the order. It is um Wednesday, March 4th. It's time is 10:03. And um this meeting of the Barnstable County Board of Regional Commissioners will be conducted in accordance with applicable laws and members of the public are invited to attend in person or virtually. And to do so virtually, uh, you need to go to our, um, website and, uh, go to the meeting center and look at the
the portion of the agenda that allows you to broad to join our broadcast. Um, or you can follow the meeting on the Barnesto County YouTube channel. So, our website is kcod.gov. And without further ado, um, I'm going to ask everyone to join us for a pledge of allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
And uh now I'd like to ask everyone to join us in a uh a moment of silence uh to reflect on the the bravery, the sacrifices, and the service of all those who've put their lives on the line in service to our country, protecting our safety, our freedom, and our democracy. Thank you. Uh the next item on our agenda is public comment. Do we have anybody here in person that seeks recognition or do we have anybody online that seeks recognition? Looking around,
Ian, Robin, do we have anybody that's seeking recognition? Okay, we're good. All right, let's move on to the next item on the agenda. We have a spot on our agenda where we have uh we're open to communications from the Assembly of Delegates. Is there anybody from the assembly here that wishes to be recognized? Hearing none, then we'll move on to the next item on our agenda, uh general business. Um what we wanted to do is we wanted to get up front in our meeting today an opportunity to to get an update on the uh the blizzard response. Um,
I think all of the commissioners have been just sort of overwhelmed with the incredible hard work uh by not just the folks here in the county, but our partners. Um, it's just incredible the the response here on Cape Cod and in our travels around the region. We've been getting a lot of the accolades, but really all of this, all the accolades need to go to you and to all the folks here in the county and in the towns that have really stepped up. just an amazing uh display of
service. Uh and speaking to Jenny Wheeler earlier today, we were talking about how the Cape is a unique village. It's a very unique place where people come together uh crossing town boundaries, working together to serve and and help one another. And we saw that in in abundance. So, um we could probably go on at length singing your praises and the praises of all the others that you worked with here. There's so many people to thank and acknowledge. Um, but what we wanted to do was to get our core team here to sort of update us, give a chance to reflect on some of
the things that they've seen, they've done, talk us a little bit in terms of where we're at. Um, uh, I want to give a shout out to to Andrew and to Chip there. You you kind of are quarterbacks. You've been you've been at this Chip for a while now, even in Panama. Um, you know, I think our team has been led by you folks and I think you've done a great job. So, um, I'm going to turn this portion of the program over to our team and I'm going to let you take the floor a little bit and say some things and then, uh, I think, uh, I know my fellow commissioners
are going to want to have the opportunity to say some things as well. Andrew and Chim feels like just a dream now. Does you want So I'm just first question for me is how you doing on sleep really I know all of you you know you pretty much round the clock 247 so well thankfully I think for everyone who is uh watching me on our storm coordination calls I did get a chance to shave um so we're we're we're doing better
uh sleep has happened so um yeah and while you're here. Let me also just acknowledge we get Chief El Eldridge from Brewster who's been sort of a key part of he's been he has been a key player in all of this and he's thanks for joining us and um hang in there. Stand by while we uh hear from Chip and Andrew and our team here first and then we'll turn it over to you for some comments. But it's great to see you. I'll kick off. Thank you Mr. Chair for having us here today. Um, fortunately for usually
I have to present for a while, but this one will be short and sweet for me. Um, like many people, I went on school vacation week and then got stuck where I was. So, um, it's pretty impressive the response that came out of that without with, you know, people missing, people away, how the county, u, the emergency preparedness division, the department of health, all the other county departments to watch them come together and and respond to this event. We've been sort of building for for situations like this for 22 23 years. Um it started with the formation of the regional
emergency planning committee. The goal to bring everybody together, get everybody aligned, get everybody working on the same sheet of music. And uh it was pretty incredible to see everybody come together and put and uh put everything forward. Um the real rockstar of this show was Andy Platt, one of our folks that really stepped up and when I was away and and ran with the ball and Mike Walker in the division two quite a bit and then of course Vera who stepped in to help us at the end. So, I'm gonna let Andy talk about sort of the response component because he was really
the one who was at the helm and and helping guide this. Well, good morning everyone. Um, so I just want to kind of go over just really briefly uh the timeline of kind of what happened. Um, so we kind of all singing from the same sheet music. Um, so around uh I want to say the Thursday or Friday prior um we started to see kind of the storm coales. We worked with Frank Olaflin, our our kind of in-house meteorologist, uh, who we um, kind of getting a sense what's happening and we saw that storm, unlike the last storm that it started kind of over us and then shifted away
and away and away and ended up missing us. This kind of did the opposite. It shifted towards and towards and towards us and we started to see um, I know they use terms like bombogenesis and all of that. We started to see a rapid intensification of the storm um, up until it hit us. So, um, we got the wheels spinning, uh, even before Chip left, um, uh, for his trip. Um, just just in case, making sure that we're ready. You know, we always plan for the worst, but hope for the best. Um, and in this case, we saw, um, I came in on, uh, Friday, it looked like it was going to, um, you know, we were going to get something. We knew that. Um, by Saturday, it looked like it was
going to be pretty bad. Um, you know, we came in, we started making sure all wheels were in motion. Uh, discussions of potential sheltering, um, needs and all of that. We operate with what's called a community lifelines model. So we look at, you know, what are the the individual lifelines in the community that might be impacted by a storm like this and how do we put things in place to address those? Um that's really the standard that FEMA shifted to and the and the nation's kind of shifted to um in the few past few years to kind of look at those impacts. So um we knew a big one was going to be a lot of power outages um and certainly that came to fruition um with the
I know uh Frank likes to call it the gorilla glue snow. Um, so, uh, we saw we saw certainly gorilla glue snow. It might have actually been concrete. I think a lot of the DPWs discovered when they were trying to plow it. Um, so we activated the MAC, um, the evening before um, on Sunday to, uh, get folks in because we knew travel was going to be very difficult. Um, we also, the decision was made, uh, by the host towns to activate uh, NSET Regional High School um, as a shelter um, as well as Barnstable Intermediate Prestorm. Um, we activated uh all of our Americanore members um and
all of our part shelter partner agencies um which I'm going to try to work through and thank in a moment um to make sure that uh we get folks in. Understanding travel was going to be difficult. So those two shelters were open. Um we didn't expect to see a ton of people right off the start. We got a few people in each of them. Um really anticipating that as power goes out um and folks are cold in their homes, they're going to start wanting to come into the shelter once the storm has passed. Um storm hit. Um I think we all know what happened. Um we saw almost complete uh power outage on especially on the outer Cape which got hit very hard. Um we started getting calls right
away for resource requests. Um understanding that the snow was very difficult I think you know very difficult to plow. That was definitely a new one where just typical uh you know pickup truck with a plow on it in some cases could not push the snow. We actually had to bring in heavy equipment um through our partners at the state um to assist um with removing the snow and opening roads. We saw trees down, power uh power lines down. It made it very very difficult to move resources around. Um we uh engaged our public safety partners to help people who needed to get to shelters right away um
into the shelters, but then we advised folks who could, you know, bear to stay in their homes for a little while longer until it was safe to travel to kind of shelter in place. Um as time went on um and the storm started to kind of pass um more and more folks uh without power and understanding it was going to be pretty cold, especially Tuesday night, um started seeking shelter. So our numbers started to climb up. Um we saw you know first 30 then 50 um in Barnsville Intermediate. Um the decision was made um in Yarmouth to open Dennis Yarmouth as a shelter. So we uh kind of rerouted
some of our uh Americanore and some of our other shelter partners there to help activate that um and sent to some of our Americanore staff there to actually be the shelter manager. Um so that was opened. We had uh at that time recognized I think this was my timeline in my head is getting uh all mixed up but um we noticed that there was a uh a challenge with the heating at NSET um with their generator. Um we were able to get resources in from the state space heaters and and heaters to get them through the night. Um but I think we in looking at it didn't seem like it was going
to be able to be fixed easily. So we made the decision to um close that shelter and transport all of those folks to at the time Dennis Yarmouth um and then to cover the outer Cape um a bit more we made the decision to open the our regional shelter at Cape Cod Tech. Um so we opened that up as well. Folks started moving in there. Um as the storm went on, we started working with Eversource or continued to work with Eversource on prioritizing uh power outages for you know nursing homes. Um you know the you know our public safety radio system which was on generator
um making sure that basically critical life safety function functions and those critical lifelines were supported um and prioritizing through that um and working with our partners at the Cape Cod RTA to um help get people to the shelter who need it. I believe we were well north of 200 um folks who kind of went in went into Dennis Yarmmouth. Um uh close to I believe a hundred at Barnesville Intermediate and I want to say over over 50 at Cape Cod Tech. Um their numbers went up and down because what we also saw is in addition to people staying overnight, folks just coming in
uh during the day to uh get a hot meal. Um thanks to uh the uh Family Table Collaborative um who produced over 17,000 meals um not just for our regional shelters. Okay. Yeah, not just for our regional shelters, but for warming stations, over 14 warming centers, auxiliary shelters at the uh the Mashpwampenog tribe, um Nelson Andrews, uh running that. Uh Province Town shelter, a few other uh towns open some smaller shelters in their um community centers, libraries, councils on aging. Um so, um they were able to get food to them, um as well as open up their own space for
um first responders and DPW workers to come in to get a hot meal as well. Um Dennis Yarmouth uh regional uh high school also deployed their kitchen staff to produce food out of um out of there as well. So food we were well covered uh which has always been um I know a challenge uh for our sheltering system especially when restaurants are without power um being able to do that. So that was a huge uh burden and and load off of us and our response knowing that that was taken care of. Um as we continued um we started uh pushing more and more folks to the shelters. I think we recognized pretty quickly that one of the major challenges is just medical support for the
shelters, understanding our population, knowing that um folks need have some more advanced needs. We also saw folks, you know, who were maybe coming out of the hospital, maybe discharged, who couldn't go home to their cold home, so they went to the uh the shelters, which um you know, may have some more advanced needs. Um, so working with all of our partners to try to get as many uh doctors, nurses, physical therapists, whoever could um kind of support those advanced needs um and any functional access needs that came up for folks um through the storm. Um so that was
something we we definitely focused on. Um around uh Thursday, um we started to see the numbers in the the census uh in the shelter start to decline. Um, we uh started discussing what demobilization might look like or maybe uh combining uh systems. I was we started talking about getting a a team in to spell us in the MAC who had been there uh for me since Sunday morning. um for others since Sunday evening um and had very little sleep um because and so getting some fresh folks in um the
county and town staff who stepped up um and came in and spelled us Vera who came in and spelled me um in there um and making sure that we could get home and we had a fresh crew coming in uh to help kind of demobilize things um as we transitioned over to um demobilization. Ver I don't know if you want to say anything about kind of that process once I stepped out. But I do want to go through and thank all of the individual agencies, but if you have anything, you know what, we basically uh we had a fresh group of people come in to uh to spell Andy as as he just mentioned as well as the
Americanore uh um coordination leadership which consisted of Misty at the time and so did herculan work. Uh Misty was replaced by no no fewer than three people um in in for the demobilization which gives you an indication the enormity of the of the task that she shouldered. Um and uh we were you know basically we just landed the plane that was flying well. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Now in getting the food out to the um the shelters, was that the RTA? It was. It was. Yeah. We worked
with the RTA as well as if it was, you know, a difficult situation or at the height of the storm, our our partners in public safety, police and fire um as well for more difficult or risky transports, they were able to take care of that as well. They did an incredible job. Yeah. Yeah. Real. I mean, absolute heroes. Um if if you don't mind, I'd like to go through and just kind of list some of the Perfect. So, and I tried my very best to make sure I got everyone. Uh please, somebody, if I I don't don't let me forget anyone. Um so well first of all the you know as Chip mentioned our regional emergency planning committee uh chaired by Chief Peter Burke from Hyannis Fire um and Chief uh
Heath Eldridge from Brewster PD um absolutely uh rock stars in supporting us throughout this making sure that we had what we need helped us with our coordination calls. You know I think one of the best things that the county's done for a long time during this and really our role to play is that coordination piece. um bringing folks together for a common operating picture and that's what um the REPC and those coordination calls can really do. It helps people um you know disasters don't care about town boundaries or anything like that. So making sure that you know everyone's on the same page, everyone knows the needs um and we can push around. Um so with that the the Cape Islands
fire chiefs and police chiefs, emergency managers, departments of public worked, every town employee department um you know leader who stepped up and supported um you know they're the ones facing the brunt of the response. You know the shelters are their buildings. It's it's their system. They have the um we're a home rule state. They have the um emergency management authority. So um making sure that we can support them and that um they communicate with us. Um so they were absolutely tremendous. Um Americanore I'm biased. I am an alum of two years and used to run the program. But um uh the Americanore staff um the Americanore members, it is safe to say that if not for them,
I don't think we could have opened those shelters, at least not when we did. Um they are absolute heroes um to the Cape um as as well as everyone. But um those 18 members, the staff that went in um Misty uh Neee um their their manager, their program manager um who came into the MAC to work with me and I was able to just hand um you know kind of sheltering uh coordination for the staff and everything so we could focus on other things. Um what Vera said is absolutely true. When we needed to cycle her out, we replaced her with four people. So that should say how much
she was doing. Um so I want to make sure that is identified. Michael Andronovich and Mattie Bower, the staff there. Michael actually went in to be the Dennis Yarmouth shelter manager. Um so he was uh helping with Nick Pascrosa, the school resource officer out there run that shelter um with the partners. So um huge step up, but those members um you know I I remember in 2015 2018, you know, the members going into the shelters I did myself. Um it is grueling work. Those members had uh uh you know, they developed relationships and rapport with everyone in there. And I can tell
you when we wanted to cycle them out, they did not want to leave. Um that was very, you know, they were very clear like, "No, we are staying. We are at mile 22 of a marathon and we want to see this done." Um the commitment and work that they put in um cannot be understated. Um we mentioned, but I cannot stress enough the family table collaborative, Jenny Wheeler, uh the 17,000 meals, not just to the shelters, but um to anyone who needed them. Um anyone who might have any kind of food insecurity. Uh working to get food out there, bringing in um World Central Kitchen. um correct to to support as well um to make more food. I know. And it was really Jenny and I think one chef
um working uh the overnight shift. So um our friends at uh uh the fire departments assisted in getting some more folks in there to help. Um and that was very quickly identified as a critical critical resource um that I think we we we ought to um continue to support and make sure um it is there because feeding the shelters I remember back in the day, you know, you can only go so long on pizza and donuts. So having good quality food for the shelters, especially folks coming in who need warmth, um that is a huge lifeline to folks. Um the Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority, John Kennedy, um they as soon as the roads were clear, you know,
they said, "What do you need? Um do you need us to move food, equipment, resources, people, um they were an absolute lifeline to us. They allowed us to take the burden off of our police and fire personnel who were out responding um and helping get people to the shelters, get people between shelters, get people from NSET to DY when we had to do that. It was a very easy call to say, "Hey, we need to move people or resources and the RTA stepped up as they always do throughout these storms to support the Capeen Islands." Um so that was a huge resource as well. Um the American Red Cross um when we need when we needed more people, they are part they are partners in our sheltering.
um Maria Zeninga um and her team from the uh Hyannis chapter as well as the Massachusetts Red Cross. You know, we had frequent calls with the state um emergency operations center. The Red Cross is right there, what do you need? We'll get you people. They have brought in people from all over the region. Um they flew in people, they flew in teams to make sure that especially as we needed to spell people and people needed some rest. They could get in there. They said to shelter managers um to help lead those shelters that hadn't been opened in a while and maybe needed some more um on the job training um or just in time training. So they were huge there. Salvation
Army Emily knew um first of all opening um being willing to open up their kitchen and hyenas to Family Table Collaborative um when they were looking for a space um as well as us helping send resources down as soon as we uh opened up the Cape Cod Tech shelter. Um for you know making sure that we had blankets, CS, you know going out to the store and getting us, you know, diapers and just additional things that we needed once stores backed open. Um they were a big help. All of our community emergency response teams, Boxert, East Hamert, DYert, Falmaert, Sandwichert, those are community members who volunteer their time to help respond to emergencies and they're
also integral in running these shelters. Um, and they are always ready to step up and help us. um our medical reserve corps um both here and across the state um through Lisa Jackson um sending us you know helping us find medical support for the shelters which is always always always a need especially this time of year when folks might be you know on vacation or you know they might uh spend their winters um elsewhere um making sure that we can pull resources from all over the state is huge. Um our animal support teams all of our shelters support animals. I think we had multiple Do we have a Was it a parrot? A parrot. Yes, we did have a parrot in one of our shelters.
Um and a guinea pig. Yes. Um so the lower Cape animal shelter team and the Cape Cot disaster animal response team led by Holly Rogers. Um those two entities u managed the uh animal component in the East Ham shelter for the lower Cape team. Um and then Cape Cod Dart helped come in um Holly came in herself to help train the Americanore um to help run shel animal sheltering component in the shelters which can be complicated. Um and you know folks you know there's a lot of anxiety there especially for the pets. We learned after Katrina um in the emergency management world,
people won't leave their pets at home. Um and we want to make sure people are comfortable coming to the shelters and knowing that their pets are going to be safe. So that is definitely something that we make sure is available. Um the Department of Conservation Recreation through the state, Josh Nigro, Karen Lothrub, uh Chief Celeno um and their team um who came in uh served in the MAC with us. Karen and Josh were there the entire time um doing logistics, driving all over the place, moving resources. if we needed something moved. Uh Josh and Mike Walker went out um at the height of the storm to move stuff in trailers um which uh you know was was to make sure that we got things
um out where they needed to go. They were absolutely huge um as well as supporting us in other ways. You know they they're experts in wild and fire but they're also uh experts in supporting disaster um services. So that's a huge partnership that we have directly from the state. Um, of course, Eversource and the almost 2,000 line crews they put out, Renee Goldstein and Sean Kavanaaugh who served in the MAC with us. Um, helping us prioritize, helping us figure out. Um, getting us timelines when there was a critical facility down. Um, making sure that we could, you know, point them towards, you know, a need whether it was a shelter without power or a nursing home or uh, what have you. um National Grid, Bill Sioka, Verizon, Ellen Cummings,
uh the Steamship Authority, Highline, Coast Guard, um all um keeping us updated on their operations, especially when it came to helping Nantucket in the islands as well. Um the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, Mima, Nate Cochran, who served in the MAC with us the entire time. Um you know, was my keeping me sane and helping me out um as a fellow emergency manager. Uh Fernando uh Calderon who came in um as well to support him later on. uh David Bryant up at the state emergency operations center who um we started working with directly um to kind of put up
resource needs and get us what we need um and Don Brantley the NEMA director who came down um to support us and and and you know talk to us directly um showed you know without them um and that's obviously our our huge partner um in that the department of public health and the health and medical coordinating coalition uh HMCC helping us get resources and supplies for medical that's Crystal Leine who has been actually served in the MAC many times and worked with us for a a long time. Um so a huge huge of huge importance. Um we had a national guard come down. The ma uh
Massachusetts Air National Guard came down to support the shelters as well at the direction of the governor. Um the 102nd Intelligence Wing as well um down on the base um supporting the towns with their needs um when requested especially for you know tree clear, you know, whatever it is that they needed some more advanced support for. Um, of course, our delegation, um, all of support, all of our elected officials who supported us and kind of pushed issues and and helped us, uh, clear roadblocks when we needed them. Um, the governor's office and the governor herself who did come down, uh, visited the MAC, visited all the shelters, um, really showed uh, the state, you know,
putting it out there. You know, we've in the past we've had situations where just the Cape really gets hammered. Um, and you know, it's the rest of the state, you know, may not it may not be a focus because well, you know, the Cape's got it. we've got a really good team down here and they know that. But um they made sure that we had everything that we needed. Um and that was really really helpful to us. Um the numerous county and town employees who stepped up. I mean we we put out a call as soon as we realized this was going to be a longer term thing. Whoever um you know I whoever could support um I I I'm not even going to try to list them all. You have so many employees here as
well as in the towns who did not hesitate to go to the shelters. Um our own public health nurse um was was down. Wendy was down in uh the the NSET shelter um serving the medical need from the very beginning and helping us uh coordinate with Jay. Um Jay who also uh served in the MAC with us and supported us. Um it just the 200 local, county, state, nonprofit entities who joined our coordination calls and helped us. And I I especially want to recognize Mike Walker. Um he's been our MAC manager for over 20 years. He served Marsal County for a very long time.
He quiet, you know, doesn't doesn't uh doesn't get in front of the cameras, but he is um a kind of a staple in emergency management in this uh this region. Um he's trained so many people um in the incident command system. Um he doesn't know this, he probably doesn't remember this, but he actually was the one who originally taught me the incident command system and introduced me to emergency management way back in 2013 when I was an Americanore member. So, um, I really want to just recognize him just quietly serving in the MAC, supporting, managing the room, um, being a shoulder to lean on and a source of information. Um, he is to me kind of an an unsung hero among
the county. Um, and I want to make sure that that is recognized as well. Um, Chip Vera, did I forget anyone? Just the school districts. The school districts are a little, you know, they're they're part of the town certainly, but, you know, it's their buildings. It's their people. They brought in their own staff with their custodial staff. um engine school nurses and school nurses who are invaluable and you know it's functional needs we know what our demographic here is in the Cape and there's a lot that goes into supporting that and it was pretty incredible and we also had the
animal support alumni that were the work at the towns yes we put out the call I know Misty put out the call to IA and they came in and supported um especially just shelter staffing but also with the animal component um and then the I I it's no secret that a lot of Americanore um have served here and then stayed here um in positions and we put up a call to alumni and many of them uh brought went right back to their Americanore pledge of getting things done and went in and served the shelters as they did so many years ago as Americanore members. So um big shout out to
them as well waiting here. He's before letting a recap. Yeah, I feel like I feel like we've uh we spent a lot of time together. I mean, for a whole week, I could get nothing but Keith Eldridge. Uh coordinating on the phone in the morning and in the afternoon and uh between between the calls, hanging out at the shelter. So, last week um we spent a lot of time together and uh thank you Heath for all of your work. I want to give you a chance to sort of say something. Yeah. No. Well,
f first of all, I'm grateful that that Andy went through all of those folks because I definitely we would have left one or two out uh because there were so many people that contributed. Um so I I'll just make two two quick points to add on and and speaking on behalf of you know myself and chief uh Peter Burke from Hyannis Fire who couldn't be here um this morning, but he's your other co-chair of the RECC. Um, I think a couple of things that that I took out of it and and one was uh, you know, we heard it from one of our elected officials who touches Cape Cod and other parts of Southeastern Mass as well as one of our uh, volunteer organizations that has a footprint both
on and off Cape that you don't see this level of coordination uh, other locations. This is pretty unique and you know, we know Barsville County government is unique in a good way and this is an extension of that. uh you know you don't have this uh in all parts of the Commonwealth or parts of the of the country. So um you know it it and a lot of what occurred in a good way through the course of the storm was based on relationship building that happened you know during the blue sky time of
uh of our REPC meetings and some of the dealings that we we've had with different organizations uh during those blue sky days that then when we needed to lean on those relationships during the storm um we saw the fruits of those labors uh which was great. And then uh just the other point I'll make is you know while we're uh we appreciate the accolades um you know we're not resting on our laurels that Chief Peter Burke and I are helping put together an afteraction review so we can figure out what can we do even better next time. So uh because unfortunately we know it's not going to be our last storm. Um hopefully the last snow of the season. I'll be happy with that. But uh we
know there'll be other storms and uh we want to be uh equally if not more so prepared uh when that uh arrives. So, we'll continue to do the work we need to to be ready to serve the uh the people of uh Barsville County uh when the time comes. So, thank you all for your support and the opportunity to to be here today. Thank you, Chief. Um I want to give uh before we turn it over to the commissioners, I want to give a chance for for Misty and Jenny uh to to say a few words. Um, no. I I think you know
the the the accolades for Americaore um were were loud and clear in you need to hear that because um I I spent a lot of time in one of the shelters and I saw them all working firsthand. It was just amazing what they were doing and how they fit in and how people responded to them. So feel free to chime in if there's something that we've missed, but you should just know we really appreciate all all of your collective efforts. Thank you. I I've been hearing it as well over the last um few days
and during the um anybody that it uh arrived at any of the shelters or at the MAC and worked with our members that were working there has just said how professional, committed, compassionate, and kind they've been. they really brought up the level at the um shelters and just made it a a calmer, happier place than I think people sometimes expected. And so, um yeah, we couldn't be prouder of all of our staff and all of our members. Um we I'm not surprised, but I also um it did kind of blow blow me away and blow I think a lot of people away of at what they they did.
And also all of our staff jumped in. the only one staff member that didn't make it cuz he was very sick, but he also tried to go around and check all the houses and bring people changes of clothes. Um, so our whole staff really everybody stepped in and I I really couldn't be prouder of all of them. Yeah. Thank you. And Jenny, came to the rescue. Yeah. You know, sometimes people say, "What are they doing? What is the need of that?" You know, and then and then there it is. This is why all
the efforts put in. Yeah. True. Amazing. I like Missy, I'm I'm very proud of my entire team. Um uh like Chip, I was actually stuck out of town. Uh some of you might know my like second mom passed away about five weeks ago. I was down checking on um you know my best friend's dad who uh you know making sure he's good and my flight got cancelled. Um and so it is hard to be away from your team.
Um I did not have one second of doubt in their capacity, but uh managing from afar has its own level of stress. Um but we put together um just shy of uh 15,000 meals out of the family table collaborative directly out of our kitchen. Um, and we uh through um you know I recognize like Annie was saying like you kind of see things coming and I recognize very early that this could get beyond
our capacity and you know this is about the people we're serving not about us and many man hands make light work. Um I have been a member a proud member of the world central kitchen chef corps since 2024. I never imagined my first time activating would be calling them to come help me. Um but um I am so thrilled they did. Uh we drafted that email Monday night, sent it at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, heard back from them at 9:05 a.m. was on a call with nine members of their team. Um,
but because of the coordination of me being part of the emergency response and having all of the data that I had been getting on all the calls and having constant communication with Misty and Andy, I was able to download what they said was more information than they've ever gotten from a chef core member. Um, and they really understood what the impact was that was happening on Cape Cod. They were boots on the ground at FTC at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday morning. And I want to be clear, they
didn't bring chefs because that we had covered. We have an amazing team. Um, and again, it's relationship. It's about relationships, right? So, as part of the American Culinary Federation, um, you know, we had John Norton, their president in our kitchen. We had the entire team from Lon. Um Mick, who if any of you don't know was nominated by James Beard for best new chef in 2025. Um him, his sue chef, his baker. We had Nianab, the new executive uh chef for Red Jacket. Um we
had Eric Labont. Then we had my team helmed by many of you might know him as Captain Awesome um for his programs that he runs in science. Um, thought that was there was quite a That's awesome. Jeff Avery, um, was extraordinary. Uh, my newest hireer, Nick Cap, uh, Jenny Burkheart, uh, my distribution chef, Dee Knight, and my dozens and dozens of our volunteers who came. And I will say that the unsung hero for us is the RTA. Uh, John Kennedy moved mountains to assist us. They
had over 50 trips with food all over Cape Cod. Um and it was truly ext an extraordinary partnership like really amazing. Um and then also again the communication with all the chiefs. Um we had two different police chiefs go and get two of my chefs to come into the building on Monday. um and a fire chief also uh again went to retrieve uh Jeff Avery and then two other chefs and one of my key volunteers actually stayed at the facility both Monday night, Tuesday night and we had somebody
there Wednesday night. We were able to open on Monday during the storm for all emergency crews, um, any, you know, DPW workers, Eversource, anybody that was out trying to assist in the storm to just give them a place to literally go to the bathroom, grab a coffee or hot chocolate, a cup of soup, something to just, you know, help center them in the middle of the chaos. Um, and we even had volunteer, I mean, um, people who came into our warming station who all of a sudden were like, can I help? and because they saw everything that was going on and you know people
seeking comfort then jumped in to become part of the support and it was truly an extraordinary you know extraordinary circumstance. Um we are grateful to show um what we can do. We've also had kind of a afteraction. You know, I'm looking forward to talking with everybody else, but you know, to kind of see again, it's like that's great that we could show up and show what we can do not just for the entirety of Cape Cod every day, week, month of the year, but in an emergency situation,
what we have the capacity of doing and you know, but this was a blizzard, which is, you know, whatever three, five, seven days and it goes back to normal. Mh. A hurricane is 3 weeks to 3 months and much larger and so showing what we have the capacity to do and building those relationships. I think now it's about infrastructure. Correct. So like now what we're doing is we're working with again all of these partners to be prepared for anything that you know hopefully doesn't but
on the just in case an insurance policy right. So again, it's about making sure, you know, the Family Table Collaborative is the only food agency on Cape Cod that serves all of Cape Cod. We're the only food agency that addresses all the food sensitivities and allergens. We have five staff and over 550 active volunteers. We truly do nothing without that component. The volunteers are the heroes of our story. So, we are grateful, beyond honored that we could step in and hopefully
show you what can happen on that side. One of the one of the chiefs said to me, "You do know you're not running a five-star restaurant during and I was like, but here's the thing. Food is comfort, right? It brings immense comfort to people." And we all know if all you're doing is carbs, sugar, and caffeine, it's not a pretty look like after a little bit. So being able to get good meals, meals that made people feel good, that made them feel, you know, more at home. That's what we do.
That's that's really the core of what we do. Again, um you know, on a regular basis, more than 15 nonprofits benefit from what we do every single week. We're not about singular program, singular. We're here for the community and that is all of Cape Cod. And I am happy to be able to serve. That's great. Uh Barrett, I want to just get you in here and then I'm going to turn it over to the commission. Thank you. Uh um just uh one last mention, one of one of the sections in our incident command structure was our communications team and they performed a very important function
terms of uh inreach and outreach inreach to uh county employees as well as outreach to the community. Sonia Sheasley and uh Bethany Travers um stepped in and stepped up uh and were and were a presence for us uh and we really appreciate that as well. Thank you. Thank you for pointing that out, Commissioner Lions. Okay. Yeah. So, I just I'm I'm dying just to tell you what a great job you did and how wonderful you all are, but um no, I was really impressed, you know, uh and I'm not, you know, going to take all credit because there was two other commissioners here, but it
was around 2009 2010 when we were approached by I want to say Greg or I can't remember his name now, but he was the head of the Red Cross and some fire chiefs to talk about a mech and that we needed we had just had some sort of and you know, we had no money, But we started the seed and I remember the first storm that it was sort of put into place. It wasn't as coordinated. It was small but that's when we realized we had elder with older population with medical med medicines and dogs and cats and pets and those were things that you know we got CS we got some
Americanore and to see what it has become all those years later. I just am so impressed and so happy that we gave that seed and kept supporting this effort. And um you know I remember going to a uh environmental conference here 1 Cape whatever a few years ago and they always talked about how we're going to you know reverse climate change and this was like we're going to adapt and I'm like we're doomed. So anyway, um but the guy from Sandy was there, uh Hurricane Sandy,
and if you maybe you might have been at this and he said, "If you don't know your neighbors, get to know them. And if you like if you don't like your neighbors, get to like them enough because you're going to need each other." And this was truly an example of how none of that came up when you were interacting with other people. And if you looked at Facebook, there's the haters, there's the, you know, the mal contents. But if you get away from that and you look on the ground, everybody was helping everyone else. And to me, at this time in our uh where we are in our society,
it was really a welcome reminder and lesson that it's really all of that is noise. And once that noise is out, we work very well together. So kudos to everyone. I was very proud to be part of it. I was very proud to listen in and how well it was coordinated. I was happy to go to a warming shelter and help out when I could get out there and every a lot of people went to warming shelters to volunteer and to get warmed, but I was there once I finally got out. But um and even that in our so we have lessons, you know, we need more warming shelters. We need more generators.
there's really got to have a list of what what what could have gone better if we had had those things in place. So kudos. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Bergstro. Yeah, I I don't have a lot to add to that. I was impressed. Um you know, we spent some time contacting people we knew, some elderly people who we knew were too stubborn to leave, you know, and making sure, of course, they would lose phone service if they couldn't recharge their phones. So, I mean, I was here for the blizzard of 78 and I think this was worse because 78 there was a lot of snow,
you know, but here it was more it was a different kind of snow and it it really took trees down and down and and everything else. I had occasion to see um we finally got out a few days and we I walked our dog on the beach and sure enough some of these bucket trucks pulled up Illinois and I talked to them and they said, you know, people I know a lot of my friends are complaining, oh, we haven't got any power. It's been a couple days. I say, you know, they got to wait for somebody to take the tree down and then they have to wait for somebody to put a hole up and then then they go
up and they put electricity and then the cable. Well, that's probably the last thing on the list, but I mean it's it's complicated and I think they did a pretty good job considering what they were faced with. My question actually is in the early it seems like a lot of people access the shelters later in the storm when they realized that Yeah. But I mean in the beginning of the storm Monday, I mean the roads were pretty much almost impassible. So did you have difficulty marshalling your forces and getting people around to where they had to go? I mean the even the parking lots,
some of the shelters had to be plowed. It really is a, you know, a coordinated effort, you know, as Jenny even mentioned, getting getting some more of her folks in. Um, we had to work with our our partners in the fire departments, police departments, DPWs, um, to move critical critical people around. It's always a, you know, we always use kind of a risk management, like risk versus reward of moving people. Um, at the end of the day, if you know, if somebody can can bear to stay in their home until it's safe, then, you know, I would say it's it's safer to do that than be out on the roads. But when you have folks who might have, you know, durable medical equipment that
needs to be plugged in, oxygen, folks who, you know, just cannot bear another night, um, and it becomes a life safety issue, um, that's when we need to to prioritize that and we get, you know, whether it's a a fire truck, you know, police car, whatever it is out there. Um, and there's other kind of rescue. And, you know, at the end of the day, you know, I hate to say it, but we got kind of lucky in a sense. Um, you know, this could have been worse. We did not get the coastal flooding to the level that it could have been. um if this had been a king tide, you know, a lot of what you know, a lot of whatifs, you know, with timing, but that's that's kind of the the risk assessment we
do and with a hurricane especially, you know, when you start adding in water and flooding and needing to move people with, you know, high tide vehicles. I think opening a few shelters pre-storm helped out to some folks who knew. Um but it's really getting the message out to folks, you know, that obviously had some warning. They were predicting this for days. Yeah. So, uh you know, we had we had a leg up on it. But I hope you mentioned that I think it was Chief Eldrich that mentioned that um they don't get this kind of response elsewhere off the Cape. So I'm hoping that the other areas of Massachusetts and maybe down the coast are paying attention. Yeah. And maybe Pete Heg
really organize something. Yeah. Yeah. We've actually gone to present a few other areas on on our model and what we do and how we do it. Yeah. Well, they're not going to they're not going to get you guys to do that. They probably get somebody, but I don't know if they're going to get anybody to the quality of the people that we have here in Barnesville County and Americanore volunteers and so on. So, I mean, I I'm sure that the Americanore volunteers, you know, like yourself, you know, years later when they have other jobs in other places, they'll be able to sit down over a beer, a cup of coffee, and talk about this storm and how they
responded. If if I could just add another thing, you know, talk about relationship building here. Jenny is I know from being in the outer cave which usually was forgotten I have to say through a lot of things not on emergency stuff but I mean you know people reaching out it's always been so uh there she is all the way from Yarmouth and uh down in down in Wleley and and everybody knew what the family kitchen was everybody knew who she was what was going to happen when what was going to be provided and you could count on that and it's it's um that and uh the Americanore. So
the Americanore, we have a community dinner on Tuesday nights and they have a table just for the Americanore kids and I've gotten to be able to sit with all of them. Although I still have to get to the house to have a dinner. Um and so everyone has become familiar with them. They're sort of like the celebrity table. They're always pointed out that those are the Americanore and the nurses that come down during those dinners and do so there was a lot of uh already known people that were not just from uh the outer cape. So, it's it's amazing how over time all of this does
come together if we keep it up. Yeah. I think we have something that's very special and that's an identity, right? Uh when there's a public safety issue or an emergency, we have great cooperation and collaboration with police and fire. Um I've seen that firsthand. We had a tragedy in Yarmouth uh last fall and to see how public safety, the police, fire all responded to that to that incident and and stepped up. Uh and then to see it sort of in in you know sort of multiplier effect
with this storm was just unbelievable. I saw so many firefighters, EMTs, police officers bringing people in to the shelter and um these folks would not have gotten there but for someone going to their door digging them out. How they how they made that connection, I don't know. Some folks, I'm sure, didn't even have phone service. But it gets back to the the village mentality where people looking out for one another. It does. And passing the word on and getting word to folks
to help and take care of folks. So, we just saw this big time throughout the cave. Jenny, can I add one more thing? I just realized I don't like Andy, I'm like, I don't want to forget anybody. Oh my goodness, that's so stressful. Um, we had an enormous with the help of World Central Kitchen. We had an enormous engagement. Um, you know, we have a very strong relationship with Whole Foods Market. They opened before they were open to the public to get us food because as you can imagine producing the number of meals we made that was our biggest problem. We were running out of resources out of food and that's what World Central Kitchen's real good at getting us
resources. Um but BJ's Wholesale Ring Brothers. Um we also got Pink Door Catering supplied uh 1,700 meals through World Central Kitchen. Uh casual gourmet prepared meals for us. 300 meals I think. And you know, I spoke to Rooney at DY and I want to make sure they get credit. That is their chef team from within DY that supplied. We She and I had a conversation and I was like, "You're going to be self-sufficient for food? Awesome. Yay. You you go. If you need me, call
me." But like, I'm happy to take that off list. So, you know, it really does take a v village. I say this all the time. We sure do love ours. You know, you can't do it without all of us. You know, we are stronger together. That is my consistent line and love's always our secret ingredient. But it was all of those players that coming to the table, stepping up that made us capable of doing what we did. Yeah. Great. No, well said. Well said. Thank you. Um, the only thing that I can say is that it to the extent that there are things that we can do as commissioners to sort of
reinforce and and get the word out about how much these collective efforts are appreciated, please please let us please let us know and resources. I mean, if there's really identified, you know, so the next I think I think what's going to happen is after they do their aftere event review, we'll identify things that need to get fixed. the legislators will be close by and we'll be close by to make sure that we can work together to make sure that should this happen or when this happens again some of the some of the lessons that we've learned we're able to apply some of the resources
that we need we can get we can make available the next time there's an ARPO of funding you know um we got to put a chunk into emergency we got to make sure that more resources exactly right but we have to think about that yeah so this is definitely on our radar screen as So on behalf of not just the commissioners but everybody in Barnstable County, thank you great. Thank you very much. Good Mr. Chairman, your opening comments that the Cape Cod spirit was on full display and I don't think it's hyperbole to say that lives were actually saved. Right. Right.
We were fortunate to play a convening role, but you could fill this room 10 times over with the number of thanks and thank you for taking the time out of your busy meeting for recognition. Today's about recognition and thanks. And yes, Michael Dutton and Vera have already started that process. How can we be better, right? The TV Mike Walker not being here. It's not here personal things, but that three-legged stool is important and and certainly um like I said, lies would say, but it isn't one it isn't one. We play the convening role in this. Um but it is unique. I've been in other
I've served in other parts and say this doesn't exist here. We very fortunate in the fact that you would take the time, you were on those calls with several hundred individuals and agencies, 10 and two, 10 and four each day to say what's our next piece. How do we help one another? Significant. That doesn't happen anywhere else. So, thank you for this. Well, it's a team effort, but the good thing is we've got an all-star team. Yeah. You know, all that kicked right in. Thank you. Thank you. Kick right in. Michael Michael Dutton did say he's going to start charging me rent because he I said my office became my apartment, but but then he took good care. We were having great
food. You know, we we're always looking for fun. Yes, exactly. No, no, you folks all went through a lot. I mean, that's And your families as well having you go. No question about it. We get it. We saw it. We could see it firsthand. You guys are working on those calls. All cool. All very, you know, we're just going to get it done. So, so aren't you Aren't you glad you're back? Yeah. Andrew, we're wonder. It's funny. It It actually snowed more in Charlotte when I was there for four years than it did here and then I come back. So, I think it's it might be my fault, but it's okay.
We'll Well, we're glad to have you back. In some ways, the these are reinforcing experiences. Yep. Very good. All right. Well, this concludes this item on our agenda. Thank you. Much appreciated. Thank you guys. Jenny, great to see you. Chip, thank you. Andrew, thank you. Misty, thank you. Well done. We're going to take a minute here just to get for our next uh Thank you. big discussion.
All right. Wow. Good commissioners. There is there will be just to fill some air here. There will be some you know a hot wash as they call it in the business to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities for the for the next one. Interesting thing about in incident response structure and the way it works is that it can be scaled for whatever time frame is necessary. So we were in an incident response mode during COVID for at least a year and a half, right? By the way, so that's right. you know, so
it does it is modular and and flexible in that way and intentionally. So, yeah. So, the one thing, you know, people were talking about, well, at least it isn't Sandy. Oh, this remember that, but we were in t-shirts, you know, or whatever one of not Sandy, but one of Bob or whatever one of these storms were that went through in the summer. And that's going to have to be another sort of um exercise we have to go through in our heads and our thinking. Now, see if If you look back at
prior incidents, most of the times that we've had that are similar to this in terms of the impact in terms of power have been, as you've said, during warmer weather periods where the tornado, hurricane, all of those are warm weather events, right? I can't think of the last time we've had people without power in a winter storm. Many days were like this. This has been, you know, the staff quite some business. the staff told us that this this was actually the longest and most impactful period uh that the MAC has stood up uh for for quite some time. Yeah.
And the other difference was is you know I'm on a culde-sac so the first one of the first ones of these is three Mhm. three uh three nights and I couldn't get through because this tree down at this time the tree had taken out and um thank you. There was just a lot more coordination even though there was four days. Did Ron want to say something? I'm sorry. No, no, I was just gonna say I in the blizzard of 78. One thing was good thing is we didn't lose the internet.
That's true. Those were the days. Yeah, exactly. All right. To the to the other emergency we addressed. The next the next item on the agenda. Can I can I move on? Are we ready? The next item on the agenda is an update from Ken Cerillo on the Barnstable County icebreaking situation. What is that? I'm going to tell you. Yeah. And as you know, the the last crisis we were dealing with before the storm was and um we had uh our our dredging team uh stuck. Oh, right. In Dennis and we had our fishing fleets stuck in Chadam, Harish, Dennis,
and elsewhere. So Ken, you with us? Yes. Good morning. Morning. The floor is yours. What's the latest? Well, I will give you a after that a tough act to follow after that last uh update. But yes, we can't forget what happened here. Um certainly as we kind of quickly go through, we had a lot of frozen harbors. Uh we had the Coast Guard the authorization for us to do uh the ice breaking. And what I'm just going to run through here is just a quick update of what we did and how it
was done. Uh we operated to manage the operation. You know, this was done uh under the direction of all the harbor masters. We solicited everyone to see what need there was. Uh the following MSHB and Barnstable, Dennis, Walle, Chadam, and Harwitch had some immediate needs. Haritch was taken care of by the Coast Guard. They had that 49 footer that was able to get back into operation. Took care of Sackwatucket uh but really wasn't able to go into any of the other embainments and couldn't
get to the north side. Didn't have enough draft to be able to get in there. So unfortunately uh that was the kind of the effort that they were able to provide. And then the larger uh Coast Guard cut of the shackle that's the one that kept the ferry routes running between uh Nantucket and Hyannis. So it did leave us with the option of doing nothing or trying to go ahead and see if we could uh find a path forward which we were able to do. You know we did go out and try to find other contractors. Fortunately, Robert Bawa, Rob, they stepped up and you know quite honestly
they were incredibly flexible uh to meet the need. You know, basically they gave us the the two boats uh to be able to run and go where we needed them to go. Um so uh let me just kind of run through the target areas again. Su harbor where we were frozen up but a lot a lot of uh municipal infrastructure there. The harbor was very iced up. We're talking about you know six plus 8 in thick in these areas. Very heavy ice. Wealthy a lot of uh lot of frozen area in there all the way
up the inner harbor to town pier har which like I mentioned sacucket was cleared by the coast guard uh bonable there was concern with bonsible because they didn't want us to go they didn't want any ice breaking to go past bliss point uh because they were concerned that breaking up the ice could have done more damage uh to the pilings and the floats that were there. So we had a stop at Blush Point and on the south side three bays Kuit North Bay uh West Bay and Stage Harbor. Robert Bear was
actually working up at the head of the harbor. So they kind of were able to work and clear up the mooring field where some of the fishing boats were morowed up uh as they departed from there. We'll see that in a second. And then Mashby quite a bit pumps it and quite up to Little River. Uh it was tough if you think of what had to be done here. Both of these boats that they had 26footers, one twin screw, uh all steel, sort of like our push boats. And you know, quite honestly, we would not have wanted to use our push boats for for this effort. It's sort of like you want this
is why you want to have a rental and not use your own vehicle. But um they started over in in um Stage Harbor and ran all the way down Woods Hole and route to the north side. went from Woods Hole to Suitt. It's a two-day trip. Got there on Friday afternoon, uh the 13th of February. Cleared, broke up a lot of Sissuit and spent the night, spent the next day, broke it up again because, you know, started to freeze up again and they needed to kind of keep it moving on the outgoing tide.
And then they ran deadheaded up to Wealthfleet. Spent the afternoon of Sunday uh in Saturday in Walthleet. And then the night and then the next morning broke it up again there and went back to Cissu. Had to get fuel. Ended up um getting stuck in there because of uh some of the weather that blew up and they weren't able to get back out and then they ran over to Barsville Harbor uh and then made it back to the north side. So all that was done from Thursday through Monday. And meanwhile
the uh other boat was working on the south side as well already trying to go ahead and get into a koi bay but the ice proved way too thick inside there for that boat. It was a single screw a big outboard on there and they weren't able to really get too far. So we moved them over to West Bay and I'll show you that in a second. But he continued on here Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday going back and forth between Pompanesset Wuite and um uh Pompesset Woy and East Bay, West Bay to Kuit Dock.
Finally on Thursday ended up finishing up going up to Prince Cove and not even be able to get up to the ramp because the ice was now really thick up there. So they were able to get, you know, within uh throwing distance of the ramp, but um just up to the point And the other vessel, Mr. Magcoo, was able to work several days uh Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. And they again, like I mentioned, uh came over from Oakluff. So they ran that boat from Oakluffs down to Falmouth, and then they continued
on into Koi Bay and then moved on into West Bay, Pompa, uh excuse me, West Bay, Katua in that area. So it was, you know, almost a whole week of working the operation. You know, the way that the rate was structured was $375 an hour dock to dock. So when they were floating off the dock, the clock was running. Uh again, it was a daily change of plans. You know, we had to move according to the weather and had to move as they were moving from the north side to the south side. uh in constant
touch with the Coast Guard because we were still trying to see if we could get them to come in, but uh they were not able to do anything further. We also did work with to see if Edgartown had a need and they did not. Uh they had the Chappie Ferry run uh which was their main concern there, but we did offer them the services as well, but they didn't need it. Uh so the total was $31,781 for the effort. And I think um you know as we still seeing there's still ice in in a handful of the embainments but I think we were able to kind of make some good progress here in a very
short period of time at a very good rate. I know the wellfleet harbor master was very appreciative of this work some of the fishermen there as well. Same with Chadam. Uh same with um the harbor masters for the emergency response which was you know the other important part of this was to give them access so they could get their boats in and out and as well as trying to hopefully mitigate some of the damage that we're going to start to see reports of as things do thaw out and municipalities start to realize that um pilings are being lifted and floats are being twisted. So
we did what we did and I think it worked out well. Thanks Ken. If if I could just Commissioner Lions, thank you. If I could just tell Ken um you know, from the great town of Welfley uh that you came and saved. There was nothing but praise and also wonderful words of um gratitude about you to you and to Mike Dutton. uh everybody just it was their first really encounter working with you for many people and they were very uh impressed and and uh very very grateful for your
help and assistance and so I just wanted to pass that along to the commissioners as well as you and Michael Commissioner Bstrom. Yeah, you know what I'd like to point out another advantage of having Parsonsville County is that we could move quickly. I mean, we got word from, I think it was Senator Seir that the this had to be done because a lot of the votes were and so but unfortunately it would have literally taken an act of the legislature to appropriate the money and get it done. a quick call to Mike Michael and uh then to you and appropriation we made I think on a Wednesday and
then the assembly met on Thursday and according to you we were we were uh breaking up ice on on Friday. So it it uh you know it was very you know it is good to see when we you know are able to kind of bounce really quickly like that. Um again, Robert Bau they Bobby Robbie did a fantastic job just simply offering us the crew just do what you want, take them. Uh the the three three captains were very very good. One of the fellows, Max Lindsay, he was on for the most of the time.
Um they worked hard. You know, it was a lot of logistics of moving these guys around and pointing them in the right direction. Uh the ice was very thick. It was not the little skim ice that we're used to seeing in the wintertime. Uh, could we have gotten ahead of it? You know, maybe a little bit earlier. And, you know, from our perspective, we were being very selfish because we just needed to break the dredge out. That's all that's all we cared about doing. Thanks, Ken. Thank you. Just one more thing. The old-timers in Chadam would talk about the days when you could walk in there, Tucket. But then they fit a lot of things which are probably less a little little embellished a
little bit, but like we're doing. All right, Ken. Thank you for the great job. And uh happy sailing. Happy sailing. Exactly. All right. Next item on the agenda. Let's move on to uh PAS and talk about our municipal fire training facility and our cleanup. Yeah. With our friends from uh GZA. GZA. Well, you're learning a lot about the county while you're sitting there waiting to be uh
interesting stuff. It is. Yeah. Yeah. So, good morning. Good morning. Uh I'm going to ask you guys to introduce yourselves for the folks at home and then uh give us your update. Looking forward to it. Paul Rosal. um the assets and infrastructure manager for Burnsville County and I'm joined with GZA. I'm John Pacman with GZA. I'm Jen McKnney with GZA. Good to see you again. Nice seeing you as well. Thank you for your time. We know you folks have been incredibly busy.
There's a lot going on here and we know you have a presentation for us today to kind of update us on how things are moving forward. Um I'm excited about uh the work that you've been doing and uh uh we look forward to your update. Yeah. Do you want to jump into sharing? I'm doing that right now. You see my screen?
Share. Commissioner, can you can you open up? Hit the right. Oh, there it is. Share that way screen and then you should be able to pull up There we go. Okay. Bingo. I want to get this out of the way. Minimize it. And then you can hit presentation. Yeah, there you go. Okay, great. So, uh, again, thanks for for having us again. Um, we
thought we would walk you through what we've been doing since our last meeting with you. Um, and but we're going to switch it around a little bit this time, we thought we would would start with talking about what we're doing on the remediation side of things to stabilize the site. Um, so just to refresh everyone's memory as you know what what the site looks like, where things are, uh, I thought I'd start with this larger map. Um, so just a refresher, Flint Rock Pond up here, Mary Dun Pond over here, your former fire training facility is right here. You can see my cursor,
right? Yes. Okay. Um, groundwater flow is from the northwest towards the southeast. So, generally following the, you know, the track of my cursor here. Um, we have the site is surrounded by a number of sensitive receptors, mainly the the drinking water wells. We have 10 drinking water wells near your site. We have the Mary Dun wells over here. We have the airport well, airport one well here. We have the Marwells down here to the southeast. And we have two Barnesville
Fire District wells over here to the west of you. Um, we have the airport which had its own issues. I think you recall. Um, we have the Barnesville fire sorry Barnes water treatment uh plant here. The the water pollution control facility here. Um, and um, just you know keep those those landmarks in mind as we go through this. Okay. Um, so we, as I said, we start with what we've been doing recently to help stabilize the site. Um, and last time we spoke of a permeable reactive barrier that
we installed. That's a different approach than what you were doing before, which was pumping a lot of water and treating that. So, what we did for that is we installed a colloidal activated carbon curtain, so to speak, underground. that's injected and that carbon is is sequestering contaminants moving through it much as you do when you filter the water on on the Hyannis water district wells for example they're going through carbon we're just injecting carbon into the ground and doing it in situ um the full scale PRB permeable reactor barrier was was injected
u last year on schedule um between July and October Um, and we installed a number of of additional monitoring wells on the downgradient side of the the the permeable react reactive barrier here. So, so this this figure just as a refresher again shows the alignment of the of the full scale PRB along your your eastern and southern property line here. Again, groundwater is flowing in this direction down through the barrier towards the Mary Dunwells, towards Mary Dun Pond.
Um, and so, so we install those those permeable, I'm sorry, th those performance verification wells on the downgradient side of that so we can monitor the effectiveness of the PRB. Um, due to the the weather that we just heard a lot about uh, in January was very cold. I'm sure that contributed to the ice problems that you were dealing with. We were not able to sample as as we planned to sample in January. We couldn't do it. We'd freeze up all of our equipment. So, we had to postpone that sampling into early February, but we do have those results. They just
came in. I'll share those results with you. Okay. So, a few PRB facts just to for your interest. Um, we put a lot of carbon in the ground. Um, the carbon comes in a liquid form. Uh, you know, we we we injected 400,000 pounds of this of the material. Um, that's a lot. And it comes in these plastic totes. We brought in 200 totes of that. That's a lot of material. Uh but it was it's a big and deep permeable reactive barrier. So we need a lot of material. Um we injected that through
almost 250 individual injection points drilled through with a a drilling well. That's pushing a probe down to depth down to anywhere from 50 to 70 feet down below grade and then injecting the carbon through that. And I'll show you some pictures of that coming up as well. Uh there's a lot of injection points. It took a long time. these points of space only 5 feet apart so you get good coverage. Um the length is long. It's 600 feet. Um and as I mentioned we're going down to 70 in some cases 90 ft where in the southern area where the ground surface came up we had to
go particularly deep there because the ground surface came up. Um and again we we factored in the concentrations in the groundwater and if you if you recall from our last conversations you know most of the training you know infrastructure the buildings the the the fire training pits and the like were all in the southern part of the site here. So as you can expect that took the brunt of the impact. So our concentrations there are much higher. So we dealt with that by putting more carbon in in the southern part than the and in the northern part. So we have two different areas
with different dosages of carbon. Okay. Uh does that make sense? So the next few slides are just photos to give you, you know, an appreciation of what what what it all looks like. So these are the totes that the material comes in. Uh we had 200 of them come in. Uh given the size of the site, they came into a stage. So the trucks were coming in delivering the totes throughout the entire process. Um this is the equipment that was used to to mix it because the totes comes in very concentrated. So it needs to be diluted to meet the you know the the anticipated dosage
that we need. This equipment to the left is is basically a metering pump that takes the the un undiluted carbon and dilutes it down to the dosage we want and mixes it with with clean water before we inject it into the subsurface. The photo to the right is what the carbon looks like. is a very fine um carbon almost dust size. It's micron size particles that we mix with water and create a slurry like this and inject the slurry. But I thought you might be interested to see
what it looks like. Okay. Um so here's the actual activities of it being installed. So it's a small drill rig that pushes those rods to the to the required depth every five feet as I mentioned. And here's the injection point here. You can see it's a it's a perforated injection point. So this is the end of the the rod that gets pushed down to to the bottom and the bottom here is that lower silt layer that we spoke of before. So we're injecting all the way down to that silt layer and and then the carbon gets pushed out through these these penetrations through the pipe that you can see
here. Okay. Um so that gives you an idea of of how this works. And there was a lot of hoses throughout this near the site while we're doing you can imagine there's a lot of water hoses and carbon hoses. And this is only one setup. At one point we had three of these setups running at one time to maximize the production. Okay. Um so here are the results. Um and we have two monitoring points so far. We have our initial pre-treatment result which is on the left hand side. Um and then we have the post injection result on the right hand side of each of these graphs. The graphs
show uh response in the shallow zone, the shallow groundwater, the midpoint in the groundwater, as well as the deep part of the groundwater, which is right above that lower silt layer that we spoke of before. And across the board, we're seeing great great reductions. Um, and and the thing I want to point out is that these scales are not consistent. So, this scale is in the 12,000 range at the maximum. This one's at 600. This one's at 50. And it's simply because concentrations are higher at
the shallow than the deep. Okay. But you can see that across the board and these are for individual contaminants. Um concentrations are drop dropping very very well. So the the PRB is is performing as expected and that's a great thing. It is a great thing. It is. How long do you think it will be before it flush like where we won't see? Well, that's the big question. This is a relatively new new technology. And how long does the water does it take for the water to get through? Exactly.
Exactly. I I don't have a final travel time for you yet. I'll have that when when we next meet uh for the next, you know, it's a hard number to it is and we're we're we're trying to do that with some modeling and there's a lot of variables that we're looking at, but it's it's we're you know, it it'll happen pretty quickly in this setting because groundwater flow uh is quick here. It's all fine fine to coarse sands ground where flow velocities are high. So it's going to be relatively quick in this scenario. Okay. Now the concentrations the concentrations I mean the
stuff doesn't disappear. Does it concentrate in the carbon? It it it's a question in the carbon. Correct. Does it stay in the carbon? I mean how much how long can that carbon last? That's the big question and we talked about that early on. Exactly. Is how long will the carbon last? It will not last forever. It is considered a temporary fix. We're trying to stabilize this combined with the cap that we that you folks put on the site years ago. This is is intended to keep the the the contaminants at the site and not allow them to go on to impact the Mary Dunwells. We recognize
that you may need to add additional carbon at some point in the future to, you know, supplement it. The models that we have suggest that should be on the order of 10 maybe longer years, but it's such a new technology. We're not entirely sure exactly how that's going to last. And I don't want to lie to you and tell you we know for exact. I'm just curious that if you know if this was a filter, you know, after a while it would would clog up. It would release whatever. But you're saying that
carbon has the capability of of concentrating a lot of this. It does until it It does because it's such a small particle size. There's a lot of surface area to the carbon. Okay. Okay. So, there's a lot of surface sites where the car where the contaminants can absorb to. Okay. It will not be a permanent fix, but it should last at least a decade or longer. And that allows you and as we said when we started this process, it buys you time because there are new technologies coming out all the time. Right now there are new carbons being developed that weren't available
when we put this out to bid. There are car, you know, there are carbons out today that weren't available then that are better carbons. There are carbons that are mixed between carbon as well as a iron exchange resin that is more permanent. In fact, it is permanent. But those those materials weren't available just two years ago. Wow. They're coming out that quickly. That's amazing. Okay, sure. So, you know, I keep going back to the ponds. I'm I'm determined to make this work around the ponds and I being told not to. But is it because it has to be replaced? I mean, this
seems like a a solution for, you know, and it's like putting in a water filter to a house. It is. Every house would have to do this like every 10 years. Like I would replace my water filter every six months. Every Exactly. Right. So, is that the reason why it wouldn't work or is it just That's exactly right. the carbon will become saturated at some point and it will no longer be effective. It was something that people were aware of that worked that actually got like PAS and maybe even phosphorus. Do we know if it captures phosphorus? No. We don't know that. We won't we won't know.
It's not it's not good for for nutrient loading. Oh, so that's that's why it's Yeah. Yeah. That's too good. But the idea here is again to stabilize the site so that we're not continuing to push I absolutely understand and and by doing that the the wellhead treatment costs at the the you know the Mary Dunwell should go way down because we're not putting so the contaminant load on on those carbon beds. Are we new to this? I mean is this you say it's relatively new technology. Is that is it being applied elsewhere? Oh yes. And so we have a record even beyond before. Oh yeah,
it's been used for the last 10, 15 years, but that's still relatively new relative to us dealing with contaminants. We looked at some case study examples. I know um Australia and some of the other parts of the world have been using this for quite a while. So our concern was we we love the idea of new technology, but we want the proven new technology to be used, not to be the the first trial and error group. So especially we're paying. So what's exciting is the fact that we're at this point and it's all working. It's all working. It's all working. Yeah,
it's all things are moving in the right direction and you know then we'll look at it and again you may need to add carbon in the future. I would imagine there's going to be new carbons in the future that'll be more effective and maybe last longer. Exactly. So there's there's a way to look as we look at the future there may be technologies that can help do even a better job at remediating the pollution. Right. Exactly. One of the one of one of the issues that we've had now for years, several years, is that going into an uncertain financial future. In other words, we don't what's
expected of us from the various regulators. We call them regulators and what expense are we going to incur in the future? But it sounds like with this we've limited this relatively limited the problem. I mean, so dude, are we going to be are we gonna are we going to satisfy the the the monkey mucks in Boston, everybody that we're on top of it? They're not going to demand, you know, more of us because that's I mean, when we do budgets and this is a big I think the next Yeah.
the next our next meeting and discussion will be to look at financing and where we're going long term. Right now, we wanted to give get you folks to be up to speed on just how this is performing and it's performing well. Right. All right. It's It's meeting our expectations. We're hitting all the marks. It's working. And so this is from my point of view, this is an exciting development for us here in Barnstable County because up until now, all we had were ideas and approaches, things that we thought might work, but now we're actually in the ground getting results, and it's
happening. It's huge in that every step we take on this project, we have to through the Massachusetts contingency plan, you know, law coordinate through Mass D, right? So, every step we take, we have either whether it's a filing or approval process, they were in strong support when GZA presented um the idea of the the PRB. D said they had a very similar um mindset on it. So, we move forward with the law permiting process. they approved and you know as far as managing the site you know our
number one um focus is you know public welfare ecological health now we have carbon treatment on the public drinking water wells the water is safe and clean this PRB is trying to mitigate our site and also clean water you know through the Mary done wells in the future um but also we're balancing cost with that so looking at you know the most cost effective approach the PRB really presented itself as the the most strategic option right now knowing we'd have limited funding. You know what what can we do for a bang for our buck and make a huge impact where if we would have put
in a pump and treat system at a large scale we would be in the tens to spend money tens of hundreds of millions of dollars and we might not really you know take care of the issue. So right now it's container site um work with D and public uh keep the public health uh component safe. Yeah. If I could just expand on that, this is a passive system. Once it's in, you do nothing but monitor it. Just make sure it continues to work, right? Whereas the alternative system that we where you were going before was expanding that groundwater pump and treat system that you had,
which is an active system. It's active pumps, there's there's lines that get clogged, lots of maintenance. And this eliminates all of that and still is protective of human health and and again contains it to the site. So we're not continuing to feed contaminants towards the Mary Dunwells at a very low cost. Yes, they did. How how is it uh how's how's everybody all our uh what would we say polluting partners or something like that doing uh feeling responding to this information?
Is everybody um Well, I think one of the reasons why we wanted to have this meeting is because this will be preceding a more public Oh, so this is not hit prime time. This the results have not been We we'll be getting this information out soon. You got a public meeting. What? Next week is it? Next week after Tuesday, um March 10th at 6 PM. So, it was important that we get this presentation done here first. Very good. So that we'll have some idea what the public's going to be presented with at the public meeting. And through the permitting process, there's a chance for, you know,
public comment and and all of the stakeholders to weigh in and they've all been very supportive. um they're familiar with the PRB model, the forest site and to show these positive results right now. It's it's great news for for us every everyone down gradient, you know, Hannis Water, DPW, it's it's a very positive note for them and I think it's safe to say that D has been reasonably pleased with our performance and um we'll be getting obviously some more feedback from them once we go through this public discussion process. we'll get more feedback from
the community and others and then we can sort of make some adjustments or move on from there. But I think we're at a great spot and I think the public reception will be very positive and uh we're always going to hear noise. Um but I think we have enough information now to to show some real confidence that our approach is headed in the right direction. Yeah, our feedback from the D has been very positive thus far, which is good. Great. Do you have anything to add to this uh discussion? Um, I mean, the results are great and it'll I'm looking forward to seeing, you know, how it looks
in the future. Um, the other thing that we want to add up, um, we we did set up a an opportunity for Senator Marky Stamp to join us once this presentation was concluded, but they're not they're not on the call. Okay. Today, so we should bring up the other slide that deals with the uh the funding. Did you bring that? Okay, I did. I I have a few slides about the investigation side of Would you like me to go through that or would you like me to table that? No, no, no. Please go go through some of the other slides that you want to and then we'll hit that overall on time. I know
we have We're doing okay. We got another 10 minutes. Okay, great. We have Yep. Okay. Um so I'll go through these really quickly just to give you a sense on the investigation side. Uh and actually before we get to investigation, this slide deals with the existing pump and treat system that's out there. Uh as you know, we've had some issues with it. It was vandalized, was damaged that way. We also had some freezing issues recently, so we had to deal with all that. Um, and those have been uh mitigated. Uh, the repairs have been done. Uh, things have been cleaned.
Everything's good there. Uh, we have a leak in one of the units that's scheduled to be repaired. Uh, so that's not a problem. And, uh, um, the the thing we want to comment, we continue to to look at it now that we have the PRB in and it seems to be giving us good data. One of the things we're, you know, we're we're starting to think about is do we need to even continue to run the pump and treat system? Is it doing anything? Is it worth the cost? So, that's something that, you know, we're going to be looking at for you. Okay. And if we can demonstrate that it's no longer needed,
um, then let's let's let's look to to uh put it in in a in a standby mode or or disable it alto together. And John, for the record on that too, say if that was a recommendation, that would need to go through D as well for public comment. there'll be a ton of data associated with that on the cost benefit. Yeah. So, on an update on the investigation side, um most recently we we collected a number of of samples from some older wells that are on the the southern part of your site near the airport runway as well as to the southwest part of the site towards the wastewater
treatment plant. And uh we wanted to get a sense for, you know, what the chemistry there looked like is, you know, is that all consistent with the same source or not? and and that helps us interpret our data are you know with we know we have co-mingling of plumes. So that's our big challenge is to try to separate out where the stuff's coming from and how is it getting coingled and you know and the like. So we did a lot of sampling there. We you know we we sampled wells that hadn't been sampled in 10 years. So we wanted to get a sense for what do they look like today. We'll talk about that a little bit moving forward. Um we we started looking at additional sources
in in the area. So, we pulled up um street atlas maps and the like and as well as you know street uh database uh information try to sense get a sense for who operated out there and are any of those people or businesses likely to have used PAS. So, we want to see you know the idea up to this point I think was the idea was it you know it was either our our stuff or the airport stuff and I think there's probably a lot of other people that are using PAS. We know that because it's it's
ubiquitous. everyone uses the stuff and discharges it. So, we're trying to document that right now. Uh we've looked at fire department records, which has also been helpful. Um and we started doing some some initial interviews. We we had one in at one uh interview thus far, and I know Paul is is planning to do some additional interviews at some of the people that actually work there to get a better sense for what went on there, how did they operate, etc. All that helps us interpret the data. Okay. Um, we are continuing to look at forensics uh in
terms of the relative distribution of different contaminants. Um, trying to get a sense for what does that tell us and we're starting to see some patterns that evolving between our stuff, the airport stuff and maybe some additional patterns that are inconsistent with both. So, again, it's all moving in the same direction. Okay. Um, we have a good sense for the nature and extent of contaminants at your site. Uh, we still it's a little bit of work to do to assess the
nature and extent towards the southeast area as it as it approaches the airport. Try and that's going to be difficult because it's such co-mingling there between the plumes. Right. Okay. But that that something we're working on. The modeling is coming along well. Uh, we have a working model. We continue to collaborate with Tom Camareri who I know you all know. always very wellrespected hydrogeeologists and in fact we're meeting with Tom tomorrow to discuss our model and his model and make sure that you know we're all in agreement here. We want to work out any disagreements right
away that I think that makes sense and and you you know Tom Tom does work with soul source so soul source is part of that conversation as well. Again I think transparency is a good thing for us all. Give him my regards. We will we will um and um you know as I mentioned there's still in you know this you know moving forward what needs to be done. We still have some interviews to to to you know people to talk to um there's some some work on the human health risk assessment that still needs to be done. We know that you look at exposures um when you put in the wellhead treatment at
the Mary Dunwells you really eliminated a great deal of exposure there. So that's that's huge. Uh but there's other exposures to look at such as thermal contact, swimming, uh consumption of fish, those type of things that we're looking at now. Um we are starting to cooperate with the airport because the airport has started to reopen their risk assessment and it makes sense that since they're redoing their work and we're doing our work, let's collaborate here so we don't end up with duplicating efforts. Um so we're doing that. We had a meeting about that last week. uh
which is good between the airport and us. Um the ecological risk assessment is ongoing and and the initial results look very positive there. Uh looks like we're not um you know adversing adversely, you know, impacting the ecological receptors in the ponds. Um we don't have radioactive fish. We don't have radioactive fish, you know, but there is concern about people eating the fish. So that's something we have to look at and that may be that's more in the human health component of it than ecological. the fish will be will be still living and thriving but humans probably shouldn't
eat it. So that's something we and maybe may may it may be the way to deal with that is to you know say no no no fishing in those ponds. Okay. Uh so again more future tasks we need to finish the phase two which is the investigation report that we're working on. We have to uh write the phase three which is a feasibility study. What is the what is the right strategy for this site? And I think we already know what the right strategy is and I list them out here. It's it's to continue to use of the PRB with the monitoring. Um it is to you know continue to affect the to to assess the
effectiveness of the old pump and treat system, the groundwater containment system. Um and um and then maybe we consider since we already have a treatment system at the site, does it make sense to do some on-site source removal? So pumping water at the site itself, not downgrade, but at the site. So that's something to look at. That'll take some tricky engineering there so we don't uh negatively impact the PRB. We don't want to pull things back from the PRB, but we may be able to do something there, which if we can reduce that mass loading at your site, that should extend the
life of the carbon, which is a good thing, right? Okay. And then there's the phase four, which is the remedial implementation. Um, and that's what I have for you. Any questions? Any thoughts? Any more questions? Oh, do you want to talk about the You wanted to talk about Stop right here for this. Okay. And then let's go into that other question afterwards. You mean the cost? Yeah. No, no, no. The cost. We're going to talk about costs later on in our next meeting. Right. I want to talk about the the funding. The fund. Yeah. In a minute after we're done. Okay. With any questions on what we just heard. No, I think we're Should I stop sharing? Would you prefer? No. No. Not yet.
Put up the other slide. Okay. So the last slide has to do with your, you know, congratulations on winning this this additional grant. That's fantastic. So we received word from Senator Marky's office that we are going to receive $3 million in federal funding to essentially be dedicated towards this effort here. And uh and kudos to our senator, kudos to our congressional delegation for everybody supporting this. Um but Senator Marky really stepped up and went to bat for us in this and uh I'm thrilled that we're able to get um this funding for this project.
Um we'll have to figure out precisely how those dollars will be allocated, but we know we have more work to do. Yeah. And so this will be a big step forward. Yeah. I was going to say that that the the federal fund the $3 million is money well spent by the federal government because what we're doing now is going to have applications across the country in similar situations. I mean this you talk about 10 years of a certain technology. You're right. It's just at the beginning and and every time we have a project like this it adds to our knowledge of what works and what doesn't. Yes.
Right. There are other federalally federal there are other sites that the federal government has to deal with or is considering dealing with where what we learned on this site could very well be uh incredibly beneficial to other federal facility operators and all including on on Cape Cod for example that that new carbon that I mentioned is being proposed for a site in Turo. So we're very anxious to see, you know, how does that work out because, you know, that could help you. Well, there's a very, very large PAS contamin area contamination, a huge plume emanating from
one of the fire training sites on the southern end of Dr. Cape Cod. And there has been lots of discussion about what role the Air Force will play in addressing the PEOS contamination. How much of it is migrating? How much is still sort of on base is is a whole other question. But um this has been a topic of discussion involving the Air Force and the communities uh for quite some time. And and in that situation, you know, the Air Force has stepped in to do what we did and
that is provide some immediate tunnel treat relief to the water systems that have been impacted. But there's still the open question about how to deal with the larger whom and the source. Yeah. So I honestly think that here in Bible County, we have an opportunity to sort of as as Commissioner Bergstrom said, provide some real lessons uh to be learned that can be useful and applied to other sites, not just here on Cape Cod, but around the country. Right. So, we we just listed out a few
bullets of we already talked about it, but things we that you may be able to fund with the with the with the additional money. No, it's all good. Great. So, unless there are any more questions, any thoughts? Anything I missed? No, I don't think so. All right. Well, John, thank you, Jen. Thank you. Excellent. Great to see you. Thank you. Good to see you again. Some of us may see you at the public meeting next week. Yeah. Great. Good luck with that. It's Tuesday. Please unshare. Unshare your screen. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Stop sharing. Stop sharing. There you go. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. I don't know either, but you didn't. So, I guess it's finally here. Yeah. Yeah. So, the next item on the agenda is um ordinance 2026-03.
This is to authorize a budget transfer of $70,000 for the general fund operations of the county. That was approved by the assembly. It came back to us. It's gone beyond the 10day period, but I had it put on the agenda in case we want to to approve it. Essentially, from what I'm told from Michael and from Vera is that essentially it's it's the wording of the ordinance changed, but in essence, it's doing the same thing. That's correct. Yeah, the the assembly had some edits just for clar for clarity that they wanted to make and uh uh passed those uh past those
edit edited versions. Um and the redlinined uh what the yeah we have copies that you have there show show the changes that they made there they are just for clarity please I move to approve ordinance 2026-3 to authorize a budget transfer within the county's fiscal year 2026 operating budget as enacted in ordinance number 2025-03 in the amount of $70,000 for the general fund operations of Barsville County as amended by the Assembly of Delegates. Second. So we have
a motion and a second. Any more discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. I. Opposed. Carries unanimously. Number F. Ordinance 20265. This is on the chiller. Do I have a motion? I move to approve ordinance 2026-05 to authorize the the appropriation and transfer of 347,731 from the capital stabilization fund for the first district courthouse chiller underground
piping replacement project as amended by the assembly of delegates. Second. Okay. Any discussion on the motion? Um all those in favor say I. I. opposed. Carries unanimously. Okay, we're done with uh our regular business. Now, new business. Are there any new business items that we need to bring up? Nothing new? Nothing pressing? Okay, let's move on to the consent agenda. Can I have a motion on the consent agenda? Yes. Um Mr. Chair, I move to approve the commissioner's consent agenda item A as listed in the 7A. 7, excuse me, 7A as listed
on the March 4th, 2026 meeting agenda for use by the town of Yarmouth. Second. Do we have a Sorry. It should read 8A, not 7. Pardon me. So, your motion has been revised. Revised. Okay. Made the motion. Commissioner Bergstrom. I second the revised motion. Yes. Okay. So, um any more discussion? No. All those in favor say I. I. I. Uh abstain. Forest. And uh the
motion passes two with one abstension. All right. Mr. Chairman, if you would notice that all of the all of these motions uh should eight, it should be eight uh item eight, etc. instead of seven. We'll make those changes to the next three. Thank you. All right. So, I'm going to move to approve commissioner's consent agenda item 8A as listed. Uh, is it 8A or 8? Yeah, it should be eight because we just did 88, didn't we're both involved in 8A. Three motions for this just because um Mark needs to abstain from one. Now, you have to abain
for the other. Well, we just acted on 8A. So um this is a request for qualifications for trade persons where um the town of wealthy and the town of Yarmouth are participating in this group bid but we just voted on 8A for a specific town that was for the town of Yarmouth. So this one will be for the town of Well, she All right. So the same 8A Yeah. but I'm just going to abstain on this. So, I move to approve commissioner's consent agendum agenda item 8A as listed on the March 4th,
2026 meeting agenda uh for use by the town of Walle. Mr. Burke, can you second that? Okay. So, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I abstain. Commissioner Lions abstains. Okay. Very good. Uh the next uh motion I'd like to make is to move to approve the uh commissioner's consent agenda items 8A as listed on the March 4th 2026 meeting agenda uh for use by the towns of
Barnstable Bourne Brewster Dennis Eastam Balmouth Haritch Orleans Sandwich and Truro. Second. Right. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I opposed carries unanimously. Mr. Chair, I move to approve the commissioner's consent agenda items 8B through 8 O as listed on the March 4th, 2026 meeting agenda. Before Okay, we have a motion and a second. Um before we vote on that,
let me just ask if there are any uh consent agenda items there that um any commissioner would like to at least make reference to or speak to. itation. Um, a lot of these deal with um surplus property, not surplus, but property that's being acquired by the state for the purposes of the new Sagamore Bridge. Right. That's my understanding, sir. So, here on this consent agenda, we have several
parcels that have been identified. I did ask um the county administrator. I think Michael's on he's Michael has has stepped away. I can ask Paul our our assets administrator come back staff to just double check to make sure that there isn't any issue or concern. None have been reported. No sir. So let's just show for the record that staff did investigate this and has it not identified no concern at all? No sir. That should concern them. Okay. We make a motion and a second.
Any more discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. It carries unanimously. Um number nine, approval of meeting minutes. Do I have a motion? Did you have to approve through P or O? Oh, I said O. Um it was it was written as O on the motion. There is an item. Um I um move to I move to approve Item 8 P as listed on the commissioner's consent agenda of March 4th,
2026. Thank you. Second. Okay. Motion second. All those in favor say I. I. Opposed unanimously. Okay. Now we move on to the approval of minutes. We have the February 11th minute. Do I have a motion? I move to approve the February 11th, 2026 regular meeting minutes as drafted. Second. Okay. Motion and second. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I I opposed carries unanimously. And u commissioner reports. Commissioner Bergstrom, do you have a report? I do not have a report. Commissioner Lions. No, I think we kind of summed up all that we wanted to
say as far as the report would have been sort of a reflection on the last week. And um I I think that's it. Okay. Very good. Let's move on to the next item uh which is the uh upcoming business or upcoming agenda. Um yeah, I have an item I want to be placed on the agenda. Um Governor Mora Healey recently issued executive order number 650 entitled protecting access to essential services
and keeping Massachusetts community safe. And what it does, and I took out a couple sections, is it it basically limits the activities of the immigration and customs enforcement on um the state property and in state facilities. So, um I think we should have a meeting and decide whether or not that is applicable to us statement and if it is not whether commission would want to issue a similar a similar executive order that would cover the Barnesville County campus plus the
um courthouse in New Orleans. So, I know we can't discuss this because the agenda but I'd like to place Julie not is there any objection to putting that on the Not at all. All right. Very good. So, we'll add that on the list and see if we can slot it in one of our I have I have another I'm not done yet. Go right ahead. I would like um recently um the cost of the healthc care coverage for county employees came in significantly lower than what was placed in the budget and I would like to the commissioners to consider raising the cost of living allowance for the county employees from
2 to 3% that would be covered by the the deduct reduction in I think I think the reduction in the healthcare 140,000 increasing the uh cost living to basically what amounts to the consu consumer price index would be significantly less than that. I mean that's just a item for discussion or I could bring it up to with the assembly. No, I should I we should definitely put it on the agenda um for coming. I agree. Yep. Okay. So, we we're all on board with bringing that up for future
meeting doing that soon. I know there's been some discussion with the county administrator about that. Um any other uh future agenda items? What I'd like um is maybe have and his name is going to is escaping me, but the gentleman who does a lot with water over at the commission. Uh it doesn't have to be in the immediate future, but maybe once the snow melts and that sort of thing. Um and just take a look at our water situation. What what does it look like? Our water reserves across the Cape and that sort of thing. And uh I just was reading and I shared it with you from the river
association or riverke keepers from mass the state of Massachusetts and it was you know we're not out of a drought just because we've had this you know this snow that seems like there should be another foot of water in there. It doesn't you know translate that way once it's melted. And also with frozen pack it doesn't go in on the first storm we had. So it's I think people need to realize because a lot of people just assume oh well after this it's I mean I see it on Facebook and um so I just think to help people still officially in drought big drought big drought and we're in a
very big drought area so we have to be conscious of that. So Tim Pascanis Pasanosis thank you I knew I'd but I think well I think I butchered it but I think it's a little I think it's I think it's pretty I think you did a good job. So, any objection to putting water supply on the agenda? No. All right, that's good. When they feel like you can handle that. Very good. So, uh let's move on to the um county administrator. County administrative report. Um, one of the things
that I had raised with the county administrator is I asked him to submit to the assembly and to legislators our collective comments regarding the uh the deeds excise tax proposal that the assembly was working on. And I asked him to share that memo uh with the fellow commissioners. And I guess my question for my fellow commissioners is have you had a chance to read it? Uh, and um, and we may I wanted it on the agenda for today, but um, Mike's not here, so we'll put it on the
agenda for the next meeting, but I just want to make sure that my fellow commissioners had read that and if we missed anything. So, say I perused it, but I will go back to it for our next meeting. Yeah. Because I think we just we needed to get on record because I've had numerous conversations with delegates about my concerns. Yeah. On the proposal. I'm sure they've heard from others. It's getting a fair amount of discussion. So yeah, at some point I want to make sure that we're all clear in terms of what we have identified as issues and concerns with respect to the proposal.
And if I can say, you know, as I say, I look at Facebook, I try not to engage and um you know, it doesn't always bring the best out on people, but there are a lot of people that commented on that. That's not in a positive way. So um very good. Well, um please note for um to the administrator if there's something that you wanted to add or uh comment on regarding his memo. Okay. Like I think I I it's like a four or five page me that lists a whole range of things that memo was delivered to
them. Yeah. And so it's been delivered to them. If we need to modify it, we need to make some adjustments on it soon. So please let the county administrator know if there's something that you think we've missed. All right. So bear, was there anything under the uh Yes, I do. Uh I'm informed uh by our health department's clean director of our clean water center, uh Brian Bombgard, that next week is National Groundwater Awareness Week. And I think Brian is with us remotely to comment
on some of the planned festivities. Groundwater my request comes up. Yeah, there you go. Brian, is there any if Brian if Brian is with us? Uh, please he is. Uh, hi all. Brian Bombgardo, director of the Clean Water Center. Yeah, I just want to let you know uh in celebration of next week's uh National Groundwater Awareness Week. We're holding an event here on Thursday. Um, we're going to have a talk um called the Unseen Lifeline: Groundwater's Role in Cape
Cod's ecosystem. Uh we have Dennis Leblanc who is scientist ameritus at USGS and Marcel Bellaval who's the director deputy director of uh USGS's New England Water Science Center coming to give a talk here um at 3 p.m. uh Thursday March 12th. Um there'll be uh it's about a half hour talk or so and then there'll be opportunity for folks to act ask questions but the the focus of the talk is how uh how groundwater plays a huge role in in our rivers and ponds and wetlands um and our drinking
water wells as well and then they'll talk a little bit about some of their ongoing work with respect to that. Um so we're really excited to invite everyone to come. Um there's a signup page on the county website for those who would like to come because we do have limited space available for that. Um so please share that out with everyone in your constituency um to let them know that we have that coming up. That's great. Commissioner Lions. Yeah. Brian, are you going to have that recorded? Uh yes, we will record it. Yep. Good. So that would share it afterwards for people. Thank you.
It's a good idea. Great. Yeah. Now, Brian, you heard Commissioner Lions is really concerned about um water supplies, water resources, particularly the drought. And in prior meetings, she's talked a lot about the Chicasset lens and the fragility of our water supplies, particularly on the lower cape where uh the pilgrim lens in Province Town is almost is is unusable. the Hammet lens in Truro has been under a lot of stress and uh if province Sanuro need more water they've always had eyes on
the chicesset lens which fleet is dependent on so I think might there be an opportunity soon do you think uh to help us better understand uh the water supply resources particularly if you're spending time with Dennis Leblanc and USGS um I think what I'd like to pitch is maybe for a future meeting in groundwater water awareness, a better understanding of the lenses, particularly on the lower Cape and how adequate they are to meet some of the anticipated demands that we're looking at
for water supply out in that area. Um, is that something that you might be able to help us with, Yeah, we can we could help pull that together. I think I think our speakers uh for next week would be ideal to come in and and talk about that. They are incredibly knowledgeable about that exact subject. So I would highly recommend them for that. Yeah. Yeah. No. And and and as you know, Commissioner Lions is our representative on the Cape Cod National Sea Advisory Commission. Yes. And part of the role of the Cape Cod National Seashores to protect uh the water resources
on the outer Cape that are shared by both the federal government and the local communities. And so there's for future Yes. generations and for future generations. So there you go. So um one of the things that I've noticed with respect to the towns of Brewster, Orleans, Chadam, Harwitch is the water suppliers meet on a pretty regular basis in those communities to look at uh the use of water in the Monoy lens. And in the Monoy lens, they're very very concerned about the
same issues. Is there adequate water uh available to supply the needs of those towns particularly as we enter into drought conditions? So I think this is this is a topic that I know they're going to be getting into. So I think out in the lower cave sagamore lens is a very different story but um because there's just a whole different water resource there but those lenses are relatively small in comparison and have significant demands on them and I think there's there's a growing
concern at least among the commissioners here that as we grow and develop particularly on the lower Cape that um the towns may not have sufficient resources without some significant conservation measures measures uh that are taken in order to um meet some of the needs that are anticipated in the years ahead. So, that's kind of the general topic and if you could help us with that. You may not be able to dig into it at your meeting uh on Thursday, but um we'd be happy to host you and Dennis and uh our friends at USGS for a future meeting. Is that a fairly Yes. Is that a
good run? Y. So, there you go. Fantastic. Thank you so much. Great. Thank you. Thank you. take care. Anything else? Um the only other thing I would say is um we are in the early stages of planning a Cape Cod Water Week. Um I think it's an important thing for us to do as a county. Um, you know, there are a lot of celebratory weeks throughout the year that are of a national scope, but I think Cape Cod being so reliant on water, um, we'd like to spearhead an effort to try to
just raise awareness more generally, um, and sort of focus some of our attention into a into a week-long series of events. Um, so I'll have more information about that as we start to get toward that. We were thinking um sometime in June for something like that, but would be definitely interested in your feedback um as to what you know timing would be appropriate etc. So uh I'll be checking in with you uh via Michael on that as well coming up. No, I I think we'd like to do that. As you know, we are actually very good planning on meetings out on the lower cave. All
right. the commissioners are going out on the road and um it may very well be that we might want to highlight uh water supply, water resources, some of the things that we just mentioned, you know, at a commissioner's meeting, you know, particularly when we're out on the uh the outer Cape and I think we're looking at possibly June being out in the Wallfleet area. When are we out in Wall Street fleet and April, Robin? 22nd of April. Yeah, that's what I thought. So, in April, we're going to be out there and it might be a good idea to showcase water supply issues at our next
uh at our April meeting. What was the date, Brian? 20 April 22nd. April 22nd. There you go. And you know, put that on your calendar, Brian. Yeah, put it on your calendar. And uh because you know those towns out there especially Toro and Well Fleet are dealing with um sewer uh AIA systems and uh the good and the bad in between. And so to be able to talk about advances in the systems that are online now and what you're looking at, you know, the the efficacy that's now being evidence shown to
be evident uh would be a good thing because we're all grappling with with those roads. I think what Commissioner Lions is saying is that we probably have multiple topics. Oh yeah. Uh under under your under your jurisdiction. So we could do we could do a whole meeting focused on IIA systems and some of the work that's going on out at the clean water center. We could probably and we could in addition focus on water supply issues and better understanding our groundwater resources especially on the lower cape and the various stresses because I I don't know I don't know if such a study has
been done or any kind of analysis been done on this topic. You know, if I could just mention one other thing. So, you know, there's a thing called the Wealthfleet forum, community forum, and they will hold a forum, and it's not just for Wealthfleet. They would invite if you wanted to do a a big presentation of what's what do we know right now and what what's available. Um, you know, other towns, the the neighboring towns would come. We'd make sure that they got that information, was able to participate. Or we can invite them to. Yeah. But if there's a week in the in the summer
that we're going to do that, plus you have the non-resident taxpayer people more of of you know on site. So they're always interested in what's happening as well. So those are um keep that on your on your Yeah. Aren't you guys putting a lot of lot of travel on more work? All right. Thanks. Few more. You're welcome. And co coincidentally the 22nd that meeting is Earth Day, just so you know. Oh, okay. How perfect is that? So, you can be our featured speaker. You and you and anybody
else that you want to bring along. All right. All right. We'll be we'll be back on that. The Earth needs advocates. All right. Any other county? Yes, sir. There's just a few more items. I'll be quick. Um yesterday, uh we received notice that uh Rep. Representative Keading's congressionally directed spending or earmark portal was was opened. Uh the deadline for submissions is Monday. Uh the coming Monday, I believe it's March 9th, um we will uh we the county will apply for farm improvement
funding, superior court historic renovation funding, dredge equipment and storage facility funding, and aqua fund capital funding. Right, Michael tells me. Secondly, um to just so that my fellow commissioners know that as you know, I've I've been big on going after ear marks since since we became and and and we and we've done reasonably well. It's my it is my thing and I tend to spend time in DC bird dogging people. Um these are some of the suggestions that I have
conveyed because some so for example Aquafund right that's SRF dollars uh SRF dollars are getting earmarked by other members of Congress uh for their community. So the overall pot of clean water money is shrinking a bit because other members of Congress are grabbing dollars for their districts. So my recommendation is is we grab something for us in our Aqua Fund. So I'm suggesting we make a fairly large request for the Aqua Fund and we identify some of our other
building projects that we know are going to be challenging in terms of our ability to implement. um cooperative extension. They've always had on their drawing board um some facilities and the historic renovation of this historic superior courthouse. Yeah. Historic structures are eligible projects for federal funding. So yeah, but Mark is just am I led to understand that Congressman Kading already has these requests? Uh we've ra we've made some of them in the past. There's going
to be an announcement on Children's Cove soon. Um I just wonder if he's taking further input or we've already given him marching orders as to what we want. Yeah. I'm not certain. That'll be a question for the administrator. Yeah. Okay. These the time is short so I would imagine what happens is is when the portal opens basically it closes within a matter of days. Yes. So the conversation is quick. So I'm just letting you know as the chair since this is an this is a this has been an area that I've worked on for 20 some odd years. I'm I'm very quick to sort of lay out a game plan
a suggested game plan and what I'm doing is I'm sharing that with you. So these are the items that we will be submitting in the port hole. Okay. So we're submitting them to the congress and he is submitting them to the to the appropriate he hasn't happened yet is what I'm saying. No it has not. But that's in the works. So we're flagging it for you just so that you're aware. If you have another project that you think we should take a look at, by all means, now's the time. No, no. I'm just I just time is of the essence. I wondered if if if if you know, are we if he already has
requests coming from the county that he's going to submit, are we going to say, "Wait, don't do that." Yeah, we have changes. We don't What we're trying to do is make sure everything that is being sought of is coordinated, comes through the administrator's office. And uh and this is and this is a topic that like I said I I used to do this for 25 years with two congressmen. So um I want to make sure that I'm at the table when we have these conversations and that we can come up with a strategy. Um I tend to monitor where some of those earmarked dollars go in other areas and
uh there's some opportunities for us I think we should pursue. So that's kind of what we're doing. So when the portal closes I want to assure you we'll be well represented with projects. Exactly. Now, it's up to the congressman just just for the sake of clarity, it's up to the congressional office to determine whether or not it can be done. It can be done. Right. Right. Or they'll make the request. So, this is our request of them. But generally, Senator Marky, Senator Warren, Congressman Keading have all been terrific to work with. Generally, everything that we put in front of them, they've been very supportive of, and I'm assuming that will just continue. Thank you. Thank
you. Uh to uh Commissioner Bergstrom's point um a little while ago, um Michael also informs us that uh KP Law is helping us review possible steps in applying Governor Healey's executive order 650 to the county owned court buildings as well as other county properties. So he's he's he's uh Michael's asked for for commentary and review of this uh proposition from our uh county council. Yeah. Be interesting to see what what they say. Well, I'm not so sure what I mean, we're we
consider this county property, but I mean, we're all part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I'd be curious to go over the registry of deeds and see how this property is listed in in the listings. Is it listed under Commonwealth of Mass is listed under I mean, it's a moot point, but still, it's something we should think about. Go right over there and ask Jack. Um at your next uh uh next meeting on the agenda will be a consent item that uh further extends uh the last three um ARPA subreient uh contracts for another three months just for for those entities to complete
their spending. There's um a couple of towns and uh gosh, I'm I'm blanking on the on the Oh, and uh one entity in the housing tranch that uh are still uh spending their funds down, but um we have a very clear path in place. just just to remind uh yourselves and and and anyone who might be listening that all of our county ARBA funds are in fact obligated for expenditure and so there are no uh there's nothing going back to the um there's uh what I'm saying is that they are expenditure
is still ongoing. We have to we have uh through December 31st of 26 to expend the funds but all of the funds are marked for expenditure. There's nothing left. There's nothing obligated. They're obligated. Obligated. Yeah. They're IDed on schedule. And they're on schedule. Yes. Thank you. And then lastly, um, uh, Michael informs us that, uh, there there are some proposed health insurance policy changes coming to you for your consideration at your next meeting. These include
limiting eligibility to county health insurance um authorizing a high deductible plan and implementing a deadline by which retirees can join the county's plan. Right. We talked about that. Yep. So getting be getting something official to review and vote. Yes. In the very near future. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you. Any other staff report? Robin, anything for us? Good. Right. So the only other agenda I move to a term. Do I have a second? I second. All right. It is what
is it? 12 10 12 1210. So all in favor I opposed. Carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you staff.