this meeting is being recorded by the Valley Health Regional collaborative if any other persons are present are doing the same you must notify the chairperson at this time no meeting called to order at 8:31 and we'll do a roll call of
members Bruce can you say I you might not be able to unmute um Tim can you say that you're here I'm here thank you Garrett uh Garrett Simonson representing shutesbury Mary that's okay I'm here Ryan Ryan
Paxton monu and John John can you just unmute and say you're here or you're unmuted can you yes I'm here awesome thank you sorry about that no that's good um so the only one not
present is noren but we have Garrett instead perfect um I'm here I'm here Bruce great thanks Bruce I figured out how to get it unmuted that's okay um
so public comment no discussion or comments will be entertained unless requested upon upon upon by the chairperson or Board of the committee um for new business do we want to approve the meeting minutes did anybody get a chance to read
them do we know if um I think I can't remember if it was John or I might myself as well offered some corrections to the previous minutes that we didn't approve were they actually looked at and it was anything done yes they she redid All of the minutes added a a lot more um
detail to them and we sent them out I think on Monday and then the ones from last month too anybody want to make a motion to accept or should we pass on this well I I know on your the one the last one that you
did it's not a big deal it's just you you left the H out and Sarah's name at one point at the oh okay on the bottom I can point it out to you at some point okay so we haven't accepted the the meeting minutes that were revised from
January is what you're saying Megan yes corre okay I don't have those right in front of me but I would make a motion that we accept the February minutes de and February oh it's actually December February right it's the right exactly oh
I'm sorry no no it's my fault I'll second that all in favor of accepting the February minutes Bruce Bennett I I wasn't present so I'll obstain John Hillman I Brian
I okay I think motion carries um so we'll do an update by by me for nurses activities um Robin hosted one last ditch effort on a flu Clinic she held at the at um my office in
Greenfield she just put up signs all over town um she emailed people she put it on um she put it in the newspaper she put it on the radio we got three people who came which still was very surprising for this late in the season so we're
excited that she she made that last ditch effort um and we sent out letters to all the schools to remind them about mandatory reporting because we know that there's been clusters of Nora virus and flu um
in the schools but nobody has reported them to us um so we sent out a an informational sheet with the mash General law and just reminded School nurses that they need to call and report um I know in Greenfield we didn't get any response Deerfield and Sunderland didn't give any response I don't know
about monu um the Sarah is doing a winter blues and safety class um um and she's working on getting a menstral equity paper published she's
she's completed it she's submitted it um she also is going to be presenting at the mapn conference that we're going to in May and she applied to the American Nurses Association to get her poster um presented there if she does go there
she'll be traveling to DC to to present the paper so we're really impressed with with all the work that she's doing um and and Megan she's also uh G to attend na the na Summit right yes she is going to that that is the end of April
um and she'll give a little report on what she learned back to our collaborative at the end um and an has been covering Megan what was the thing in May you were talking about it's the Massachusetts Public Health Nurses Association meeting
um so it's all the public health nurses across Massachusetts we get together we learn what's going on on um the the head of the dph is usually there Sam Wong is usually there Katherine um who is our she's the nurse leader for the Mass
Public Health nurses so it's um it's a really good event we usually learn a lot um let's see Ann has been she's been covering for Cindy in Deerfield on Wednesday so she's been doing office hours there in addition to her Sunderland office hours
um she's been going to the senior center food pantries um she's been working um going to uh I can't remember the name of it she told me it's a it's a mom and mom and baby type group where they um give a
bunch of resources and things like that um it's an online information sharing group um and then everybody's been doing their infection control and like the maven and things like that um so the next thing sorry this is not a
great report on this month inspector interviews have taken place and we offered the position to a man named Corey Hartman and he has accepted and should be starting on the 17th um Ryan and I were on the interview committee we
interviewed I don't know maybe 15 people if I had to guess maybe less um or went through 15 applications I should say um we didn't interview all of them but he he has surfsafe experience he's also
held a lot of managerial positions um no um inspectional Services experience but he seems really gung-ho to learn everything that he possibly can um he also had he was a former tattoo artist so he does know the body art
regulations um but he just seems like he's had a lot of leadership experience and he would be great to be able to just go out and work on his own um I think he's like a a motivated guy any questions about him could you send us a
copy of his resume Megan yeah absolutely just email it to us y definitely and when is he gonna start Monday okay does he need a training period yes he definitely does um so the
first thing we're GNA get him to do is the Serve Safe manager then the tier one food training classes online after he does that we'll have him do foundations of Public Health Services um we've already signed him up with his personal
email to the housing courses and um the tier 2 food courses through the state there is a long waiting list for that but at least his name is out there now um and then we're just GNA the pool operator he'll be able to do that
here but I think within about two weeks or or so we from his start date we should be able to get him out on some housing inspections to Shadow us maybe three weeks from then he'll be able to go out and do them on his own what certifications did he come
in with just the serf safe manager um but it's expired so he's going to have to redo that one but that's easy to get it's a two-day course no one that we had interviewed had any experience or
um when it comes to inspectional Services no nobody who applied so I noticed in the the minutes not yeah that there's a program started at GCC yes so just discuss yeah yeah so
there is a program it's not through gccc though I thought it was but it it's just through community colleges Greenfield hasn't started theirs yet but there is a training program through the Massachusetts Health boards where they are sending students to local Health
departments to learn how to be inspectors they're shadowing they're paying the students a rate that's coming out of the mass public I mean the mass Association of Health boards not us um or I'm sorry mhaa math Association um
Massachusetts Health officers ass sorry um it's mhaa that's that's supporting this program so in Greenfield we actually have the First Student in the state coming um she should be here within a month or
so I have a oh sorry um and um I'm I'm hoping that we can eventually offer her a position once she gets trained up she'll be going through the calendar year so in December she will be done with school done with this
program and either we can hire her in Greenfield if we have an open spot or if any of the other towns are looking you might consider hiring her because she will be fully trained by the time she's done but are is is there any classroom work or is it just really their she's in
school for public health um she's getting her Bachelor's in public health no but this program you're talking about is really just individuals hooking up with Boards of health health departments and and following inspectors and try to
learn that is that it's not there's not coursework or there all that stuff I'm just trying to understand that yeah so there the the only coursework is through what we would normally put our inspectors through so she would take Serve Safe manager she'd take the tier
one tier two tier three housing courses through the state um she would take the certified pool officer program not so the college cour workk is just what she's normally getting for her Bachelor's in public health but the cours work that we're going to assign her is what we would normally give an
inspector so that she would be able to be a certified inspect not certified inspector but be able to be qualified to do all of those things like she'll take the soil evaluator course if she can get in things like that any other questions on that
program I would just like to add that um during the interview process it became very clear how much of a difficult time everybody's having trying to hire for this position um so even though this person's not coming in with any certificates I we felt very strongly about this candidate compared to the
entire applicant pool um we really got a lot of folks that just were not the right I would say personality or skill set um to be able to learn to Be an Effective health inspector um as we kind of saw with some of the other hires or
interviews that we had you know sometimes just being the right type of person to be able to be an inspector and interact with the businesses and kind of have a good sense of how regulations should interact with the private sector I think sometimes that's more important because again like there's all these training resources set to bring people
up to speed in the field so I felt really good about the candidate that we ended up finding is is he a local person okay he lives local I'm not sure as though he's lived here his entire life but um he's certainly worked in Greenfield in Franklin County for many years okay so
he is familiar with the area yeah he worked at Kenna middle right next door to our office at one point okay okay and he managed um food manufacturing which can be more in-depth really than food establishments deal with so that can be helpful just for
understanding process okay good I hope he's a personable guy that gets along with the clients that he's going to be dealing with I think he will he seemed really talkative during the interview um really
reasonable okay good um so the next is the Massachusetts Association of Health Board conference so on one of my emails I had wrote that it was the 16th I think of April um it
is actually 4:26 it's a Saturday um and if any of your Board of Health members or if you guys want to go it's we can the vhrc can pay for it it's a all day course um at the hotel
Northampton and it's from the um mahb um they're they just go over all different topics like title fives or last year it was green burials um I find it really informational um or educational I I'm GNA go this year I
think um was there um who else was going to go you have a conflict that day yeah I just wanted to make make sure if someone else is interested and we can transfer the slot or if you haven't paid yet that's okay they'll let me cancel it
it's not a big deal sorry about that I no worries found out no no worries at all but you you only have five filled so far of the teners four filled yeah I wouldn't worry about it getting filled up that's not gonna okay so I if I can
go I'm going to go I just haven't signed up just because of I'm not sure if I'll be able to so okay and if you do decide to sign don't pay for it on your own there's a choice on the thing that says um Bill my V my SSA or something like that choose that option right I looked
at all that Stu okay great um the next is foundation of Public Health Services survey I am close to being done John from I don't have any of the budget information from Lever
yet um it's due in the next two less than two weeks um so if you could get that to me as soon as possible that would be awesome do I know what you're looking I I didn't know I was supposed to give you anything oh okay I sent a couple emails um oh I missed it that's okay um I'll send you another
email today so just be on the lookout for it sure and Bruce is on vacation but when he gets back he's gonna give me one more little piece of information that I was looking for and then I'll be done with Sunderland and I think everybody else is done can you remind me Megan what that is yeah I it was I think it
was like what you spend on paper and things like that um just the office supplies okay miscellaneous supplies yeah it was it was things like that and if your Board of Health gets a stien that that thing but I'll send you an email too just to remind you of the exact little things but it was it was
only a couple little okay okay and I'll get that back to you all right sounds great and I think that that is it any old business or any other topics that we needed to talk about today can we talk about uh Federal how
things are being affected on a federal level yes I don't really know much no I mean it's we also don't know very much we did get an email about a week ago um pretty much just saying that they're going to keep us updated that we don't know what's going to happen that the
funding for us should still be earmarked for us um in Massachusetts so it sounds like they're still going to cover us through fiscal year 25 um but really they're just still saying we and when
you say they who are you referring to this is this came from the Department of Public Health so in general the Department of Public Health about 50% of its budget comes from federal funding um it seems like they're trying to make it a priority to keep the shared service
agreements funded um particularly because the legislation that supports it in Massachusetts uh I think another thing to consider Beyond just Federal funding um because you know this will also impact de is the uh EPA stuff that came out yesterday um there's a there's a big
push for deregulation at the EPA on the federal level and a lot of the stuff that we enforce does come from like the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act um in addition to that there was also a decision by the Supreme Court last year it was the Chevron decision um which
essentially took away administrations on the federal level's ability to regulate beyond what is legislated um so you know typically federal agencies have you know made these regulations inous like similarly to how cmrs are made by dph or
D um and that's kind of called into question a lot of their authority to do that so the the landscape from the top down could change quite a bit in terms of environmental health regulations and I think it'll be interesting to see which ones in Massachusetts are well supported from our cmrs because again
Massachusetts does have kind of duplication of a lot of these efforts but that's probably the biggest thing to think about other than the uncertainty of funding from the state anything else okay does anyone want to make a motion
to adjourn make a motion we adjourn second all in favor I Bruce bannett I Tim Hil I John
Hillman yes Garrett Simonson yes Ryan yes Megan yes okay I'll see you guys soon thank you very much bye by everyone [Music]