Board of Health: October 5, 2026

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

0:01 It’s just October, and I’m pleased to open the Board of Health meeting tonight. We have a guest committee joining our board this evening. So the first thing we are going to do is share the agenda with our colleagues, or maybe just a colleague from the Sustainable Marblehead Community Organization. There’s a lot of overlap between what Sustainable Marblehead is interested in doing and the public health side of recycling and reusing information. So we thought it was best that we got to know each other better and invited the Sustainable Marblehead team. So if you want to come up here, you may want to introduce yourself and your team. We can introduce ourselves to you. Okay, Kristen? Hi. We know each other. I’m Kristen. Okay. I’m new to the Board of Health. Thank you. Sure. Amanda Riccio. Hello. Thomas Arrow. Julius House. Okay. And I’m Elaine Leahy. I’m the executive director for Sustainable Marblehead.

1:32 So thanks for having me. Glad you’re here. All right. Well, I did prepare some words, and I brought a little handout that I could refer to during my talk. So this is for in a little bit. These numbers are from the Marblehead town reports that I’m sure Andrew probably put together. All right. But we can look at that in a minute. So, good evening, and thank you for inviting Sustainable Marblehead here to join us at this meeting tonight. As I said, I’m Elaine Leahy, the executive director for Sustainable, and I’m here to speak on behalf of the organization and specifically our Sustainable Living Working Group is our little subcommittee that works on composting, recycling, and Mary Ellen Miller couldn’t make it, but she’s also someone you probably will speak with in the future. So, basically, I’m here tonight because we hope to collaborate with the board on several areas of mutual interest, as Tom said, including waste reduction, recycling, and composting. Increasing our efforts in each of these areas is good for the environment, good for the town’s finances through less trash, more composting and better recycling, and better for residents’ pocketbooks when we reduce and reuse. We’ve enjoyed working with Andrew Petty for many years, and we greatly appreciate all of his work and his ongoing efforts toward these goals.

3:08 So by coming before the board, though, tonight, we hope to broaden and strengthen our relationship and identify additional ways that we can work together for the benefit of Marblehead. So as you probably have heard, I know Andrew’s talked about this, Massachusetts is facing a shrinking in-state disposal capacity. Some landfills are projected to reach capacity before 2030, and the Commonwealth already sends a portion of our waste out of the state. So reducing the amount of waste that we need to dispose of can help protect Marblehead from future increases in disposal costs while also generating savings today. I’ll highlight some of the numbers from the last three years in just a moment, which is what I kind of passed out to you guys. So MassDEP’s current solid waste strategy calls for reducing disposal by 30% by 2030. That would be 5.7 million tons in 2018 to 4 million tons, with a long-term goal of 90% reduction by 2050. I don’t know how that’s going to be, but that’s what their plan is. So this strategy specifically identifies recycling, reuse, and organic diversion as important components of achieving these goals. And if we look at Marblehead’s documents, this also some of our own goals align

4:40 with that same approach. In the Marblehead 2025 town report, it says, “Marblehead is continually working to maximize waste reduction, recycling, and composting to ensure the safe management, reuse, and disposal of solid and hazardous waste. And the town needs to focus on decreasing the amount of waste we generate and increasing the amount recycled.” And as I’ve heard from both Albert and Steve, who are really long-time experts in this, a lot of these things Marblehead’s been doing for decades already. And additionally, the town’s Net Zero Roadmap, adopted by the select board in 2023, reinforces this commitment. In the Appendix A, it says that actions identified for Marblehead, the town specifically calls for us to significantly increase participation in composting programs, and the health department’s identified as a lead with Sustainable Marblehead as partner. And I’ve worked with Andrew and the Green Marblehead Implementation Committee on that. But as everything goes, we need patience and things take time to kind of get going. So we see this as a really big opportunity for collaboration. We’re not proposing a new goal. This is something that Marblehead, things that they’ve already identified as important. So, just to turn our attention now to some of these facts and figures from the last

6:11 three years. I won’t go through everything because I’ll leave this with you guys, but for anyone listening on Zoom or in the audience, the figures kind of illustrate the benefit of recycling food waste diversion and textile recycling being not only good for the environment, which they are, and that’s really important, but they also generate savings for the town, which is also a really important thing. So just a couple highlights that I pulled out from the numbers that were in that report. So thanks to Andrew for referring me to this report originally. The total reported savings from recycling diversion over the last three years is approximately $1.1 million. I was shocked. Averaging 370,000 a year. The food waste diversion, which is essentially composting for anyone who wants to hear the other word, is approximately 88,000 in savings over this three-year period or about 29,000 a year. And the textiles and used clothing, which it is a law that you cannot put those in the waste, the trash anyway, but that generated approximately 36,000 in savings, averaging 12,000 a year. So when you take all these things together, it was more than $1.2 million over the three years. So of course, the diversion does have costs. It’s not free. So I guess the important question will be whether the cost of the diversion is

7:45 lower than the current and future cost of the disposal. The numbers suggest there’s some important things that we can look at together. So I just, in conclusion, just like to leave you with a few questions to consider. If we agree that reducing the amount of material we pay to collect and dispose of is valuable to the town, how can Marblehead further reduce that amount? And how can Sustainable Marblehead collaborate with and support this board and Andrew and the town to reach this goal? You probably won’t be surprised that we have a few ideas about this, and one of them, Andrew has been gracious enough to help us with. In a few weeks, we’re going to be doing, or I guess a month, a compost recycled trash Q&A, just to try to educate people of where things go so that keep our recycling stream clean and valuable. And, someone from BlackEarth Compost has a CHaRM program, it’s called. It’s hard to recycle materials, essentially, and we’re going to have one of them to come as well and speak about it. So, but I’d love to hear your ideas as well, and that’s why I don’t want to throw out a million ideas. I want everyone to think about it. And, just in conclusion, we appreciate the work of your board and especially of Andrew, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts and other ways we could partner Whether it’s events, newsletters, wires, articles, outreach,

9:19 and oh, one thing I do want to leave is possibly a tour of the transfer station. It’s been talked about at some of these smaller meetings we’ve been at. And you’d be surprised, folks in our group, some of us don’t know where to find– “Oh, there’s a book bin?” Where’s that? “Oh, you can put clothes up there?” Where? If there was a tour or even in the short term, because that’s going to take time to organize, even just a little map of where things are, maybe just to put either on the website or hand it out when people buy their sticker, if you don’t do that already. I don’t know. I didn’t think so, but it could be something. So, I’m grateful for your time and the opportunity to hopefully begin a dialogue, and I look forward to brainstorming and seeing what we might be able to accomplish together. Oh, it’s been a great partnership over the years. And I just want to remind everybody about the three Rs that you briefly touched on. So everybody knows the three Rs of recycling. But there is an important order to it. So it’s reduce, reuse, recycle. So you’re supposed to be reducing what you’re consuming and buying, then you reuse the items as much as possible, and then you recycle. And that’s a really important piece. So, do I really need to buy this item? Can I live with something else? Can I get something from another friend? Can I reuse it?

10:50 We recently discovered a company, and generally I don’t talk about brands, but it’s called Depop. It’s a huge online recycled clothing company. So I’m wearing a Depop shirt. Oh, that’s amazing. It’s a high-end shirt that would’ve cost about $100. I paid $15 for it. And so again, I wear it to work. But they have hundreds of thousands of items on there. And so we kind of got our kids into it. Rather than buying these expensive clothes, Lululemon, why not go in there and take a look? And it’s a huge savings and stuff like that. And obviously, you’re reusing something at the time. Yeah, definitely. It went the other way in my family. She wants money for the things she’s not really interested in, so. It’s a great business. It is. But those are some of the things that we’ll talk about more during the holiday- Mm-hmm … special and stuff like that. Yeah. That’s going to be great. But yeah, so a map would be great for all of that area. So we’ll work on that and try to get that together. I have a very engineer plan for it. I don’t have a basic plan. So I’ll take a plan and dumb it down and- Okay … make a basic plan for up there. I’m just curious. Mm-hmm. And maybe you’re the person to ask. Most of these numbers are kind of holding steady over the three years, except electronics recycling.

12:21 Mm. Right. So we talked about one thing today, and I called TVs something else. What was it? Cathode ray tubes. Oh, cathode ray tubes. Cathode ray tubes. So back in the day, we used to have these enormous TVs that would come in with all these CRTs. As technology has advanced, items have gotten smaller and actually lighter. So I’m probably recycling more TVs as far as the number goes, but my tonnage is going down. Hmm. And again, it’s hard to say the different environmental impacts by the tonnage. Obviously, cathode ray tubes were a concern because of the mercury in them. Again, when you’re looking at new electronics, you’re talking about precious metals in these TVs. So the environmental impacts of harvesting all these precious metals is really large as well. So it’s always hard to say, yeah, the number’s going down a little bit, but what’s the overall impact? There’s going to be a couple little things. So for the last 10 years, we haven’t paid to get rid of our recycling, but we haven’t received money. Now there is a diversion cost. Hmm. But as we move forward, we have to pay a processing fee, but there will be some return based on commodity markets and stuff like that. So I have to figure out how I’m going to do my numbers and take a look at that. Food waste is probably the reason why the number is the exact same.

13:54 I probably didn’t have a number at the time, so I used– No, it generally goes up. Some of the stuff you have to, like 2023, we’re coming off of COVID a little bit. Mm. Where so many people are home. We had a lot of people go back to work over the last couple of years, so the amount of food being consumed in the home is going down. So not as many people are home for lunch and stuff like that. So that’s why you see some differences. Textiles, more and more people are aware of the program, so I think that number is going up. Mm-hmm. You’re going to hit a point where it kind of flattens out. Do we make money on the electronics recycle? We do not, no. It’s purely a cost. It’s purely a cost, yeah. Huh. Yeah. You’re paying for somebody to take that product and break it all apart into different aspects of it, to either sell or scrap the precious metals. So if you go to foreign countries, they used to smash the TVs on the ground, lighten them on fire, and then gather up the precious metals. And in some third world countries, they’re still doing that. Mm-hmm. What’s the name of the company that you bought your shirt from? It’s called Depop. D-E-P-O-C? D-E-P-O-P. There’s an app. $15. My teenagers love that site, and if you put stuff in your cart but you don’t get it

15:25 right away, it could disappear. So it’s like- And you can bid on items and- … “Mom, hurry.” Yeah, it’s really cool. Well, why aren’t clothes recyclable? So they are. There’s a huge market for clothes and stuff like that. So again, if I’m putting the clothes in a recycle bin, the company that buys it, and a lot of times, so the company that we work with, CWT, is partnered with the Girls & Boys Club of America. So they’re going through everything. They’re taking a look to see, all right, what can be sold? T-shirts have high value. There always used to be this kind of T-shirt market. Cool old T-shirts, like they’ll save them. So they would literally sell bales of T-shirts back in the day. Other clothes can be resold, repurposed. And then in Massachusetts, there’s actually a rag market. So we always want items to be clean and dry that are going into the bin. So clean, please wash it before it goes in there, make sure there’s no food waste and stuff like that. Dry, make sure it’s gone through the dryer, but put it in a plastic bag. So put it in a trash bag, and that way the items won’t get wet and spoiled, because they’re going to sit around for a long time. So if the item’s wet, it’s going to mildew. If it’s mildew, it’s just not worth recycling. It’s probably just going to be thrown away. Now, items, depending on the item, like jeans, obviously ripped jeans are highly valuable. Linens and stuff like that, there is still a market out there. And so we buy, as a municipality, we buy used rags to use in our mechanic

17:00 shops, our bays, and stuff like that. It’s cheaper to buy that stuff. The company used to be out of Lynn, so the transit was really quick and stuff like that. But, so again, we’re looking at total impacts. So again, we’re just trying to fill in the whole void, but clothes and all that stuff definitely has value. Linens can go to the animal shelters, too. They love those. Yes. So blankets, all those things are great for the animal shelters. Towels. They’re always looking for those items. So yeah, that’s a really big piece, too. Hmm. I was surprised to find Staples recycles electronics. Yeah, there’s a lot of companies, and Staples used to be big on cartridges, so like printer cartridges are another big item that people recycle a lot. And again, it’s something that can be refilled. Now, we can’t necessarily refill them at home, but you can send them back to the company. There’s enough of them out there that they would refill them and redistribute them and stuff like that. Again, Staples is trying to get people in the door, so sometimes they were offering, “Hey, if you recycle some of these items, we’ll give you a $10 gift card to do some shopping.” But they were also selling monitors and all that stuff as well. So there is a little bit of the responsibility code that they have to follow. Yeah, we did this back in the day. We do accept making sure that these items get recycled properly. Now, the state of Massachusetts is always looking at

18:35 recycling codes and stuff like that, and when we talk about this stuff, it’s more about Home Depot and selling paint. Should you pay an upfront fee to make sure that product is disposed of properly? Mm-hmm. So it’s always been a discussion about should Home Depot or other paint companies be required to take all their bad paint back? So just imagine what they would have to do for a setup if they were had to take all their oil-based paints back and then their epoxies back, they would have to have another section where they could store all this stuff. But it’s all these discussions about responsibility from the manufacturer and on down and stuff like that. Oil companies for a long time, if you could put your car oil back in the container and bring it back to Auto Palace, they had to take it back. Hmm.

19:36 Other questions or thoughts? Okay, let us hear from- How do you calculate the food? It seems amazing to me. That’s like- So I get it- I get it right from, I’m not the one that does it. Black Earth calculates it for us. Okay. Eventually, they pick up- Yeah … throughout the town? So yeah, the transfer station, the schools, and throughout the town. Wow. What percentage of the town uses Black Compost? So we have about 800 customers that do curbside composting, and we serve 8,000 homes weekly. And that number’s been pretty steady, I think, for several years. Is it Marblehead? Yeah. Yep. So 10% of the- Yep, 10%. And then there’s the folks who could just go to the transfer station and use those as part of your sticker fee- Correct … which is also– I know a lot of older folks or single people who say, “I don’t have or justify the need to have curbside,” but they go up there and do it. Yeah. We sell 6 to 7,000 stickers a year. I don’t have it broken down per household, but there is a huge number of people that use those. And so what we’ll do is, as we see the need increase, we add bins up in that area to add collection points for food waste. Mm. Some of the other things, so obviously with Household Hazardous Waste coming up,

21:09 during that event, we do have latex paint. We work with a company called Recolor. And so they take all the liquid latex paint, they batch it all together, and then they resell it for large projects. So if I’m painting a warehouse and I just need a bland color, I can go to them and buy used paint, which is still good and stuff like that. In a perfect world, we would set up another shipping container that we could do that for latex paint as well, and they would be our vendor. But it becomes a little messy and stuff like that. But that is something that we could do. With latex paint, all you can do is dry it out, and then you can throw it away. It’s not hazardous. And paint can’t get frozen because- Mm … you know, so in the wintertime, it would be useless. Right. You’d have to do it seasonally. Yep. You said you had some ideas for us. Mm-hmm. Well, I’d be happy to share a couple. We’d be happy to listen. All right. I didn’t know how long, I didn’t want to take- Keep going. We’re interested. Okay. So we shut you up. Okay. Thanks. Okay, so one I had mentioned when we spoke the other week is the idea that since there are new folks who have opted out of curbside trash pickup, they could be new sticker owners, new sticker holders who traditionally didn’t go to the dump every week, and now they will.

22:40 So could we somehow educate them to say, “Oh, did you know that there’s actually composting?” Usually we hear 30% of trash that you’re throwing out is actually food waste. And you guys probably know this, but for anyone who’s listening at home or on Zoom, the reason you don’t want that in the landfill is it creates methane as it decomposes, which warms the atmosphere. So that’s essentially why you don’t want it, but also the compost will return all those nutrients. It’s circular back into the crops, and all the labor that went into it is not being wasted. All the water is getting returned. So there’s lots and lots of good benefits. So is there a way to kind of reach those folks? I don’t know how many there are, but those are, to me, prime– Like in marketing, I do marketing, that’s like a prime target. They are your leads right now, like really hot leads, I would think to say. And not just composting, but anything up there that’s a resource. Composting is what I focus on, but really all the books, the textiles. So I don’t know whether it’s– I know Andrew had said there could be trouble. Could we maybe just make a general flyer to promote some of the things that are bringing– It’s good for the environment, but it’s also good in terms of revenue

24:11 and money savings. I think the greatest thing for us to do to work on is to create that map that has everything on there, and then we hand out the map with every sticker. I think that would really– Again, we want to do it sustainably, so we have a one-sheet piece of paper that you get that kind of lists a lot of items on the front as far as costs. Mm-hmm. But if we could print on both sides and the backside would be the map, that would be extremely helpful. Put the link on a website. Oh, yeah. Definitely. Where would you think it would go? On Marblehead Cares or on the town one? Town website. Town website. Yep. But we should have a link. Yeah, I think you could have a link from Marblehead Cares as well because- Well, they’re always going to be there. They’re always going to be links, but yes. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Do we know the swap shed? So the swap shed is seasonal. We’re currently operating out of two shipping containers. So that’s a large financial investment that we want to make at some point. But we have two big projects up there that we need to finish. One would be finishing off the compactor building that needs to be resided and needs a roll-up door on the front of it. And then the second largest project is the swap shed. And that needs a concrete pad and then a garage-like structure. Yeah, that would be amazing. Oh, yeah. We’ve been talking about the swap shed for a long time.

25:41 Mm-hmm. We really want to get that underway. Again, it’s a large financial project, so the first step for us is to really come up with a cost for that. And again, we’re paying prevailing wage. In a perfect world, it would be a tech school project. So we put the concrete pad in, we have the plans, we buy the lumber, and the tech school comes and builds it. But there’s some things that go along with that. Hmm. So they could possibly do that? They could possibly. Yep. They revamp that. Yep. Well, that might save the town a lot of money and get something. Because you want to do it right. Correct. You want to make it big enough in the beginning because all this stuff, I would think as time goes on and the cost of trash goes up, you want to have a little as much space there so things you’re not doing now for the future, just plan because the cost of trash, I was at a town today, two communities, and in a few years, people are really going to start paying attention because it’s all going out of state and the cost is going to go up. You think Essex Techs, that would even be- Yeah … a tech school? Yep. Yeah. So it’d just be good if even beyond just the map to have some education of why is this important to consider and how easy it is in terms of composting. We’ve been trying for years to think of ways to get more people to do it, and it’s tough. It’s almost like we’ve hit a plateau.

27:15 It is tough. There’s definitely a yuck factor to it. And making sure that people have the right tools and the right setup is always important. Amanda was asking me today what’s my setup. So I keep a one-gallon stainless steel container on the counter. It’s got a lid. It’s got a charcoal filter. I line it with compostable bags. Again, because I’m composting, I do use paper towels, so I do put that in there. So that does absorb a lot of liquids and stuff like that, so I’m not dealing with kind of a soupy bag. And then I carry that outside to my 13-gallon pail that I have outside. I do use two bungee cords on top of it, so the raccoons can’t get into it. There’s nothing like waking up in the morning, your compost is all over the driveway. So, these little things that you’ve learned over the years, nothing can get into it now. It’s really easy. The bungee cords are attached to the lid, but it’s easy to take on and off. It just eases the process. Now- And then you take that to the transfer station? No, I just– Yeah. So I have Black Earth come weekly. And so yeah, I just take it to the end of the driveway. So I’m only going from my kitchen, and I have a kitchen door out to the side yard, so it’s like 20 feet to my bin. So it’s really easy for me to do this stuff. But it does make a huge difference. So my trash is relatively clean. It doesn’t smell. The only thing really in my trash that does smell are my meat

28:47 trays. I don’t wash those. I’m not going to waste the water. So but for the most part, everything goes in there. Yeah. And- And I have younger kids, I have kids, and so yeah, there is going to be always some food waste. There’s no way around it. Yeah. Who doesn’t like the crust on their toast? Stuff like that. Yeah. I give it to the birds, the bread end and the- I’m not going to talk about that. I don’t know if you bite the bread end. No. But- It’s important to save. Right. You’re not using your garbage disposal. Correct. Yeah. Right. That’s always a big piece, and you know. It clogs sewer pipes, too. I wouldn’t use a garbage disposal. I clean sewer pipes. I would put a half a dozen in. And Black Earth picks up the compost from the transfer station? They do, yeah. Okay. So they do all of the community. So they do curbside for residents, they do the transfer station, they do all our schools. And so they, all part of it. The schools compost, too? Yes, the schools compost as well. And so this tonnage includes all of that. Yes, includes all of that. Yep. Okay. When I look at the schools, I look at schools could really be close to zero waste. And yes, there is a small amount of waste there. But you could really concentrate on the amount of recycling that come out of there, and then really everything from the cafeteria should really be going into the compost. It is a big change and stuff like that.

30:18 But… Yeah, if they’re peeling carrots for- Oh, yeah … lunch, that should all be composted. But it’s a process and it takes steps. It’s tough. Right. And again, if you teach your younger kids and get them doing this one growing up, they know how to do it by the time they get to school, or how they– All the way through the school, and it’s second nature to them. They don’t even think about it. There’s always things in other areas where you’re like, “That’s not a great setup.” A lot of times when we go into restaurants, and they have a recycle bin, people are dumping full drinks in there and stuff like that. Mm. In a real world, that’s not helpful at all. That’s never going to get recycled. Nobody wants to recycle coffee in a cup. Just… Yeah. So that’s– If I could just say, since you gave me an opportunity, I’ll just leave you with one more idea that we really have been wanting to work on for the last few years, is black plastic to-go containers from restaurants. You probably already heard that black plastic is toxic, and when it’s heated, it especially leaches into the food. So you’re taking your food you took home from a restaurant, putting it right into the microwave, reheating it, and you’re ingesting some chemicals. So that’s one problem that the doctors here would be aware of. And then the second problem is that they’re not recyclable.

31:50 So being the black conveyor belts with a black thing on top, it doesn’t know, it doesn’t see it, right? So they may have a little triangle on them, but they’re actually not recycled. So we have been speaking with restaurants ourselves, our sustainable living group, the last few years. But it’s tough. They’re busy, and we would love help on this, whether it’s can you just switch to a white one if that’s the cheapest option? Because we know that money is a big factor. We don’t want to put any restaurants out of business over this, but the best would be compostable. But they may be more expensive, but that’s option one that’s best. Then there’s also, you used to get those little aluminum foil ones. They’re recyclable because they’re tin. And then some other clam shell, those can be recycled. And then some kind of plastic, but just not black plastic. So knowing that you are regulatory, is there some way we could say, “Do just something else,” because the black plastic is a health issue, not to mention a recycling issue. So that’s just something I’d love for us to consider. My oldest child, who’s not a child- … is a sort of a nut in these things. Mm. She brings

33:20 good Tupperware to restaurants- Oh … and asks them to put- Oh … the things that they’re going to take. The doggie bag. The doggie bag. She brings the doggie bag with her. That’s amazing. And I wonder if we could almost get- Hmm … the restaurants must have to pay those little things. Yeah. Maybe for every doggie bag– We’re just playing now- Yeah. But for every doggie bag, they would give you 10 cents or a free mint when you left- Right … or something like that. But we make it fun. It’s a real issue for her. When I’m visiting her, we go out, we have to go to certain restaurants, and they know that Courtney wants use her own Tupperware. That’s great. Can we ban those items? It won’t affect Salem or Swampscott, but we could ban them in Marblehead, no? You can. So there is always a cost to it. So yes, you can definitely ban the black plastic. Like you guys banned plastic bags. There are generally regulations out there to take a look at that. Just know that you’re adding the cost to the establishment. The black plastic’s are cheaper? Yep. It’s the cheapest, yeah. Well, I know I went through our kitchen drawers and got rid of all the black plastic utensil- Yep … and replaced it with silicone, and it was not inexpensive, but I was a

34:52 former- And there’s some other little things that go into some of these discussions as well, and one of them is food safety. So a lot of the restaurants have changed their procedure, so they generally no longer take your food away from you and give it in a plastic, like in a doggie bag. They bring you the doggie bag. And that is a little bit of a food safety because if there are containers that are being used, that’s on you. They didn’t provide the container. Because there is some concern about food safety, about people bringing containers and are they clean? Mm. And if they’re not clean, who’s going to get blamed? Okay. Hmm. But yes, that has all been looked at and stuff like that. You have some larger– There are programs out there about reusing containers, bring them back. The establishment will wash them, and then you can take a different one and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. But I believe Concord has some regulations on some of the takeout containers. You can’t even buy a bottle of water. No, you cannot. Which is ridiculous. Mm. You can drink if you’re thirsty, but you can buy a plastic- Cardboard is one … bottle of Coke, but it’s not a healthy glass of water. Well, this has been great. Thank you. Why don’t we plan on a regular basis? You’re coming, maybe not for the time we had a space today. Mm. But just to update. By the next time you come, hopefully we’ll have a map- Okay … because everybody saw that as a great idea.

36:23 That’s a lot of work though. It might take a little longer. That’s a lot of work. Andrew knows that. Well- The quicker- Even if it’s– Well- Before the next- Maybe AI can figure out how to do it. Yeah. No, it would be nice because people that don’t know the compost is way up the back. I dump leaves, so I see it. Well, yeah. But a lot of people just go down and put recycling in and trash in, and they don’t know, Andrew. They don’t go, they have a landscape on it. Well, let’s- I think that would be a benefit … maybe one of the first meeting in January or something like that, you come back, remind us that you’ve been invited. Okay. You come back, and we’ll at least see how we’re doing- All right … on these kind of issues, and maybe we’ll pay attention. I’m going to be in Denver over the weekend in Colorado. Denver, Colorado is way ahead of many states. I don’t know if it’s ahead of Massachusetts, but because it’s an outdoors state and all that, so I might learn something. Yeah. So thank you very much for coming. Thank you. It was a great conversation. Thank you guys so much. And maybe twice, three times a year. It does seem to me, well, Dan Fox has now invited all the chairs of all of the boards and committees and commissions of the town.

37:56 Mm-hmm. We’re going to have an introductory meeting. We’re going to start meeting. Oh, okay. Excellent. I think that’s a great idea, because, as a newcomer, it does seem to me that even boards like ours- Mm-hmm … are siloed. And so if we can begin to talk to each other, and we have so much of an overlap with you- Yeah … we’ll have you on a fairly regular basis and on we go. How do you dispose of her? Is there anyone on Zoom that has any questions? If you mind, no. Andrew checks that. Because I thought someone would be interested in this. How many people do we have on? I only have three people on. Oh, I see five people but okay. Well, thank you. All right. Thank you so much. It’s great to see you. All right, you too. Okay, second item on the agenda is a internal initiative, which is looking at things in new ways. How can we get better at what we’ve been doing? So, one of our new members, Kristen, will be sharing. Do you have any extra of these for- Yeah, I have a few. Yeah. We’ll be sharing an initiative that she’s been working really quite hard on.

39:26 Kristen? So I don’t know if you guys remember at our meeting, a gentleman came in, and Dan, I think his name… No, P. Ryan Wilson, and he said to us, “Let’s do something. Let’s take a few nights off the calendar and give kids something to do in Marblehead besides drink and have a good time.” In addition, we had heard in the comm focus groups from kids that there’s nothing to do in Marblehead except drinking. So we’re hearing it from both parents and kids that this is an issue. So, good public health hears community needs and responds to it. So I texted all my summer help, who are young women from the high school, and said, “What’s fun? What could the board of health do that would be fun for kids that you’d want to do?” They came up with some ideas. They liked the silent disco idea. One of them had been to one at a camp that she works at. She said scavenger hunts are great. So they gave me, they’re like my little focus group, some ideas. So I met with P. Ryan and he said to me, “Okay, let’s just do it. Just make it happen.” And I said, “Well, we’re working on this

40:58 committee. We’re going to bring young people into it. We’re going to look at the data.” And he’s like, “No, you’ve just got to do it.” And then I talked to my daughter about it, who is 20, and she said, “Mom, kids our age don’t want committees. Put your money where your mouth is and make something happen.” So here’s the idea, Marblehead’s Amazing Race. There was some question about whether or not to use that language because there used to be a boat race that involved alcohol that was called Marblehead’s Amazing Race. Marblehead’s Great Race. I went to it. But the kids don’t have any knowledge of it. None of them have ever heard of it. Yeah, it was a long time ago. So, I just started talking to people, everyone who I could find. To Rotary, actually Rotary people called me, because I put a thing on Facebook before I knew I wasn’t supposed to, to say, “Hey, is anyone interested in helping on this?” Marblehead Museum, other parents, the YMCA, Parks and Rec, and the PTO chair, or PCO, I don’t know what that means, all said, “Okay, this is what we can do to help make this happen.” Now let me say, this could be a $0 effort. We print the clues. We put them in envelopes.

42:30 We have people standing in front of various places that hand the envelopes to the kids. The kids in my quasi focus group said, “Yeah.” I said, “What about T-shirts? If the winners won T-shirts, and if you won first place, you’d be blue, your T-shirt would be blue. And second place, they’d be red or gray. And third place, they’d be orangy.” And the kids are like, “We don’t want T-shirts, we want sweatshirts.” And we kids get a million T-shirts. We want sweatshirts. So I’ve been pricing those. Other kids said, “Just give people cash.” Like if the first place team, everyone got $50, and the second place team, everyone got $40, whatever. Now, I have some sample questions, but I don’t know if I share it, if it has to be public, and I really am being like, Elaine has a kid who could be in this. And I know that she’s very competitive- … and I don’t want her passing the answers- Inside information … inside information to her son. So some of the places that we’re going to be working with, if we decide to do this. Goldthwait Reservation

44:02 is going to encompass the space and allow us to do a bonfire. That would be like, with the number of kids we could have, would be like a $1,000 event. But they’re giving it to us for free. And a lot of people have stepped up and done that. Marblehead Bank is also interested in funding it. And I haven’t yet heard back from Grand National. But lots of people, Marblehead is very, very generous, I think, in a lot of ways. And if you need help, I feel like people do step up. Okay. Some of the questions my kids, because I didn’t talk to kids in Marblehead, didn’t like. Ryan had done online a thing that said, “Create a scavenger hunt in Marblehead for teenagers that will take about an hour and a half.” And so it created one, but they were all history questions. Like, “Paul Revere spoke here,” or whatever. Not fun. And my kids encouraged me to think of things that were more topical to them. So I guess the movie Hubie was filmed here. A lot of the kids who were juniors and seniors in high school were in that movie as extras. So they were like, “If you asked a question about that, everyone knows that

45:35 because we were a part of it.” And so that’s the kind of questions we’re really looking toward. There’s some celebrities that are from Marblehead too. So Adam Sandler has done two movies here and owns a house. I don’t know that we can just call him and say, “Adam, can I have $650 or $1,000 because I want nice sweatshirts?” It’s trivia questions. Oh. There’s probably… So as old and sort of boring person, could you really explain a scavenger hunt? Okay. How would it work? So all the kids would start in one location, at the high school. The high school has agreed to let us have kids park there. They are in four-person teams. They get extra time off at the end if their team includes a freshman, a sophomore, a junior, and a senior to encourage sort of not intergenerational, but inter-grade teams. And so it’s four kids and a parent. The parent has to drive because I didn’t want kids racing all over town trying to get- You know, between the neck and Old Town as fast as they could. They will all start in the same location, but they will not have like all go to place one, then two, then three. So they’ll be randomized into different orders. Because you wouldn’t want one group just to say, “Well, they’re good, let’s just follow them because they know where they’re going.” Because they’re all going in

47:08 different directions. So it would be, in my head, it’s 100 kids in 25 teams of four. And you just go from place to place. And when you get there, there are things you have to do to document that you got it, you got there. One of the locations is an old place, and they have to do a modern Instagram dance there and have the parent film them. And it’s a bit of– I mean, it’s not dangerous. I mean, I don’t know what modern dance moves are, but I don’t know, The Swim, whatever. Yeah. Like whatever’s cool. And then we end at Goldthwaite, have a bonfire, have hot cocoa and cookies. The head of the PCO said that she thinks she can get enough moms to bake cookies, that it would be homemade cookies, and we wouldn’t have to pay for them. And I’m waiting to hear from Boy Scouts who do coffee at the farmers market to see how much an urn, because I need an urn. Like I was like, “We could just– I have a coffee. I have one of those silver fancy coffee things for brunches.” But we wouldn’t have power, so that’s not going to work. So we need those big urns, like that they throw over the coach’s head at the end of

48:40 the Super Bowl. So that’s the idea. I would hope we never plan another one of these. I hope that kids will say, “Oh, that was really cool.” And we’d say, “Hey, here’s the other ideas we had. The silence disco, open mic night,” whatever. And the kids would then take the lead, and we could be supportive and drop in and help them figure out whatever. But the Rotary has a group of kids who is going to help us with how to post things and where to post things so that kids want to go. Some of the kids have really big dreams like, “You should get celebrities to record.” And I’m like- He’s a ninth-grade English teacher. How’s that for a celebrity? Right. A ninth-grade English teacher might be good. But this is the plan. It is tangible for young people to say, “We heard you. We’re trying to do something.” And to parents, “Partner with us to do something. Let’s change the norm, let’s change the narrative.” And then

50:10 it could snowball. So that’s the idea. The whole thing, if money were not an object, every kid would be getting a sweatshirt who participates. And I would be doing things differently, but with zero budget and me begging local businesses to– The T-shirt, the Marblehead Graphics people were like, he goes, “If you’ll use End Run and you don’t need them all the same color, I can get you T-shirts for 21 or sweatshirts for 21 bucks with ease.” Which is amazing. Mm-hmm. But local businesses care. Yeah. It’s a ton of work. It’s been a long scene. Yeah. That sounds like- And when do you think you’re going to do this? Because of power? So, no, no, no. Oh, no. Because the weather’s changing quickly. So the question is, do we do it October 23rd, November, the first Friday in November? I don’t remember what that date was. I thought I put it on here. Or the second Friday in November. The goal is do it before Thanksgiving, which is a heavy drinking week for kids here. And I think dropping into their brains, “I had such a great time that night, and I wasn’t drunk, and I didn’t have to sneak in

51:45 when I got home.” And like that you start to have kids think, “Maybe we just do something different that’s fun.” And I don’t want to be preachy about it, but I want to empower kids to make different choices, and not feel– Well, I’ve done adolescent drinking, use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs for 25 years, like when I had a baby. And one of the things that we’ve learned concretely is that teenagers have no frontal lobe, really, and they want whatever the reward is like in seven seconds. Because they are in a world, right? Where they’re playing video games, and you can win in 10 minutes or you’re watching Instagram or TikTok videos and everything is so fast-paced. That to say to the kids, “Join a committee for the next six months so we can then understand that…” The kids are like, “Yeah, no.” Like there are probably some kids who would be really into that, who want to do medicine or epidemiology or something with their life.

53:17 But I’m just…

53:23 I will say that I personally feel, have felt like I’ve been here seven years, and with those two drunk driving deaths, that I didn’t do enough, that I know how to stop this. I’ve worked in communities that have turned this around, and I didn’t do enough. So, I spent two weeks doing this. What do you need from the board tonight? A vote that you want to do it, I guess. If you have ideas for me, and this is like for the whole universe, email me, text me, call me, because this has all come from folks call me and say, “You know what? There’s a baking club at the high school that might want to do the cookies.” And then we found out that they have a whole agenda, and you can’t interrupt the baking club agenda. So, now we’re with parent– Like it’s the ideas that come from the people. We’re looking to have a club from the high school co-sponsor the event, so it’s not just from the Board of Health. But I would like kids to know that the Board of Health did this. The two high school students, the youth representatives, weren’t able to come

54:54 tonight, but they’ll be able to come to the next meeting. But I think this would be great to hear their- I take comments … ideas as well. We lose daylight saving between those two- Yeah … dates. We do. Do you want to do it- I would love– I feel like October 30th is the night before Halloween, and there may be other stuff, probably alcoholic stuff, but other stuff going on. People will be having Halloween parties the night before. And also, you have the football games. Yeah. Uh- I checked football, I checked away cross country meets, and I checked a third sport. And I checked for concerts like Wire or whoever

55:48 A few comments and suggestions. Back in the 1960s, us kids, we used to do this on our own. We would do a scavenger hunt, and it might be like go to the lighthouse and get somebody to sign a card or whatever type of thing, and it was fun. It was a good activity. What age group are you thinking? I was a scout leader, and we had kids 14 to 18, co-ed, going on 25. You know the age I’m talking about? Yeah. Is that what you’re thinking of? So high school is mostly 14 or 15, right? It’s 15 to 18 in that- Your kids are growing. That’s why you have a parent involved. Right. Well, also- Theoretically responsible adults … theoretically responsible adult. And also, I was going to ask the police to do a breathalyzer. I don’t like that. I think, right, and I got shouted out of the room. I think it’s going to take away from the people that participate, because if you’re going to have a parent involved, then you want it to be fun for the kids, and you don’t want it to be like, “We don’t trust you.” And kids- So I think the kids that you’re going to want to respond to this are kids that are looking for alternatives. And the other thing I just want to mention is when I was in high school and stuff, we used to have free concerts over at the beach. High school kids would go- Mm-hmm … over there and stuff. And now that you say you’re having this at…

57:20 These kids that have their own bands and stuff- Mm-hmm … I don’t think they charge anything. And I don’t know if you just want to open, if the Board of Health is going to sponsor this, I applaud you for what you’re trying to do, but I think you should open it up to, even if the parents of the kids, if they have smaller kids after, instead of giving a lot of prizes, I’d rather see you go down to Tony’s with the money and buy pizzas and give them a hoodsie, pizza after they get… It’s a fun event. It’s not like you’re going to get a big prize. I don’t mind the sweatshirt. And I really think there’s a lot of it. The only thing is timing is short, and there’s all kinds of banks. Each bank gives a lot of money away. Marblehead Bank, National Bank, Institute Bank. Bank has– I didn’t write the Eastern. There’s places you can go, but they have to go to the people- Right … at different branches, but the main corporate and stuff. But there’s places that you can go, but you want to make this enjoyable. And if you were nice, lucky enough to get down there at the end of Greystone there, them to let you use that area and stuff. And make it fun for a couple of hours, and then the parents can go back maybe with younger kids and have a piece of pizza and a hoodsie and have a night. I just think it would, because you got kids that are 14 and stuff like that, I think they want to have fun. And I think that’s fine. And then if they have younger siblings, we just had that

58:51 tragedy that that poor high school kid died, and he has three younger siblings and the variation of ages, it would be nice to include the whole family. But I understand you’re not running a job. I think Kristen’s done a great job in a very short period of time. Oh, yeah. Fine. And perfect is the enemy of good for things like this. So especially for the first one. Hmm. I think- Yeah, you want to start slow. Yeah, I think you have to decide pre or post daylight savings. If you’re willing to take after daylight savings, gives you a whole two more weeks to plan. That might be useful, but pre-daylight savings could make… Well, bonfire at the beach, what do you think? I’m not worried about…

59:43 The hunt part itself, it doesn’t matter if it’s dark or light. And it’s good if it’s dark at the bonfire, I think. It’s already dark at 7:00 these days, so I don’t think- If we’re thinking like 6:00 to 7:30 or 6:00 to 8:00, something like that. It’ll probably, for me, A, it’ll never start right at 6:00. We wanted to do it late enough so that parents who were working could get home if they wanted to volunteer. We need volunteers to be at the spots, so we’ll need at least 10 volunteers to be there and to… My guess is the groups will be numbered, and so if you’re at, let’s just say Abbot Hall, and the kids are picking one from you, they’ll say, “We’re team seven.” And you give them the seven envelopes so that they get the right next clue. A couple other thoughts on that. For the T-shirts and things like that, Marblehead Mercantile would give you a good deal. The sports shop would, too. I think it’s the sports shop that we went to. It’s the one you gave me. Yeah. Rather than cash, if you did decide to go that way, do you know where the Marblehead bucks are? Oh, really? A lot of the places in town, you can buy Marblehead bucks, and you can only use them at Marblehead businesses. It’s a good way to help the merchants out. Yeah. I know the Savings Bank, the National Bank, you can buy Marblehead bucks. I get them sometimes you give them to people and…

1:01:14 Cool. How many people were you thinking of all together? Four people on a team, five counting the responsible adults, but how many- How many teams do you expect, or what? I don’t know. It could be seven. I have no idea. In my head, I’m thinking 25 kids, because every group of children- 25 teams or 25 kids? 25 teams. So that’s 100 kids. 100 kids, yeah. How many kids per class- In high school? … 100, roughly. It’s 407 in the entire high school. No, it’s about 250. That’s like $2,000 worth of sweatshirts. Okay. Oh. High school’s- Large. But 200 per class now, right? Yeah. 2 to 250. So like 1,000 kids in the high school? Was 1,000. It’s probably like 850, 900 now. Yeah, just… Yeah. Okay. I think 100’s doable. One last comment. Having parents provide food, a lot of places you can’t do that. The Board of Health wants to inspect the kitchen, and a lot of churches will do that, but- Yeah, the church, I can’t go down there and get cookies anymore because of some people, and I don’t like it. But some people still bake, and I don’t bake them. I don’t- So again, food safety is always a concern. Donations are kind of fall into a different category. We’re not selling the food. Mm-hmm.

1:02:45 And we would go nut-free. So I’m not making the peanut butter blossoms for the folks today. Mm-hmm. Sure. So this is great, Kristen. You’ve done so much great work on this. I think it sounds so much fun, and I think you’re right. A committee is good. I mean, you do a committee well. Yeah. This is a great, like you said, you’re kind of putting your money where your mouth is now. You know this is going to be fun. It sounds so much fun. And a lot of kids, like you said, are going to see challenge the thinking that you have to drink to have a good time. Like, let’s challenge that thought. This is a good way to do that. I don’t think everyone drinks every weekend. But I think the kids that drink are loud about it. They have something to talk about. “Oh, were you at so-and-so’s?” And, “Oh, we went in the woods, and this happened, and that,” whatever. Kids can come back Monday and say, “I can’t believe we lost.” They were told, whatever, it’ll be banter. I love that. It’s such an idea because it builds camaraderie afterwards. Right. Like when people are running around town, like, “Oh, we’re winning team.” And you buy it from Depo. Yeah. Five plus fees. They’re not going to personalize them for you. What about Black Friday? Do the schools have off?

1:04:14 You mean Black Friday after Thanksgiving? Yeah. Schools are off. Oh, they’re off. But the Wednesday before- I know people, parents are working … they have Thursday off, Friday off, Saturday, Sunday. Yeah. So that’s a day you could do like- The day late? … 3:00 to 5:00. People may leave town. Yeah. Leave town. Yeah. Well, I’d be happy to entertain a motion thanking Kristen for all her work and offering the Board of Health confirmation, asking her to move forward. I will make that motion. Okay. Yeah. Is there a second? Second. All right. Is there any further discussion? Is there anyone online who might have anything? Um- We certainly ought to get you in contact with both the current and the weekly news to get this information out, the families and all that, and Marblehead TV and everybody else. But there’s a motion that’s been seconded and discussed. All in favor? Abstain. Okay. There are no opposition. Passes unanimously. Okay. Yeah. All right. So,

1:05:42 keep us posted. Should we pick a date? Yeah, you can pick a date.

1:05:56 The disadvantage of waiting later is it gets colder. The advantage is it gives you a little more time to pull everything together. So… Go over the dates you were– The 23rd of October. November, I think it’s the 3rd or the 10th. November, the first Friday is the 6th. Okay. The 6th or the 13th.

1:06:25 So should you pick two dates, and if it rains- Right … the first date, you have a backup. Because you’re not going to have the kids out on the beach if it’s pouring. Pockets like a week ago. You can go on the 6th, you can have a month. The 13th. Today. You’re going to get the football. So- That was the 13th That was November 6th or 13th. 6th? Well, if you schedule it for the 6th, then your- Yeah … plan B could be the 13th. Yeah. Okay. Sounds great. Have you contacted the school committee? I have not contacted. I’ve contacted the administration, and we have John Bovey’s blessing, and we have the high school principal’s blessing. 24 hours. Yeah. Of course. Good to see if- Why would I ask them? Do they want to– They scare me a little. Would we want them to co-sponsor it with us? Why not, I guess. I feel like this is a Board of Health thing. They’re closer to the students than we are from a school perspective. Well, it’ll be a town thing. Mm-hmm. Board of Health sponsors things for the town. Okay. And then you don’t have any hard feelings. Yes, we can check if there’s anything else we can- Even the police chief, you want it. Yeah. Anytime they have a parade or anything.

1:07:56 You don’t want to leave anyone out that’s going to complain about not being. Yeah. I think the fire chief too, if you’re going to ask them- Let’s look for it … just to let people know- Mm-hmm … what you’re doing so there’s no surprise. I can ask very quickly. Yeah. And we’re going to ask, I don’t know the thing from the fire station that gives you the sign. Message board. The message board. Oh. Yeah. To- Talk to the chief of police. Yeah. Yes. And so I’ll try to get an appointment with him.

1:08:34 Okay. Fantastic. Did we agree on November 6th? Yep. With November 13th as backup? Yep. Trying to get as much publicity as we can. Try to inform as many other components of the town as necessary and courteous. There’s sustainable markers, two large five-gallon containers we have that we don’t even have to use our water. Oh, that would be great. And compostable cups. I only use paper. Compostable, absolutely. Thank you. All right. If anyone wants to see the sample questions, you can. You just- What? Not you. Nothing. No, not him. There’s a few things you’re going to still need to work out. Obviously, we have a meeting, not week, two weeks meeting. Perfect. So things that come up, you bring them back to the board, all of that stuff. Again, I’ll need to know exactly what you’re going to want us to print off. Again, we’re going to have schedules and stuff like that, but glad to help. I’m just going to have to have that exact knowledge of, I don’t have a staff dedicated to this or anything like that. I’m happy to send over a copy. The people should be volunteering to help out, do this. It shouldn’t be on you. True. You’re the manager of the operation side. That’s right. We didn’t hire you to plan parties like this.

1:10:05 Yeah. He just raised his hand to volunteer. I heard. And I worked at the copy center in Cross Campus Library in college. I can unjam any- We don’t have a copier. You have a copier? No. There’s an office copier. We do not have one in our office yet. Well, anyway. Okay, the next Board of Health meeting is October, let’s see, 21 days from this, 26th. So, we will meet on the 23rd. Anything we need to do, we’ll meet on the 26th, but it’ll be the following week. We’ll be able to help you formally and informally one-on-one, we can help.

1:10:57 Okay? All right.

1:11:04 This, the agenda, I’m going to pass on talking too much about the coalition. This is exactly the kind of thing I think the coalition will end up doing. Exactly. So let’s just see how it goes. I do want to say, I’m very pleased that the first parenting class of the free course that we’re offering occurred on the 1st of October, and I’m told by the senior person that we’ve worked with Marblehead Parenting, that was a great success. We had seven couples signed up. One had to drop out at the last minute. But the agenda that they went over, this is the first night. It’s fantastic. They have a certified car seat tech. Certainly, as a grandparent, I think the car seats have become much more complicated over time. So they did that. They had a pelvic floor physical therapist. They brought in a feeding specialist. They brought in a pediatrician from one of the local offices. And in the next two meetings they’re going to be, and we were planning on this even before all the stuff in the newspaper, mental health,

1:12:36 maternal mental health, pre- and postpartum mental health, and all of that. This is a dynamic group. Diana has been terrific at putting it together. We have tentatively scheduled four of these for the first year. So we’ll do it every three months. The next one will probably be early in January. But we didn’t do great publicity this time because we didn’t get everything together. We still got seven families. So I’m going to meet with the obstetricians later in the week, and I think we know we’re going to get about 160 births in town. The goal would be in the first year to try to cover 25% of those. Think that would be maybe a little stretch goal, but let’s hope to see if we can get something like that. And, so I’m very pleased that that’s going the way it is. Great. I met with Marblehead Pediatrics today. They’re all on board, and so we’re going to go to Pags, and we’re going to go to the MGB Obstetrics group. And we’re going to try to encourage the parents that need it, even to go to the postpartum as well as

1:14:08 the free prepartum. So that has gone very well. So I’m pleased to see that. My review of the Michael Hugo conversation last week or the last meeting, I think everybody thought we learned a lot. The board certainly learned the complexities of the open meeting law. I was asked before the meeting whether we’re going to have office hours tomorrow. We are not, because from what I learned with Michael, there are ways of getting us in trouble with the office hours unless we plan well, and I’m pretty sure we can plan well. So what I did after Michael was here, I wrote the Attorney General’s office. The Attorney General’s office has a specific open meeting law office. And we got, I thought, was a very thorough response to how we want to conduct. If the board members agree to have with me only maximum of one more board member at the office hours, then we’re

1:15:39 covered okay. And then we should not talk to anybody else on the board about what goes on at that meeting. The board has to agree not to Zoom in to the meeting, because that would be, again, an open meeting. I learned all this from the– It was instinctive, but clearly, that’s what the Attorney General’s office told us. If we have a newspaper person there, that’s the highest risk, because the newspaper goes out and blankets everybody. And I will have responsibility that I have to keep my mouth shut, or at least keep my mouth shut in not saying things, “Hey, I like that idea. That’s a good idea.” I will get myself disciplined that I will say, “Thank you very much for this. We will bring it to board consideration. Thank you.” And that’s all we have to say. That I cannot say positive or negative things during that meeting, and we do not want the newspapers to quote me in any way during that. The weekly news responded back immediately saying, “No

1:17:11 problem.” And I suspect “The Current” will eventually. So, I would suggest that we will plan on having the next office hours after our next meeting, and then we have to decide whether we meet after every meeting for a little while or we meet once a month, those sorts of things. Okay? But we learned a lot from Michael. We learned a little bit more from the Attorney General’s office. And, I continue to think it’s a positive way of getting information from the people who voted us into this office. So, I’m positive about it. Are there any comments or questions? So the board agrees that we– I’m happy to have somebody else run it at any time. It doesn’t have to be office hours for the chair. It can be office hours for any of the board members, but that can only be two of us or fewer. Okay. I just want to say, tonight’s meeting and most Board of Health meetings, this is a pleasant place to come compared to a lot of other boards. They should be looking at this board, because I’ve gone to other boards, and they don’t treat the public the way you treat them. But you make me feel comfortable. I don’t know if you want to listen to me or not, but

1:18:45 other people make comments to me. They like the comments I make at these meetings on the street. But my point is what Tom said earlier. I’ve talked briefly to some of the other board members. I’ve talked to him more because he’s more accessible. A lot of these other boards, the people don’t have time to talk to the people that voted them in. I won’t be voting several back in that I thought recently that I supported because they don’t bother to call me back or anything. What I want to say is, I would like to meet other people that are on this board, and I think it would be a good idea that if Tom’s on vacation, someone else hold the meeting, or you have a second person there. Because there’s people that don’t want to come to these meetings that have ideas that would just feel– I talk in public. I’ve got up at town meeting. And what I’m saying is a lot of people that have a lot to say, but they don’t feel comfortable getting up talking there. And a lot of other committees don’t seem to be friendly listening to them. So all I’m saying to you is, I think that it would be nice that board members– I’ve even suggested to a lot of other boards, once a month when they have a meeting, one of the committee members come in a half hour early, so the public that’s in the audience might want to ask them some questions or something and meet the person. Because you’re limited to the time. Some of these meetings have a real busy agenda, but there’s seriously things

1:20:20 going on in this town, and there are people that care. So I think if you want the public to support– With this lady, I applaud her for what she’s trying to do and stuff. You want to make the people feel welcome. That’s all I got to say. Thank you. But remember what we heard from Michael. Yeah. And I think we can understand how the other boards limit. If we don’t have a topic on the agenda and a public comment brings up a comment that’s totally not on the agenda, we’re violating the agenda rules. Yeah. So that’s why the other boards maybe have bigger agendas than we do. I just want to say, some of these chairmen of the boards, the way they treat the public, it’s their opinion. They all have a different opinion and a different style. They tell you before they talk that you got two minutes. They’re not even listening. But I think one of the things we have to do, there are no bad guys. Right. We just have to get away from that. There are good people with sometimes bad ideas, but no bad guys. So it’s just difficult. Yeah. It’s a busy world. It’s a complex world. All you got to do is read anything that comes to the– Any newspaper or anything like that. The country is in a funk.

1:21:51 The world is in a funk. And, so public health deals with prevention. The best way to prevent the funk from going any further is trying to be positive. Oh, I apply. We just have to be positive about the– I’m happy that you think we’re an example. Oh, I think you’re a great example. We’re selling a good product. Public health is a very good product, and public health is undersold in the United States, so we have a responsibility to sell it like it’s known to be valuable elsewhere. So I think it makes it a little easier for us to be in a preventive mode. Right. I’m just saying there’s two difference of opinion some people have, but what the point is that everyone that takes the time within reason should be able to say their spiel too, within reason. And then you people can make a determination because a lot of these meetings are one-sided. Not you. You’re giving a lot of leeway, which I think you’re getting criticized from some other people in town. But I applaud you for what you’re doing, and people on the street that I talk to like it. That’s all I can tell you.

1:23:23 Thank you. I want to thank all the members are doing. I think they all, no matter what happened here, I think that all the members are trying to make the town better, even though they have a different approach doing it, and I don’t agree with some of the statements other people have made. I think the big thing that I learned, we should stop doing a lot of things on Facebook and discuss it in open session meetings. Well, Hugo was pretty clear about that. Yeah. Okay. Michael Hugo wrote me afterward that we have a great board, and he had to say that, but actually, I think factually he’s right. Oh, I think he should say that. I enjoyed that. And he’s willing to listen and answer questions as we go forward. But I was impressed by the sincerity with which the state of Massachusetts wants us to obey the open meeting law. Yeah. I hadn’t taken it quite that seriously before. And Hugo, if there was one thing I learned, boy, this is nobody’s joke. I think just my opinion, and you may have already done it, that your board should vote to send him a letter. I really appreciate that he took the time to come way

1:24:55 down here from Wellesley at night, and I was very impressed with him. I didn’t agree with everything, but he’s a very neutral person, and he didn’t make me feel uncomfortable. That’s all I’m saying, Tom. Wrote him within minutes of the meeting. Yeah, I want to talk to do your job. Okay. In keeping with the upbeat and the positive things that I think this board is doing is these community health reports that we get from Dr. Ritvo. The people that I talk to on the street, everybody- Yeah … is happy to hear that. The important thing we have to do is not only say we appreciate them at the board meeting, but how do we distribute the information that Amanda shares with the town for those people who don’t pay attention to what goes on here and don’t read the newspaper and all those things? Because it’s absolutely critical that people understand the rapidity with which infectious diseases and other things out there can influence the population of the town. We’ve all lived through COVID, but we’re beginning to forget how bad it was. So with that, please. So I don’t have much, just a brief- She says that all the time.

1:26:26 No, but I definitely don’t have much of anything written up today, but we’re starting to see early rise of flu, test positivity. We don’t usually see it this early, so I’m not quite sure what to make of it yet. But it’s just a good reminder that this is a good month to get your flu shot. I just got mine today. And, that it can give good protection against hospitalization and severe disease and is also important for those who would like to have the COVID vaccine as well. And with the measles case rising in the country, I just did a quick lookup of the school vaccination rates for elementary schools in Marblehead and both schools, one was 97% and 98%, vaccinated against MMR specifically. So that’s great data to see. So we have herd immunity in the schools, should measles come our way. And, yeah, as we get deeper into the winter, I’ll talk more about test positivity rates and what’s going on with flu, COVID, and RSV. But currently, not much. The activity of all the respiratory illnesses are still very low at this point. I think the best way for communication goes, so now that we have Lori, we will have a little bit more expansion on the communication side.

1:27:57 So what we’ll do is we’ll develop on our website a health news page. And so what we can do is take the information that you talk about tonight and post that under essentially the meeting date on the health news. So any information that you have, you can just email over to me, documents and stuff like that, and we can add those to the website. So, if people miss this, they can go right to the website and get that information. Yeah. And I’ve talked to Lori about us collaborating on projects. Yeah. We did the psycholosporiasis news article together, and then so going forward, Andy and MPH, we can collaborate together on things that are happening. The other thing I wanted to bring up, Andrew, you had previously mentioned a public health calendar. Yes. I found one for the health and human services, and then another one for the VA. Which was the one– Because the HHS, there’s so much s**t on the website. So really, you can do a combination of them. Okay. So there’s many different groups and stuff out there that dedicate each month for a different topic. So, October intends to be infant mortality or suicide prevention month. So we would want to go through and put a draft month calendar together, and then the board would choose the

1:29:29 topics that you would want to sponsor for each month of the year, and that would become the calendar. So you literally could take the HHW, the VA, and pull the ones that you like and be like, “All right, this is really the calendar that we want to put forward. So these will be the topics that we will highlight over the year- Yeah … and post out on those topics.” That sounds great. They were very similar. Yeah. October was taking charge of your health, health promotion, for HHS, and then for VA, it’s get recommended cancer screenings and tests. Yeah. They both had suicide prevention for September, so. I’m wondering if we should add a section to keep a running list of all the food safety recalls. I just saw another one today. That could be challenging. So we tend to pull stuff from the FDA, but it can be really, really expansive. So if you want to go through them and say, “All right, these are the ones we want to post,” or we can provide the link to the FDA. When we do some of that stuff, we just have to be careful about how we’re doing it, because it can be really expansive. Yeah. There’s recalls on a daily basis and some huge recalls. And a lot of times there might be federal recalls, but they really don’t affect Massachusetts because none of those products are coming to us, and so there’s many different layers to it.

1:31:03 Okay. But yeah, and again, as far as communication goes, we can provide some of the links to some of those resources and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. All right. One of the things that we’ve not talked about in this meeting, even, this is my third year, Andrew is a member of a number of regional groups and statewide groups, and he does a great job as our agent, but doesn’t share that with us sometimes because the meetings are long and all that. But I’ve asked him to really try to let us know more about the kind of things that he’s involved in, and has been involved for 13, now coming around on 14 years. Almost 15 years, yep. 16 years. So in fact is- It’s quite an optimistic menu of the things that are out there that even though we’re not well-funded by the town or by the state in public health as it would be in other countries, there are activities out there that the community needs to know about and feel good about. So you’re presenting a couple today. Yeah. So again, unfortunately, public health is always underfunded, especially locally and stuff like that. So when the state looks at public health across the state, there are always these holes in certain areas.

1:32:33 They tend to be a lot in smaller communities. So the state was really looking at public health as a whole and how can they do better, and better serve each community. So one of the things that they came up with was a public health excellence. What are the things that public health needs to do on the local level, and how can we achieve great public health excellence? One of the things that they figured out was that we need to do a little bit more collaboration. So, Marblehead might be able to sustain themselves, but just barely, but communities like Swampscott might not be able to, or other communities like Nahant might not be able to. But if we work together, we might be able to see better public health overall. Better public health in this area is better public health for everybody. So what they started with, they started with a trial grant probably approximately 13 years ago, and we formed the North Shore Shared Public Health Coalition. So the North Shore Public Health Coalition is eight communities. There’s eight local health departments that contribute to this. So it’s Beverly, Danvers, Lynn, Marblehead, Nahant, Peabody, Salem, and Swampscott. The work focuses on enhancing and expanding the services of local health departments provided to prevent disease and promote health across our communities. So many health departments

1:34:05 are already struggling to meet existing mandates to address communicable diseases, food safety, housing, sewage, well water, and environmental hazards. But in the 21st century, their list of duties has ballooned to include protecting the environment, planning for natural and man-made disasters, preventing new insect and tick-borne diseases, reducing substance addiction, reducing prevalence of chronic diseases, and improving mental health. So again, we would never be able to do all these things just as Marblehead. We have a very small staff, but by working with our neighbors, we’re able to do more. And so this group, so this whole group of directors and often public health nurses, gets together to try to figure out what can we better ourselves with. That was one of the formations of tobacco control. We don’t have a tobacco control agent that can go around Marblehead, but we do have one regionally. We also understand that it takes an astonishing amount of time to put regulations together. But if we work collaboratively together, we can do that. And a lot of times what works in Marblehead will work in other communities. And it’s also a benefit to a lot of the establishments to know these are the rules here, these are the rules for the North Shore. And a lot of times what happens is that we developed Tobacco 21, it worked extremely well. The state adopted Tobacco 21. So we try it in local public health, and hopefully, it gets expanded to

1:35:38 Massachusetts public health. So there’s different initiatives that we’re working off. Again, some of the basics, food safety. All of our restaurant establishments have to be inspected at least twice every year. A lot of communities struggle to do that. A lot of the reasons are shared resources. So I might not, or the community might not have a full-time inspector that can get to all their establishments. But if we work together or we share resources, and resources can be funding from the state, we can hire additional help that can work in all the communities rather than just one. So that is an area that we have done a tremendous amount of work, food safety. We’ve hired inspectors to make sure all the communities on the North Shore are having those restaurants inspected on a regular basis, on a routine basis. We’ve also developed rodent control programs, understanding just basic flyers. Again, if one person had to do all this, you’d never have enough time in the day to get all this work done. So we have put together flyers that we’re able to, when we have a rodent control issue in a neighborhood, I can blanket the neighborhood with a flyer that everybody becomes familiar with. It’s a flyer that’s used on every town in the North Shore. Again, with the shared resources and underfunding, we can do a lot of these things. Some of the other areas, again, tattoo. We do not have a tattoo parlor, so therefore, we really weren’t working on regulations. We had a set of regulations, that came from 2010 and stuff

1:37:13 like that when the state kind of came up with a lot of regulations. But some of our communities next to us, Salem, Peabody, Beverly, they are highly coveted for tattoos across the country now. They do a lot of tattooing. They have a lot of artists that come there. They have a lot of regulations. We needed to update these regulations, so we did them as a group, and we are able to adopt those regulations here locally, and now we can protect our community better. And we now have our first tattoo parlor that has gone in, and we have a potential another one that will be coming shortly. So again, we could never complete all this work as an individual, as a small department, but working together through some funding from the state, we’re able to do this. Disease surveillance is another really big one. We have a single public health nurse that works for us. Again, we have epis that work for the state of Massachusetts, but a lot of times there’s a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done. We can’t do this all the time. Nurses go on vacation. They have to take time off. We need to be able to fill in the gaps. This is another area where this grant has allowed us to do that. So we’ll continue to work on different items like this. I know we’re going to continue to take a look at tattoo. There’s other regulations that might be coming up in the future that this group will do together and suggest that the board take them up as an item. Kratom is one of those as well, that we’ll all take a look at, and make suggestions to the board about. We came to the board to say, “These are the things that are

1:38:44 happening. We recommend that you go forward with these regulations.” So it is a great collaborative, great partners. We’ve been working together for quite a long time now. We also all work together for public health emergency preparedness under another grant, but this is a wonderful resource for that. There’s another opportunity for us and a great opportunity to expand on parental childhood and stuff like that. There’s also the North Shore Visiting Mothers Group that is led by the nurses, and that’s a total of eight communities if we participate in it. We do have a public health nurse that’s a full RN now. We can be part of this organization, and contribute both in other communities and our own. And so this is an area that we would like to really expand on. So the Visiting Motherhood Program, so the North Shore Visiting Partnership is a collaboration of groups on the North Shore. Again, this would be eight communities. And this would be parents or new parents or new mothers would receive a one-time home visit from a public health nurse. And again, these nurses are trained, but again, this is just another service. It’s another check-in with a mother, to make sure we’re looking at different issues that could be coming about. So I definitely suggested that we’re part of this. But this is how these grants work. We get these grants from the state of

1:40:16 Massachusetts, and it allows us to expand on our services. Questions? I think that the Visiting Mothers Group would be fantastic. How do they hear about new moms? That is always the hardest thing. It’s just the same issue that we’re kind of dealing with the parent class. So again, you would try to get into the doctor’s offices and stuff like that and provide you with a pamphlet or a handout. What do you think is the best way to get to new parents and stuff like that? I think going to the doctor’s office would be great, and on labor and delivery floors- Okay … as part of the, often you get a big packet once you leave the delivery floor, a bag of all kinds of information. So having it included in it. And again, this is a regional grant. It’s eight communities, not just… Or yeah, it’s even more communities than what I just said before. So there are a lot of connections with the hospitals, both in Salem and in Beverly. So that is something that we can put together and make sure that we try to get to that. Again, you would need to try to get to the doctor’s office so they could have these as handouts. But again, for the parental classes now, if we could get flyers that we could give them now, so when they go home and have their child, they would know about this service already. Mm-hmm. Kind of working hand in hand together. Yeah. I was at Marblehead Pediatrics today, and this is the third time we’ve got

1:41:48 together. And we’re going to visit the obstetrics group of MGB, the one over near Whole Foods, and get them involved in our parenting classes. And it’s good to know about this. Yeah. And again, we have to allow some reciprocity. So for the most part, yes, we have a great public health nurse that will be able to help all of our citizens and stuff like that. But if she’s on vacation, that would allow somebody else from another community to come in. They can also collaborate, “Hey, I’m seeing this issue. Who should I bring these concerns to?” Those are always great situations. But the other communities that would be included in this would be Boxford, Gloucester, Hamilton, Manchester, Middleton, Rockport, and Topsfield, and Wenham. Oh, so none of the original. No, this is a whole. So all of the original- All of the original … it’s an addition to. Yeah. So it’s sort of a North Shore Cape Ann. It is a North Shore Cape Ann. Yep. It’s very similar to our North Shore Cape Ann Public Health Emergency Preparedness Group. So a lot of us meet together, and it kind of came from that. It’s not in very many places for babies to be delivered in. No. So it’s Salem, it’s Beverly, and it’s Addison,

1:43:18 Gilbert, and Gloucester. But not Anna Jacques or Newberry? Uh- They definitely do. Oh, indeed. Absolutely, they do have some- Yeah … deliveries a year. Oh. But Newberryport’s not part of it, maybe? No, Newberryport’s not part of ours. That’s it. Yep. What if the mom gets a visit and the nurse is like, “I see 75 things here that this person needs.” Like they don’t have a crib or… So there’s a lot of different things. So when you leave the hospital, there’s a nurse that meets with you to go over a lot of those things with you. Again, if the nurse does show up and there is things that are of concern or things that are missing, they can go back to the state and say, “Hey, there’s a lot of concerns I have here. We need to have a discussion with the doctor. We need to start to take a look at this.” Reach out to social workers and try to resolve the situation.

1:44:27 But yeah, hopefully they’ll come armed with resources to give. Yeah, as much as possible. Yeah. Again, when they do come upon these situations, there are different groups that they can reach out to. The idea is that we’re trying to do some prevention, get into the homes. And again, not every person’s going to want a home visit. But again, it’s just another layer to try to add to what we’re building on. Well, in Marblehead, we have the Humane Society. Yes. We can get quick access to them for these kind of emergencies. And certainly- Yeah. We have two things. Again, we have Marblehead Counseling Center, if the person wants to work with the counseling center. The counseling center is also an avenue to the Humane Society, making sure that people have really what they need. Okay. Well, I think it’s really important that the board is aware of all the things that Andrew’s doing in the region, because it is optimistic that things are getting done like that. So I will make a monthly report on the North Shore Public Health Collaborative Group. Great. The second one is that we have a Youth Prevention Coalition. That is Marblehead, Salem, Lynn, and

1:46:02 Swampscott. This is mainly school systems, school social workers, school different educators and stuff like that, as well as some health department staff. There is a group from Naglee there. There’s a group from the alternative high school or recovery high. And again, this is dealing with youth prevention. So a lot of discussion takes place on training. What trainings need to be provided to staffing and other people in the community? So we’ve provided funding so people can do the I Can Help training. It’s identifying youths at risk. And it can be anybody in the school system. It can be a school cafeteria worker. We’ve sent quite a few employees through the Marblehead school system. We’ve had a great response. And again, there’s always a person from the school department that’s on these meetings that’s facilitating all that work in the school department. We’ve also done trainings for Teen Mental Health First Aid training, and we’re continuing to try to promote all these ideas on a regular basis. Again, the group gets together, talks about what funding’s available, what trainings are available, and the schools are generally the ones that are trying to bring it to their staff, other people there. Again, it’s another great group of people. Always trying to look at the benefits of everybody. There’s some other youth prevention ideas. There can be art therapy certificates and stuff like that, or options.

1:47:35 So people have identified individuals in the school that are struggling. There are ways to kind of give some other ideas to get them into some of these programs and get them, similar to the Amazing Race idea, we’re trying to get kids out from where they tend to be hanging out and stuff like that, into other avenues, and expressing their interests and stuff like that. Again, this group meets once a month. And I can report back on this as well. But again, we’ve had a lot of great trainings. The high school and other schools in the town have been great about sending employees, and there are, a lot of times, there is availability for the funding to cover people’s time with the training and stuff like that. But this is all through a BSAS grant, so a Bureau of Substance Abuse from the state of Massachusetts. And that’s it. The last thing I wanted to talk about is bills. So we send bills out on a weekly basis for all the board to sign. You’ll receive a DocuSign. I need a majority of the board to sign it. If I don’t receive a quorum, the bill cannot be passed on. If I continue not to be able to get a quorum, I will come back to the board and say, “I need to change how we do it.” A lot of boards just have their director and their chair sign. The way our board has always been set up is that all members sign the

1:49:07 bills. So I just wanted to remind everybody about that. Well, I didn’t… Pretty good. It’d be great. Yeah. No reason they went out. Yeah. It needs to be done a week from when it’s sent? It needs to be done right away. Oh. Yeah. Oh, right away. Yeah. Days. Oh, okay. Yeah. So like the one I got, it knew that I haven’t signed yet. That’s why. No, that’s okay. Yeah. Well, that’s just good to know. Oh, yeah, exactly. This is just information to know and stuff like that. It was, I was kind of guessing about- If I am not able to get something done, we will ping you constantly to say, “Please sign.” Well, speaking of being pinged- Yes … I’m being pinged at least about- A conflict of interest. Yeah. We have to somehow take a course or do something. I remember I did it last year, but I’m getting pinged on both my personal email and my work email. So if you’re getting pinged, so it’s all run by the state of Massachusetts now. I talked to the town clerk, the state of Massachusetts has kind of taken over this piece. If you are up, they will ping you. For new members- I’ve done it … you would’ve done the training right away, they would’ve given you all the information. It’s all online now, but it has to be done every two years. So if you’re getting- One year … pinged on it, then you should complete the course. Yeah. Where do I get it?

1:50:39 You go right online. They should be sending you a link to it. So in the email you’re receiving, it should have a link. I’ll check it. I’ll check it if- Yeah. If not, just let me know and I can- Yeah. Yeah … yep … I know I’m not the most digital. Oh, I can. Yeah, I can send you, because- It’s all the same website. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As I remember. It wasn’t a big deal. Yeah. It’s one foot in front of the other. Yep. Straightforward, but okay. And we certainly had an update. Last year we also had an open meeting law from the town council. Correct. And we certainly got a good one last week. Yeah, you got a really good one from Michael. I think the town does their open meeting lessons every other year. But I’ll talk to Thatcher to see what the schedule is for that. Okay. But yeah, Michael did a great job kind of covering all that stuff. He kind of expanded on some of the issues and stuff like that. So I think you guys are up to date with all that stuff. Okay. Is there any public comment? Any more local comment? Okay. I think the black plastic container banning is really interesting. Yeah. So I’d like to do a little research and then we can talk about it. Yeah. So we should put it back. We should put it on an agenda item- Yeah … to talk about. Yeah. Any of those other local towns, have any of them done it in the eight or just the Concord? Let me ask and see if anybody has them.

1:52:09 And did she say Concord? No, I did. Oh. Yeah. And maybe that’s something that we could do as a coalition. Yeah. So again, as far as the coalition goes, generally Swampscott wants to be on board. Some of the other communities, it goes up and down. But we can definitely take a look to see who has the regulations to see if anybody in this area has already have one, and go from there. Okay. I think there’s several variations to them. You can ban take out plastics. So again, we already have that plastic bag ban that went to town meeting. The board thought it was reasonable, but they didn’t want to do at the table, they wanted to bring it to the town meeting because it does affect businesses and stuff like that. The takeout containers are at a slightly different level. Again, those are an item that you’re consuming out of, so there might be a greater health concern than a plastic bag, per se. Yeah. The brief look up I did was that it’s the flame retardant- Yeah … in the black as opposed to the colored and the white. Really the idea is that you should not be heating up any food in plastic. Yeah. Yeah. Why would you even want to get food out of a container, hot food that’s sitting there- Yeah … right next to that- Yeah … stuff that’s leaching. Right. The idea really is that that’s really a cold to-go container. But again, everybody uses those containers differently.

1:53:40 But yes, that is something that we can take a look at regulations and we can put that on an agenda. It goes further. The black plastic- Yeah … utensils. Most people have them at home, and their flippers and all of that sort of stuff. Oh. I went through my drawers and when I finally understood how bad the black plastic was. Yeah, we did the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Same thing. Okay. Interesting question. Yeah. Either of you gotten a chance to view the transfer station in person? Oh, we did this. Yes. I also was thanking Andrew. Yeah, we did this morning. Since it was open. Should go back another time when the swap shop’s open- Okay … so you can see. Right. Pretty much any decent Saturday. They go early. Yeah. So the swap shop’s open currently Saturdays from generally 9:00 to noon or 9:00 to 11:00, weather dependent. And yes, it is a very different scene than what we saw this morning. And yes, what we saw was decently busy. But you’ll see every parking spot taken up during that time. Except for the new ones. People have parked every day. Don’t know they’re there. I know. I’m trying to figure out how to get the people to move around and stuff like that. Yeah. But yes. I will say, I went every week. Now I’m at a farmers’ market every week and the hours don’t work.

1:55:14 Well, farmers’ market ends Thanksgiving, right? And so does- Maybe not. How late does the swap shed go? It starts to shut down around Thanksgiving as well. Oh, okay. Yeah. It’s always weather dependent. Last Saturday they had a list for folks for who was going into November. Yeah. But you can go up. You don’t have to go up as a group. You can go up any Saturday- Yeah … and look at it. Quite amazing. It is amazing. Just don’t go at dawn, because it’s dangerous. Yeah. They’re coming at you all different directions with stuff. And they- Except I can’t bring my kids. Yeah. I brought all the stuff to drop off there, and they found more stuff- More stuff … in my home. Bringing more home. Yeah. It’s up there. Yeah. We brought- It’s good stuff. Yeah. Buy Nothing Marblehead is also an amazing- It’s a great resource … resource. Yeah. Okay. I think we’ve reached our agenda. It was an upbeat, positive meeting. We got to try and do as many of these as possible just because all the negatives that are out there. This is why we want to be on the board. So, do I have an upbeat motion to adjourn? All in favor? Yep. Unanimous vote. Thank you very much. Thank you for those on the Zoom, and thank you for Steve and Al for your presence