you know, her husband calls Cambridge the largest American adult playground. And the people of the city of Cambridge are extremely progressive overall, and they did not want Arthur D. Little coming into town. They have a facility there. They did not want their facility to be manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. Arthur D. Little wanted to do chemical and biological warfare weapons in Cambridge. I can’t think of a less likely place to try to pull that off, but they tried. And the board of health held hearings. And naturally, when you have hearings in Cambridge, in front of that board of

18:00 health, you have Harvard and MIT. You have some really scientific minds that came in. And through those hearings, it was found by the board of health that, yes, it’s less than 1% chance, that’s what the evidence showed, that anything could go wrong. And all that matters is that there’s any chance to the board of health. It’s prudent avoidance. We’re going to say no just in case that 1% or less happens. And of course, Arthur D. Little went all the way to the SJC, and the SJC says- That the courts will only strike a Board of Health regulation when the challenger proves on the record the absence of any conceivable ground upon which the regulation may be upheld. So that is the thinnest of margins, and that was what the SJC said in that case back in 1985. And by then, the SJC still had never overturned a Board of Health, and still to this day, they never have on anything where there’s been… I won’t say never, but if somebody were to say, “I want you to make a motion, please,” and somebody on the board says, “I make a motion that such and such. All in favor? Aye.” That’s not really a well-founded health regulation. That could get struck. That could be arbitrary and capricious because you didn’t think it through, you didn’t debate, you didn’t deliberate, you didn’t have any evidence in front of you. You just did it on somebody say-so. And, in fact, in the cell tower case, there was a lot of questioning by the

19:35 SJC about the fact that the mayor instructed the Board of Health to rescind an order that they passed. And the justices debated for about half of the argument was over the issue of when a Board of Health has many hearings, considers 1,000 pages of testimony from those hearings, hundreds and hundreds of scientific studies, and after they’ve done all of that work and they issue an order, that’s a good order. But when a mayor says, “Rescind your order,” and they rescind their order, isn’t that arbitrary and capricious? And we were getting all excited because we thought the SJC was going to say that no mayor can just order something like that, but the court being an appeals court, appeals courts never go beyond where they have to go to get to where they’re going. And all they had to do was say, “The issue of cell tower placement is preempted by federal law,” and that means that you can’t go there. So as much as we may have found other things about the Board of Health, we’re not even going to go and talk about the Board of Health authority. Which I thought was disappointing, because I thought that would be a great example of arbitrary and capricious, that a mayor said, “Rescind it,” and they just like that, did it. Same as, “Will you make a motion? So moved. All in favor.” It’s as much consideration as that. So really, this is really where the rubber meets the road is on this slide. It’s United Comb and Novelty versus Leominster Board of Health.

21:06 And the issue in that, or the ruling in that case is that when the court is looking to see if it was arbitrary and capricious, the reviewing court, which would be the superior court in the beginning, and if they do, they’ll get overturned by the SJC, but the reviewing court is not authorized to weigh evidence. They can’t even hear what the case was about. They can’t find any facts no matter what. If the Board of Health had rocks in their head and nobody in the world would ever have decided it that way, the court can’t say, “That wasn’t right.” The courts have no discretion to exercise whatsoever, and they cannot substitute their judgment for the Board of Health. That’s a pretty heavy-duty thing when you think that through a little bit. But the courts aren’t even allowed to ask what happened. All they can say is that to overturn something that you do, the only thing that the courts can do or say at that point is, “Was there a deliberation?” And a deliberation doesn’t have to be very much, as you know, because we’re going to talk about open meeting law in a minute. We’re going to talk about deliberations and what that is. It’s a Facebook post. It’s anything. But if you sit here at this table, you have a motion, and someone says, “Do you think that’s a good idea?” “Yeah, I do.” That’s probably enough to get by the SJC. If you’ve discussed it and people think that there’s enough there. It’s always better to build a little record, especially when you know you’re going to get challenged, and you know if there are certain circumstances where you’re

22:39 going to get challenged. Three months ago, you would’ve been challenged if you tried to shut somebody down for having kratom in their store, or if you tried to take their kratom. Today’s a little different. But no matter what, you should always have a discussion about something. Do some deliberation, and then you’re totally safe. So what do you do? These are the things that a Board of Health does that no one else in town does. And in fact, very interestingly, I spent about an hour this morning on the phone with Department of Public Health, and we were discussing green burials and the fact that MHB is coming out with a guidance on green burials. Because there is nothing. And what we found was that the DEP has a whole thing about green burials. I don’t know if you’ve had that issue here. Have you had that at all? No, not yet. It’s coming. You know it’s coming, right? But green burials, DEP has regulations, and DPH has regulations, and we discovered a disconnect. That the DEP regulation does not say at all what the DPH regulation says. And so now they’ve both looked at us and said, “Okay, well, you found the problem, now you fix it for us.” So- Can you define green burial? A green burial is where mom or dad dies, and they want to be buried in the backyard. And they don’t want a casket, they want to just be put in the ground. They want to be part of the family estate. And that’s a whole another lecture for another day, but that’s strictly within the

24:12 Board of Health. Tanning facilities, that’s within Board of Health. Bodyworks. Do you have any bodyworks establishments? That’s our first one. Okay. We’ll talk. You and I will talk about that. But what you- We have regional regulations, and the board has adopted new regulations in the past year. Okay. The ones from your regional group? Yep. Okay, which I wrote when I was in Framingham because we had 19 of them in Framingham. And in 19 of them, 18 of them were doing human sex trafficking. Only one survived our visits by our health inspector. And that’s something that is a modern phenomenon since they took massage parlor jurisdiction away from Boards of Health. So those popped up right after that. Med spas are also not under- Med spas are the same. Right. They’re not under the jurisdiction of- No. So two different types of med spas. So there is a non-medical med spa that would fall under the Board of Health, but as soon as you add a doctor’s license that oversees the med spa, that then falls under the state. Right. Do we have any non-medical med spas? We do not, no. Good. You’re lucky. Yes. So okay. Does anybody have any questions about authority before we get onto open meeting law and records? Oh, okay. Just with the green burial, so should we start working on regulations? We’ll have one for you. Okay. We’ll get you covered. And the state has regulations, so essentially I think what MassDEP is saying at

25:45 this point is that if you want to bury your loved ones in the backyard, that’s okay, but you must forever own that land to protect them. Huh. And DEP’s is a little different. Yeah. And MHB will come up with something that’s going to be a tie between them both, and I think that they’ll both adopt whatever it is that we’re working on. We’ve got a crack legal staff. Because what’s going to happen is that it gets deed recorded, and so it’s forever recorded on your property. You forever have to control that property. So it places a large burden on the landowner. What about foreclosures? There’s one in every group, isn’t there? How did you know that? You did that in med school, too? Well, maybe another- She was that student. Another day. There we go. All right, so let’s talk now about the open meeting law. And I think that one of the most fundamental things is that people have a right to see where the regulations come from. They have a right to see how the sausage is made, so to speak. And I remember using that in one meeting, in a very young member of Board of Health who was in her maybe very early 20s said, “Do we have jurisdiction over house?” As a matter of fact, you do, is what I told her, but that’s not what this is about. But you know what I mean when I say how the sausage is made. So, the open meeting law is

27:16 really here to allow the public access to everything that you’re doing and to watch what you’re doing. And the basics are very simple. You have to have a notice of the meeting They have to be open to the public, in an accessible place to the public, by the way. Minutes have to be kept, and there has to be a complaint process. And we’ll go through each of those in a second. So really, the four definitive questions when you’re asking about whether something was an open meeting is the communication between or among a quorum, quorum is very important, of a member of a public body. So it has to be a quorum of a public body. Was there a deliberation? And that’s where people get hung up with open meeting violations, because you might post something on Facebook, you might say, “I think such and such,” and if it’s in front of the Board of Health, you can pretty much be sure that somebody who’s looking to get you is going to get you on that one, because you can’t be going out on social media and talking about something that happens here that you’re going to be taking a vote on because another member of your board might see that post and might say, “I’m going to take her side on that one, because I think I agree with what she’s saying there.” And then at that point, that could be considered or construed as a deliberation. And it has to be something, in order to be an open meeting issue, it would have to be something in your jurisdiction. So you can talk about the school committee doing something that you’ll never see,

28:52 and you can put that out there on Facebook if you don’t like what the school committee’s doing on something, because that’s not your jurisdiction. But if it’s something that might come to you, then you have a problem. So the best is just don’t comment on Facebook about anything, because if you do, you’re in a scenario where as soon as somebody in the public says, “The school committee’s working on such and such. Would you please look at this?” Now you’re deliberating on it, and you’ve posted something on Facebook you didn’t even think was coming to you. And we’ve seen people get set up. There are actually people who, I don’t know, they need a life, I think. But there are people that are going to watch this tape, and I know that there’s somebody that watches my tapes. I know that. And, good luck is all I can say. And then the next question, the fourth question is, does the communication fall within an exception? So first start with, what’s a meeting? And a meeting is a deliberation by a quorum, and it has to be a public body. So if three of you are talking about something, that’s a deliberation. If two of you are talking about something, that’s fine. But if you two are talking about something, and then you go to him and you say, “We thought this. I was talking to Kristen, and we were thinking blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Tom, we think that you should put this on the agenda, and we think…” As soon as you do that, you’re in violation of the open meeting law.

30:23 All right. What is not a meeting? Did you ever do any site visits as a board? No, but we’re planning one. You’re planning one? Okay. All right. I’m glad I’m bringing this up right now, then. Good. All right. So if you’re doing a site visit, as long as you don’t deliberate, which means you can go look at that and just leave it at that. That’s okay if you’re pointing something out. But if you say, “Look at this, isn’t this a violation that we’re looking at right now?” Boom, you’re deliberating. It’s a very fine line. So the best thing you can do is don’t talk to each other. Bring a pad of paper. You can ask questions, say, of our health director? You can ask questions of your health director, yes, but you can’t talk to one another about, “Did you hear what Andrew said? He’s got rocks in his head. What’s he thinking?” Boom, violation right then and there. If it’s just said to one person. That’s okay. Okay. To one person, but to no one else. Okay. And I went on one. I don’t know if you know anything about the town of Oakham, Massachusetts, but they have a battery energy storage system that the state approved. And it turns out that the 42.9 acres of land that that’s on are strewn with… It was the largest automotive junkyard in New England. And the property is strewn with asbestos brake linings and brake drums, and there’s white powder everywhere. There’s an asbestos dump in the middle of it where they

31:56 have pipes. There’s a place to dispose of your mercury halogen lights and of your fluorescent bulbs, which is mercury, which has saturated the ground. One part of it, well, they’re missing 450 gallons of diesel fuel because the bottom of the tank is ruptured, is rusted out, and you can smell it in the ground. And the state approved it. They said, “This is a good place to put a battery energy storage system.” So the Board of Health had an election, right? Literally, the day the state decision came down, by coincidence. And the chair of the board, who was an incumbent who had been a member of the board for many years, had a write-in opponent. And it became obvious that this town was going to end up in litigation over this piece of property because they didn’t want this on there. And it’s also on the Quabbin Aquifer. That’s not a good idea either. And the incumbent chair lost a write-in campaign to a woman who is, she’s a nurse, good for Board of Health. She’s a lawyer, good for Board of Health, about to get into litigation. And oh, by the way, she’s a retired judge. Even better. So that’s the trifecta. So she got sworn in, and within a half an hour of being sworn in, I got a phone call. She said, “I just got sworn in 30 minutes ago.” She said, “I’m all excited.” She said, “You have to help me do an administrative search warrant. I want to go on that property, and they won’t let us on the property.” So she’s

33:28 been a Board of Health member for less than 30 minutes, and we’re writing a search warrant. I went on the property with them. It was a mess. It was unbelievable that the state would allow that. So when we were there, I think my job was to tell people, “Shut up,” because they were talking, and I said, “You can talk to her, yes, but you can’t speak out loud about it.” And we were able to keep that pretty sacrosanct when we went on the property. But there’s so much of a temptation. Don’t give into it. Just take your notes, and then come back here and talk about it. Okay. So another one is if you’re going to attend another board meeting. If you’re invited to go before the select board to talk about something, or if you want to do something with the planning board, notice your meeting. Especially if you’re going to the select board, because I remember once when I was on the Board of Health in Framingham, we had to go to the select board, and we didn’t have our meeting noticed, and I wasn’t the chair that year, so I take no blame for this one. But we sat there and listened to the select board misstate what a board of health does. Because until you’ve sat in this training, you don’t know what a board of health does. And I’m hoping your select board members will at least watch the tape, the first part of the tape, where I talk about board authority, because it’s unique. No one else has that power. And we could not correct the select board when we knew they were wrong about

35:00 something because we didn’t notice our meeting. And if I had spoken up, I would have violated open meeting. So I was going like this behind everybody, but they do what they got to do. So if you’re going before another board or meeting jointly with another board and you want to speak, make sure that you notice it. A deliberation is really basically any communication. It’s a very low bar. Even if it’s an unresponded to expression of opinion to a quorum. It can be to each other on your little site visit, but it can’t be to everybody. Even if you say, “This is ridiculous.” Boom, violation. Also, what is not a deliberation, discussion and distribution of agendas. Now, here’s something. I got somebody in trouble, and you’re going to see it in a minute. Hopefully, we’ll get the video to run. But I got the Nantucket Board of Health in trouble because they were working on a turf field, just like happened in Oak Bluffs. And their chair called me. They meet 4:00 on Thursday, and the chair called me at 2:00, and she said, “I just sent you an email. Will you open it?” And I opened it, and it was a three-page long motion. And she said, “I want to read this motion. Will you help me edit it?” And I said, “I’ll help you edit it, sure.” And she said, “I want to send it to my board members.” I said, “Well, if you do it, you BCC them,

36:30 and you tell them nobody respond, nobody talk to each other. This is just for your housekeeping.” Sent it to her and got a call. … that their municipal attorney was offended by the fact that I had given her client the advice that she could send that to her board members. Now, I wouldn’t have thought twice about that. I thought there was nothing wrong with that. And the lawyer’s position, and I tend to agree with her, is that by the chair of the board drafting the motion, and she said, “If you had sent it out, or if the health director sent it out to the board members, that’s one thing.” But it came from a board member, it was a motion, and obviously the motion tells what that board member is thinking because she’s making a motion to do this. And she said to me, “That’s a communication that is potentially a violation of open meeting law.” So, she sent her board chair a statement to read into the record that would talk about how this was inadvertent and blah, blah, blah, just to minimize the damage. And they went ahead and did it. And, we’ll talk about that in a second. But, you don’t want to aggregate a quorum, which is what we were just talking about there, and okay. So, what’s a public body? A public body is a multiple member board, and it can be elected, appointed, or

38:01 otherwise constituted to serve a public purpose. And what is not a public body? The general court, which is the state legislature. I think that there’s a ballot question on that coming up, on November 3rd. Should they be subject to the open meeting law? And the courts are not subject to the open meeting law. But that’s basically it. Everyone else, every other public body is. So now let’s talk about posting the meeting. There’s five required elements you have to have on your agenda, which has to be posted. And I don’t think you’ve ever had an issue with posting. But 48 hours, not including weekends, all of that. It has to have the date of the meeting, the time, the place, list of the topics reasonably anticipated, and the date and time and that the notice was posted. So this is one where it was posted by the chair of the board in Rockland. And you’ll notice that it was posted on February 27th for a meeting on February 28th. February 28th was a Saturday. And he was holding this meeting at 6:00 PM. And, we won’t get into too much detail, but I will tell you that it’s a three-person board: the chair, his mother, and another woman who the chair would not ever recognize when she raised her hand.

39:34 And obviously he got voted out shortly after this. But when I called him to say, “You don’t have 24 hours, you don’t have 48 hours posted, and you’re meeting on a Saturday night at 6:00 PM. And I know that your health director can’t be there because that’s how I found out about it. She called me to try to talk some sense into you.” He said, “I don’t need 48 hours because it’s an emergency.” And I said to him that, “You do need 48 hours because it’s not an emergency, because MAHB was at your board of health meeting three months ago discussing what you’re now calling an emergency, which was to ban kratom in this town.” And this was like the third or fourth time that he had a Saturday night meeting. And after this one here, the next election, which was about two weeks later, he didn’t survive it. But here’s something important to know, that in addition to the 48 hours, if you post on your website, which you do, and if you don’t, do you post in town hall too? So everything’s posted. They do post on town hall. So this is town hall. It’s up on the board behind us. Okay. But we use the online posting now. Okay, so the online posting, if your system crashes- Correct … for six hours or more, all of the postings in town are voided. So that means that the clerk has to cancel all the meetings and start with 48 hours notice for everything, even if it’s two weeks from now.

41:04 It’s now voided because there’s been a break of six hours or more. And so it’s a mess. We ran into that in Great Barrington at a meeting where we went out because the chair of the Great Barrington Board of Health wanted to ban COVID vaccinations from his town. Because everybody knows that if you have a vial of COVID vaccine in a building, even though it’s sealed, and there are children in the building, it could kill them. That’s what he told me. So, we went out there to try to convince him not to do that, and when we got out there, they had had a crash. There was a severed line, a fiber optic line, that they caused the town hall to crash. And it had been out for 12 hours. And we advised him that he should call his municipal attorney, and find out whether or not he can have the meeting, and he didn’t. Then we had time to do what we needed to do after that, thank God. So anyway. Oh, and no acronyms. Some boards are helpful. You’ll look at the posting and it’ll have ABC about DEF. Thanks. So, all right. Executive session. And there’s 10 exceptions where you can go into executive session, and I think that there are one, two, three, four, five that apply to boards of health with some regularity. I’m going to skip number one for a second. I think that discussing litigation, complying with gen– which is number three, number seven, complying with general special law grants, if you have a grant that

42:38 requires some secrecy. And number eight is, for job interviews, and I’ve given you some resource slides, which I’ll get to in a second. And to discuss trade secrets. In Framingham, we have a lot of biotech. And we used to sit on IRBs because their regulations said that you have to have somebody from the town in case there’s an escape of something from a biotech facility. And we couldn’t talk about it. And we have Genzyme, and we had Sanofi. We had a lot of big companies that are doing biotech. And some of them were multi-billion dollar patents that we’d be sitting in the room listening to them talking about these multi-billion dollar investments and patents that they had. And we couldn’t be talking about that. So there are exceptions to discussing that. If there was a problem, we would go into executive session. We tried that with New England Compounding Center, which I don’t know if you remember. They had the injectables that caused 28 deaths, 20 states, and 78 hospitalizations. And we knew about it before it happened. We knew it was happening. We couldn’t go in because it was exclusively in the jurisdiction of the State Pharmacy Board. I noticed an emergency meeting of the Board of Health, and in the amount of time, we had people traveling, we couldn’t meet for three days. And in that three days, the feds came in and shut it down.

44:10 But we knew about it first, and we notified the feds about it. We notified the state. But it was too late by the time we got there. But the first one is very interesting because do you ever have hoarding cases? Yes. Okay. So, if you look at the way that this is written, the exception, “With notice to discuss reputation, character, physical condition, or mental health, rather than professional competence of an individual.” So I’m reading that and I’m thinking, okay, so it’s talking about when Andrew finally loses his marbles. You’re going to bring him in and you’re going to say, “Are you okay?” That’d be an executive session. And that’s what everybody thinks that number one means. But I notice there’s a comma after the word mental health, and then the next word is rather than. The next two words. Okay, so I call the AG’s office and I said, “Can we use exception one when we have hoarders come in? Can we give them the dignity of not dragging them in front of cameras and in front of a room full of people as they break down?” I’ve been through some extremely awful hoarding issues with people who really needed mental health help. They really did. And it was all about that with one case. And I remember I was just pushing back the tears. I get emotional when I even talk about it. But I couldn’t do that again. And so I started looking for how can we get around it? And I went back and I looked at this and looked at it, and I called the AG and they said, “Oh, no, no, no, no. It’s about when Andrew Petty loses his marbles.” I said,

45:44 “Nah, I don’t think so.” And they did a little research into it and they came back and they said, “You can teach When you do these presentations, you can teach the fact that they can offer a hoarder an executive session, because it shouldn’t have to be aired out in public. So that’s one of the things. I think that’s one of the things I’m most proud of that I’ve done with MHB, is the fact that folks who are in a tough situation shouldn’t have to air it out in public. All right. So, this is a resource slide, and I’m not going to cover it. I’m just going to tell you that when you get the slides, if you want to know how to go into executive session, I know your chair certainly knows how to do it. But one of you other folks might be the chair someday and might just want the resource. This is a resource slide for if you’re ever going to be doing any hiring on how to do it, what goes into executive session, and what has to be an open session, and I’m not going to even cover it. I’m just going to go on. Minutes. 30 days, I don’t think you’ve ever had a problem with minutes. Yeah, we have problems now because we have a hard time keeping up with minutes or having a person that can actually write the minutes up. We post our meetings, so everything is recorded now, and that’s available the next day and stuff like that. Right. Okay. Right. So this, we’re going to hopefully… Is there anything with using AI to write up your minutes? Yeah, if you want to do it on AI and you want to approve it- Yeah …

47:19 as a board, there’s no reason not to. Cool. But you have to make sure that reflects what happened in the meeting. Do we do that now? So we do. So next time you can ask to take a look at them. Like you said, make sure it represents what was there. Mm-hmm. AI will follow the conversation, but it doesn’t always capture the correct person saying it. It makes it harder. If you just read the AI, you’re like, “What really happened here?” at times. It can be kind of confusing. The Zoom AI, though, is very good. Yeah. Yeah. The Zoom AI, because it identifies, except it won’t identify who at the table is speaking. Right. But it’ll say panel or something. But if one of the Hollywood Squares lights up and somebody says something, it’ll pick that up. Okay, so this is what not to do. This is when a quorum of the selectboard attends the Board of Health meeting, and I’m going to hope that the sound is going to come through. And I’m going to have it loud enough that people in the room should hear this. But somebody who’s on- Oh, so- You’re on Zoom, right? Don’t go online because it’ll… Or don’t put your volume on, but I know you’ve heard it before. Yeah. We’re pretty sure it’s going to work. Okay. We’ll get a reverb. Okay, so here’s… Article authorizes funding, but the parameters are not. Madam Chair, a point of order. Okay. Now, that’s a selectboard member. This topic is not agenda. It is not noticed properly. Town council has weighed in on it.

48:49 My understanding, I also as a selectboard member, we all received the memo from town council today that both Mr. Dixon and Ms. Heller referred to. You are in very gray area here on open meeting law. My job as a selectboard member, part of my job as a selectboard member is to protect Nantucket- The guy nodding next to her- … from being accused by- … is a selectboard member also … open meeting law. That is our role. I think you’re very in muddy territory here, and I would reiterate what both Tom and Don have said, that this should not be continued, and that a very specific agenda listing the topics to be discussed, including amending more articles, none of that’s agenda. The public had no notice that what you’ve discussed or what Ms. Levy’s proposing right now was what happened at that meeting, and that is the purpose of open meeting law, so the public can be prepared to come and speak to the items that will be discussed by the board. Okay. So that is a selectboard member talking, and she referred to the fact that as Tom, and the other person’s name, both said. So Tom is the gentleman with the black hair sitting next to the chair. He is a selectboard member who sits on the Board of Health by designation of the selectboard. They actually have a person that they put on the Board of Health. And there was another speaker there. So three people on a five-person board spoke about, again, this is the turf field issue on Nantucket. And if you look at the agenda, what she said, it wasn’t on the agenda. Board discussion of scientific presentations regarding turf field and

50:22 determination of potential next steps. That’s as covered by the agenda as can be. So the AG’s office never took action on the two complaints against the Board of Health, but the complaints against the selectboard for the three of them speaking up are still pending in front of the attorney general right now. And here’s a point that’s very important, and it’s not important here because you’re all elected. But in a situation where you’re not elected, the chair of the board, who has been a member of that board for maybe 10 or 15 years, the chair of the board and one other person, the woman sitting to the chair’s left as you’re looking at it, in the grayish zipper. The two of them were not reappointed to the Board of Health because the selectboard strongly favors putting in a turf field. All the chair ever said was, “We need to have a hearing and determine whether or not this could be a public health nuisance.” The selectboard didn’t put her back on and said that she had no right to be talking that way. The other person is the leader of the pack when it comes to, we don’t want this in our town or on our island. So they both did not get reappointed. Then the gentleman with the white hair to the left, I should talk, at least he has hair. He resigned. He had been on the Board of Health for 20-something

51:53 years, and he resigned because the selectboard did not reappoint the chair, who did nothing wrong. And then the selectboard member, Tom, he resigned. So I have to go to Nantucket in the next two weeks and do one of these for a five-person board, four of whom were not on the Board of Health a couple of months ago. They’re all brand new. And only one member remains from that Board of Health. It’s some protest, some other issues. So that’s just an important little life lesson that we deal with. Okay, so conducting the meeting, public participation, and here’s another one where the rubber meets the road. You do not have to allow the public to participate in your meetings. There’s no requirement that public input has to be given. And it’s really up to the chair to determine who will speak and for how long. And the problem, though, is that once you have allowed the public to speak, you can’t restrict them on anything other than time, place, and manner. So you can say, as the chair, you could say if you had a packed room, “How many of you want to speak to this issue?” 10 people raise their hands. You’ll say to yourself, okay, you’re willing to give 30 minutes to the topic of public input.

53:23 So you’ll say, “Each of you 10 will have two minutes, and then we’ll reserve the rest of the time for other people who are going to be stimulated to speak and people in TV land who might want to chime in.” Three minutes is a long time to speak. Three minutes is a long time for you to listen to it as a board. If you can’t make your point in two minutes, you probably shouldn’t be speaking anyway. But the issue is once you open the floor, you can encourage civility, but you don’t have to have civility. If somebody wants to attack the board for some reason, they’re free to do so. And we’ll show you one of my slides in a second on that. Now, there’s no right to address a public body except in a couple of places that we’re going to talk about. One of the things that I would advise is that you should never allow two people to talk about the same thing. And that’s when it’s good to have a gavel because you can say, “The first time that anybody in this room repeats something that someone else said before them, I’m going to gavel you and you’re going to stop.” And the reason is that we’re a very intelligent board. We listen to every word you have to say. Everything matters to us. And by repeating something, you’re taking someone else’s time away. So you can control the room that way. If somebody’s going on beyond their time, let them finish up.

54:56 But So let’s see here. These are instances where you have to allow public participation. And if you’re making a health regulation under general law, Chapter 111, Section 31, which says boards of health can make reasonable health regulations. If you’re doing that, you want to hear from the public. If you’re doing anything on Title Five, you have to hear from the public. But when you’re doing a regulation, if you don’t allow the public to speak, two things happen. One is you’re opening yourself to criticism because you didn’t consider what the public wanted. But more important to me, in my five years chairing in Framingham, was I learned, I listened, and I learned things from the public. They knew things that I never even thought about on topics that I thought I knew everything about. And it’s their opportunity to educate you about something that you might not have known about. We did the only raw milk regulation in the entire country. We were the first ones ever. It’s been adopted everywhere, including Ottawa, Canada. It’s their province regulation. But I was hell-bent. We were going to regulate it, we were not going to allow that guy to stay in business that was selling raw milk. And son of a gun, we gave him some conditions. And he came to me, I ran into him in town about six months later, and he thanked me. He said because people drive an hour and a half to go to his farm because they don’t trust their own supplier that they’ve gone to for 20 years because they know

56:29 that his has some regulations that will make it so that they won’t get sick. He couldn’t keep it on the shelves after that. He hated me at first, but that’s another issue. All right, so if you’re doing Title Five, if you’re making regulation, solid waste facility sitings, you have to have public input. And if it’s a noisome trade, you have to hold a public hearing before you can assign a location. So it would be a business that there might be a good place in town for it, but it’s not where they are right now. You can tell them, “Yes, if you want to go buy some property in XYZ neighborhood, you can do it there, but you can’t stay where you are.” You have to open that to the public for comments. Now, this used to be considered improper behavior.

57:21 Well, good evening. I’d like to start off my citizen speak with a song. Could you please give the- Oh, sorry. My name is Ron Alexander. And- I’m from Wellesley, Massachusetts. Okay. I’m going to start off my citizen speak with a song. Oh, where, oh, where has the superintendent? Oh, whatever happened to he? Well, he yelled and he screamed, and he couldn’t keep it in his pants. Mr. Alexander. He’s been fired by the board of guarantee. Mr. Alexander, you are out of line, and I will- Okay. Now, Mr. Alexander, I wish I could use my speaker’s notes here, but he had something like 320. He had filed 320 open meeting violations against various boards, mostly school committees, and a lot against Framingham and Natick because he lived in Wellesley, and a lot against Wellesley. The judge forced him to do an apology to a school committee member, and he was subjected to some trespass orders and things of that sort. But that was improper back then, and that was 2018, until this happened. And the next thing I want to say is, you said you were just merely volunteers, and I appreciate that. But you’ve still broken the law with open meeting law, and that is not the best you can do. And when you say that, “This is the best we could do,” I know it’s not easy

58:56 to be volunteers in town, but breaking the law is breaking the law. Ma’am, if you want to slander town officials who are doing their very best- I’m not slandering … then we’re going to go ahead and stop the public comment session now- Well, you need to stop being a Hitler … and go into recess. You’re a Hitler. You can say what you want. All right. We are moving into- Okay, so that woman is Louise Barron. And if you’re familiar with the case, Barron versus Kalenda, which is Kalenda was the chair of the Southborough Select Board. And Mrs. Barron took them to court because they adjourned while she was speaking. And the SJC says that if you have a civility code in your town, it’s unconstitutional. If you’re going to allow somebody to speak to a public body, they get to say whatever they want. And if it makes you cry, you can cry all you want. It doesn’t matter. I’m sparing you the slide that has the argument in it, where the SJC justice asks the lawyer for the town, “Well, how far should we allow them to go? What if they incite a riot, or if they incite some kind of a civil disobedience or some kind of an incident? Is that enough to stop them?” And then, “Of course it is, Your Honor.” Well, not necessarily. Isn’t that where we came from as a country? And when you read the decision, the decision basically says that civility codes are

1:00:27 against the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. People have a right to say and express themselves, as long as they’re not threatening imminent harm to the board. So if somebody’s standing here and they whip out a gun, you can tell them, “Put the gun away,” and kick them out. But once you duck. But

1:00:47 that’s completely off the table now. You can’t stop somebody once they start. You can stop them after two minutes, but they’ve got the floor for that two minutes. That’s another reason you might not want to go to three minutes, allowing the general public to speak. So the bottom line, though, and this is something where I’ve watched a number of your meetings. And Tom, you’re a wonderful guy. You’re a lovable guy, and you love to talk to people. And they love to talk to you. And I love what you’re doing. In fact, I’ve actually suggested the office hours thing since you told me about it a week ago. I’ve talked to two other boards of health and told them, “You might want to think about your chair holding office hours and coming and talking to them then.” Because that’s when you should be in the discussion is one-on-one. At a cocktail party. You run into someone in the grocery store. I’m sure that you’ve run into people in the grocery store. I’m sure that they stop you. But you should always avoid any kind of a response to any kind of a comment. And that goes for the entire board. That’s public speak time. Let them come and tell you what’s on their mind. A lot of times you’re going to get an agenda item. Somebody’s going to come in and say, “We need to do something about such and such.” And you go, “You’re absolutely right. That’s going to be on our agenda. Not next month, but the month after. We’ll schedule it in.” But you don’t want to engage people. Let them come and talk to you. If it’s during public speak, it should be an

1:02:17 unresolved issue until the board decides as a board you’re going to engage. And I know that that’s going to upset you because I know you love to talk to the board about it, but you can’t. I’ll help you so far. Okay. Yeah. Well, no. That’s my warning shot across your bow. No. Go ahead. But if the topic is on the agenda, can we listen to the public and make comments to their comments? Is that what’s the violation? You should make the comments, and other members of the board should go through you as the chair if they want to comment on it. Because you’re right. The free flow of information, really, especially when you’re not sure about something, which I remember from being chair was around 9/10 of the time I wasn’t sure. I was dead set positive when it came to milk, and I was 100% wrong because I went the other way. I made the motion to approve it. But it’s a good learning experience for the board. But somebody else sitting next to you on the table should not engage the public. There should be nobody other than you addressing the public, and it should be really about the point, and you are on point. I would say 100% of the time that I’ve watched the tapes, you’re engaging the person on the point that they’re talking about. Unlike me, I’m all over the place, as you can see. Well, what if Dr. Richman said, “Mr. Chair, please ask the public member X”?

1:03:49 I would say, “Mr. Chair, through you, could we inquire?” And then you can just look at the speaker. But they shouldn’t be directly, and there should be no interplay between anyone other than you. So from what I understood Is if we don’t have, as far as I know, a raw milk. But maybe somebody stood up and said, “Marblehead needs a raw milk ordinance.” If it’s not on the agenda, neither the chair nor anyone else can respond, right? You shouldn’t. You might ask why. Because the person speaking, you’re better off not. You’re better off having Andrew make a call on Monday or tomorrow morning calling the person or telling the person, “Please call our director tomorrow and have this discussion.” You’ve got the attention of the board on your issue. And then that way, Andrew will vet it, and if there’s something there, he’ll come to you and he’ll say, “Tom, I think that we need to put this on our agenda.” Then we put it on the agenda. Yeah. Then we can debate it. Yeah. And you can have that person come back and present. Okay. Yeah. But that would be an agenda item. That’s not public speak. It’s a totally different animal. And a lot of times, I used to open the floor to the public on an agenda item, because particularly when I really wasn’t sure, and I knew there were people in the

1:05:21 room that knew something I didn’t know, which was almost 100% of the time, and I’d ask, “Does anybody have any input on this?” Because that was before we had AI, and I couldn’t go to ChatGPT and say, “What input do you have for me on it?” So if that person then comes back and comes to sit with us and does a presentation, we can then ask them questions- Yes … directly engage. Oh, absolutely. They’re an agenda item and you’re trying to learn something about it. Yeah. It has to be posted on the agenda. Well, the first instance would be during public comment, but then say this gentleman says, “I want you to do something about raw milk.” Raw milk. And he tells you, “We have a farm. I don’t think you even are aware of the fact that we have this farm and they’re selling raw milk, and I’m a little concerned because of the things I read about raw milk and the pathogens,” and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so you say, “Okay.” And then at that point, after he’s done speaking, you’re free to talk to your board and say, “Does anybody want to take that issue up? Should we put that on an agenda?” And you don’t have to take a vote to put it on the agenda, but just get a sense of whether or not… It’s kind of like a probable cause or a show cause thing. If there’s enough just to- But if the public member says we should ban raw milk in Marblehead, okay, and if the two of us talk, we’re violating what wasn’t on the agenda, right?

1:06:53 Okay, but you’re talking about putting something on the agenda, and I would- For the next time. Well, that’s a different- If we’re talking about it the day at the meeting that the public person is making that comment, I think I’m hearing you say we should say, “Thank you very much for your comment,” and nothing else. We should not communicate with each other if it’s not on our agenda. That’s correct. I think so. Yeah. That’s right. So again, if the person came to public comment period and said, “I want to talk about raw milk,” and they spoke for their two minutes, and the board was interested, you could say, “Thank you, Mr. Smith. We’ll put this on a future agenda.” And then once it’s on the agenda and you ask Mr. Smith to come to the meeting, you can have more discussion about it, and everybody can talk about it. It’s posted that you’re going to be discussing that item. Right. Now, the person can make as many comments, he can try to demand an answer. The board doesn’t have to, on the spot, give an answer. You can say, “I need to think about this.” Unless a motion’s called and the board’s asking for a vote, you don’t necessarily have to lay your cards out. And I wouldn’t say I think you’re right about that to somebody either, because that’s how you’re telling the other members of the board, and that’s not on your agenda. So you’re deliberating at that point to a quorum in an open meeting, but it’s not posted.

1:08:24 Yeah. So, but you can say, “Yes, let’s put that on the agenda.” So if we come back the next week, month, and we put raw milk on the agenda, then we can hear the public person and interact. And you can have it, and all talk. Yeah. Okay. And you talk to one another about it. Okay. And we can invite that person to the table and all of those things. Yes. Okay. So clearly, one of my weaknesses is getting making sure things are on agenda. Okay. And I hope that we’ve had a series of one public comments or chair’s comments. We’re meeting again tomorrow. It’ll be a very interesting session. See how many people remember what you’ve said and what I remember tomorrow at the chair session. Yeah. The comment. Yeah. If- I’d like to go… Okay. You said that we should never speak on public and social media. That’s right. Yes. On things that are on the board. How about written? We wrote a column in the local newspaper about acetaminophen causing autism.

1:09:57 Did you discuss it, deliberate it before you wrote it? What we did, I don’t remember- Okay … to be fair. But when I’ve done it by myself, I put that I am chair of the board, but this reflects my own opinion, not the board. Mm-hmm. Does that hold water? It does and it doesn’t. Yes, it’ll get you out on technically speaking, but some people may come at you for that. What about if I’m on Facebook? If I’m on Facebook, and I say, “I’m only speaking as a individual, as a member of the public, I’m not speaking as a board member.” Well, it depends. Will two other members of your board read that Facebook post? If so, then you’re really skating along the line on that one. Because it’s something that you’re going to be deliberating, I’m assuming. Well, that basically says you can’t, because you can’t ever know who’s going to be- That’s right … tuned into the Facebook. So you have to assume, not worst case, but you have to assume-

1:11:29 No, you do have to … that some other member of the board is going, two other members of the board are going to see that Facebook post. And so therefore, I cannot say that on public. I’m not sure you even need two members of the board, right? I think if you’re expressing an opinion on something you reasonably expect to come before the board and you’re doing it in a public forum, you’ve deliberated. You’ve deliberated, right. You’ve deliberated. Yeah, because you’re expressing your view. That’s your opinion. But it’s no harm, no foul unless a quorum actually sees it, or it’s likely they’re going to. Because if you post something on a Facebook page that one of your other members does not belong to, but one of your members says, “Hey, somebody sent this to me. We should be taking a look at that.” Now you’ve stumbled into it by mistake. But you’re saying I can do that for a written document, for a newspaper article. Did you decide as a board you were going to write an article? No, I don’t think so. Okay. Better form to do it that way. It’s better form to have the board to discuss the fact, “I want to write an article, and I think the Board of Health needs to take a position on acetaminophen and autism. And can I get a vote of the board? Can

1:13:00 somebody make a motion that I’m allowed to do this for the board?” You’re the chair. You’re the mouthpiece of the board. Or you could say someone else will write it. One of the other members will write it. But get the blessing of the board to do that. Okay. To do it, and the board doesn’t have to see it before it goes into it? If they’re designating you to do it. It’s just like the judge who is the member of the board out in Old Camp. What I suggested to that board was appoint her, give her total authority over this issue to move in whatever way she sees fit, and even though that was her first meeting with her new board of health, they basically turned it over to her, and she was in court moments later. Believe me, the next day she was in court on that. Can all of us make edits to one- Yes … document that we will then submit? Do it through Andrew. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, you’d all do your red lines, and then Andrew would- So, let’s say Tom writes an editorial. He then sends it to Andrew, Andrew circulates it, and then we can all make comments and- And send it back to Andrew. Yeah. What we can’t be doing is passing it among ourselves, because that’s- That’s right … basically a meeting. Right. You can meet to discuss your edits. You can send them all to Andrew and then you can 48 hours notice, you can do it by Zoom.

1:14:32 Just everybody get together and say, “Let’s go through this.” You have to let the public see what you’re doing and hear what your changes are, but yeah. So, the local newspaper writes an editorial that we disagree with. We need to mention that we disagree in the board. It’s an agenda item. The board says, “Did you read that editorial? That’s crazy. We need to write a letter to the editorial board.” Yes. Then we can talk to each other. Yes, as long as it’s in an open meeting, yes. But also- It doesn’t fall under any of the exceptions for- But also, for example, Tom reads an editorial he doesn’t like. He can send an email to all of us and say, “Please read this, but don’t answer me.” Right? He can do that? Well, that’s kind of like when… I would’ve said yes until I was told different in Nantucket when I told that chair, “You can send your motion,” because that was her position, and she communicated her position to a quorum. That’s the way it was explained to me. No, just read this, without communicating anything. Without saying their opinion. Read this. Just sharing information. Don’t respond. Yeah. I’d send it through Andrew. Sorry to make all this work for you, Andrew. That’s why you get the big bucks, man. Okay.

1:16:02 So, final nuts and bolts on open meeting, I don’t think we have to… Oh, recording. If somebody wants to record your meeting, they don’t have to ask permission, they just have to tell you they’re doing it. But if they get obstructive… We had one where a member of the board of health was an anti-masker, and this is during the height of COVID, and Cheryl and I both went to that board of health meeting, and the board of health member engaged her in this whole conversation about, “My civil liberties tell me I don’t have to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I’m a member of the board of health.” And there was a guy filming it, one of his friends, also not wearing a mask and came right up in my face at one point with his phone, and the chair of the board said, “Please sit down.” And he said, “I don’t have to sit down. I have a right to film.” And it got very heated, to the point that he offered to meet Cheryl and I in the parking lot afterwards. And so he needed to be escorted out of town, literally, for our safety after that happened. And the board meeting ended abruptly. And at that time, there was no issue of freedom of expression that was being protected. It was before the Barron case. I don’t know what would happen today, but actually, the guy was out of order. So, if somebody is recording but they’re walking around and putting the microphone in someone’s face or the camera in someone’s face, that’s out of order, and you can

1:17:34 instruct them to stop and to leave, and you can actually have him removed if you want to get to that point. Oh, and retaining all documents. When somebody comes up to the table and they hand you something, that now is a public record. So, at least at a minimum, you’d have to run out in the hallway to a photocopy machine, make a copy, but if he wants it back, because that’s now part of the record. If you’ve looked at it, if a member of the board has looked at the document, it’s proffered as someone speaking to you, that’s public record, so you have to retain that. So, these are all things where we see people getting nails for public records issues. So, the public records law, that brings us right into public records law. I’m not going to go into the mechanics of a request. I’m just going to tell you that basically everything you’re doing is public record, and everything you look at is public record. Public records are all books and papers, maps, photographs, anything, financially, anything at all, regardless of physical form or characteristics. So, it doesn’t have to be in writing, it doesn’t have to be a picture. It can be a text message. Except for, I believe it does not include your personal notes. Your personal notes? Yep. Right. Your personal notes. Right. Personal notes. If you show that notepad- Correct … to somebody next to you, it’s now discoverable. Okay. The other thing never to do is to sit at this table while those cameras are on you

1:19:10 and do this. Just anything at all, because you’re now texting during your meeting, and somebody can make a request for that text, and that can get pretty ugly. We’re going to talk about that in a second. But every record, everything is public unless there’s a statutory exemption for it. So, emails, text messages. Do you have .govs for all of your members? We try, yes. Okay. If you don’t, then you should have an email address that would say, like, TMASROBOH- Correct … @gmail.com. That way, when you’re asked for your board of health correspondence, you just give them that account, you don’t have to give them your phone and your computer and let them go through all of your personal stuff. If it’s a text message request, that can get hairy because you may be asked by your municipal attorney to give them your phone. I think probably in the case of this particular board, I’d be surprised if your attorney said, “We want your phone.” They would probably just say, “We want all of the text messages that might respond to this.” In the case of somebody who is on a small board and he and his mother are members of the board and they have no regard for the third member, situations like that, the town council might say, “I want your telephone,” and you won’t get it back for the next three or four weeks. Might make somebody not want to run next time for re-election. Anti-harassment.

1:20:45 When there are records requested, do you have a harasser in Marblehead that does serial record requests about everything on earth? Comments. Okay, so you do. All right. So, there’s only been one instance, and in fact, Ron Alexander, the guy who played the ukulele, he got sanctioned. He’s the only one that I’ve ever been able to find where the secretary of state has said that this is a harassment. I know that in Framingham, we spent $800,000 in legal fees with one person who doesn’t exist, who keeps doing record requests. I don’t live in Framingham anymore, but when I was there, ridiculous amounts of money being spent defending public record requests, and the person doesn’t even exist that was requesting. It was a group of people using one particular name. Redactions, sometimes you see this on TV when you see something coming out of Washington, DC, and it might look like that. There are acceptable redactions. I think what I’ll do is just make this a resource slide, and you can look at it later if you ever need it to see what you can redact. But basically, if it’s something that reports and decisions and contracts, things of that sort, where public officials’ names, things that give out identity information, those can be redacted, but records that take place in a meeting cannot be redacted.

1:22:16 Contracts, invoices, government expenditures, police reports, and things of that sort can’t be. And then, pitfalls with redactions I’m going to make this a resource slide. You can look at it later on. But this is very interesting. This was back in the day when I was living in Framingham. And Wy Spicer, this comes from her phone. Wy Spicer was the mayor of Framingham, who, during a meeting, decided that she was going to say that the city council chair, this is after it became a city, “The city council chair is an a-hole.” Didn’t put it in those words, but you know what I said. And talks about how another member should stay in her lane, because she’s no longer on the planning board, she’s now a city councilor, and she shouldn’t be doing this. And, “I’m going to call another city councilor tomorrow” and called her on her bull. And, basically went off on the majority of the city council in this text string, and somebody, actually, the named person who doesn’t exist, got these in a records request and published them in Framingham. And on the third string, and this is all a communication with her chief operating officer who was

1:23:46 there. This was on a Zoom, but he had done a presentation, and he ends up saying, “I’m eating frozen chocolate yogurt. Then I’m going to go to bed, and I’m going to go skating in the morning and blow it out of my system. I’ve had enough.” And then New Bedford, the next one with New Bedford is that somebody on the city council leaked something to the public that was a serial conversation between city councilors that was a violation of open meeting. Leaked it out, and so now we have the city councilor saying, “I’m going to challenge you. I’m going to find out who’s not a member of our family, who it is that would actually go out to the public with what I’m sending.” That stuff doesn’t do well on reelections for people who are elected. Mayor Spicer is no longer the mayor. And it had a lot to do with that particular post, I think it really hurt her badly. And then, just so you don’t think it’s all local, there’s actually this gentleman has a website and his address is Northport, Alabama. And the only thing on his– This is his webpage, and it’s only one page. And he calls himself the Open Meeting Law Enforcer. And you’ll see that this is to allow you to contact Patrick Higgins & Associates, who’s the biggest Open Meeting Law enforcer in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He does not have one of these for any other states. He was from here originally. He moved to Alabama, and he’s decided that he’s going to

1:25:18 look for Open Meeting issues. And, Pat, it’s nice to talk to you again. Okay. So, you’ll probably get a request for these, but that’s okay. You can give it to him. Okay. Use of personal email addresses, we covered that. Cell phones for texting. But never forget there can always be a follow-up request. There can be a, “Okay, I sent you a record request. I want all of the records that talk about my record request that went on in town hall.” And usually that’s a serial enforcer that’ll come back to you and say, “I want to know what you were saying behind my back when you got this record request.” So they can come back and get more. Okay. Let’s talk about Marblehead. First of all, I think that some of the work that you guys are doing is spectacular, and really, you’re reaching out to the public. Your community wellness fair, that’s something that I’ve read up on some of that. Your parenting classes, it’s exciting to see that you’re getting some results on that, and I think that that’s going to become huge. And such a big issue today, especially you watch the news today. I don’t know what happened to the trial, but that poor woman, if you can prevent that once from even starting to happen, you’re doing God’s work. So, I think going from three people to five, I think that you’ve probably found that to be a real blessing because you were there for both.

1:26:52 Yeah. We ran into it in Framingham. I had a call. “Could I go to the Regional Technical High School? There’s an issue over there involving a mercury spill.” And I was out of town. I was actually on Long Island at a friend’s funeral on the way from the graveyard to his house to be with his wife after the funeral. And I got a call, saying, “We need you in Framingham. We’ve had a mercury spill at the technical high school, and the superintendent needs you there.” And I didn’t say, “I’m in New York.” I said, “It’s going to take me about four hours to get there, but I’ll be there.” And I turned around on the Long Island Expressway and went the other way and went back home. Got there at 9:30 at night. They had broken windows out of the school, and they had these blower units. The mercury spill happened in a classroom that had carpeting. The teacher took no precautions whatsoever. Kids were walking over it. Kids took it home in their clothing. So, we were reaching out till, imagine 1:00 in the morning, getting a phone call, because I was making those calls, and we got done at 1:00. Anybody who we knew had exposure, “Don’t wash your kids’ clothes. Don’t put anything in the washing machine, because you’re going to destroy your washing machine. Get rid of the shoes, put everything in a bag and bring it to school tomorrow. School’s closed tomorrow, but please bring it and leave it on the front doorstep, and we’re going to pick it up, and we’re going to test it. Leave your name and address, and we’ll let you know what the exposure levels were,” and all that. It was a nightmare. We were a three-person board. I couldn’t call the doctor on the board to talk to

1:28:24 him about mercury poisoning and the dangers of that. Luckily, I had done some cases when I was practicing law. I was an environmental lawyer. I had a huge case involving mercury at one point, so I knew enough about what I was looking at and told the superintendent, “Yeah, the board of health will sign off on an emergency order to not open tomorrow.” And it was actually two or three days before they could get the school open after that, because it was all over the carpeting, all over the school. They found it everywhere because the kids walked right through it. Couldn’t call the doctor. Because it’s an emergency. Can’t you have an emergency meeting- Well- … without posting? Yeah. Well, the other thing is I couldn’t find him. He was out of town. I just couldn’t get him. So I did that. But then I went to town meeting and told them, “We need a five-person board,” and as soon as I told the circumstances, we went to five people. It’s such a difference. It’s an incredible difference. And for those who were on the three-person board, you know, but for people who weren’t, it’s way different. Was it you two? Yeah. Right. With three of you? Tom. Oh, yeah. That’s right. The other Tom. Yeah. Yeah. So, you get a lot more capacity to do it, and that’s wonderful. And- So you answered the question. If there is an emergency and you need to post an emergency meeting, yes, you can do that. There are guidelines on how to do that, what you need to do. Okay. But yes, you don’t always have to wait for the 40, yeah.

1:29:54 The other thing is your issue that is highly emotional and highly local, although it’s an international issue, children being children, high school kids being high school kids. And, I think that you guys have done an amazing job. It’s a very difficult issue to wrestle with. Thank God I never had to go through that. I think the closest I came to that was when we had New England Compounding, because we knew that all hell was breaking loose and there was nothing we could do. But as long as each of the boards and each of the committees in town look at it in their own narrow lens, and I would think that maybe your town manager would get the input of all of the department heads and see what your board is doing. We don’t necessarily operate that way, but yes, we try to collaboratively work together. And that’s the only way to tackle an issue like that, and it’s tragic. It’s just tragic that you have to wrestle with that issue, but it’s an issue, and it’s truly a public health issue. And I think, Tom, you’ve done a great job of keeping the public health lens on it because there’s so many different things coming at you from so many different directions, and you have to have so many different emotions about it too, being from here. But you’ve handled it, I think you’ve handled it really well. And, I think that it’s a community issue, working with the school committee.

1:31:26 I will say that I have closed down– I’ve worked with the school committee, and I had to close… We had a toxic intrusion into one of our schools, and I had to close that school. The Board of Health had to close that school. We found out that there was a test well on the corner of a school building, and it tested off the meters for TCE. It was a vapor intrusion from a plume on a chemical company next to the school. And I told the chair of the school committee, “Honey, I’m going to close your school,” because that was my wife. It was Thanksgiving week, and we spent our whole Thanksgiving week, other than the Thanksgiving dinner with the family, we were at the school virtually every minute of it. So I know how a community issue can hit a board of health. Just keep your blinders on. You don’t want to know anything else other than the public health aspects, and you’ve been really good at doing that. I think I know what TCE is, which you may want to share that. Trichloroethane. Right. I’m sorry. Which is a solvent. Right. Well, this was actually TCE- … benzene and PERC, which is perchloroethylene, and there was toluene, all testing way too high and in the school building. And the plume goes under the schoolyard. So that was just staying in our lane, and that’s all you can do, and nobody can ever criticize

1:32:59 you as long as you stay right where you belong. And you have not, from what I’ve seen, and I’m just a guy talking to you right now, but I think you stayed remarkably in your lane on a very difficult issue. So the record knows I didn’t directly call you. So that’s why I wasn’t looking for this. You made your first contact with Michael, if he’s saying- Oh, no. No, and I don’t think anybody actually, the people I’ve spoken to, I haven’t had this conversation. Yeah. I did it because I watched your meetings and to prepare for this. I will tell you, I spent a lot of hours on this one. A lot more than I usually do, because usually I use the same slides for everybody, and just, but this is not one size fits all. I think that you have some amazing things. I think you’re doing a great job here. And, but- To go back to one of the very first slides, we can make regulations, but we’re such a small board with so few resources, how do they get enforced if we can’t count on the rest of the town, including the police department, to help us enforce? That’s a tough issue because you only have so many dollars, and you are only one board, and you don’t get to tell the Selectboard you’re going to spend your money on this. You can bring it to them. Hopefully, public pressure will tell the

1:34:32 Selectboard the town wants it to be done this way. The same people I would– I don’t know, I have not looked at your Selectboard meetings, but I’m willing to bet that a lot of the same people that come here to talk about various issues, if it crosses out of public health and goes somewhere else, will go to those other boards, including the Selectboard, to say we need to pay attention to something. And I’m saying that without knowing, because I haven’t looked at the other board meetings. But that’s an issue, and where we really are seeing it is with battery energy storage, where we have a board of health that says we don’t want it in our town. Tewksbury has a, it’s called BESS, Battery Energy Storage System. They have a BESS that was approved by the state, and the testimony in the hearings was that if it catches on fire, its hydrofluoric acid comes raining down with, because it’s hydrogen fluoride smoke, and it would take 67 seconds for the smoke to go from the BESS units to the windows of an inpatient assisted living facility that has a memory care unit and a lot of people on respirators and oxygen, and 67 seconds for that hydrogen fluoride smoke to come through their windows. And I thought for sure the EFSB, the Energy Facilities Siting Board, was going to deny that permit, but they gave it. And so the Board of Health, when they went to intervene, was told by the town manager, “You can intervene, but

1:36:06 we’re not paying for a lawyer for you.” And you have to have a lawyer to be an intervener. And they worked out something with the board saying, “Our town won’t pay for it. Our Board of Health needs to be present for this thing. We’re coming. Will you let us come?” And they said, “You’re not supposed to because the regulations say you’re not supposed to, but we’re going to grant a waiver.” But in the case of other towns, the state might not ever do that again. Who knows? But that’s a Board of Health trying to defend the town from something that’s a terrible idea. And you like to think that you’re going to get the support of all of the other boards that would be voting the money for you, and that would be the Selectboard and the town manager’s backing. And it doesn’t always happen. So when I went after General Chemical, the company that had the vapor intrusion on the school, it was an abutting facility. We went, we did an inspection. They actually, while we were in the yard doing our inspection, we gave them two weeks’ notice we’re coming. We actually saw a barrel, a 55-gallon drum of toluene fall off the back of a truck, rupture, and pour into the ground. And across the parking lot at the same time, we were directly next to the school, we couldn’t see into the playground because there was a white cloud, and there was a vacuum truck, and they were emptying this white powder from a vacuum truck. And I went over to the guy and I said, “What is that?” He said, “That’s nothing.” I said, “Yeah, well, I can’t see the schoolyard.

1:37:37 What is it?” He said, “Well, that’s stuff we picked up in a paper mill.” I said, “Where?” He says, “In Maine.” I said, “So what is this white stuff that’s in the air?” And I knew exactly what it was. And he just wouldn’t go there. But we basically filmed it, showed it, and it was not a good day for that company. We shut them down, and we were told by the Selectboard to stand down because they’re a taxpayer, they’re a good citizen. I said, “Good citizens don’t poison the schoolyard next door.” And the Board of Health is going to continue. They had no choice. They really had to back us because we were holding a hearing, and they wanted to minimize their damages. Town council said, “We’re going to attend every one of these.” And I said– I went to the Selectboard and I said, “Look, I’m an environmental lawyer, and I’m a plaintiff’s lawyer.” I go back to the Woburn case. I was a partner in that firm. And I said, “I’m going to get this town sued because I’m going to say something because I’m not going to be able to control it because I’m so p**d off about what’s going on. If you want to have a lawyer there, I will listen to everything that lawyer tells me. But the Board of Health doesn’t have a budget. You have the budget. If you want town counsel to protect the town, he has to tell me what to do during the site assignment hearing, and I’ll go with his playbook. But we’re going after this company.” And that’s what it took, and it was just a battle of wills at that point. And they knew I was coming, and I was not going to

1:39:11 stop. So it can be a game of chicken for the chair. It’s a tough position to be in because presumably you’re friends with some of the folks on the Selectboard and your town manager, but I basically told them, “No, I’m not stopping. You cannot make me stop.” So you put the town into that situation, and they have to do something. It’s like a game of chicken at times, though. It’s very difficult. It can be very difficult. So I think I’m almost done. Board demeanor, chair’s role. I think we talked about the chair’s role. And- I have a question about board demeanor. With the other boards that you’ve worked with, do they have a code of conduct? They can’t. Oh. You can’t. Really? Yeah, that’s what that case, that’s what Barron versus Glenda says, that if you have a code of conduct, you can’t, unless it’s time, place, and manner. You could say, “We have 30 minutes before-“ For board members. Oh. Not for the public.

1:40:15 I don’t think you really can. Because the school committee in town has one here. You should talk to your town counsel about that. You have Mead Tolman, right? Yep. Yeah. They’re very good on this. They’re really good on this. You want to talk to them about it. Yeah. I know that you had a situation here. There’s no secret. And by the way, yes, the answer is a Board of Health can issue a censure. You can’t do anything. You can’t take voting rights away or discipline or anything of that sort, but you can issue a censure. And I thought what he did was very- … forthright. He came forward and he made the motion. And I don’t think that most people would’ve made that motion. I have a lot of respect for somebody that does something like that. But I know that you had asked that question. Gee, I think we could do it, but you didn’t, and you did the right thing. Your instincts were absolutely right. You can do that. So, Tom’s kind of perspective is he wants to be open and honest with the public and share as much information as possible through Facebook. Right. Mm-hmm. I guess, would you advise he just educate people on what was discussed and leave opinion out of it when he’s doing these posts? I wouldn’t use the word advise because we don’t advise. That’s me telling him. But I would say best practice is to

1:41:46 only address stuff that’s already been acted on by the board, something that’s not under consideration. And you can defend the actions of the board, certainly. You can say, “We took this vote and this is why, this is what we did.” But you have to be very careful about that, because then you get into the whole serial open meeting violation. That whole thing can kick in very easily, especially on Facebook. You guys should just not post on Facebook. It’s just better off not. Nobody cares. Nobody cares what you think. They care what they think. And they’re going to say what they want to say. But then, as soon as you engage, now you’re either defending yourself or you’re standing up for somebody, and it’s something that could come before your board. Usually, it is before your board, which is why it’s on Facebook, and you’re just better off not engaging it. It’s hard to do. Very hard to do, especially if they start naming you. I had a lot of that going on in Framingham. A lot of it. They didn’t like some things we did, but we were the board of health, we had to. Which is another thing that right now I’m working with another town where the select board wants to take control of their health director and wants the health director to report to the town manager. And I held a session for that town and asked them to make sure that there was at least one select board member, and there was.

1:43:17 And the question I asked the select board member was: “Why would you want to be in a position where you’re supervising anything to do with public health?” Because public health inherently makes very unpopular decisions, closing the favorite restaurant in town, making people wear masks, whatever it is. You’re up for election. Why don’t you just let the board of health members lose their elections if they make the people in town angry? Why would you want to subject yourself to that? And that select board member got back to me and said, “You know, that makes a lot of sense. We shouldn’t be subjecting ourselves to that same criticism when the board of health is there to make the unpopular, hard decisions at times.” No one else is there to protect the public health. And I think that’s– Noise complaints? Oh, yes, pickleball. Let’s talk about pickleball. So, I did look at your town, at your Facebook pages, so I’m a little up to date on some of this stuff. This didn’t come from board of health members. You can take noise complaints. You should log them all, because if it comes down to a public health nuisance thing, you’re going to want to be able to present, “On such and such a date, we had this complaint.” And then the board can determine whether or not it’s their opinion that this may be a public health nuisance. And they can hold a hearing, and they can discuss what they want to do. If you want to see something, just do a Google search of Wellesley, where I now

1:44:49 live. And Wellesley had a pickleball issue and ended up installing pickleball courts at a public beach on a pond away from where everybody lives. Although they just put a pickleball court right smack in the middle of a neighborhood right next to where I live, but I haven’t heard it yet. But pickleball’s bad. It’s noisy. It’s a fun game. Everybody wants to play it. It’s great exercise, and it’s wicked noisy. And you’re going to get complaints, and that’s going to be something that when it really happens, we can talk to you about it at that point. And then, I would just say that adopting a clear member expectations. You know what your procedures should be at this point. You should always have logs, and Andrew’s very good at this, keeping logs of complaints, of bug stuff. And there should be one person speaking for the board at all times, and that’s your chair. And done. Boy, that took a long time. I just realized. No, that’s good. Sorry, Tom. Didn’t mean to hijack your whole meeting. Great. Always better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission, right? Further comments from the board? Okay. Comments from the public? Here we are.

1:46:21 You said you’d hook it, so- Yeah … we’re hooked. Oh, I’ve seen the back of your headlight. Oh, okay. That camera does you no good, and anyone would do me any good so… I just want to say, I don’t know if you realize it, this three-member board, five-member board just added in June. I know. What’s gone on before any of these people were here, when we had a three-member board and board of health, how they used to treat the public, it wasn’t too pleasant sometimes. So I’ve seen a big improvement when we went to a three-member board than a five-member board with these people that are in the room now. And we can agree and we can disagree, but I think everyone is trying to do things for the best of town, even though it comes out sometimes that people think it’s offensive. I’ve been to all kinds of board meetings. I came to a board meeting in this room in 1974, my uncle, when I was 14 years old, 13 years old. My uncle was on the select board. And you should have seen in the olden days how the public was treated. I’m just curious. Tom’s wrote a lot of articles for the paper. He was a medical doctor. This lady over here, and is a current medical doctor now. She’s written some articles- And still is … yeah, and as an attorney, she’s wrote- No, in her position- She still is

1:47:53 … but my point is on this, they only meet every two weeks, and she’s talked about the flu, and she’s talked about mosquitoes. And I’m not appalled about any articles that she put in the paper, and I want up-to-date information changes really quick and stuff, so if they have to have all this stuff go to everyone in the meeting, and like a medical doctor, I’m not a medical doctor. She knows more about that. She’s up-to-date. She’s in that practice every day. She’s getting information that other people aren’t privy to yet, like you were. Mm-hmm. You came from Framingham, that horrible situation with the pharmacy company. Yeah. He went to jail and everything. Yeah. So you’ve been around a lot of real hazardous things in schools and everything. And I just want to say, I like the way that Tom has handled things. I know he does things, like this new baby thing. He thought a few weeks ago there were only going to be two people there. He was going to have to cancel it. And he goes, “You know something?” He wasn’t going to give up. He says, “I’m going to try this even if two people show up because it’s the first meeting, and I haven’t had time to put this in the paper, and it’s a new system.” So you have to start on small. But what I’m saying to you is, I don’t want to put a lot of restrictions. And the other thing, I just want this board to be cautious. Our town council led here just recently in the paper. It has skyrocketed to millions of dollars where the

1:49:24 school directors take up $100,000 a year. The taxpayers can’t afford this anymore. So I like people like you. I don’t know what it’s costing to have you come down here. Zero. I have a feeling. Yeah. If you told me you’re from Wellesley, I was a little scared. So what I’m saying like that, this time years ago, a lot of people volunteered, and they were really dedicated to town, and we got that same type of help, and we get good bang for the buck- So a lot of times people go to these different lawyers until they hear what they want to hear. Because you talk to this lawyer over here and this lawyer over there, and they’ll say two different things about that. So I don’t want to spend a lot of time with lawyers. I just want to help it work with the public. And with the public, if they feel like I’m really concerned about this gas station heroin. We just had the state come in here a couple of weeks ago and fine four of our cigarette vendors in town $1,000 a piece for selling something. Whatever recently, I don’t know if you’ve run into, like Cumberland Farms lately, they’re taking half the cigarettes now in the past month or two, and they’re putting all these little cans of nicotine stuff. I don’t even know what’s in them, but I see people going in there buying three or five cans. I don’t even know what we’re letting them put new products in here. So we have- We’re beginning into areas that are not on the agenda. Okay. I just want to say, if you could give them any guidance or maybe the state would change the law because, these four little small businesses in town, that’s

1:51:00 really going to hurt the $1,000 fine. And I don’t think they knew that they were doing wrong. So I don’t understand, why don’t they have regulations when they put a new product in a store? The state already approves it. So we know that they’re not breaking the law because these people on this board didn’t know this. We needed people to come from out of town apparently that can then just say we’re selling these things. It’s whack-a-mole, and the most recent one, of course, is Kratom, which finally it’s been banned by the state. We do a lot of work on the tobacco. MHV does a lot of work on the tobacco issues across the state, and every time that Cumberland Farms sues a municipality, our staff gets very involved in those lawsuits because it’s just whack-a-mole. What’s the next product going to be? Who knows? But you know. Do we have anybody on Zoom? No questions on Zoom? No questions on Zoom. All right. So I cut you off. Go ahead and finish. The last thing I’m just going to say, the only thing is I’m very disappointed that a few more public officials didn’t come down to listen to this because I found it very helpful. And you seem like you’re the type of guy that even if we didn’t agree, we could have a conversation. I could still shake your hand. Absolutely. And I feel like I work on the highway at the end of my career, and I feel like when I go to talk to some of these boards, tomorrow I’ll be going in front of the Electric

1:52:30 Light Commission, and their favorite saying when they see me, “We’ve got a lot on the agenda tonight. I hope you’re going to be quick.” It’s very insulting because I’m the only one in these audits. They don’t have a lot. So if you don’t want to listen to me, and I talk about useful things I do, and other people come up to me and they appreciate you going in front of these boards and saying your things because a lot of people are sort of intimidated by these boards now. And what you just said earlier, learn from the public. Oh, yeah. They’re spending millions of dollars sometime, and they didn’t know what the public knew. And the money wasn’t spent as good as if they would’ve had some information. That’s all I’m going to say. Again, thank you for taking the time to come here. Thank you. I appreciate it. I’m very enlightened. Excellent. Thank you very much. Well, I think on behalf of the board, I would like to thank you, Michael. And you can bet that you now have five people on this board who will be calling for specific recommendations. I can talk to anybody anytime. You can all call me. You know that? So anybody who wants to call anytime, this is what I do, so… And it’s my pleasure to be here. All right. If there’s nothing online, I think a motion to vote or motion to adjourn. I have a couple items. Oh, I’m sorry. Yeah.

1:54:01 Yeah. Yeah.

1:54:07 So Haley Ward is our engineering firm. They represent us for all landfill and transfer station items. We are required for MassDEP, to do quarterly reports, annual testing. We have to have inspections. So we have an annual contract with them. So I have a new contract. It’s a five-year contract. The total value over the five years is $336,750. So this is between 2027, 2031. So I need a motion for the board to approve the contract with Haley Ward in total of $336,750 over the next five years. So made. To have a few questions. Yep. This is for the five years, this is per year? Correct. Yep. So it’s just below $70,000 a year. And was our previous contract five years? Yes, it was. Okay. Yep. That’s standard. What were we paying before? Very similar amounts of money. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So second. Is that a motion? Who made the motion? Motion made and seconded. Okay. Any other comments? No, I have the same questions as Amanda. Thank you. Okay. All right. All in favor? Any opposition?

1:55:38 Motion unanimously passes. And then we have our household hazardous waste event coming up. It is Wednesday, October 7th. It is an evening event. It runs from 4:00 to 7:00 PM. We’ll have lights. This is trying to get to people who are unable to come to Saturday events. This is a pay event, right? Need to make that very clear. Getting rid of household hazardous waste is not cheap. So we have different tiers, 0 to 3 gallons or pounds, 3 to 10 gallons or pounds, 10 to 25 gallons or pounds. So we call those small, medium, or a half load, or a full car load. Now again, if you’re over 25 gallons or pounds, it will continue to go up. So you could have multiple car loads in a single car, technically. Again, a bag of fertilizer can weigh 25 pounds. So the cost for 0 to 3 gallons or pounds is $43. 3 to 10 gallons or pounds is $60, and 10 to 25 gallons or pounds is $95. So please remember when you’re buying these products, buy only what you need to use. Really think about, all right, do I need 25 pounds of fertilizer? Am I going to use it up this whole year? Or do I need to look at smaller bags and stuff like that?

1:57:11 Again, we will take a variety of different items. We will take latex paint, which is non-hazardous. I will charge you these amounts. We are working with a company called Recolor, and we’ll be repurposing the paint. But because you’re getting rid of it during these events, we will be charging you per these guidelines. I thought I heard latex paint you can dry it out and- That’s correct. Latex paint is non-hazardous. You can dry it out. As long as it’s dry, you can throw it away in your household trash. Okay. Yep. I was just looking to see. Nope. It is online. It is online. Things like you cannot just bring- Kitty litter is a great item. Yep. So kitty litter is bentonite clay, and it dries it right up. There’s other products out there at Home Depot and Ace Hardware and stuff like that. These little packets that you can pour into gallons of paint, and it’ll solidify stuff. But again, latex is non-hazardous. If it’s oil-based paint and it’s dry, it still has to go through household hazardous waste day. And this is only for residents? So we work with Marblehead and Swampscott. And yes, it’s only residents. It’s not for large businesses. Again, that’s why we’re into the half the car, full car loads. Is this Marblehead and Swampscott jointly? So- Yes. Yep. Okay. Yep. Is it pretty busy?

1:58:42 Yeah. So we’ll do about 175 to 200 cars. Do we want to open it up to outside cars? We generally don’t have the opportunity to. Yeah. So we like to share the reciprocity with other surrounding communities, but we need to try to make sure we take care of all Marblehead and Swampscott residents. With the number of cars, we’re usually maxed out.

1:59:10 Okay. Well, before we adjourn, I guess I’ll go to my other reports. Our next technically scheduled meeting is the second Monday of October. That’s a holiday. So we need to reschedule that meeting. Are there any suggestions? One of the ones I made on emails, we consider either going to the first Monday or the third Monday, because we can’t get this room any other day. Correct. It’s really hard to get this room other times. We can only get the room on Monday. The first Monday is next week, right? That’s correct. Let’s do the first Monday. Do the first and the fourth? Or the first and the third? Or the- No. We’re up- Or the fourth. Okay … we’re up for the second and the fourth officially, but on… I looked. Patriots’ Day, Presidents Day, and Martin Luther King Day don’t conflict with our regularly schedule. So actually, it’s a pretty good- Yeah … year to be on a Monday, I think. So the question, can we all make the first Monday of October or move to the third and fourth Mondays

2:00:42 for both of our meetings?

2:00:54 I can do next Monday, but the other question, do we have enough to go over in just a week or should we jump to three weeks from now? Um- The only reason I’m suggesting that we do the first week is that I have an item that I really wanted on tonight’s agenda. Oh. That, and the later we push it, the worse it’s going to get. Okay. Okay. Let’s do next week then. Then the answer is yes, and yes, it’s fine with me. Okay, so we’ll post. That has to be the agenda for that meeting has to be done on Wednesday. Yeah. I have to post Thursday. Yeah. Okay. And then we’ll do the 19th. Yeah. The regular… No. No. The 26th. The 26th. Okay. Yeah. Okay. But we can take other items for… How long will you need, Tristan? Half an hour. Half an hour. Okay. Yeah, I would like to talk to, about introduce again the working group on mental health. Yeah. The coalition on how to put it together. I, certainly what we learned tonight about open meeting laws, I’m still prepared to have the

2:02:24 working group do, manage under open meeting laws, because I think we do need a coalition in town for dealing with mental health. And even though the board has all this authority, I don’t think even an authorized board can do it by itself. There’s got to be people from Parks and Recs, there’s got to be people from schools, got to be people from the police department. Just, it’s got to be a town cultural change. So, all right. Well, we have then two items. And then, another item, I’ve been contacted by two youth representatives who would like to join our board, high school students. Sure. So we can talk about that further at the next meeting as well. And I’ve been contacted by Sustainable Marblehead that wants to have a joint meeting with their board. Now, whether they can make next week or they’re, I think they probably want to be later in the month, but that’s the kind of, that’s actually the kind of thing you were talking about earlier. That we would have a co-board, they would come and join our board, but they would be in session at the same time. And there seems to be a lot of overlap to what they do. I didn’t know much about it. I met with people on the team worthwhile. So yeah, I think we’re going to fill next Monday.

2:03:55 Okay. And then the last piece is that we had scheduled a site visit for the morning of Wednesday, October 7th. We need to reschedule that. Yeah. I’ve got to be out. Okay. So what dates are available?

2:04:26 So, I mean, I can switch it over to Thursday the 8th. I can do Wednesday the 14th. I cannot do that. Okay. I’m in clinic at 8:00. So, when were we going to meet, 7:30? It was going to be 8:00, but we can make it… Yeah. Well, as long as it’s a Monday or Wednesday- Okay … I can do morning. Julie, how are you for Mondays? Generally fine. So- How about the 14th? The 14th I cannot do. Oh, I’m sorry. That’s what you just said. The 21st? I have DA service. I can’t do that that day. The 19th? I have jury duty. So Mondays are hard because I have to do payroll. I can do it, just so we can get the, we can do the site visit. I will figure that out. For what date then? For the 19th. Oh, I have jury duty. What about- Sorry. Oh. What about Monday the 5th? I have an 8:00 call that day. What is it? Monday the 5th? And then we’re meeting that night. We’d see a lot of each other that day. Monday the 5th? I have a meeting at 8:00. Actually, I can stay late. I can do that. Monday the 5th? Mm-hmm. Okay. Hopefully that works for Tom.

2:05:56 He’s going to be- Tom is there on a regular basis. Yeah. Oh, he said he can’t do during the week- Yeah … because he has to walk. Oh, okay. So we just make it- Okay. So 8:00 then? Yep. And we just meet there? Yep. Okay.

2:06:12 And- Where do you want us to park? We are going to have office hours tomorrow at 1:00 PM at the- Where do you want us to park? So if you just come out the residential entrance, you can park in the swap shop area. Okay, great.

2:06:29 Yep. Now- Can I just make a, just an announcement for maybe people who are watching this meeting, whether it’s today or whenever. If you’re interested in volunteering or being a part of Amazing Race Marblehead, reach out to me. But activity for kids, a dry activity for kids. Your email or- Yeah. Oh, kristindubaihorton, this is the easiest one, @yahoo.com.

2:07:07 It’s on the site- Okay … for that one. How many people were on? I think it was eight or nine. Okay. Now we can have a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. All those in favor? Any opposition? Standing room. I’ll adjourn it. Thank you very much. Very helpful. Thank you. And if- Thank you for the call.

2:07:37 Mm-hmm. Hope the meeting will-