out how to fix it so uh I'm sorry but hopefully you'll be able to hear me it looks perfectly fine little doesn't look B okay so we can give it another minute uh for Carrie and
Sophie I don't think Jerry's joining us tonight yeah hi can you guys hear me yep great how's everybody doing day you very Welling great trying
to stay warm yeah and dry oh today was a slushy mess yeah I enjoyed getting out there at 5:30 this morning to shovel so it wasn't heavy when I actually woke up I appreciated that from nature thank you for
okay well why don't we get started I think we we have a quorum and we can uh Harry and Sophie join us later so uh welcome everyone welcome public um going to call the Board of
Health uh meeting to order and we'll do roll call alphabetically um s yeah Kevin here Joan here and Rick here
um in terms of tonight's agenda we have a a couple minutes to um up there's Sophie hi sorry I was running late that's okay and Carrie so was I sorry about that arguing my computer nice to
see everybody hey car he Sophie we just started great um in ter might as well add them to the roll call we We'll add you to the roll call yes um terms of tonight's agenda we have
minutes from a meeting way back in September and then our last one last month um Town Council I ref freed as um graciously agreed to come and talk to us about conflict of interest for a few
minutes um we're then going to talk a little bit about this uh MBTA turnaround issue and how it relates to um uh public health and what we are thinking of doing about it um we have a
pest control update um from the new company that we hired to help us manage our road issues um an is here to talk about shared services and sort of give us an
update we have a new proposed regulation we're gonna just have a discussion on uh around feeding wild life and then we'll do our usual monthly report we'll follow up with public comment if there is some and then uh wrap up so looks like a
pretty varied and robust agenda and we'll get right to it in terms of uh minutes um going back to September uh 12th um everyone got the minutes and I
don't know if there were any edits or suggestions at all uh yes Kevin um I just had a um a question and a comment and I'm not sure who can answer this but I know one of them goes back to September were we
doing the AI minutes back in September live um person minutes I think I'm 100% sure but I I believe that um we started around that time but okay
the thing is um um Cassidy was here at that time and um you know I've just been able to gain access to uh email so I can find out if we're doing it or not or if we used AI in the past or not okay it's I don't think you have have to go into
that kind of detail a day it was just kind of someone new off the top of their head kind of question um the reason I bring it up is um and this is you know maybe discussion for with the board for a later date but um a day when you mentioned it that that that's how we
were doing it I forget if that was one one or two meetings ago and I made the comment that I didn't notice a big difference well now that I look into it I've noticed a big difference and so I don't know um how much we want to get into um discuss about minutes and what
they should look like and what should be detailed in them typically minutes are um kind of The Facts of a meeting more so than the sentiment of every sentence that was uttered during that meeting um to that degree this does seem to even
lack a few of those um you know so every now and again it' be sprinkled in where a comment was made that seemed relative to um the topic at hand that gets omitted by the AI um by all of us um you know when you read through these you used to read through and You' see
your name popping up all over the place um and now it's it's like two names throughout the whole thing and it's very matter of fact so again it's a comment it's not really a concern it might be something that we can discuss at a later meeting uh to see how much detail we want or don't want or if there's a way
that we can program AI to be a little bit more detailed than it's giving us so that's the only comment I had on the minutes otherwise they looked um on sounds good we would uh work on it and add more details and you know mention the members names more often well again
it doesn't have to be it shouldn't be a detail report right that's people can go back and they can watch our meetings if they want the detailed report there should be here were the votes here's the comments that were made that relative to that Vote or to that subject then that was discussed and but it just seems to
lack that second part it seems to have the subject matter but not some what I would feel like would be relevant comments by U board members all sounds good we will work on that okay good so in terms of um September 12th um
I just had two minor edits one was uh members not present I think that was a meeting that s wasn't able to attend um I was I was actually looking at that too and I was trying to remember yeah well I you know I didn't see you in the roll
call um or any of the votes so I figured yeah and you weren't in members present so by definition if you're not a members present you're a members not present so just add cell to members not present and then um in terms of others present uh
Bill Sullivan is misspelled B not B other than that it uh look fine to me okay so if there are no other uh changes I'd make a motion to approve the minutes
from September 12 2024 as amended Okay Kevin second uh roll call oh actually vote uh s yes Carrie yes Kevin yes Joan yes and Rick
yes in terms of uh the minutes from January 9th uh 2025 our last meeting um any edits comments changes NOP make I'll make a motion to approve uh those minutes from January
9th 2025 I have a second second Carrie second uh roll call S yes Carrie yes Kevin yes Johan yes and Rick yes
okay um in terms of our next topic conflict of interest um this actually uh was something that uh prompted me to um do a little bit more thinking about it from a few meetings ago when uh during a
meeting for a variance a a couple members said well I've had casual conversations but I don't think it's a conflict and so forth and I realized that I didn't know exactly what the process was in the town
um in terms of um when a member thinks an agenda item might be a conflict of interest for him or her what should we do um and how should we act and so um in
the Board of Pharmacy which I also am on for the state you know it's very clear what the expectations are and there are a lot of conflicts of interest there because there are uh pharmacists from different uh retail pharmacies and so
they um when those phes come up this conflict so I asked IV to come and just spend maybe five or 10 minutes really not talking about um specific situations and hopefully you all have
gotten the uh State ethics commission's training and have looked at that and and done that but I just wanted to kind of hear a little bit about uh reading specific what we should do and how what paperwork we should fill out and so
forth so I'm going to turn it over to Ivor great thank you so much Dr Lopez um like he said my name is IA freed I'm Town councel um for those that I haven't met hello um it's nice to meet you tonight I'm going to give a very high
level overview on kind of the two main areas of the conflict of interest law that you were talking about um at your last meetings what do you do when there is an appearance of a conflict of interest or what do you do if there is an actual Financial conflict of interest
and how should you approach that in Reading in particular I'm not going to go into other areas of the conflict of interest law you know if you have a second contract with the town or if you're representing or acting as an agent or attorney for someone other than
the town so just understand that you know my scope tonight of what I'm talking about is really narrow and if you ever have any questions on the conflict of interest law in General you can call me and we'll talk about that a little bit later but I just wanted to to preface my my comments that I'm just
looking at the two areas that you've um you've talked about at your last meeting all right so I'm gonna can I share my screen let me see yes okay have a very brief slideshow are you guys
seeing are you seeing my slide yes yes okay perfect all right so like I said I'm just going to cover primarily two sections of the conflict of interest law section 19 and section 23 B3 section 19 is what we call
an actual conflict so if you have an actual Financial conflict you're probably most likely dealing with section 19 and the exemptions relative to section 19 if you have what we call a perceived conflict of interest you're probably under section 23 B3 so those
are the two areas that we are going to address tonight so we'll start with section 19 all right so section 19 says that um a Municipal Employee which all board
members are um cannot participate in a matter if you or a member of your immediate family has a financial interest in the matter before you or if a prospective employer or a business organization of which you are an officer
trustee or employee has a financial interest you are precluded from participating so these are what we call the actual conflicts so my sister has applied for a permit in front of the Board of Health um it will impact her
property value she has a financial interest i c i c i have an actual conflict in that situation so immediate family member is a defined term and that's really important to understand it's your parents your children your siblings your spouse
and your spouse's parents children and siblings so those are the members of your immediate family and what's really important to understand is that participation includes discussion so it's not you know I'm going to talk about this with you know the whole board
and then we're ready to vote and I'm going to abstain on the vote no if you participate in any part of the matter if you discuss it if you send an email about it at in your official capacity you have participated and that is
prohibited so these are what we call the actual conflex um all right but there are a bunch of exceptions or two exceptions to this rule
um the first one is the 19 B1 exception or exemption they're referred to both in both ways and this is um only available to appointed Municipal officials which Board of Health members are so luckily you can um take advantage of this
provision of the law and what this provision says is that if you disclose the facts related to your actual conflict to your appointing authority and receive in advance of participating that's important it has to be in advance
of participating a determination that the interest is is not so substantial as to be deemed likely to affect your services um then you can participate so we see this a lot where maybe um someone
works for Verizon for example so that's their employer and Verizon has applied for um maybe in front of the planning board they need or the cpdc they need some type of relief the cpdc member could apply to their appointing
authority for this exemption and the the select board um could say you know we don't think it's that you're not you're not going to change the way you act because of this application and will allow you to participate so for Board of Health you
know we think about this it's UNL you know you can always apply um it really depends on how significant the financial interest is whether the select board will in fact Grant the exemption and in Reading it's pretty rare that that this
happens we don't see a ton of section 19 b1s but it but it does come up every once in a while so if there's a situation where you feel like you need to file this type of disclosure you would submit it either to the chair of the select board or you would submit it to Matt who would make sure in his
capacity as Town U manager would make sure that it gets handled these are pretty specific exemptions so if you feel like you're triggering this and you want to participate you should reach out to my office and I'll talk about that at
the end in a little bit more detail it's always permitted to just not participate so in the situation where we talked about before if your sister is applying for relief in front of the board of um the Board of Health you may just say you know what I'm not going to participate and that's it you don't have to do
anything else you don't have to file any disclosures you just recuse yourself but if you want to participate this exemption is available to you can I can I just comment there about you know if if you make that decision to recuse
yourself um and not even apply what we had talked about irra in our in our pre- meeting was the idea that the best way to do that if is for you to um stop your video and mute yourself during that
agenda item so that you're not you don't need to leave the meeting the zoom meeting uh and then log back in you could simply you know stop your video mute and then you're out of the discussion and then you can come back uh
on the next agenda yeah the only caveat to that is um if you're in an executive session you wouldn't you would not enter so in that case you wouldn't be part of it you wouldn't be able to hear but as long as the portion of the meeting is open to the public you could do that for
sure or a day could move you I don't know how it's structured here if everyone is a participant or if there are um panelists however it's set up but if it's set up in a panelist mode a day could move the Board of Health member into like the public section of the zoom
and then back into the panelist section when um the meeting starts it all depends on how a day sets it up but but either option is fine from an ethical from an ethic standpoint all right just follow up on that uh would that apply in a live
meeting I understand on a zoom it would but in a live meeting typically in the past we we've asked the the the person to step out of the room more so just from a standpoint of alum presence in the room absolutely so I think there's what is the best practice and what is
legally required and best practice is that the individual remove themselves from the room so that there isn't even an opportunity for a member of the public to argue that by their presence in the room they were somehow influencing the Board of Health and its decisionmaking so for your own
protection it's safest if you you know step into the hall and then the you know another board member comes and gets you when the next agenda item comes up from a legal standpoint if a meeting is open to the public you could technically sit um where the members of the public are
sitting so you would get up from you know this the table where all the Other Board of Health members are and sit in the public and you wouldn't be able to like interrupt or you know they shouldn't call on you if they're not calling on other members of the public it gets a little bit gray so that's why I think best practice really is to
remove yourself but if you absolutely want to stay there is a legal way to do it okay thank than you yeah um the last thing I'll mention before we move on to the next um exception exemption is if you do file this exemption we would
advise before you participate that you reference it um you say you know I'm going to participate in this matter I had a conflict I got approval of the select board so that everyone knows um that your participation is is allowed all right the next one is um
section 19 B3 and you may already be triggering this exception in some situations and and not aware of it but you are permitted to act on a determination of General policy um and provided that the interest sorry so if
you have a financial interest like you're requiring um everyone in town to stop watering between certain hours um that's going to impact everyone's lawn everyone
arguably has a financial interest but everyone in town has that same financial interest and so the law allows you to participate in determinations of General policy the critical thing there though is your financial interest has to be shared with a substantial segment of the
population and that's been defined as 10% of um all residents in the municipality so this is one that sometimes comes up I'm not sure how frequently it would come up with the Board of Health but you don't have to file anything this is automatic um so
it's not something that you need to take any action for you know when the select board um maybe acting on setting water rates for example their residents in town that impacts them but it also impacts a substantial segment of the population so it's the same sort of
analysis and nothing needs to be filed so those are our actual conflicts of interest like there is an actual conflict the law says you cannot participate um but there are also times where there is not an actual conflict but there
might be a perceived conflict something that would make someone say what or really or they participated in that that feels wrong so you know any anything where a reasonable person who has knowledge of the situation could reach a
conclusion that you may be influenced to act or another person may unduly enjoy your favor in the performance of your duty those types of situations you cannot participate in them unless you disclose the relationship so if I'm a
Board of Health member and my best friend in the world is coming before me with an application um members of the public may think that I'm going to act a specific way because of my relationship with my friend so in that case you can still
participate but there are some steps to take so we want to kind of always think about who is coming in front of us and what reasonable person in this community conclude that I could be influenced based on my relationship with the applicant and the exemption is a
disclosure so you file a disclosure to your appointing authority so here the selectboard and all you have to do is disclose the relationship so you know this is my best friend notwithstanding our relationship I believe that I can still act impartially and in the best
interest of the municipality and all you have to do is filed it doesn't need to be approved like the 19 B1 disclosure does by the select board you just need to submit it to the select board and then before participating in the matter
you want to disclose on the record for the minutes that you have this um relationship with the individual but not withstanding that you filed your disclosure and believe you can act in partially you can always still recuse yourself recusal is always available to
you but you have this another ability as well so if there's a perceived conflict you can still participate but you must file this disclosure first all right so I know I said I was just going to talk about two but I want to touch on
Section 17 you know very very quickly this provision of the law says that you can't receive pay from anyone other than the town on a matter in which the town has a direct and substantial interest so you can't be paid to be like a step IC
inspector if you're a community where septic permits are being issued by the Board of Health so you know you just want to watch out for that and you can't act as anyone else's agent so these are just kind of two little things just wanted to mention but we'll move forward all right so ethics laws are
very difficult to understand sometimes um they are incredibly fact specific analysis that we have to do when we're deciding whether the the law has been triggered and I don't expect individuals to always understand what they need to
do but they should understand that if there's red flags going up they should reach out and ask about it and the onus is on each individual member to comply with the law and so if you have any questions if you're like you know what I just don't know maybe this is in the
gray area or maybe I might have a conflict it's on you to call and seek help so what do you do in Reading you can always ask a day or Matt that can be level one you can always reach out to
them the law gives you the ability to contact Town counsel any other time anyone in town wants to utilize my services they need to go through Matt or another approved department head but not for ethics law issues you have a
statutory right to talk to me so you can always email or call me with your ethics questions in addition the state ethics commission has a hotline um they call it their lawyer of the day program where you can call in and they will give you ethics
advice the Ethics Line is great it is recorded in some way they'll note that you called they'll note what you what you asked about and the advice that was given um and sometimes they can be a little bit conservative and so what I would advise is especially if you have a
sticky matter to call me first and sometimes my advice would be you know what let's call the commission together or let's see if we can advocate for you in front of the commission to get a particular um result so especially if it's a a tricky ethics issue calling me
first sometimes make sense um but those are the three areas um for assistance you can talk to matter a day call me or call the commission all right
so I think I will take some questions if there are any a day circulated both the 19 B1 disclosure form and the 23 B3 disclosure form to all board members earlier um this week and you know if you
ever think you have a section 19 issue an actual conflict and you need to file that 19 B1 you should probably check in with at least a day Matt or myself to make sure it actually is an actual conflict and not just a perceived
because that process is pretty intense getting the select board to approve um the relief is is time it takes some time so let's ju it's good practice to make sure it's a real conflict before you go through that process all right yeah Kevin yeah I had
a quick question that was a great Dove tail right into my question actually um so a lot of times here's the scenario we got the packet yesterday we noticed that now is a conflict board's not meeting till next week effectively we we're not going to be able to talk in the in the meeting
regards yeah it's a tricky situation because you're right if it's a if it's an actual conflict of interest so you're under section 19 not perceived conflict then you are precluded from participating unless the select board authorizes you but that needs to occur
before you participate so it can be really tricky when you know you may not learn about a matter until 48 hours before so that can be hard um in some cases if the matter can be continued that's the best practice to allow all
board members to participate but if not sometimes yes it's it's difficult yeah okay great so I will Prov I provided this to a day in a PDF version um he can circulate it so that you have my contact
info um after this meeting and if you know you have questions that come up at any point feel free to email or call um I'm happy to help thank you very much thank you a thank you thanks guys thank
you you every here good night hey so um a day do you want to so this next item this has obviously been um a lot of discussion in town over the last month about this MBTA turnaround plan um
actually made the news channel 5 news um and uh you know we talked a little bit about it in our pre-board meeting um you know I think from my perspective and then I'll have a day speak about his
thoughts you know I I think it's important for us to address the public health concerns um that have come to us uh from residents regarding this and to base our reaction in um in really the
science of um whether or not those concerns are you know valid or not um and so uh there's a couple ways of doing it days explored them and I'll just I'll just just let a day go ahead and uh
speak to that thanks Dr Lopez um before I proceed has everybody seen the uh drone [Music] video yes yes all right um sounds good
so um as you all know um we have received multiple complaints about you know potential Health uh effect effects health hazards from the proposed MBTA tback track um you know most of the
complaints um are directed to the Board of Health and the health department and they are centered around um you know uh you know the health hazards that may be imposed on abundant residents um particularly the vulnerable
population um so as a result of that uh we reached out to the MBTA to inform them about you know the potential health concerns and we also um you know ask them to conduct a health impact assessment and an
environmental impact assessment prior to commencement and um you know it took a couple of days and then uh we heard back from the MBTA and they stated that they're not required to provide a health impact
assessment um or an environmental impact assessment they said that the project does not require a meepa review neither does it meet or exceed the mea reviewed threshold that would trigger a health
impact assessment or an environmental impact assessment you not Define MEAP what does that stand for let me share my screen quickly so can you see the screen yes so mea is
the m Mett Environmental Policy Act office right let me see okay and um here's what the regulation says um you know the reviewed threshold does not apply to unlawfully
existing structure um facility or activity routine maintenance or a replacement project which is what this is this is a routine maintenance project is that what you're saying a replacement
project the tracks already exist they're just replacing the tracks so um the um health impact assessment or the environmental impact assessment but I think they're adding tracks they're not replacing tracks no there's no tracks
there yeah they're adding them it's it says that they were previously existing correct so um that's the law they're using and um it seems like you know they have the authority to do so so uh so
basically um what we are thinking is uh actually you know trying to get um a request for proposal a request for quotes out there um from uh you know to
a reputable third party uh health and environmental consulting firm to help uh the health department conduct a health impact assessment and also recommend uh strategies that best protect and promote the health of our residents uh with a
primary focus particularly on uh cumulative effects of prolonged diesel emissions and noise pollution on a vulnerable population so they're going to look at the you know population in general but there will be a special
focus on you know how the um emissions from the diesel engines and the noise affect the most vulnerable uh individuals uh in our community uh so right now I
am uh I Have A draft copy of The Proposal we're still working on it I anticipate that uh by next week it will be out there um we'll get it to uh the purchasing department we'll finalize it and put it out
there a day how how what kind of once once an independent um entity is uh agreed to and signed how long do you think it would take to to do this kind of
assessment this health assessment um my understanding and at least what I've read is is that um the NBTA is planning to start this in April um so it's a fairly short turnaround time um and we'd
also want the board of course we could always call an emergency meeting but we would also want the board to be able to have be able to read a report and comment and discuss it um before we took action so do you think they could do
that within a month absolutely between three to five weeks I believe okay but the goal will be to um you know get the RFQ out there and um you know have the beating process uh started as soon as possible that's likely actually
faster than if this if the meepa office did it um absolutely and they're not mea is not going to do it anyways they don't have any reason to do it right any uh comments thoughts
suggestions other ideas I just want to I just want to say so after we do the the um the audit or whatever you know the uh evaluation what would be the next step The Next Step will be to present the data put it on the website let the
residents um see for themselves what the recommendations are um there's a very high possibility that it would be uh you know an indeterminate Public Health concern um I don't believe it's going to be an imminent public health hazard but
we'll see what happens um you know I'll let um you know the subject matter experts um take a look and tell us what they think so there's no guarantee on anything it's just we're going to do the study and then see what they come up with I we
we'll proceed based on the outcomes of the the study the assessment I would think that if the assessment I'm not a a lawyer but you know I would think that if the assessment uh did show significant
health hazards relating to either diesel fumes or noise or what have you um the town might have some um opportunity uh to take
this uh further in a some kind of legal way but I'm not I don't that's what that's what I'm thinking the next step exactly yeah so uh but I don't believe so um because this has been litigated
and uh it appears that um the state and the MBT have uh close to absolute power and um you know they have uh byw don't even you know stand a
chance so um regardless I I think they're going to do what they want to do but I'm just hoping and praying that um you know the assessment will come back and um it there won't be um it won't be of a high detrimental
Public Health detriment to the residents that's what I'm hoping so if I could make a couple of comments um you're basically right 100% right to day they could actually be down there working on it right now not even not notify us um they have the right to
actually go in and just kind of do that um you know the fact that they notified us is probably um not a good idea for them quite frankly um and I don't think they expected the push back that they were going to get because they showed up to the select board meeting very unprepared
to answer any kind of question uh S I know was um there and can verify that but they basically have the right to come in and just do what they want that said there have been instances in the past um where people have made
enough noise that they have backed down from from things that they can legally do so you know if folks are out there listening um Lucas I see you down there um if folks are out there listening you know the the um the squeaky wheel gets
the grease so to speak in this one um in one of the things I'd like for our study to look at is low-level noises which as of right now they know happen but can't prove in
other words if you Pock this thing to a bird sanctuary what's it going to do to those birds um with those lowlevel noises so there are uh it's 100% true and unproven I'm going to say it that way so people are clear it's true and
unproven but we should look into that that's that that would be a major contributing factor to where they're going to place it um typically in the past with the MBTA if you give them a better option they're happy to take it so again if people are listening make
make a lot of noise try to come up with something that they haven't been able to Peg themselves as as an issue like those lowlevel noises that these um these engines Emit and the trains in general emit um that people on other um stations
here and have complained to the MBTA about um we should actually request how many times um they've complained uh they've had complaint about low level noises of these running and idling trains that's another contributing factor again to um to human ears but certainly to that Sanctuary that's going
to be it's going to be parked right next to um certainly um so I think those you know make sure that we have that on that person on on the um on those requests that we want specifically to look into those complaints and we want to look into if those are actual factors and can
we can we um qualify them somehow quantify them excuse me somehow corre so lowlevel noises and um vibrations are added there in there okay and then the the alternativ is again if you can give them somewhere else to go and you make enough noise
they'll go somewhere else har yeah thanks um thank you um ad day for the the research on this and um just um uh add in I think to Kevin's comments to to just point out that the
imminent health hazard threshold is quite high and quite specific so um we absolutely need to investigate all avenues but um as a day says you know the the threshold is high and specific
we absolutely want to avoid that and I I very much join a day in hoping that the findings do not give any indication that there is an imminent health hazard but that is a that's a a very specific bar there are other areas as Kevin was
pointing out you know the issues about noise impact um that are absolutely valid but also would not qualify as an imminent passard so um I think it's important to understand the different
ranges there and maybe not um focus too much on any one specific area um if and that's my contribution [Music] you thoughts of
comments okay so hopefully um I suspect by our March meeting uh this will be either coming to a conclusion or well underway and um you know given the time
frame it it may require a very specific second meeting in March to review the the findings um if it's not ready for the you know second Thursday of March we'll have to see we'll play it by here but it's we'll
hopefully get on the fast track absolutely okay so let's move on um to an update on uh Pest Control um a
day right thank you very much Dr Lopez um as you all know the health department is now under contract with modern Pest Control to help mitigate the rodent problem the town is experiencing um the contract is based on the 21,000 funding
availability from the that was reallocated from the Apper funding uh we were able to deploy to purchase and deploy about 15 smart boxes to different locations around town um so uh
21,000 is a lot of money but when it comes to radent control it's not a lot of money so um the 15 boxes that we got they're just like a fraction of what we need to um actually have a an effective rodent
mitigation um program so um I um met with the experts um and they advised that in order to have an effective Road and control program we would need an additional 35 smart
boxes uh which would be um 50 Smart boxes in total and I to um go over there with the board can you all see the screen yes
all right so um here's the cost breakdown so we got 21,000 from the ABA funding um so for each box there is an initial cost which is $200 and there is a $100
monthly maintenance um charge per box so we got 15 boxes um you know if I break that down we're looking at um 200 * 15 for initial cost which is
$3,000 and then $100 * 15 for 12 months which is $118,000 so that's how we used up the $221,000 we got from the Ala funding now they recommend 50 boxes so if we do the same calculation for 50
boxes $200 uh initial cost and $100 monthly maintenance we are looking at uh $200 * 50 initial cost than $10,000 and then $100 * 50 for 12 months which is [Music]
$60,000 so in total we're looking at $70,000 so we are at $21,000 for 15 boxes the experts are saying that we need 50 boxes which will be
$70,000 so the difference is $49 ,000 right so I would have to go to town meeting to ask for additional funding now the good thing about that is um instead of asking for 49,000 I
will only be asking for 35,000 and the reason is we're going to manage the 15 boxes that we have from January to April that eliminate it's um about
$144,000 from the 49,000 and then you know I can get the additional 35 boxes starting from April to December which would only be $335,000 uh in addition to the
$21,000 but for next calendar year which will be January 26 to December 26 I'm going to need need the full amount but I'm only going to be paying for the monthly maintenance because the initial cost would have already been
paid um you know in the 2025 calendar year so um the uh bottom line here is yes 15 buckes that's that's a good
start but um we're going to need additional boxes which means we need additional funding um now what does the Smart Box [Music]
do all right so essentially this is what this mapbx does it's very simple you know the rats go in through here they get lifted by an elevator that's built into the
box and then you know uh they receive an electric charge and then once they receive an electric charge they get dumped into the bin and once they're dumped into the bin the
elevator goes back down and it's ready for the next catch so that's what the Smart Box does it is very simple and um based on that uh you know based on the Capt uh captures the
catches a heat map is generated here's what the heat map looks like so so as you can see from the heat map we are currently at uh 22 catches right since the deployment on
January 17th um the bubbles the bubbles that you see represent the areas where the boxes are located right so if you click on each
bubble you can get the exact location of each box and individ individual catches per box so this particular box is located at 355 Main Street and it's an active
site and total catches nine now this is the um funny part of things for board members that love to do site visits you're going to love this okay so each box is equipped with a
tracking device and you can click on the directions and once you click on the directions it gives you a stepbystep direction to get to the boxes to each box and if you're not happy with that you can click on
navigate same thing it takes you directly to where the box is located so this is a a great tool um I'm loving it so far also if you click on the total catches and you click on download it
actually downloads an Excel spreadsheet you know and you can do a lot of things with the Excel spreadsheet you can you know it tells you the number of uh catches per month you can actually build a bar graph a pie chart you know
you can generate so many things whatever you need to do you can do it so this is a very great uh tool for uh Road and mitigation for the town of Raiden um and if you go down to this uh
rainbow colored Legend over here it shows uh the variations in activity level um so the areas that are like blue bluish green are areas of low to mouth activity m
right there and then the areas that are greenish yellow and orange right here those are areas that are of moderate to high activity okay so the good thing about the smart boxes is that they can be uh
relocated from areas of low activity to areas of high activity so uh based on this map oh you can also zoom in and out so based on this map uh you can see this area is of low activity at the moment um let's click on
it total catches zero it is active but you know nothing is happening um so something like that we can move the Bucks somewhere else um you know that we can get more catches but I
won't recommend moving anything at the moment because you know this is the winner time you know and we're still testing it out so I think we should wait a little bit let it get warmer there you know we have more activities during the war months U
compared to winter months um so right now I wouldn't change anything um ultimately uh what we're looking to do is actually uh you know publish this data online somewhere um you know we create a reading specific page solely
dedicated to rad and control the page would have this map on it it would have um you know the quantity of the captures by month we're going to have bar graphs pie charts and you know you can tell
what season has the most activity what season has the less activity we'll be able to do a lot of things with it U so that's my ultimate goal um and we're working at that on that at the moment and um yeah we'll see we'll see what happens but so far I'm loving it and I'm
hoping that when we go to the select board in April you know I'll go to town meeting in April we'll be able to get the additional funding needed to have a robust uh you know rent mitigation plan for the town of
Raiden any questions I just oh Carrie go ahead thanks a day I do I I share your your joy in these kinds of tools and the capabilities they give us it's pretty pretty amazing um
so the proposal would be then that we would require $49,000 for the current calendar year and then we would be asking for $60,000 per year for some period of time um so that's my one is
sort of like do we say how long and and how you know do we get a do we are we able to get a contract that would lock Us in and and not make us have to do price increases um but but then I think the bigger question is how are we def
finding success for this contract um like like how do we like is it zero rat sightings is it um I just I'd love I'd love to when we think about spending dollars sort of what what what's the
outcome that we're going to achieve for it and what's achievable and so forth so um just to make it simple um the best way to measure this is if we don't get calls regarding you know rat sidence
that would be the best way to measure it um frankly um but again you know we can tell the quantity of captures and uh you know it's the problem is everywhere so um I think that
uh you know once this is implemented um we're going to see the uh the quantity drop within the town of rating and that that'll be a great thing right so and if I can just follow on I mean I
think that the that's kind of where I'm it's why could so the problems everywhere and um you know I don't know if we if we get a new um like say we get a new building in town and there's more dumpsters or so on
right do we are we going to need more boxes and sort of I'm just kind of figure out is this an end point or is this just a um you know this is we're this is the right number based on the number of square miles we have in town
and this is what we'll work with yeah so don't forget that we already implemented the dumpster program as well so it's not just about catching the rats it's about you know cling dumpsters and other things so I think a combination of everything would
really help with the rent control program good so this is really about an integrated Pest Management plan as opposed to a a here's this solution we think will help it's sort of addressing all of the possible contributing factors
absolutely good thank you thank you very much any additional [Music] questions Kevin um yeah thanks for the presentation today it's certainly um certainly an interesting concept these smart boxes so
kind of along the lines of um the duvail with Carrie was going on I I I'm thinking the same line as you are Carrie you know are these fixed um um boxes or are they just kind of lying there so they they're actually uh
aesthetically pleasing compared to those other black no I mean are they like are they fixed to the structure to the ground yeah yeah I was getting there okay sorry they are not fixed but the good thing is um you know they they are equipped with GPS in them so um you know
you can't really steal it's like having air tags you can't steal those things got okay you do uh you're gonna get cut pretty much but that's part of the $100 per box maintenance if that becomes an issue anyways correct correct correct okay um and we're able to put these on
um private residents and I no we have them down on down at at um okay you know what let's go in and see um let's go in and see so this one says Main Street Cafe capri dumpster so this is behind I
believe a restaurant somewhere um let's look at this one this one says behind valin dumpster uh 36 Main Street let's look at
this up here with no activity 642 Main Street good hers dumpster front entrance this one has no activity [Music] either railroad
tracks okay just one activity so my question is are we are we getting the permission from these private entities to put these there yes or is it part of our dumpster RS that we I don't call seeing it yes from my understanding uh the mod pest goes in
talks to them you know this is you know we've been seeing a lot of rats in this area this is what we want to do um and they get their permission to do it okay um do we have one down in the Pineville area actually I was thinking of
moving these right here to the Pineville area um I know you know we had a lot we had a lot of complaints a lot of activity from the perspective of what the folks are seeing down there so Pineville is right here so I was thinking of moving a couple of those
over here but again I still I want to see what's going on in these other areas first I don't want to prematurely just move them um so I want to see what's going on um in terms of Pineville things
are looking great now uh we've been going there almost every day no issue whatsoever so uh things are looking good but um you know if we're able to secure additional funding and additional boxes I I you know I'm looking at putting um a
few at the pville location okay did you say we had 15 of these 15 I count 13 um so like this right here says two right we're looking at two boxes one two
yeah I counted those is two and the other one down here to the left is two bottom left so 1 2 3 four five 12 13 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 so just want may follow up with Bard
and make sure that they placed all 15 oh this is oh there you go yeah y so yeah that has no activity either so is there one weight probably on North Main Street too I'm guessing going further north must be at least one more just want to
make sure that we contracted out 15 that Mod plays 15 yes the 15 15 so it I mean it's an interesting concept um I think you know when it comes to rats we've been we've been
fighting you're always fighting an uphill I don't say we everybody is fighting an uphill battle um when it comes to trying to mitigate um just because they reproduce so quickly that you you know you take one off the table but four more pop up right so that's
always the the problem so I think while it's a a a good idea that you can you know move these around to more to areas to you know try to help out the public or the businesses um that are affected in those areas I think
that's great um did we also move off of having um the program that we were previously under can you remind me um where we were trying to mitigate their ability to reproduce well working was there just I know we had it I just can't remember why we
moved off of it the day you remind me it is so the thing is you have to keep fitting them the um the uh bir control right and then it wears out so you just have to keep buying and buying and you know when when does it end you know well
I mean it's the same could be said here that's why I bring up you know um was it not working that's I'm just curious if we got the like if the feedback came back after a while was just like it's not working it's not well the liquid was drying up in the winter time it was just drying up we would go there and refill and then it
got to a point it just wasn't it wasn't wasn't effective yeah it just wasn't worth it anymore like okay yeah and uh eventually with this movable smart boxes we can actually
coordinate with um you know the DPW Street openings and constructions and things like that we can actually move them to the proximity of those uh constructions and Street openings in real time to help with the mitigation uh
efforts and I think in our regs we we require that now correct um that in other words if somebody's going to come open up the street let's say it's um to service gas lines um that they they're going to have to be required to get one of these boxes right or some kind of mitigation
well uh it's not a requirement I've had conversations but the thing is that um you know I don't want to hold up a process that's for another department so for example let's use building as an
example if you're trying to build um sorry let's go back to the street opening if they're trying to uh National great is trying to do something you know I don't want to hold them up because this Pro projects they've been applied for ahead of time so I believe
that DPW has a role to play in this once they get the application and all those things we need to be informed or another thing I've suggested was for DPW itself to get their own rodent mitigation
company that works with their schedule I'll be for you know the health department will be for the town but when it comes to specific projects I believe DPW should have their own Pest Management company coming out
to help with mitigation efforts specific to those you know those constructions that's what I I think should happen Okay so so I think the the
idea that um a day had raised at I think at the last meeting was you know it's a concerted integrated strategy of you know this solution plus working with DPW
plus uh more stringent dumpster regulations it has to be a multi-front um opportunity to try to uh you know reduce the rap population I think that um the nice thing about this and
particularly if we have many more boxes um is the ability to really track the degree of infestation and you know I guess in my mind success will be when we have a we
will probably never have zero but we have a consistent very low level of captures and accompanied by you know less complaints or very few complaints around uh Rat sightings for people
either on the board or the public who don't uh sort of haven't been following this I mean a couple years ago we were dealing with um uh poison baits in Washington
Park um and there was concerned about it being a risk to birds and dogs who might get in there or other animals um and we we moved to contrapest which is the contraception uh solution uh but again
that required um you know staff to go out and check the boxes on a regular basis and refill things and the and there was really um less realtime ability to track
how how successful we were we were being um so we've we've come over the last two years from uh you know dangerous uh poisons in these uh in these traps
that were laborious to track and keep up to a system that as a day pointed out that is um highly efficient um and you know I'm hopeful that it can can help reduce and and I think we should I agree
we should get a box or two down to Pineville when it's appropriate uh to do so sooner rather than later um as well and and the advantage of having up to 50 boxes is it gives you a lot more flexibility to move things around and
you know address new hotspots and and so forth absolutely all right um Bren any more comments of thoughts on that we can move on to um update on shared services and Anette has been waiting patiently here
um hopefully we're keeping you interested uh but U I'll let a day introduce and go from there right thank you very much Dr Lopez as you all know uh the red and health department is in a shared services collaborative with the
health Departments of the towns of Andover North Andover lanfield North Ren and the City of Hil our shared services collaborative is called the middle sex Essex Public Health collaborative which
is a state action for public health Excellence Grant recipient that aims to improve the delivery of Public Health Services across the region andet Garcia is um the shared services coordinator
she's here tonight to give us an update on the progress so far um Anette please feel free to introduce yourself and proceed with the update great thanks so much ad day um so I'm happy to be back I know it was a while ago I think last August that I was before the board um
specifically to talk about our intermunicipal agreement that we were working on um to help formalize our collaborative um but since then a lot has happened so I want to provide an update on some of what we've been working on um what we have coming up because we have a few exciting projects
that we're entering into um and then also to answer questions um so I do have a presentation um that let's see if I can share it so I think you should all hopefully be seeing this now
um so first up it lets me there we go um so a little bit about what we've been doing since I was last year in August um so I didn't put it on here but we did complete our intermunicipal agreement we had all six
of our communities um Boards of health and select boards approve and sign that so we're official um it's great it gives us a little bit more um governance structure it outlines expectations for our shared staff as well as our participating
municipalities um we also have hired two new positions um so we now have four staff members it's myself our part-time public health nurse Leanne we also have a full-time um health inspector chenine Pierce and then just in December we had
a full-time Health Communications specialist chandini Paul join us um so it's great to have more people to do this important work um some of the highlights our public health nurse attended and supported 13 vaccination clinics this fall um so in September
October and a little bit in November um and three of those were to help live here in in reading for some of those clinics um our health inspector who started with us in August has done 85 inspection so far I know in Reading she helped out with some special events on
the weekends um I forget which event it was it was in September I don't know if it was reading day or um one of the other uh street fairs she went out and did the temporary event food inspections for that um we've held a few trainings but most recently we trained all the
public health nurses in our collaborative um to deliver opioid overdose response training for um Town members or community members so they all participated in this training that taught them the principles of um adult
learning and then the content for this training so that was a great initiative and we're really happy that all the nurses turned out um and we currently are hosting a working group of all of those who participated in the training to continue the conversation about how they want to implement that knowledge in
the community um and they've been really productive conversations that we've been able to help facilitate um to share ideas and share resources to help bring that training to Residents um we also our communication specialist has been really great about providing some timely
PSA templates for our communities so you may have seen some of these on uh topics like nurov virus and Aven flu um so she's been really effective at helping us and our municipalities increase their public Communications on important Health topics um and making sure to stay
up to date with those um so some great projects that we have coming up in the future um I'm some of you may have heard about the foundational Public Health Services review this is an initiative from the State Health Department um for local
Health authorities to be looking at how they are meeting the foundational public health services so I'll briefly explain what those are um they're a set of service areas and activities that are um recognized on a national level for what
an effective Health Department offers um so the state has taken on the task of really evaluating how well our health departments are meeting those service areas and our Health Partners um and so as the SSA we're helping our um
communities complete that project and in the future I think it will be really important to help inform um you know legislature and help push for increased funding for health department so that we can improve our capabilities um of meeting the needs of our communities so it's been a really great opport to kind
of take a look at what we're doing as individual health departments and then seeing how well our collaborative can help fill in some of the gaps to improve our ability to provide those Services um we also are entering into a strategic planning process so we just closed bids
for um a thirdparty vendor to help do a strategic plan for our collaborative um and we're hoping to begin that in March this is going to be really critical for our group because within this our request for proposal proposals we really ask for the vendor to help us identify what are our common goals and help us
set up a pathway forward so setting really specific and actionable goals um for moving forward over the next five years of our collaborative to ensure that we have a common Mission um and some goal posts that we can set forward to make sure that we're making progress
in what we want to accomplish um so by the end of this fiscal year we should have that completed strategic Pro the Strategic plan um and I plan to bring that to all of the boards participating Boards of Health to kind of update you all on what we envision our future to be
um as we move forward as a collaborative we're also focusing on a lot of tabling events this um Coming spring and summer so we really want to get our name out there um as a collaborative and be present within the community so we're looking for different
Health faires or town day opportunities um to set up tables and focus on a specific Public Health topic um so we've chosen and sun safety is our uh topic we were able to purchase a UV camera that helps show effectiveness of sunscreen
and we'll show um different sun damage as a way to kind of engage the public and really entice them to come speak with us more about sun safety and while we have that touch point with the community we can provide additional health information um so we're excited to start some of those opportunities and
get to know the communities a little bit better um we also have some exciting trainings coming up for our environmental health staff and public health nurses um so we're working to develop a foodborn investigation training for all of our Health
Inspectors um to better understand how communities respond when they're food board illness outbreaks I'm also setting up some mock noise investigation trainings for our inspectors so they'll have the opportunity to come out um use some of our shared equipment that we
have for investigating noise complaints and get a little bit a Hands-On training about how to conduct those investigations um and our Public Health nurses have been busy with CPR trainings um and we're also looking to engage them in the foodborn illness outbreak
trainings because they play a crucial role in identifying um you know helping conduct the the food histories to figure out where exactly exposure to a food born illness might have taken place um so it'll be a really great opportunity to bring a bunch of staff together um
towards a common training goal and then just briefly to look at our um spending and some of our funding so these numbers were pulled when I did our quarter 2 update with um The collaboratives Advisory board so they're
accurate from July 1st through the end of the calendar year December 31st um so our total award was 532,000 up to the end of the count 2024 we had spent 194,000 um we're on target to to be
really good in our spending and spending down all of our funds particularly because we have the strategic planning process which is going to be a very large sum of money um so you know that's definitely good we want to make sure um that we're not leaving any funds on the table certainly salaries always make up
a huge chunk of our spending um but we've also been able to assist in technology we're covering um subscription for our communities for Food Co Pro and housing code Pro um so we have all of our communities using the same inspection software which has
really helped facilitate um ensuring that you know inspectors regardless of Community are conducting inspections in the same way we've also been able to look at some of the data to help identify if there are certain areas um food establishments need increased education on so that we can help fill
that role um and then training is also a really large portion not only do we facilitate those group trainings but we've also been able to to pay for other trainings so um I know we were able to send some running staff to mhaa um help
with different membership fees and outside trainings anything hosted by like mhoa or Miha um we're able to support all of those requests which has been great we've definitely seen an increased number of um the local inspectors getting certain credentials
like their rhs um or Title 5 uh certifications so I think that's been a huge benefit of this grant is being able to help uh facilitate and support that professional development for local staff um so those are the highlights but I just want to open it up if there are any
questions for me or comments looks like great progress that's it's terrific that's tremendous thank you yeah yeah we've been busy it's been great to have more staff um on board for a long time it was really just me and the public health nurse so we're
excited to have the inspector and the communication staff on board as well I would like to mention that uh when we were down um you know when we were short staffed and we didn't have a public health nurse the nurse from the shared services I was very uh helpful to
our town so I'm really appreciative of that so thank you very much Anette Kevin uh real quick in that just can you remind me in regards to the grant that was awarded is that a um when does when does that repeat or is that
just a one-time deal yes so this funding we signed a three-year contract um so that goes through the uh fiscal year 2027 okay and then we have to reapply at that point um I don't think we have to reapply it depends if there's additional
funding available um so you know that's that's up in the air if if this gets funded at the state um and they're able to continue to fund it we don't necessarily have to reapply for it it just has to be available okay so there could be a point in time where all all the um towns are going to um split the
costs uh yeah so there could be potentially um it was written within our IMA that none of the communities are required to do that it would be up to the individual communities if they wanted to contribute funds um as a way
to kind of uh you know plann for not having additional funding part of our strategic planning process is to look at alternative funding sources so are there other grants out there that we can apply to um to help you know ensure sustainability outside of this current
state funding great that was my next question thanks so muchette yep Harry thanks sorry sorry thanks Annette um um sorry a little background somebody
forgot that I'm on a meeting um um so um thank you Anette great presentation great progress um I I have a couple of questions for you um and and as you know and I think as as others know so I I hold a similar position in in another
Community to what Anette does um so um I want I so here are my questions how do the inspection how do you how do you guys go about getting inspections assigned does a day just call and say hey we really have a need
or is there does he have to do some planning what happens if we get in a jam can he just call on demand yeah definitely so we do it a few different ways um we have some communities who don't have um currently don't have any inspectors so we provide more regular
support so they send us like two months worth of establishments that they want inspected um and we can go out and provide that support to to help them make sure they're getting that minimum number of inspections um if emergencies come up there's a you know foodborn
illness complaint um or somebody is out for an unexpected amount of time they can just call us and we're able to shift kind of those regular routine inspections to help prioritize um so we've developed like a standard operating procedure that helps establish
um expectations for how we're prioritizing the different inspection types um that really allows us to kind of shift for prior ities and and help respond when some communities maybe only need it in specific situations where there's an unexplained absence or an
influx of complaints it's awesome great um that's that sounds great and I'm glad glad to hear that and I know I mean that's a huge value for for us for for reading to know that um the town does have that kind of backup available and
that it's trained and um you know trained we have a sort of a preting process already we're not just relying on Word of Mouth or whatever so that's excellent um in terms of training um I know one of the things that
um one of the goals is is about having uh all inspectors go through the um food inspector training and the housing training housing training to my knowledge is not available quite yet but I know food has been out is that something do you have information on how
many inspectors in the shared services area have been able to participate in that you know I don't have spe specific data I always send out those opportunities I know anecdotally so our regional health inspector as well as
myself have been fortunate enough to go through the Food Training um and I know anecdotally some of the other inspectors have been able to get into those classes and complete the training um but it's certainly something I can go back and look at and and make sure that we're tracking at the regional level um to see
how well they're getting into them but I certainly do make sure to always um like as soon as we get the email because they are competitive in the spots I make sure to send it out to our regional inspector our region and all the inspectors so that they can sign up as soon as possible yeah and I believe I believe
Amilia has completed a train as well oh good awesome has completed excellent yeah and then just so sort of knowing that that our our colleagues um also are going through and getting that training and that's so important because now everybody has a common understanding of
what the regs are and what a proper inspection how a a condu inspection is properly conducted um so I'm I'm glad to hear that's going well um and then I guess my last would be yay Communications that is a wonderful
addition it's it's really um um it's really valuable I know reading benefits from having some inhouse communic ations folks but they aren't necessarily Public Health oriented so you say you have templates um you build
them kind of B your person can build them based on on hot Public Health topics or or can they build things on demand if you know if different towns say oh this is a real priority for us yeah definitely we've done both um so she kind of looks seasonally or just
keeping an eye on the news to see what's being talked about what's you know diseases are circulating a little more readily um but then we also have um had municipalities that say hey we had this event take place um can you write a PSA for us and she's able to accommodate
those requests as well um so we certainly try to preempt any of those by staying plugged into what's being spoken about um but then she's able to you know support any of those specific requests that may um come up kind of ad hoc
that's awesome because it you know it it it's it's the um we would you I I'm sort of having a little flashback and Kevin can relate to to covid and conversations we would have and we'd kind of run through and we'd get all the way through and we'd figure stuff out and then we're like okay and now we got to figure out
how to communicate it and you know I've always been a big proponent of we've got to build that communication capacity into our planning and into our our staffing so this is just this just makes me really happy that there is a resource available yeah and I actually forgot to
related to um Communications we launched our regional website so it's me phc.org and so all of these templates and resources that we're creating live there so the local our local Health departments have a One-Stop shop where
they can go find any of these communication tools um social media images any of our Sops they all are on that one spot um for our local Health departments to access and they can find um any up dated you know information
that we provide right there so thanks a day for pulling that up that's that's wonderful CU yeah cuz I I really hate recreating the wheel and and you know it's sort of the weight we did a great graphic or we did a great presentation on this where is it how do we that this
is great um this is really exciting and I um I I I I I I'm just so happy that um our town has this has all of these resources y'all have done a lot of work
I will say my community we're not we're in a different place with my communities they're in a little different um different circumstances every shared services group is different but so this is really both personally you know personally it's just interesting to see how it goes but for for for for reading
yeah these sound like excellent resources does it how is your Advisory Board does a day how does that work is it um a day or an all staff for just anybody how does that go yes so um we meet monthly and we have one voting representative from each community so um
a day sits on it um I think they're all the health directors are the representatives that we have currently um they are public meeting so you know anybody's welcome to to hop on to them um a lot of times our regional staff will sit on them especially if they're reporting on something that they've been
working on um we don't typically have our the other local inspectors and nurs don't typically come to them um but we do hold regular inspector subcommittee and public health nurse subcommittee meetings so that's kind of how we're having that regular touch point with our
local staff to help engage them um you know work on some specific projects um and what we found really beneficial is it's kind of just a place for the uh you know nurses and inspectors to talk to their colleagues about weird situations that might come up um you know I know
Amelia brought something really great to our la last meeting she had a weird um was it a weird body art question that had come up and so she was able to kind of like brainstorm and hear from her colleagues experiences across municipalities um so that's been a really great way that we've been able to
facilitate um information sharing across and you know just experience sharing across the municipalities that's that and that's even I mean so having not just administratively but also operationally having that kind of connectedness that's
that's great and speaking of communication uh Dr Lopez and I and Matt we're actually trying to work together to create a Facebook page for the health department you know specifically for the health department because we don't have a way to directly reach out to staff uh
you know and sorry to the residents so we're trying to create that and um we're just waiting for you know Matt the town manager to uh uh approve it and uh we'll go from there awesome now I have had two two items and I'm not sure if there were a request or
a thought or um a question so one has to do with um Community Health needs assessment so we underwent a process um last year and the year before and in
coming up with um a community health needs assessment and um and you know we came up with several goals and some objectives um I'm wondering whether other towns in
the collaborative have done the same thing number one and and with respect to that whether in as you go through your strategic planning process whether you can think about
incorporating those kinds of work um those those pieces of work into what the collaborative is doing so for instance if three of the towns um you know have done assessments and and they all have
these two same objective or goals then maybe the collaborative ought to you know pick up a bigger you know make that a focus not only for those towns but for the whole collaborative in an effort to kind of move things along um
not to mention encouraging other towns you know towns in the collaborative to have their own needs assessment somehow you know these local assessments um are very um very much informed by what's
happening on the ground and and somehow having the collaborative take advantage of that and help promote you know Solutions and and move those would be would be a great idea um as you think about
strategy yeah definitely um most of our communities have completed their own local needs assessments so you know that's good that they do uh exist out there for most the communities um and we have looked at them as a as collaborative staff to help inform our activities and priorities um to help you
know cross over I don't think we've done it as intentionally as you're speaking about yet in terms of like really being able to make sure that we're taking those um you know concrete objective and action items and incorporating them but I I think it's super important so we can
make sure that it's part of the strategic planning process that we're looking at all of those documents and finding where they most cross over to to leverage that shared resource um and help kind of meet everybody's goal at one time great great the other the the other
thing was just um you know in terms of Public Health foundational sort of standards and I know that the I guess dph um did a piece of work last year um collecting data from Boards of
Health departments across the state and uh coming up with some data um comparing them in terms of meeting certain standards and this may be too uh too work intensive I'm not sure but at
some point in the future uh I think what could be helpful for the towns would be to um have the collaborative produce comparative data um maybe for the six towns and and then
the you know the state not not the other 30 you know 44 towns but um but just collectively you know here are the r six towns and this is the Statewide average
high low or whatever um for whatever date is available out there because one of the things we always try to at least I always try to think of is are we how are we we're in a little bit of a cocoon here on the board of health but H how
are we doing and what are the areas that we should be you know more focused on in terms of meeting Public Health standards uh that we're not and so the collaborative might have a role in producing that data on a more regular and frequent
basis Carrie did you want to say something sorry I'm it's like I'm gonna explode I know sorry well I just um I was kind of looking to see if I could pull up the dashboard I I didn't know if if you had
it and because because because there is data there is data available for what you're referring to Rick is the capacity assessment um and you can see we don't have the data at the individual Community level um because this isn't about individual
communities the shared services collaboratives exist to improve the the all the towns right um but yeah there is some and and I know Annette and I are both going to have to be out doing doing more presentations later this year about
the the info for the foundational Public Health Services in the collaborative as well so um sorry yeah oh no that's fine um I can certainly so I just was able to pull up
the uh dashboard that Carrie is talking about um so I will share my screen quickly and and while she's doing that I'll say my speech is always this you're going to see a percentage and the percentage is um how close are we to the
bare minimum right that you know people get excited and say hey we've got a 78 that's a high C that's great no this is just the bare minimum um and I think that's important to to to underscore um
we want everybody at 100% um so I'm trying to look here so um this is this like first step that you were talking about Dr Lopez of the um initial kind of capacity assessment the state did with these groups to look at how well we're meeting what they called the performance
standards so these were um responsibilities that by Massachusetts laws and regulations and federal laws and regulations Health departments were required to meet so these were things like performing disease investigations um conducting inspections for different
items um and so we all reported or all the health departments reported data on how well they're able to meet those different um performance standards and so the state using all of that data created this dashboard where you can look at um by your shared service
Arrangement um how well you were meeting those performance standards so I was trying to find ours in this list um and for some reason I'm just not seeing it you know what Annette go to the right yeah go to the right hand side and use
the mun just type in the name of the mun municipality not all the names are properly entered so yeah um if you just enter me so we'll look up ready I'm scared don't be scared we
should be an overall our um group was in a really good place yeah we should be in the 80s I believe see so how come it's not yeah I can't read the the letters are small so I don't know what it says
what say town of North Andover right it's just that it hasn't been updated to reflect the name of the arrangement it's just showing the host community so there you can see yeah so overall our group um was 85% meeting the standards which you know we're in a
really good place especially compared to a lot of the state when it came to meeting these requirements a lot of our health departments are well resourced we have um you know very professional and trained experienced staff that are able to meet these requirements um so you know this was a super helpful process it
did help us kind of Identify some areas right off the bat that we could improve so we worked on improving some order letter language um some inspection reports to kind of you know get that last 15% um in meeting these standards and so
when it comes to the foundational Public Health Services I believe the state has similar plans to kind of aggregate the data that's provided and um allow us to look at state level and shared service Arrangement level how well we're meeting those um foundational Public Health
Services additionally built into the tool that we're using um we get some like initial summary data for our community so that's certainly something that I can come back and present to the board so we can kind of look um you know both reading and then across the region
what our municipalities reported in terms of their ability to currently meet those um foundational Public Health Service areas is great it's good that the state is is doing a big piece of this that's great yes thank you yeah
definitely and um just one last question um I know that the grant funding that we have is from the state as well as federal government and with the current you know Grant freezing that you know we've been experiencing how how is this
collaborative um going to be affected that's a great question um I have spoken to our program coordinator so they're kind of our connection to the state that we work with um and and ask what they're anticipating the impact to be um and
they unfortunately don't have a clear answer right now as to um what the final impact is going to be um they expect that we won't see any impact in this current fiscal year in terms of our current funding is what I was told um I
don't they gave the caveat that things might change but as of right now it doesn't appear that there's going to be any impact um you know the good news is because we are partially state funded if there is federal um funding taken away
we at least do have some State funding to draw back on um and you know they'll provide us updates as available and Carrie you have I don't know if you have more upto-date information than me no I'll just add that I think that we are these programs are at a um Advantage as
compared to others because we have we have the dollars in hand right we we have received the dollars um they're certainly always potentially subject to clawback um depending on the source but we have receiv received them there are some programs that um only receive
funding they invoice they deliver services and then they provide an invoice and then they receive payment and those programs are more have a a more significant exposure um risk exposure than um this does but um yeah I
I know the same as as a net right we know that we have dollars in hand right now we know that dollars were um committed um we also know that it is an uncertain funding environment in general right okay thank you very much
Annette appreciate your time and good news all while yes thank you so much for having me I look forward to coming back again soon great work thanks n good work thanks n he Dave do you wanna you want to uh
absolutely let's get this meeting uh over over with all right so uh here is a draft copy of the feeding of wildlife regulation um you know we created this draft regulation um based on you know a
complaint that we received um and uh we figured out that you know we didn't have any bylaw or regulation that addresses um you know feding of wildlife uh within the town of readen so um um this is just a draft
copy um I see you know a couple of typos that we're going to fix uh later on it's you know it's a copy is not a big deal at at this point um we thought about uh presenting it as a bylaw but we decided to go um via the uh Board of Health
regulation route to save time uh we know that if we go through the you know bylaw process it's probably going to take six to n months to get it done so uh we decided to go via the uh B of Regulation
route which is uh faster um so ESS Al this regulation prohibits the feeding of wildlife in readen with some exceptions um you know um feed that is not that is
deposited by natural vegetation or as a result of agricultural or gathering practice are not considered feeding for the purpose of this regulations the person [Music]
responsible for the premises uh where the problem with Wildlife occurs wildlife feeding occurs would be notified in writing um will also issue um you know violation notices uh if we have to um any individual or corporation
that is licensed or entitled under the law to possess wildlife of any kind is exempt uh from this [Music] regulation and um also you know failure
to comply with the regulation may result in a fine of $50 first offense um $100 second offense and $150 for additional offenses so again this is just uh you know A draft copy for review and I
anticipate that um we would have a finalized copy uh at a subsequent meeting for the board to vote on so did everybody get a chance to read it um would you like to make any recommendations or amendments or
changes Kevin I'll just make one a day because legal is going to do it anyway um paragraph two of 26.3 just move the whole paragraph under 26.4 for exemptions it's cleaner that
way okay legal legal is going to do it anyway so yeah sorry say that again 26.3 paragraph paragraph two Feit the whole paragraph should fall under 26.4 exemptions okay sounds good
that's the only recommendation I had on it otherwise it looks great perfect and uh I'd like to uh thank Amilia for helping out with this as [Music] well so yeah I think it looks great too
I mean it it has everything in I I was concerned about bird feeders um and I see you included that as an exception and um you know I I think it's important because feeding
Wildlife although it's well intended and we all love animals um you know it does promote the potential for injury their vectors for certain diseases um and it really they really can be a health out
in this kind of environment any comments suggestions for a day oh I just wanted to speak in regards to the uh to the board I don't know if the um the homeowners is going to be able to be here for public comment um this evening or not but I've been in
touch with one of the complaintants um has had a tough time where um they have there's been um neighbor across the street has been feeding wild turkeys and what ended up happening is they end up all on on um uh complaintant property and defecating
all over their property and their belongings their cars and what have you and turn into quite a new um nuisance not to the point where sometimes there's so many of them they can't you know they're fighting them away to get in their front door so just as one example of where this would be very effective um
even though the person has is aware of this who continues to feed them it it would be great to have a mechanism to get them to stop doing that on behalf of another Resident who shouldn't have to deal with such things so right yep speaking of turkeys
um I I read a couple weeks ago that and I mentioned this to a day that um in Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard um they discovered 20 dead turkeys and uh and I I have a summer
home down there so um and the the issue there is they're testing them for Aven flu and and it's a you know it's a classic example of you know you have a lot of Wildlife and um they bring
diseases so you know you're this neighbor with all these turkeys if um if developing Aven epidemic amongst uh birdlife in the town then they're at much more risk so that's just a beyond
the causing a mess on the lawn you know there's some other real hazards as well the day if everything goes well how when do you see us able to make a vote on a u on a final proposal probably at the next meeting
okay great hey a monthly update oh okay and um I just wanted to bring this up um so we have uh this flyer on both websites on the BF website and the health department websites um regarding you
know the bird flu um outbreak and we also um sent this to each uh resident with that has a keeping of animals permit with the town um so they also have this information they know where to
report uh any um illness or mass uh Mass uh casualties they know where to report it to uh they know who to call so um yeah I just wanted to put that out yeah all right uh in terms of monthly report I
believe um I'll let uh Amelia go first and then um leave is not here today so I'll I'll do that part good evening everyone let me just share my
screen okay um I'm assuming everyone is able to see my screen y um okay so January was a little bit of a slower month for me with inspections um this month I've actually been gearing up back on the field which has been exciting as I love doing food
inspections um so we had one late food permit uh renewal which is fine it happens um I did four food inspections that were scheduled for January um we had one complaint regarding a restroom with an
establishment which we ended up actually bumping them up a risk level so we bumped them from a two to a three just because um from the last inspection that I did from the complaint we received and just from another time that I was there there was
no active managerial control going on so every time I went to The Establishment and asked to speak to the manager or the person in charge there was no one present to be that person so we spoke a day and I spoke with the district manager of that established
we talked through some of our concerns with her she was very receptive to bumping up the establishment to just be more involved with them and I actually did their inspection this month and it went really well the manager was there we were able to talk things through we
were able to get on a page um where we were both in agreement um he was actually very thankful that we were able to go through you know some issues that occurred education wise communication wise so you know I'm really hoping that we can get them on a good track and bump
them back down to their type two risk um kind of you know touching based on where that complaint stood and where that had gone um we did one temporary permit which was for a wrestling match at the high school that occurred on January
20th um for the junior varsity wrestling team um I did one body art inspection last month um everything went well everything was good we had two complaints on um one being an issue with um snow salt in a parking lot which was
rectified by at the time that I was out there and then another issue that um complaint that we received with a house that we are monitoring and we are working on um at the time that I went out there there were no violations present so that was a plus um but we do
have them on our radar and we continue to hopefully rectify anything that comes up in the future and um our issue is getting contact with the owner we've sent you know order to correct letters warning tickets tickets um I've left Flyers I've left my business cards my
lives business cards um our you know our main thing is getting in contact which is our what we're struggling with but we're hoping that soon we'll be able to get in contact and we'll be able to talk through with some of the issues that are being presented to us um wellness check
remember yes absolutely so we actually did conduct oh I apologize we did conduct a wellness check as well with the sorry I wanted to make sure I didn't get out of Zoom um we did conduct we did call um dispatch to conduct a wellness check to ensure that
the resident was safe in their home which they were they were responsive to the wellness check so that was a plus um they're just not responsive with us so we you know we're really hoping to get that to that to that level with them um I did the tanning inspection at Planet
Fitness which everything looked great checked out well the manager that I walked around with was super knowledgeable with tanning um the regulations and what's expected they don't promote it which is awesome um so that was that uh we did a reinspection a
day and I at 10:51 Main Street which I know we talked about in our last Board of Health meeting so we did that back in January which was after our last meeting and I know that that is something we will address back in the spring so I don't want to really talk much about that we did have a complaint with one of
our nursing facilities a day and I did go out there we got a complaint regarding um no hot water um that was being used on the residents so the residents were being bathed in cold water and the kitchen staff had to uh result to styrofoam and plastic
equipment um obviously as their hot water supply was not operate was not operational uh when a day and I did go out there we spoke to the D uh manager at the time um who's no longer there um they are in New Management and um a
heating technician did come out uh rectified the issue fire also had gone out um National Grid had been out um there's a couple things going on with that establishment but they're being worked on um I don't know if a day if
you want to speak a little bit more to that um but a day and I did go out there and you know the issues that were complained to us regarding the hot water and the use of the styrofoam utensils were rectified once we were out at the
establishment um we did get one call regarding pest sightings so um my goal is to every time that we do receive a complaint with that we keep an Excel sheet with the address that someone is complaining about and I would like to add it to our monthly reports as well so
we can also keep track of where people or how many calls we're getting regarding pest sightings and then I was able to do both of the pools at the YMCA which also turned out to be great and well in working order and the Y is
actually very good with keeping up with their pools which I was very impressed they do a lot of water testing a day believe they do it four times a day every day um so they were they were well they were they were well um and that was that for the month of January for me so
not too much going on but always something going on thank you very much thank you all right um so in terms of uh nuring updates um
the influenza cases in January we had 63 confirmed cases um the covid cases were d uh were down dramatically only two cases in January um you know other communicable diseases um have stayed
constant pretty much negligible um a couple of foot Bor illnesses and uh little to no Vector born uh diseases I see flu shots are still available for individual 65 plus um
please call 781 942 6656 to schedule your flu shot uh we're going to have a blood pressure screenings at Frank Tanner drive on February 20th 2025 and also at the
Pleasant Street Center on March 5 2025 we have a free hearing screening um coming up on February 18th at the library from 9 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. um for some reason uh we not too
many people haven't signed up this time around um last year we had to have like three sessions because they kept on getting field and field um so I'm not sure what's going on and I'm hoping that um you know our new Facebook page would
help us get this information out there uh we actually have um you know our own followers um that can subscribe to Health Department news and um you know be in contact with us let's see what else
um we have the mamography van um coming in April um this is a program that we want to keep uh it's been a success so far we just want to keep doing it so we don't have a specific date in April it looks like
it's going to be towards the end of April but it's good to keep the residents informed and you know to let them know that we're going to be having this um van back and they can um you know um adjust their plans uh accordingly so uh we started the diabetic uh
supplies uh donation and that has been going very well and leave had a great idea um based on the success of that she had a great idea to do uh medical supplies take back
and um this has been going well as well so we're really happy about that um if you have um you know medical supplies that are unused that are unexpired diabetic supplies that are unused or you
know unexpired all you have to do is call you know 781 942 6656 that's the number to the public he nurse um call to schedule the donation and um you know we would hand it over to
the appropriate uh hands so with our diabetic supplies we usually donate them to uh Life USA and uh with the medical supplies we donate them to low Human Society um you know this programs are they're going
really well we're happy I'm glad that uh leave is here with us um you know things are going well um no complaints let's see what else oh and this is
um Le's idea as well with um the shared services so we're collaborating with the shared services and the the library to come up with the hands only CPR class um this is scheduled for March 20th um and
also April 17th so um we're not going to be issuing any you know certificates it's just a hands only CPR class so feel free to join us us um you know anytime so March 20th and uh April
17th let's see what else do we have and I would just like to remind the residents that um you know we in uh February this is the American Heart month take care of yourselves you know
live a healthy lifestyle do some exercise um eat properly and um yeah and everybody's gonna be fine all right I'll hand it over to Dr Lopez great thank you a
day um so now we come to our uh public comment section um I see one individual Lucas prto um Lucas do you want to make any comments to the board oh there you are
yep sure thank you for being patient um y floor is yours well first of all thank you all um all these Town meetings that I've started to attend since the MBTA situation I now realize all that you guys put in and appreciate all the
effort um just wanted to backtrack to a day's um reading of the law in what the project is um they are putting in new track there used to be track there back in the 60s or 70s but it was removed so
so as far as I'm concerned once again a lawyer should look at the I think it's noi and the law like have your legal council look at it but please don't back down that's all I ask it sounded like you guys aren't but please don't back
down like I think I heard earlier tonight some people think the MBTA for some reason has doesn't have to report to anybody it just is mindblowing to me so far uh so I I just want to keep it short simple so I know you guys have had
a long meeting but uh Kevin has my information um he's been a great coach for my daughter for years for soccer um but I will throw the invite to if you guys want to listen to myself and or some of our others in our group we'd be willing to meet at the town uh hall or
the library and give you more information into the situation that uh is unfortunately been forced upon us uh by the MBTA and the biggest key which I think you guys have heard so far the MBTA has tried to sneak this through
through the Conservation Commission and I am the second to closest to where they plan to idle the actual locomotive it's not even just the idling it's also the slow moving trains back and forth all day long from 5:00 am to 11: PM so once
again I don't want to hold you guys up but feel free to reach out to me and we can set up a meeting to get as much information that we have uh dug up in the past three to four weeks and get you that information we'd be I'm more than
happy thank you Mr P I think that um the independent consultant may want to have such a meeting to get that kind of input as part of their overall assessment
sure thank you thank you thank you okay um any final comments thoughts suggestions not hearing any um I'll make a motion to adjourn do I have a second
second second sell he roll call S yes Carrie Kevin yes Joan and and I I would just say that Carrie and Joan both vot affirmative on
mute yes for AI yes all right thank you all appreciate it all right thank you good night thank you e e
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