Thanks by the Valley Health Regional Collaborative. If any other persons are present are doing the same, you must notify the chairperson at this time. We'll call to order the meeting. And could we do a roll call? John. Yeah. John Hillman, board of health lever.
Hello. Hi, Garrett. Garrett Simson, Shootsbury Board of Health. Tim. Tim Hilchi, Deerfield, Board of Health. Ryan Ryan Paxton Monkey Board of Health. Am I missing someone? Just Bruce. Okay.
Um, so for new business, I'm hoping that we can switch the order that everybody would be okay with that. We have Kyla here from the Foundations of Local Public Health Services and she wanted to give us a summary of our survey. Kyla, do you want to go ahead?
Yes, thank you so much, Megan. My name is Kyla Botszian and I'm a consultant with BME Strategies and we're working with the Office of Local and Regional Health in the Department of Public Health. Uh with me here today is Katie Ran um who works for the Office of Local and Regional Health and also Illana who
is the program coordinator for your shared service arrangement also with um OR. So, I'm going to share my screen and we'll go through um the preliminary results for your SSA. I think I need permission
to share my screen. Matt, is that something you can do? Still here. Matt is gone. Does anybody know how to do Oh, host tools. Look at this. Allow parent. I think I just did it. I think you could do it now. Yes. Perfect. Thank
you. Okay. So, hopefully you guys can see my screen now. Um, jump right in. I already gave my introductions, but uh we'll go through the preliminary data, go through some of the overarching spending categories for
your shared service arrangement, and then hone in on two um foundational areas or capabilities that Megan and I determined would be most applicable to talk about for your shared service arrangement. And then we'll talk about the data to action toolkit. So, uh we
can't rename ourselves on Zoom, so that's okay. I'll skip this step. and I already introduced myself and the folks with O. So, thank you guys all for being here today. The purpose of this presentation is really to provide actionable insights
that align with long-term capacity building goals including identifying areas for increased shared services with an emphasis on enhancing foundational capabilities and meeting phase one of the performance standards. The goal of this presentation is to understand how
FPHS preliminary data can guide decisions and support each stage of the FPHs planning and capacity building for phased implementation. So the foundational public health services or FPHS framework was developed
by the public health accreditation board in collaboration with a national network of public health experts and recommended for adoption by Massachusetts in the blueprint for public health excellence and it is written into the safe 2.0 legislation. So the foundational areas
which are shown in this teal color in the circles are core public health programs and services that are necessary to keep communities healthy. And then the foundational capabilities which are shown in the dark or the navy squares are skills and functions that
are needed to support basic public health protections programs and services. And throughout this presentation you'll see the same colors teal for areas and blue for capabilities to represent them. Um, and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health's Office of Local and Regional Health is adopting this national
framework as envisioned in the blueprint and written in the legislation. And while local public health is not responsible for delivering all of the services in this framework, they are responsible for ensuring that the foundational public health services are available within their communities. So
this can be through external partnerships or uh collaboration with the shared service arrangement staff. And these preliminary summary tables are not intended to be an evaluation in any way, shape, or form of local public health or your shared
service arrangement. Rather, they're just tools to support you with understanding the current services and resources and identifying opportunities to share resources and improve service delivery. Hopefully the train going by isn't you
guys can't hear it. Um, so in this guide we we won't have time to review all of the results today, but this table of contents provides an overview of what's available in the presentation which I will email to Megan
after the presentation and she can share with with all of you. and we will review parts of the preliminary spending and uh foundational area and capability data and key takeaways. And we'll do a quick introduction to the tools that will be available in the data to action toolkit.
But we won't be able to review the data interpretation guide or the appendix during this meeting. But these are available in the presentation as a resource should you want to look over them after. And the data appendix provides additional data that could be useful in further interpreting the summary slides for overall spending and
the foundational and each foundational area and capability. So now we'll move on to the preliminary results presentation and discussion where we'll explore an SSA level overview of spending, service delivery, service sharing, and shared
staff capacity and expertise. And these are all presented at the shared service arrangement level. and they are uh going to be included in a full state report that will be available in the fall and all of that will be anonymized and there's no information
about or you won't have the names of specific towns in this resort since it's all at the shared service arrangement level. Um so this slide is just providing some additional context about FPHS and the
number of towns that completed this. So you can see that all six of the towns in the shared service arrangement submitted complete data for both of the tools that were part of this review. So there was this cost tool and then the service delivery tool and all six towns
completed both tools entirely with large thanks to Megan for all of her amazing support in getting those completed. Um and reminder that local public health isn't responsible for delivering all these services and this is not not an assessment in any way.
So overall, there were three grants that were received by members of the shared service arrangement in fiscal year 2024, which all of this data is reflective of of FY24. And the total spending across the shared service arrangement in FY24 was
$1.03 million, 48% of which was spending from grant dollars. And then 511,000 was spent on community specific services, which is services that fall outside of the scope of the foundational public health services, which include things like
um trash or any sort of waste disposal, anything like that is considered a con community specific service. And regional positions included five occupation categories. You can see in this um chart
on the right hand side that five of the positions across the shared service arrangement were regional staff. So these are folks that are serving more than one community in the shared service arrangement. I'll pause here if anybody wants to chime in and ask any questions
about this. Um, so this slide is showing the total amount that was spent on the foundational public health services. So this is the $519,000 that is on FPHs. So the remaining was on those community
specific services. There were 8.8 total uh staff FTE or full-time equivalencies. And then you can see on the in the charts on the right hand side that the highest spending category of the foundational areas and capabilities were
was in environmental public health which with 40% of your spending going towards environmental public health and it was also the largest uh FTE category with 37% of staff FTE going to environmental public health which makes a lot of sense
since environmental health covers things like inspections which is a large role that traditionally local public health is responsible for. So this aligns closely with the rest of the state. [Music] Um so in the service delivery tool uh
folks were asked to indicate the staff's capacity and expertise for each service under each foundational area and capability. And the shared services staff were also indicated. They also were asked to indicate their capacity and expertise. So the shared services
staff are those folks that are shared across uh multiple municipalities um in your area. And this table summarizes the highest two foundational areas or capabilities for both the shared service staff and the average across the local
public health entities in the shared service arrangement. So this table could be used to illustrate how local public health entities and shared services complement each other. So you can see that the highest areas are different for the shared staff versus the local
municipal staff which is showing that you all are complenting one another and not providing duplicative services. Rather uh the local staff are providing things like environmental public health really strongly whereas the shared staff are doing things like communicable disease control which makes sense since
you have shared nurses who are doing that work in your shared service arrangement. Um so this table is showing essentially the same the same thing as before but this first chart shows the capacity and
expertise for the shared staff. So we can see the expertise on the bottom and then the capacity on the side and we can see again that things like equity, community partnership development and communicable disease are the highest categories for the shared staff in your shared service arrangement. And then
this is the chart for the local municipal staff. So averaging the capacity and expertise for all six municipalities in this SSA and seeing that communications and environmental health are much higher on the expertise scale. Um since these are things that
you all are responsible for at the municipal level. And then this last uh page of charts is uh showing again the same data but looking at the local public health staff next to the shared staff capacity and expertise. So the
shared staff is shown in the purple squares and then the local municipal staff is shown in the orange circles. So you can see areas where the like incommunicable disease control and chronic disease and injury prevention and then really all of these areas at
the top where um except for environmental health where the shared staff are driving the capacity and expertise. Um but then other areas like environmental health where um the local staff and shared staff are more similar and the expertise is slightly higher for
for those local staff. Um, and so we can see where you all are complimenting one another and also potentially where shared service staff can be utilized more if perhaps municipalities weren't aware that the shared staff had capacity or expertise in these
areas. Um, going to pause now just again a little bit because the next step is to hone in on two of the foundational capabilities or areas. Uh so does anyone have any questions about this capacity and expertise portion of the presentation? I know it's
early. Um I'm going to So, we've seen the overall spending, the overall capacity and expertise, and now we're going to spend um a little bit of time drilling down on two foundational
areas and capabilities. So the first is environmental health and then we'll go over um emergency preparedness and response. So for future reference and since you will all have access to these slides after there's a slide that looks like this for each of the foundational
areas and capabilities that provides more information on the SSA level data for each of those foundational areas and capabilities. So environmental health is an important one to focus on since it is most closely
linked with the current performance standards and local public health entities in your shared service arrangement dedicated 33% of your total spending and 37% of staff working hours to environmental public health which as
I said in the beginning is the largest spending category and the largest staff working time category and shared staff staff are supporting all of the towns in the delivery of the headline responsibilities that fall under environmental health. So these things
over here on the left hand side uh that say headline responsibility these are all of the different activities that fall under local that fall under environmental health in the foundational public health services framework. So, uh, shared staff are supporting
folks in all of these, but that doesn't mean that the shared staff are driving these, um, the delivery of these services. In many cases, it may be that the local staff are really driving these efforts and then shared staff are just there to kind of provide some support as needed or they're supporting in certain communities more than
others. Um, almost all of the towns indicated that they were meeting community needs. So over here on the right hand side of the bottom left um figure we can see the mostly or completely met community needs. So this is showing the number of communities in the shared service arrangement that
indicated that their community's needs were being met for this specific headline responsibility. Um and it's really awesome to note that this bottom one that the headline responsibility that is asking if you were able to conduct all mandated inspections. Five out of six of
the municipalities in the shared service arrangement said that they were able to do this mostly or completely. So this is really showing that you all are delivering these performance standards um to the best of your ability and you're really meeting the needs of your communities in doing these inspections.
So that's really wonderful. Um, and then we're able to you were able to identify some partners that were helping in some of these things related to environmental health like implementing uh programs and strategies and working
cooperatively with others who whose work impacts environmental health. And then some of those partners that were identified through this process are listed over here on the right hand side. So things like the department of environmental protection, the department of public health, uh different fire
departments, uh and legislation, the mosquito control, all of these things were identified as partners who were helping to further your work in environmental public health. And then this center figure here of the capacity and expertise shows uh once again the
same uh average capacity and expertise for the shared staff. And then it breaks apart the capacity and expertise for each of the six towns in the shared service arrangement. So we can see that um about two towns have more limited capacity and expertise while it looks like one town has really comprehensive
expertise and moderate capacity. So this can be utilized to see maybe where you could leverage support from the folks in that town where they really have high expertise to potentially support training efforts or things like that for the towns that have lower
expertise. There any comments or questions about this slide? I know there's a lot going on. So, I could say that some of the some of the lower um expertise are actually from Greenfield because when I did the survey at the time, we didn't have any
inspectors. Um so, don't think that it's just the smaller towns because some of this is is definitely related to Greenfield and not having the inspectors when I did the survey. Yeah, thank you so much. And this that's a really important point since this is capturing FY24 data. So, um even now
like if you did this on your current workforce, this would likely look different. And don't be alarmed if it you're like why does it look like we don't we have low capacity and expertise and we just hired this really experienced inspector or we're training this inspector. Um this could have changed even since the time of this
survey, which is always a flaw in data collection, but um important to note where you were in FY24. Um and then we can already celebrate the changes that you've made since then. So thank you for that context, Megan. Um so the next uh foundational
capability that we were going to look at sorry or before I say that for each of these oh there's this uh key summary slide. So if you're looking through this later in your own time, uh there are three to four points for each of the
data slides that just basically summarize what's on them. So if you it's easier to to read them in this way. Um that that is also available before each of the data slides. So the next one that we'll look at is emergency
preparedness and response. And so for this foundational capability, local public health entities dedicated 2% of total spending and 3% of staff working hours to emergency preparedness and response. And shared staff and outside
partners are supporting all six of the towns in delivering of the services that fall under emergency preparedness and response. And there are a lot of partners listed because services are spread out across the region. So you can see over here on the right hand side a
lot of the partners that were listed um things like Bay State Medical but then also like MAPCO and then I believe um Megan you said like FRCOG is involved in some of this work. So it can look different for each of the towns but all of you have identified um some partners who are
helping with this emergency preparedness and response work and community needs were met for more than half of the municipalities. But we can see that two municipalities in the shared service arrangement did indicate that their needs were not met
in FY24 for emergency preparedness and response. Um developing a streamlined response plan that takes into account all of the partners might be a good step to help uh bridge that gap for those two communities who aren't currently having their needs met
met. Um, and there may be an opportunity to leverage existing capacity and expertise within the shared service arrangement since it looks like some of the towns in the shared service arrangement do have really high capacity and expertise while um, two towns it
looks like have absent capacity and expertise in this area and two have more limited capacity and expertise. So really sharing that knowledge may be able to help better equip those towns with lower capacity and expertise in preparing for emergencies. Um is there
anything that you want to add here Megan or any any questions? I think again a lot of it had to do with staffing. you know, if you don't have a nurse, if there's a ve, you know, if you don't have a a a regular nurse on staff, um, your capacity would
have been rated low because in 2024, if there was like a a pandemic or something like that, you wouldn't have been able to respond without the shared service. Yeah, thank you. And also noting that um saying you have even absent capacity and
expertise doesn't mean that in the event of an emergency you would just do nothing. Um it just means that like other things would have to go to the sidelines in order to respond to this emergency. Whereas if you had comprehensive capacity and expertise, it
would be just like normal operating procedures in the event of an emergency since um you have that infrastructure to be able to accommodate both. Um, so you're not doing anything wrong if your towns um have lower capacity and expertise. Um, and so as I said, each
foundational area and capability has a dedicated data slide and a key takeaway slide. And there's more data available for each foundational area and capability in the appendex should you want to look at that at a later time. Um so this is the data to action
summary. So this slide summarizes opportunities to further strengthen or improve specific foundational areas or capabilities. Um so you can you can see that the first one these are the two uh headline responsibilities or foundational um areas and the associated
headline responsibilities that most closely align with performance standards. So those environmental public health ones and then communicable disease control most closely align with the current performance standards. And then the second category where it says leverage existing high capacity and expertise. So these are
areas where some municipalities in your shared service arrangement indicated having really high capacity and expertise while others indicated having uh lower capacity and expertise. So these are community partnership development and then policy development and support. So these are areas that
perhaps you could work together to li leverage that high capacity and expertise from some communities to better train and support those in communities with lower capacity and expertise. And then the two areas where there was the lowest capacity and expertise were
assessment and surveillance and policy development and support. And some of this also may have been because of limited staffing in FY24 that may have already been addressed especially for that assessment and surveillance piece. I think hiring more staff generally helps with with that foundational
capability. So this could have already changed um since FY24. And then the area where services really aren't currently being provided is maternal, child, and family health. And this is likely because local public health in Massachusetts hasn't ever really been
asked to provide maternal child and family health services. Um, but working to identify the partners in your community who are providing those services. So like local nonprofit organizations or community based organizations, uh, churches, hospitals, things like that, um, would just help
make you aware of which maternal child and family health services are available in your community. So should you need to point folks in the direction of those services. Um, yeah, Megan, do you have anything to say about this slide or we
can Okay, awesome. Thank you. Um so the next bit um just go through really quickly is the data to action uh toolkit. So we've already finished the FPHS data
collection. The next step is to use this in planning for your SSA and then work really on building capacity utilizing the FPHS results. Um, and this toolkit is primarily going to be used by Megan and
then any of the directors in the shared service arrangement. Um, but it'll be used to utilize the data to inform decision making and planning moving forward and providing actionable insights. So there will be three um
resources that will be released when the work plan is released in miday. The first is an FPHS work plan crosswalk that shows how FPHS is integrated into the public health excellence grant work
plan and it shows how SSAs can select work plan activities that align with the identified FPHS areas um of opportunity in their communities. And then there is a partner mapping template that supports you with mapping out service providers
and partner organizations. So, should you want to really map out where all of your emergency preparedness, for example, providers are located, what they offer, the strengths and weaknesses in each of those partners, you can utilize this partner mapping template to to help you do that as an SSA. And then
finally, there's an FPHS facilitation guide um that provides questions by foundational area and capability to help facilitate discussions and solve problems and things as the shared service arrangement. So just kind of to continue this discussion around the
foundational public health services and to help you navigate these resources and also understanding your data, you're welcome to reach out to members of the office of local and regional health team, Katie who's on this call and then Christina um as well
as folks on my team at BME Strategies. Um, and then, uh, subject matter experts from MHA are also going to be available to help walk through the data or utilize the three tools mentioned before and
really help provide uh, an opportunity for you to leverage this data and continue this conversation about FPHs. Um, and that is all of my presentation. I am happy to answer any questions or if you have any questions that um you have
for uh DPH or O we have two folks on the call to to answer any questions for you as well. So just wanted to say thank you Kyla for all your hard work. Of course. Thank you so much. Um Megan did so much. Yeah, I go ahead.
Oh, sorry. I was going to do the clapping hands, but I I clicked on the raising hand. Also, yes, thank you both Megan and Kyla. You both are amazing for all the wonderful work you did with this. Thanks. All right. Well, I know it's early in the morning and you have other agenda
items to get through, so I'll stop stop talking, but uh please feel free to reach out via email if you have any questions or if you want to um have any more information about the data or anything like that. Yes. And thank you so much, Ryan, uh for completing the tool as well and
all your work on it. Really appreciate it. No problem. Okay. So, I think it's probably okay to go to the next agenda [Music] item. Is that all right with everybody?
Okay, perfect. Um, so first, do we have a motion to accept the meeting minutes? I see that um there's a couple small spelling changes that um Tim wrote in the chat. Is there anything else that anyone had about the
meeting minutes? Yeah, I did. I on the very end it says that Mary's going to collect the fees if the inspections and and the we're going to the towns are going to accept them directly. Yes, that's
correct. Each town will take their own fees and issue their own permits. The only thing that we are going to do is go out and do the inspection and we'll tell you that we completed it and send you a report. Correct. But that's not We will fix that. Yes, we will fix that. Okay. Does anybody want to make a motion
to accept the meeting minutes from last month with the changes? Make a motion that we accept last month's meeting minutes with the drafts that were discussed. I'll second it. John Lebert. All in
favor? I. Garrett. I. John. I Megan I Ryan muted. All right, Ryan I. That's okay. Perfect. Um, all in favor? Motion
carries. Nursing activities. So, we did a health fair at Greenfield Community College. Um, they worked with the nursing students there. Robin was there. um and did a menstrual equity project as well as um gun safety. She did more
Narcan training. I believe Ann did Narcan training as well. She came and picked up a bunch of boxes of it. Um Sarah went to the um nacho convention in San Antonio or NO and um she said that
it was wonderful. She had a great time and she's going to give us a report I believe next month and just give us a little summary of some things that she learned. All of the nurses are going to the MAPN conference next week. Um Sarah worked really hard on a poster presentation on menstrual equity to
share with all of the other public health nurses. Um and so we're all going to do that together at the convention. Cindy's been doing Oh, I'm sorry. Um, Ann has been doing home visits, covering for the
senior center and covering for Cindy. Cindy is still out probably for another month. It sounds like the new inspector um has he's really has rolled I'm sorry I'm echoing in the other room. It's
distracting. Um has really been doing great. He finished IC 100, 200, 700, ServeSafe, tier one food courses, tier 2 food, I mean sorry, tier one housing courses, the FDA food courses, and he has done all of his foundations of local
public health. And he yesterday was his first day going out and doing food inspections by himself. Um, so he's really coming along quickly. So if you need any of his services, make sure you reach out to Mary and and we can share him. Um he'll be doing his pool
inspection course on the 20th or 23rd, something like that. 22nd 23rd of this month. So um and we have him on the wait list for the tier 2 housing and food. Relevant. So I met with the
relevant people. We were spending about $44,417 without the pool inspections. If we take off the housing inspections and not have the pool, we can bring it down to
23,792. I surveyed all of the other towns and nobody is using the housing. So, I think that I mean, I would recommend that next year we don't do the housing in the pool. The pool is $600. Most of us only have one or two
pools and we charge $150 fee for the pool inspection. So we'd be paying quadruple than we bring in for the pool inspections to have that software. So that's why I don't think it's a good idea to have the pool if you know we have such limited amounts. Um but I am
hoping that we can get rid of the housing if nobody's using it and save almost $20,000. Can can we have some thoughts on that? I'm okay with getting rid of it as long as we're making a consistent effort to ensure that all of our inspectors are
going through tier 2 and tier three housing training. Oh yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Um because I do think it's important that we have consistent reports, but I think that housing in particular is really well supported by the state right now. Um I just went through most of tier three housing. I'm just waiting for the field portion that
they haven't started yet in our region. Um, and I I think it was really helpful because it's, you know, a lot of bringing people to one table and making sure that we all do housing reports the same. Um, and I think with that savings that I would be supportive of getting rid of it as long as we're sure that we're still meeting the requirements of
our IMA. I 100% agree. Um, Garrett, maybe could you find out if um, Claudia is doing these trainings? Yep. and it's just specific to the housing
inspection, housing and food. So, we would want her to also go through the tier one, tier 2, and tier three housing that the DPH is offering. If your town needs any I I think all of these are free, but if if anything comes up and she needs funding for it, this the SSA
can certainly help with that. And uh Garrett, I don't know if you have Bri Dup's contact information, but she's the regional trainer. Um, so that would be the contact for setting up any of those trainings. I can put it in the chat if you don't have it. I think I think I have emails from her. Okay, great. Yeah,
so she sends out regular updates that I you know I think Claudia should be receiving. Sounds good. I will check. Okay. Um we did the Can I ask quick question? How long are these trainings? Because I
don't know if Steve has done those. I don't believe Steve has either. Um but he's away right now. Um time consuming, John. Yeah, they are. I would say the online portion is around 40 to 60 hours.
Does that sound about right to you? I I think you could probably cruise through it a lot faster than like maybe the the stamped times on it, but um yeah, it's pretty long. And then as far as the actual in-person, it's, you know, it's several weeks of meetings for the housing one and the food one's usually
done in a similar way. So, I think it took me about six weeks to go through the the tier 2 food course at the end um in the tier three housing, but it's not every day. It's like once a week or something like that. It can be spread out. It's probably about a week's worth
of classroom time, I would say. Any other questions on this? Okay. Um, so I put discuss wishes for FY26 budget. And I know Tim had to go, but right now the Deerfield nurse is
only budgeted for, this is Cindy, their their actual town nurse is only budgeted for 12 hours a week, and they wanted to increase her to 18. So I thought that the SSA could fund that extra instead of
hiring another SSA nurse. But Cindy, if we needed her to work in the other towns for any of those times, she could do that. Um, so she's technically SSA staff for 6 hours a week. Um, right now she's already covering Sunderland and Deerfield because we have a joint senior
center. It would be about $13,000 a year. I already checked with Iliana and this is something that can be approved. Um and right now Deerfield gets the lowest well besides Greenfield who doesn't have any nurse but Deerfield gets the lowest amount of nursing hours Deerfield and Sunderlanders. So this
will make it equal to Monagu and Lebert Shootberry. Any discussion on that? I would make a motion that we fund deer uh sorry the additional six hours in order to ensure equal coverage across the shared service communities.
Garrett second. All in favor? John. John. I. Ryan I. Garrett. Garrett. I. Megan. I. Um. Any other wish lists that you can
think of for FY26 that you want me to try to build into the budget? This isn't necessarily a budget question. Um, but with respect to nursing, do we have any capacity to spend some time on like mosquito and tick outreach in Monagu this summer?
Absolutely. We're still not part of a mosquito control district. Um, and it's not necessarily clear whether or not we will become part of one. So, in the meantime, it'd be great if we could do um just like in person maybe tableabling or something like that. Uh, and I know our nurse also has some capacity, so if
they wanted to coordinate with her, maybe she could be involved with it as well. Um, but if not, that's fine, too. Yeah, definitely. Um, and we did purchase a bunch of supplies, too, so that, you know, if we could have, you know, maybe Robin and Britney go to a senior center or um the town hall or
something like that, do a presentation and we have like um we have like bug sprays and things like that that they can That'd be awesome because we did something like that last year, but we don't have the same funds for the supplies that have been given out. We gave out about $1,000
worth of just different mosquito products. Yes. Um, and a good place would be maybe like Unity Park or something where there's a lot of people outside. Yeah, perfect. Unity Park. Okay. Great. And that was purchased with the um COVID funds, not I know PHA funds
don't let us buy that, but COVID funds did. Oh, no. I was when we bought it, we had a a mosquito line item for it. Is I was talking about a Mon. Oh. Oh, I thought you meant our like I thought you meant the ones that I said and I was like in case I Leona is listening. I didn't buy it with PH money. I bought it with COVID money. We're just No, no,
this was appropriated at town meeting. Perfect. Any other wish lists? No. Okay. So, um I'm I've been working on the budget for next semester um or next fiscal year. Um, so I will
um we'll go over that next meeting. I guess it's I think it's time is going by really really fast. So next meeting is the one that we'll have to vote on that. I think the only other thing I could think of, Megan, would be is if the nurses can think of something that would
help to support work they're doing in the towns. Yeah, I'm just thinking Sarah Sarah's so active with Lever and Shootsbury particularly around health education stuff. So if there are resources that we can purchase because it's an allowable
purchase that support the health education work that they're doing. Yes, we did. I'm um we chick spoons we were allowed to buy with PHE money. So we did buy a lot of those. Um, and we are educating people on how to use them.
They're not giveaways, right, Elelliana? Um, so yes, we are absolutely doing that with with anything the nurses are asking for, I'm making it happen in one way or another, whether it's COVID funding, PH funding, they're getting everything that
they're asking for. Is it possible to get uh additional staff time to help at least us and not about other boards? Um, we need to look at some of our regulations, do new regulations, just
really spend more time. And it would be very helpful if we had somebody more driving that than us because we just don't do that. To John's point, perhaps we could try to find some room in the budget for like consulting when that comes up. I think that a lot
of the towns probably could use assistance in drafting new board of health regulations. Um, I've spent time doing some of those here, but you know, having full-time staff hours, it still is hard to get to it. So, I can only imagine what it's like when you're working with limited staff.
I'm sure that we have that in I I'm sure we have money that I can do that with, especially if we're saving $20,000 in relevant, we could put that towards a consultant. Um, the trick is going to be to try to find somebody willing to do it. I know we tried to find a consultant
um because we had extra money this fiscal year and we went to the what is it called? Our the person with expertise and they couldn't find anybody for us. Um what is the name of that? Well, it's
okay. MHA might be a good resource. I know they do a lot of contracting with subject matter experts. Yeah, that's exactly what I was trying to think of. We met with our subject matter expert and tried to get um a consultant for like an ex an inspector position when we were short and they couldn't find somebody willing to do it. Leiana has a
something to say. I might she might have a Thanks Megan and and thank you all for allowing us to be in your meeting. Um I did want to um just announce that we do and Katie's on the call as well and she kind of heads this program. We have technical support available for people
who are in the PHE program who are not in the PHE program. Um, Megan mentioned this that she previously um tried to get a subject matter expert for I I can't recall. It's been it's been a while. It was the inspector. We tried to get somebody to like fill in as a like a
temporary inspector for us, but it didn't happen. Yeah. But there's definitely um technical support services, you know, if if regulation review is something you need or if there's our services. And also um in the PHE budget there is a line item like
Megan was mentioning for consultant that you can allocate some money for that and wonderful Katie just put in that form in the chat. Thanks Katie. Um to request that technical support. So I just want to mention that. Thank you. Thank you. And for the less staff departments I'll
say that you know the technical support is really helpful for getting um guidance but I would say it's maybe a little bit different than like paying for an outcome. Um, so for example, like hiring an inspector or hiring someone to actually draft a regulation is different than maybe having them review a
regulation. Ryan, do we want somebody to actually draft the regulations though, right? That's what we're hoping for. Um, I don't necessarily need that service maybe as much as some of the other towns, but John, I'm imagining that like it would be more easy for you guys to have somebody completely prepare a
proposed regulation that your board can review as opposed to just you guiding. Y absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we're looking at POS and um, you know, I've we've done a bunch of stuff, but nothing's really been I haven't really seen anything that
really works for us. And again, we're a volunteer, so it's difficult. I think another good example that we've experienced in shoots is around uh green burial. Oh yes. Yep. So,
okay. And spent a lot of our volunteer time on on that topic. Yep. Okay. So, I will add that into the budget and then we'll we'll try to come up with um we'll meet with the technical support to see if we can get somebody to do those for us because I think green
burial and PAS are definitely something we need in Greenfield too. We don't have any regulations. We have like a very minimal thing on green burials. we allow them. But unless you've planned really far ahead, there's no way that you can actually do it and get the permission.
Perfect. Thank you, Katie. It might even be worthwhile once we get into the new budget period to all meet and talk about which regulations we need the help with the most because we might be able to get like a prepared model regulation and then all the towns could look at it. Yeah, that would be great.
Um I also just wanted to let you know that Mary um she is normally well she's been working 30 hours for us. um her contracted time is 19, but with social security rules, she's only going to be
able to do 10 hours with us until January, and then she'll be able to go back up to about 18. So, I will have a little less support um until January. Sorry to hear that. It's okay. My answer for everything is we'll figure
it out. Uh Meg, if I could take a something. We were talking about the meetings and so I pulled up the notes here and and I specifically wrote on here lover and Sunderland inspection is expected to um be unavailable until September. When an inspector is needed,
please refer to Mary at the Greenfield Health and she will schedule them. As for the fees, each town will collect payment prior to sending them to Mary. Greenfield will not be responsible for collecting fees. Greenfield will only need a week's notice to do the inspection. So, I did not write on there
that Mary would be collecting fees. So, I'm not sure how that was misre. No, it said that it would the fees would go to to the would be delivered to Greenfield or whatever it said. I just read you the the thing. So, that's why
maybe it was the way it was read um separately, but I thought it was pretty clear. Well, I I I can talk to you later, but I was pretty Okay. Does anybody have anything else that they wanted to discuss? No. Do we have a um Oh,
actually the next meeting. So, the next meeting um I have June 12th is when it's supposed to be, but I will be at the tier 2 food training course that day. I was wondering if we could do it the 13th instead at the same time, which is the
Brian says no. Um what Fridays? Oh, it's a Friday. Um let's see. June I'm just going to check Monday, June 9th. Would that work for anyone? I am not available, but I
believe Norine Norine will be back from uh vacation by then. So, Does anybody else have a problem with that date? All right, let's go ahead and schedule it for June 9th. As long as we can get
Norine, I can always change this. If anybody emails me and says it's not going to work, we can figure something else out. But, um, I don't want to skip the June meeting just because I have to go over the the budget so that I can send it into Illiana on time.
Okay. Do we have a motion to adjurnn? I make a motion to adjurnn. And my request that Mary stay on so I can talk to her. Sure. Second. All in favor? Megan? Yes.
Garrett? Yes. Okay. Bye everyone. [Music]