Select Board: October 9, 2025

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

0:00 Let’s call the meeting to order on October 9th. We have four members present with Alexis Senior.

0:08 We’ll open up a public comment. Anyone hear public comment, we will close public. Comment the line, I’m assuming. Great. Um, second thing on our agenda page, the one day liquor license, Marblehead Arts on Thursday, October nine. The applicant is Coze Kendall. Um, I’m looking for a motion to approve the request for Marblehead Arts Association for one day liquor license on Thursday, October 9th, 2025, and the Marble Wood Arts Association, Washington Street from seven to 9:00 PM subject to the following conditions, delivery receipt of and receipt by the licensed authority of the required fee of $50, delivery of and receipt by the licensed authority of proof that the alcohol will be purchased from the authorized source. Proof that the applicant can receive proper delivery,

0:55 provide proper storage and disposal of all alcohol beverages, purchase, all accordance with the general requirements of general law GLC 1 38. Alcohol we purchase from coffee’s, imports of whole vote. So Moved. Second. Mr. Sen, in favor, Ms. Moon In favor, Mr. Greater in favor, Mr. V, Ms. In favor. Next on our agenda is the Abbott Hall for the veterans, uh, town hall. We need to revise the date on which we previously approved the, like a motion to revise the previously approved date for the Veteran Town Hall at Abbott Hall to November 10th, 2025, subject to the usual rules, regulations, and fees. So Second. All in favor, unanimous.

1:43 Um, consent agenda General, it looks like we just have to approve the minutes of September 24th, 2025. Have a motion to approve those minutes. I second. All in favor? Unanimous. Next up, we have the contract in this transfer station design construction project. Andrew Petty is here to discuss it with us. Good morning, Andrew. Good morning. How are you? Good, how are you? Good. Fabulous. Uh, so this contract is for some construction with the transfer station. Uh, it includes a new scale house, uh, in site work. Uh, the site work includes the scale moving to a permanent location in the scale pit right in front of the compactor. Uh, a new concrete pad for the trash trailer, um,

2:30 and then two wing walls down below where the trash trailer sits. Um, that’s connected to the compactor building. Um, and then associated site work with this. Um, this is gonna be a great addition to the projects up there. This will give residents direct access out of the facility, so they’ll have their own lane so they won’t be crossing over with commercial traffic. Um, there’ll be some signage, there’ll be some lights associated with traffic control, um, as vehicles merge. Um, but this will be kind of the, one of the final phases of the construction up there. Um, some of the other stuff that will be coming in the future will be eventually a new swap shed, um, and some work associated with that compactor building. Great. What’s the timing on that? Uh, so I believe this is about six months.

3:16 Great. What the transportation be closed during that time? Yeah, unfortunately, due to some construction, there will be some downtime for that compactor building, so there will be some disruption, um, with any good progress. There’s a little bit of disruption. The, the scale house, does that mean it will be covered or we will similar to what we’re seeing now? No. So it’s gonna be slightly different. So yeah, it’s gonna be a full scale house with a break room in it. Um, and so the scale house will be currently where the scale house is, is that temporary trailer? Um, that temporary trailer can last there during the whole construction project until the very end. The new scale house will be a little bit closer to the road. Um, but yeah, that will consist of a, a scale room where the operator will sit, um, some communication directly to the driver.

4:02 Um, and then there will be a break room for the employees and a little bit of storage. Okay. Which the break room now is in the trailer? Correct. But the, uh, scale itself won’t be covered Is No, the scale itself will not be covered because of all the large trucks. Yeah. Um, the great thing about moving the scale to the permanent scale pit is that we can move the, the rails. Um, and with it being right in front of the pit, you’re gonna be backing up, sitting on the scale, backing further into the pit and then pulling forward and sitting back on the scale, and then you can exit so you don’t have to loop around twice. Okay. And does, does pit imply that it’s gonna be flush? Yeah, it should be raising the grade and pretty flush to that, that steel floor There. Okay. So you won’t go up like a little? Yeah. Yep. Okay. And then the, the swap,

4:47 she is later funding later date? Correct. And can do, do we have a, I don’t wanna derail this, but just Yes, no answer is, is there potentially a path for funding for the swap Shutter? Again, we would be looking to use, um, waste revolving farm Okay. To keep going with projects up there at this Time. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. Okay. And how is this getting, uh, funded at one point? If you could just Remind us. Yep. So this is getting funded from Recovery Money. Um, so there’s $1.2 million of recovery money and then the remaining, um, is coming out of the Waste revolving account. Perfect. And recovery money is from the warrant article? Yep. Correct. Of 2015? Yep. Great. Perfect. Excellent. Any other questions? Which, which one article Was that? It was back in 2015. Oh, 2015 from, yep. Yep.

5:34 That’s, I think they bid it out a few times and now you’re able to do it. Yeah, We, we’ve been chasing costs on this one for quite some time. Good. Any other questions? No, thank you. No. One last one. Do you have a project manager for this or? We do not. It’s not needed as a threshold is below the dollar value. Okay. Yeah. Or I’m, I’m talking to the project manager. Yes. Myself and Steve and the architect. Oh, congratulations, Steve. Looks pretty happy. Awesome. Need lot of fly one. It’s all used up. All right. Could I have a motion to award contract? 2025, that 0 1 8 transfer station redesign contract construction project between the town D Lewis Brothers Construction and the amount of $1,590,000 in authorized a chair

6:20 as on behalf of the board. So moved. Second. All in favor, unanimous. Congrats. Good luck. Yep. Thank you. Thank you. Good to see all of you. Also appreciate all your hard work during the strike. Oh yeah, it went, went really? I know there were some bumps, but from everything I’ve heard when, you know, you, you guys were super responsive, always some compliance, but thank you for being responsive to the town and citizens and, and good luck with the, with the new contractor. Thank You. But no, yeah, we really want to, you know, I really want to thank my employees up there. They were, you know, we have a really dedicated crew. Um, we get along really well and they’re always willing to work extra and stuff like that, so great without them. And we are very lucky that we have this incredible facility up there with the transfer station for sure. Um, we were much better off than a lot of the surrounding communities. Yeah, Well thank you from the town as well. Yeah, definitely. Much appreciated.

7:05 I’ll pass it on. We concur. Um, so a little off topic. Um, are you guys, are you receiving bids currently for the new, So we will be putting out an RFP. The idea is that the RFP will go out in November. Um, and so with trash, so it’s unique, it’s exempt from 30 B. Um, so I can have open discussion with the contractors. So the idea is that we’ll be looking to get bids several different ways, um, so we can get a bid to have it done exactly the same way as now. Um, one of the things that we have to take a look at is that currently it’s unlimited for recycling. When we move out of this contract, recycling is gonna be a large costs. Um, so processing fees, blended value sharing value of the,

7:53 the recycling material itself. But we’ll also have to limit the amount of material that’s able to put curbside. Where today it’s unlimited. Um, we’re also, a lot of the companies for safety reasons want us to go to automated trucks. And automated trucks can work in parts of the community and other parts it cannot. Um, with automated trucks, yes, there’s a safety component, but you’re also removing an employee from the vehicle. So technically there should be a cost reduction on operating that vehicle. Um, we’re also looking at supplying each household, um, with bins. So you get a 65 gallon trash bin and then you would get a recycling bin. Um, one of the things that came out of the strike was that we were able to do recycling collection every other week.

8:38 We’re gonna ask for a, a bin for that. Uh, so we would go up to a 96 gallon container for recycling, um, and have that collected every other week. I think that works out for a lot of us. And that would definitely be a cost savings as well. That’s a good idea. Um, so we’re, you know, we’re gonna be working with all the people that bid, but yes, we’re able to put out an RFP, gather all the information and actually have conversations with the contractors about costs. When would you like to have something locked down? I would like to have something locked down in December. December, Okay. Yeah. And that contract goes into effect, Uh, sep Yeah. September, 2026. Um, our trash disposal contract ends July of 2026. We’ll try to probably marry the two together, but it, you know, we have such a good trash collection

9:26 contract, you don’t want to kind of give up a couple months. Sure. But in my discussions with you and others, the reasoning behind doing it so early is ‘cause they actually have to build the trucks. Correct? Correct. It takes a really long time to build this equipment. Um, so yeah, you need to be prepared and, and, you know, gave some time to start allocating resources and everything like that. Great. So thank you for all your hard work. Yeah. And Again, you know, we really want to get feedback from the community. We’ve done a couple presentations with the Board of Health. Um, we’ve had some feedback, but the more we get, the better we are. How, how’s that feedback going here? So a lot of, you know, a lot of concerns about, you know, everybody has containers already, why are you gonna throw them away? It’s really about controlling what we receive curbside. So we wanna make sure that people are only using a 65 gallon toter for trash.

10:15 Um, it’s able to be handled by the trucks. Again, that’s controlling costs by volume. And then for the recycling the same thing. We wanna make sure that the track, that recycling is controlled. Um, one of the issues currently with the recycling is that people can use any container they want. Um, there used to be a very popular 18 gallon square bin with an open top. The hard thing here is that we have a lot of high winds and you’ll see the recycling blowing down the street. Um, we’re trying to get away from that. Um, the other issue with collection and people providing their own bins is that a lot of people buy the 35 gallon standard trashcan with that lid on top of it, but that lid gets lost a lot. Um, it gets thrown around whatever, whatever happens to it. Um, so what ideal per situation, you’ll have a,

11:01 a toter on wheels with the lid attached. Yeah. Great. So, well, thank you. Yep. And good luck on this. Thank you. Which is while you’re here. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right, moving on. We have a contract with Eastern Salt VPW. This is a typical, um, do This every year. Standard one year contract that’s off the state bid list. Okay. Um, and yeah, it’s, it’s the annual, uh, salt prepping for, uh, the winter to season, and it comes out of a snow salt defendant Budget. Okay. Great. Any questions? The usual, um, expected amount?

11:42 Uh, yeah, I don’t know. I mean, uh, Amy has the details as to how, how the pricing went.

11:51 I could have a motion to award contract BEH one nine for road salt between the town and Eastern Salt Company in the amount of $73,000 and 8 cents. Oh, sorry. 73 for, so this is 73 Oh per ton. Thank you. Let’s start over. And the amount of $73 and 8 cents per ton. And authorized the chair to sign the MLU on behalf of the board. So move second in favor, unanimous. Next we are moving on reserve fund transfer with the building department. Do you wanna talk about that, Alicia, Steve, whoever wants come up? Yes. So I met with, um, Steve C*m.

12:34 I briefed you the other day. Yeah, it has changed. Great. Since I Okay. So they will give you In, in a, in a good way. Yes. Okay, good. Okay. I was gonna say that seems a little low. Yes. Good. Yeah. Um, I met with Steve Cummings on one, the Hobbs house, and he needs to do a porch. It needs the windows done in order to keep the people warm during the wintertime. It initially had come forth as a capital request, but we didn’t have enough capital funding to cover that request. Um, so he came forward with this. We reviewed his budget. We found some money in his budget to cover the porch. So we’re only coming forth with a request to cover the windows for the Hobbs house. Okay. And are, how, how many windows are you? 72. 72. You doing?

13:19 Well, that’s what’s in there. Okay. Um, so yeah, we’re just looking to put a, a straight up vinyl window. Okay. No frills, no grids. Um, keep the cost down. Okay. It’s not a historic building, it’s not a very pretty building, but it’ll be a still be a huge upgrade. Okay. So the original approach was ‘cause we, we weren’t sure about what was in the budget, is to make sure we had enough money to deal with the porch in the back, which is a safety issue. It’s an egress issue, it’s old, and we know we’re gonna undress that. And then the balance of the funds who are available to do enough windows to kind of start the process, take care of primarily where the employees are sitting.

14:05 But Steve and, and Alicia kind of worked out a different game plan, found money in the budget for the porch, and it’s most efficient if we’re gonna start doing windows, be full, let’s deploy once and get ‘em all done. So that was the change from what I briefed previously. So it looks like we still have about $9,000 in there. In there. Yeah. So that’ll go towards the ports in theory, or the combination is above 45. That’s, so we’re just looking for transfer of 36. Yes. Okay. Great. Questions. Do you know if they still do any, like, do you any rebates for upgrading the windows on municipal buildings? Um, I think a lot of those would be through the electric company generally. And where we have the municipal light, we’re not gonna probably maybe National Grid. Logan Logan has expressed. Yeah.

14:53 If it’s out there, Logan will find it. Yeah. Maybe the gas company one can check into that. But, um, there’s some other programs, savings programs go. Yeah. We can look into it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Great. All right. If I can au motion, have a motion to authorize Stephen Cummings Building Commissioner to appear before the finance made to request a transfer of summ of $36,000 from the Reserve Fund in accordance with Chapter 40, section six of Massachusetts General Laws for Hobbes house, windows, and building repairs. So moved. All in favor, unanimous. Thank you both. Appreciate it. Thank you.

15:31 Next we have an appointment for Animal Inspector Emily de Grande. Welcome to Come Off you. Looks like you’re coming up. Come on up. It’s for one chance. We, as you can tell, we, we won’t bite you, unlike some of the animals we’ve been talking about.

15:51 Good morning. Hey, how are, how ya welcome. Um, so we see that you are on, um, point at the animal inspector. Yes. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you’ve come to be Forest us. Um, so I’m a huge animal person and, um, I’ve always loved animals. I’m actually with a, a rabbit rescue, like a domestic, uh, rabbit rescue. So I’ve been volunteering with them for a few years now. So we like physically go out like rescue rabbits that like post on Facebook, like, oh, like this rabbit like came outta nowhere. A lot of people just abandon them just like they do with cats and dogs. Um, so we get them vetted, we get them fixed, and we, we get them like adopted out into indoor homes, uh, only so we’re very like, strict about that.

16:37 So, but I mean, I’ll pretty much help anything. I mean, I transport a, a skunk a few months ago. Someone Yeah, someone posted on Facebook and she, uh, it was at Robinhood school, which is like right down the street from me in stone. So it’s like, I couldn’t like say no to this. And it was like right after I was transporting a rabbit, so I was like, oh my God. Like, how am I gonna like maneuver all this? So then I contacted her and then I ended up like getting this stunk. ‘cause she didn’t wanna like bring it to Chelmsford to the, to the, uh, rehab or so, ‘cause she probably didn’t want it to like spray in her car. But of course, me Emily like, yep, all right, I’ll chance it. Who cares? You know? But the little, he was so cute and he was like, he didn’t spray at all. I mean, it was a baby. So, anyways. But yeah, so I mean, I just,

17:23 I just love animals, so I just want, yeah, That seems to be a good thing for, I’ll call you if I, so it needs to be picked up I guess at this point. See if anything you want to add, don’t get bitten. Um, hearing this, I’ll be at my house calling with my door closed Now. Only that, uh, it’s not an easy position to fill. So two months back, um, when Dan Pru moved on, um, he’s not really moved on completely. He’s, it’s like the adventures of John Hanna, like, it’s, it’s a, a bunch of different places. So we’d like to keep Dan on as an a CO as long as he keeps his, um, his certifications up. Um, and he’s been working with Betsy and, and Laura forever. But, um, we ended up putting in JR pl that was the initial animal inspector, um, kind of fill in.

18:11 And we knew we had to do it permanent, so we posted out and we got some interest. And, um, after doing interviews and everything else, I think, um, Emily, uh, has the, the skills, not just the caring, but the ability to do the specific parts of the job that are important, which is paperwork, quarantine. I mean, we’ve already kind of discussed a little bit. Um, and I think that that’s important and, um, and a desire, right? A desire to go out and be, be willing to, you know, put yourself in a number of positions that aren’t risky per se. Yeah. Um, but, but to come out and do it and, um, you know, and, and that’s, you know, kind of how the animal, the marblehead animal, uh, team goes led by Betsy. Um, but it’s, you know, it’s, it’s people that really care about their professions, right?

18:57 And or care about their jobs and care about, um, making it safe for both human and animal alike. So, um, I, I’m, I think that shell fit in really well. Um, to remind you, it’s a $2,400 a year stipend. Mm-hmm. Um, roughly 20 to 24 callouts a year. Um, it’s very specific to the role as it relates to our public health obligations, right. So that’s what this is. It’s not animal control per se. And so, um, that’s a little bit how this goes down, but yeah, that’s it. And, um, I, I, I could answer some questions. Betsy would know the answers better. I have a general idea. Um, but what we do and what we will do, um, for Emily is make sure that she’s prepared to go out and do the things that she needs to do.

19:42 So there is no specific certificate, there’s no training per se. It’s about paperwork, accountability and, um, reporting to the state. And so, we’ll, you know, she’ll be equipped with all of those things before she’s, you know, on our first quarantine. Emily, thank you very much for volunteering. Yeah, of course. That sounds like, I hope you really enjoy it. Thanks. Yeah. You’ve got two great mentors there. Yeah. So, so All right, great. Well thank you. And thank you for coming today. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. So, could I have a motion to appoint Emily to ground as inspector Animals Inspector with a term to expire April 30th, 2026 and to notify the Department of Agricultural Resources of this appointment? So moved. Second. All in favor. Welcome. Thank you.

20:27 Thank you. Thank you. All right. Appreciate it. Thank you. Alright, thanks Chief. Thanks Betsy. Um, any select board announcements? Uh, okay. You’re good. You sure? Just flip to the next tab and skipping. Nope, I’ll skipping anything. Appreciate on top of me. That’s because I would No. All great. Um, with that, I would ask for a motion to adjoin adjourn to executive session under MGL L chapter 30 a section 21 for the purpose of discussing pending litigations Adams v Marblehead gl M 24 GL 0 0 0 6 5 5, where a public discussion on the same may have a detrimental effect on the negotiating position of the public body. Votes may be taken and will will be released at time.

21:14 Team appropriate by counsel. The board will not reconvene an open session. This will be poll. Could I have a motion? Second. Ms. In favor? Mr. In favor this favor, Mr. In favor?

21:33 Well done.