since we since we have a quorum now so this is what this is April 3 April 3D meeting of the Board of Health we have three members Katherine Hilton Garrett Simons and norian peas and oh can we do the the minutes from last time everybody happy with them yes I'll approve okay everybody's in favor of approving okay yes I don't think we need to do a formal formal vote so so by way of reporting I'll tell you that last Tuesday Arlene and I accompanied Claudia to 56 wend Road and we um we went inside which was pretty exciting and uh talked with with the owner about his his um plans and basically he is planning with a a team of of local people that he is assembling to pretty much take that thing down itself the whole building isn't coming down I think it's the front wall is staying up and there's a there's a chimney that's going to stay up but the rest uh the rest of it is coming down and um he I asked him for a timeline and he saidwell after we get a thaw but that's going to take a little time now especially because you know the roof is open so rain and snow and stuff are falling inside the house there's ice on steps it's pretty pretty scary so he's waiting for it to to warm up basically but it seems to be in progress um uh Claudia has um sent a a an a sort of followup me letter to him um setting out what we what we all agreed to and urging him to keep in touch with us so that's where that is oh here's somebody it must be whim hi whim is that you yeah I'm here I can't see any of you but oh it's arene yes hi I was I was just describing how um how you and I went with Claudia to Greg Steves and uh and inspected it uhuh I don't know if there's anything you wanted to say about that no I um I don't have anything in particular well actually I guess I was um maybe I felt the little little surprised that she uh was pretty casual about it you know there was no um sense from her that there would be an order coming or could be coming or anything like that and she just said you know just keep us posted essentially um did she speak with you at all after that time well no she didn't but she did send me for um for passing on to um to Greg mailing by uh [Music] um Regular male and um certified mail and I [Music] will it was a sort of a post post um inspection followup yeah so so the followup letter say you know summarizes shoot summarizes the plan um within two months after the interior has begun begun to thaw of ice you will commence to work commence work to begin removing the roof and rehabilitating the dwelling in addition you will inquire about the proper permits to begin demolition of parts of the building if required and permits for reconstruction from the B burog building inspector we will perform periodic checks on the progress of this project and encourage you to contact the Sho Berry Board of Health or its agent to provide us with updates right okay yeah so that that was going to be my question where it's not a a total Demolition and there's going to be part of the structure maintained are they coordinating with a building inspector that's the plan okay so and that's through the Frog yeah great yeah presumably he'll need a I don't think he yet has a demolition permit to do this um I asked cludia if she thought that would be a problem you know because he wasn't hiring a demo company and she said she didn't think so because you have a lot of leway when it's your own property uhhuh okay all right any more to be said about that not from me thanks I don't think okay well then moving on after I left there I went up to town hall and I had a long chat with Sarah Fisk and um maybe you've seen uh numerous um Town announces from me this afternoon announcing a um a Naran training that's going to take place April 25th not August 25th sorry um uh at the Leverett fire station not the library but that one wasn't my fault um so so um she had this planned for Leverett and then you know invited shuberry to join she wants to do a bunch of um training and health education events uh for both towns uh she told me that in Leverett she has to run everything by the Board of Health I said and I hope you will agree you don't have to do that in shoots Barry if you're doing health education we're behind it it's fine with us um if anybody doesn't feel that way let me know like now could I just interject I'd like to hear about those things but I don't think she needs to uh await approval right that's pretty much what I told her keep us you know keep us informed but you don't you don't have to ask our permission right okay so she's got that planned I gave her contact information for Andrew lover because she'd like to have a Tik Tok as she calls it um and he's well placed to do that um and uh oh oh and maybe you've seen around time Town these signs about let's simply walk and shoots fa and Leverett I asked her about that because those signs are not very informative and she and I are going to work up some better signage and flyers for that and the idea is for people to either using their own devices or getting some um pedometers which she has she has 36 to give out and she thinks she could probably get a similar number this year because she got those last year um so the idea is that people would just walk either alone or together or inside or outside or you know whatever wherever and keep track of it and um and send her the information send her the steps or whatever it is and then she'll have data which she seems to want to have and if seems it seems worthy enough so I said that probably we could spend some of our budget um printing up Flyers if that seems good to you guys it's not yeah I think we're going to have money left over in our budget so we might as well use it for that um so I think that's all I have to say about that um do we have any else to be reported on Garrett I don't think we had a collaborative meeting did did I miss one I know we've rescheduled one coming up this month but so so the collaborative has been having um like a separate work group meeting to talk about emergency dispensing sites right and to talk about an approach wherein the communities in the collaborative that have dispensing sites uh do a better job of collaborating around how we might operationalize them and under what circumstances so we've been talking about you know like for shutesbury and lever where we're individual single Community sites are there specific types of infectious disease events that we might want to retain the role and responsibility of setting up our own site and you know that that tends to be a fairly limited circumstance um you know so based on covid probably not aerosolized Anthrax not likely uh but if there was a an event that occurred within the school population so musles as an example or um you know food handler uh hepatitis A uh situation that might be an example um but larger or or you know if if there was um uh covid vaccines made available for older adults or a pandemic flu vaccine made available for older adults maybe we would want to sponsor a clinic here um so we've been trying to talk through what are the different scenarios and and how how we might collaborate and where the locations could be for for different scenarios it sounds like that in the event it would be pretty much ad hoc that we'd have have to make the decisions based on a number of factors and that it sounds like leaving the options open for different kinds of collaborations yeah you know I think basically where we've landed is that it doesn't make a lot of sense to just say you know these sites that we planned for over a number of years that we're just G to scrap them you know we we want to be able to use them if the circumstance is appropriate for it um but that it's more likely that we're going to face a scenario where it makes better sense to colle collaborate I age so that's that's the main um conversation that's been Happ happening at the collaborative and then uh on Monday mafco met the um steering committee for mafco met uh because on last Friday um dph uh announced there for the next CDC public health emergency preparedness grant for the next five years uh dph is preparing their application for that that funding uh those funds go from dph out to the public health coalitions including mafco and so on Friday dph presented their uh their strategy for the application and what the funding levels would be and as part of that application process they have to seek concurrence from local public health and so at the Monday meeting of the mafco steering committee um I I talked talked through that application strategy that dph has proposed and the funding levels uh which are pretty much level funded um and the steering committee voted to concur with their approach um as as part of their application very good that reminds me of a thing I meant to bring up earlier when so when I sent out this this notice of the Naran training um we got a response back from a towns person saying I sincerely hope that our taxpayer dollars aren't being used to provide Naran couple ofation points now it wasn't it wasn't a question so I don't have any any intention of answering it unless the person rephrases it as a question which was paying for this right um but it's it's an interesting question um where does all this Naran come from is it from is it coming from dph or from some other state agency Garrett do you know so my guess would be it could be coming from from a state agency like dph it may also be coming from other local sources um including you know uh EMS providers fire and EMS um it's not uncommon for there to be uh broad training on how to administer Naran MH to both professionals and lay people um so um you know the the idea is to save lives and um if we can save lives using taxpayer funds by training people on how to do it I'm all for it yeah I totally I totally agree with you are my only oh sorry go ahead Ary go ahead I'm wondering if it's possibly coming from the opioid settlement funds probably not from this this current settlement funds because they're they're just starting to be distributed but um oh okay um you know other settlements there there might have been previous settlements that provided access to uh funding for um for both the training and and the product um you know my my assumption is that there will be a lot that a lot of the settlement funds will be used to provide additional training sure yeah I think it's there are a lot of PE go ahead I keep I keep interrupting you cat I'm sorry there are a lot of um strong negative feelings out there um in the general population about a lot of harm reduction strategies having to do do with substance use like needle exchange programs and uh hotlines and um you know safe injection centers and the like boy that gets a lot of people going and um you know if they have a sense that their tax dollars um are being used to to fund these programs um so it's what you're hearing there from that one town resident is kind of a hip of the iceberg about what's out there about harm reduction strategies I think well I'm not planning to engage with that person thought that having the answer to that I mean in one sense obviously of course it comes from tax dollars somewhere it doesn't come from our town budget right but I I think it's possible that the collaborative could potentially have been purchasing Naran this year you using some of its funding I'll ask Sarah if she knows yeah just you know just as a point of information I don't I don't want to start debating harm reduction with citizens if they don't want to take the training they don't have to take it but um I don't have to you know waste my time defending it right right just to mention I think Jett um Garrett talked about the fact that the collaborative has been um meeting to discuss um you know planning for emergency preparedness um but I just I think the regular meeting of the collaborative is coming up also and that has been changed this month uh Garrett I'm not sure you were on that email um it's going to be the 18th now at 8:30 in the morning yeah I saw that okay good so that would be just to conduct our regular business of the collaborative oh and there's new there's a new um maybe it was in the paper there's a new health director in Greenfield oh good yeah have you met this person Garrett in your not not yet my and and I actually don't know the name even but yeah my understanding is that they've they've been in public health for previously for a while so good good it'll be interesting to see how this person interacts with the Cooperative there has been a person in the like a special assistant to the uh to the mayor has been attending our meetings MH so there has been there has been interest so that's good excellent okay what else have we got anything not for me yeah I was thinking I had one other thing I just wanted to tell you about maybe that was it well can't think of anything else so Arlene you're in Nashville did you say or you're in Hot Springs oh we we were there last night and this morning and we are now just outside of Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas and I yeah but we were in Nashville and not long enough to to um see much of it but we did go to the Johnny Cash Museum this morning which was just a great museum it was wonderful and um I learned about what a really fine person Johnny Cash was well that's cool um so that was good and then we walked down part of the main Dragon the number of Honky Tonks and boot emporor was astonishing but we resisted the whole buy one pair of boots get two pairs free well then how how are you dancing if you don't have any Bootsy boots we resisted well the food's pretty good too yeah uh we at the urging of a friend of ours who was in touch with us and knew where we were traveling we stopped at a a Mexican restaurant outside of Nashville so I don't know that doesn't seem to fit like what that's not Nashville food that's Mexican food but anyway right we weren't there long enough to experience more but hey I remembered the other thing I wanted to mention we got mail from somebody from the MW the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority that that ad ministers quab and water and they are having a sort of exploratory committee to talk about possibly making water available to the Watershed communities that are not included um in the oh gosh in the you know the eastern part of the state where they the the MDC I guess so um so they they haven't been very responsive but we're we're assembling some documents that they've asked for about water quality and public water supplies and and so on so so something's something's moving there wow but who knows I think there must have been some perhaps some legislative pressure on MW because they've been pretty resistant to this before as far as I know yeah I think I saw something recently that Senator kford was um pushing them on it well they seem a little bit reluctant but um but they are they are taking action and asking for documents and trying to set up a meeting so I'll let you know what I hear that would seems like to me that would be an enormous undertaking like with there's no infrastructure for providing water to us right right it seems wow yeah it seems pretty uh pretty gruesome I wonder a long maybe it's a very long range plan I would imagine but possibly or you know possibly another another way of of approaching it is that they might reimburse the towns to some extent because you know we've got all this Watershed land that's not getting it's not bringing in any tax revenue we get payments in lie of taxes but I think that's a fraction of what we might get if if um some of that property were developable and it may be that after we talk around and around about about actually bringing in water they'll see that it would be a lot cheaper just to um just to reimburse us for some of the Lost costs that we or the Lost Revenue we're experiencing I think what I was really the thought of sending a mile long pipe up from from 202 to the top of the hill my god seriously yeah I know what I was seeing was that some of the the towns in the southern portion of the reservoir that were interested in connecting into the system and that they maybe have more developed uh local Water Systems that aren't just aren't just private Wells right the um the request for for a documents was divided into two parts one for towns that don't have water infrastructure and one towns that do so obviously there's two oh two different things going on here um K very interesting another water question did Lake wola uh ever get resolved who can do the testing for the beaches this summer or do we know yet who is doing any kind of testing for any Beach testing or any water testing we don't know Bob Blanchett reached out to me and told me that the the company that was um employed last year by the Association and by the state park to take the samples and deliver them to some that the bad company is closing up um so I didn't really have any other anything to offer him except to get in touch with um the park superintendent and find out who they are going to use if they've found any I also suggested or pointed out that for years um the samples were taken locally and somebody didn't come out and do it Bill used to go out frequently and take samples and I think had a little team of other people that would go out and take the samples and make sure that they were done and I can remember Frank Bunton taking the samples at the State Park like this Outsourcing that part of it is comparatively new and uh they may have to they may have to go back to doing it that way because um it seems to be hard to get anybody to come out and do it yeah so that's all I know just a quick question Garrett was that the first meeting that you ran on Monday at mafco um Michael still I mean yeah we sort of trade off on different things but I led the discussion on the nice on the CDC funding yeah good good to have shsy taking a leadership role yeah because we haven't for years right back to bill right right right right I didn't I didn't mean to suggest that we hadn't been out front already no no no I know I know I'm just yeah it's jury's done its part let's for sure for sure no kidding thanks to Bill and you Oren and Garrett yeah so if we're done we might as well adjourn sounds good I so move okay all in favor second yes yes yes yes have a wonderful trip arene how long you gone right Arlene glad you're not here because it's sleeing like crazy yeah I I've been we've been following because right now we have a f