[Speaker 4] (0:05 - 1:13)
Okay, so welcome to the select board meeting. First, I'd like to apologize for being a few minutes late. And second, I would like to start by thanking Daniel Moresky for running the video tonight to bring you this home show.

And we're going to start our evening with two of our young citizens, our future voters. They're not here. Where are they?

Yeah. Want to go up to the flag? And would you mind introducing yourselves?

Your name? My name is Stella Phelan.

[Speaker 16] (1:13 - 1:14)
This is my brother Jack.

[Speaker 4] (1:15 - 1:19)
Jack Phelan. Okay, and you're going to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Can you just tell us what grade you're in?

[Speaker 16] (1:21 - 1:25)
I'm going into first grade. He's going into third.

[Speaker 4] (1:26 - 1:33)
Great. Well, thank you for bringing your brother. You want to start?

You start and then we'll jump right in. How's that?

[Speaker 16] (1:34 - 1:47)
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[Speaker 4] (1:47 - 1:50)
Let me ask you one question. Do you have a favorite select board member?

[Speaker 8] (1:56 - 1:59)
My mother and Mary Ellen are tied.

[Speaker 16] (2:00 - 2:15)
Sit down. I'm just kidding. We're probably not even so bad.

All right, let's sit down. Boy, that bride paid off. Thank you very much.

I love you all.

[Speaker 4] (2:15 - 2:54)
All right. So now that the entertainment is left, we're going to start with public comments. Do we have any public comments?

If you're here to talk about the subject of anything on the agenda? No, not anything on the agenda. But if you're here to talk about anything specific on the agenda, I am going to allow comment during that time.

I think that'll make it easier. So, John, is that OK with you? All right.

So we're going to start.

[Speaker 8] (2:54 - 3:02)
Question. Do we have a microphone right now? Yeah, it's that.

OK, I just want to make sure.

[Speaker 4] (3:04 - 3:06)
John, you want to have your comment now?

[Speaker 12] (3:06 - 3:08)
I have a comment that's not on the agenda.

[Speaker 4] (3:08 - 3:09)
That's fine.

[Speaker 12] (3:11 - 5:50)
I want you to schedule a, put on the agenda on this time, a meeting to discuss the permitting process of fields in town and bylaw changes to allow the police department to enforce the permitting process. OK. We have a field up here, a soccer field that was used every weekend by a group of guys.

There's a list of the license plates in the back of your pamphlet. Some are from New Hampshire, most are from Linn. Some are, one actually last weekend had an expired inspection sticker.

They come up there, they abuse the field. Gino has spent upwards of $20,000 this year to maintain that field. Two days after the rain this spring, as soon as the rain stopped, they began to grasp their cleats.

Gino was furious. The Swanscot Soccer Association has asked Gino to take and replace sod in front of the goals. When these guys ruin the field in front of the goals, the next time they come, they just shift the ball and destroy another patch.

They don't use the trash barrel that's there. The residents on both sides of the field, Monday morning, go along and pick up the trash. They don't use the port-a-potty.

If they have to go, when Mother Nature calls, they use Mother Nature on the outside of the field. We need to have a discussion about the permitting process, how it's done, who does it. Because there's a little confusion whether it's the athletic director here at the high school or it's the recreation director at the town hall.

So please put it on your agenda. Thank you. Oh, one last thing.

The list of license plates on your sheets, I put a public request in for the police department to give me not the owner's name, not the owner's address, just the cities that they are from. Request denied.

[Speaker 4] (5:51 - 6:14)
Thank you. Okay, moving along. Is there anyone else who would like to have a public comment?

Okay, so next we're going to move to the discussion of possible vote on the Votes Act requirements for town hall early voting hours. Who's here to speak on that?

[Speaker 3] (6:15 - 7:24)
I am. Mr. Fitzgerald. So this is a statutory requirement that supports cities and towns in the Commonwealth's ability to have early voting.

It requires the board to support an act signed into law in 2022 for early voting Saturday, August 24, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, August 26, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday, August 27, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday, August 28, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday, August 29, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. So this is 54 hours of early voting and ensures that we have greater access to voting. We know that nationally we have a lot of work to do to try to get more people to engage in the democratic process. But this is just one part of the efforts to just expand voter access.

[Speaker 4] (7:24 - 7:34)
So could I have a motion to approve the early voting hours as described by Sean Fitzgerald?

[Speaker 19] (7:34 - 7:34)
So moved.

[Speaker 4] (7:35 - 7:52)
Second? Second. All in favor?

Aye. Aye. Approved.

Now we're going to have a discussion and possible vote on non-union contracts. Let's start with the treasurer-collector first. Sean?

[Speaker 3] (7:52 - 9:42)
Mr. Treasurer, I am very pleased to recommend that we extend the contract for Patrick Luddy. Patrick completed his master's degree in accounting in 2021 and has become a certified Massachusetts municipal treasurer. This is a significant accomplishment.

As the board knows, over the last year, we elevated our bond rating to triple A. Just a few years ago, we were double A minus. And Patrick has been an indispensable part of our finance team.

He continues to demonstrate his financial acumen. Patrick was hired just a few years ago, six to be exact, as an intern for the town of Swampskate. I am so impressed with his commitment to public service and the work that he has done to really demonstrate himself as a terrific fiduciary.

This proposed contract would bump his salary up to $105,000 for FY25, $107,625 for FY26, and $110,316 for FY27. It also includes some longevity stipends that are in our personnel plan and a $3,500 annual performance bonus and retention bonus. So this is an individual that we've made investments in and he has also made investments in the town and we recommend that we extend his contract as outlined.

[Speaker 8] (9:43 - 9:49)
Motion to approve the contract for treasurer-collector Patrick Luddy.

[Speaker 4] (9:50 - 10:11)
Second. Discussion. I just want to make one point that this contract does expire July 2024.

Everybody all set? We have a vote to approve this. 2024.

[Speaker 2] (10:14 - 10:14)
Is it effective 2024?

[Speaker 4] (10:15 - 10:40)
No. Oh, excuse me. His past contract expiring.

I just want to make that clear. All in favor? Aye.

Motion carries. Next on the agenda is the building commissioner.

[Speaker 3] (10:40 - 13:23)
So I'm pleased to recommend that we extend our building commissioner's contract. Steve Cummings has demonstrated that not only is he able to help support many of the responsibilities of the town of Swampstead over the last few months, he's also been the building commissioner for the town of Marblehead. These types of regional initiatives demonstrate that we can do more regionally.

Steve is sitting in the back row here. If we look over my right shoulder, he's back here. Sorry to have my back to you, Steve, but I really do think Steve is one of the most extraordinary teammates.

Steve is easy to work with as a building commissioner. He often is in really tough conflicts with residents or businesses that are trying to do work and need to do it consistent with public safety protocols and building codes. And he has a wonderful way about him.

He has spent the last year advocating and advancing efforts to digitize every file in the building inspector's office. That saves us an enormous amount of time and has been a real move towards efficiencies. He is always available, very responsive, and I've reached out to Marblehead's town administrator and spoken to Thatcher Keizer numerous times and have heard nothing but absolutely glowing comments about Steve's performance and leadership in this regional position.

This contract calls for an increase in his base salary for FY25 to $115,000, FY26 to $120,000, FY27 to $125,000. It includes a performance annual performance stipend of $3,500 for each of the years. It's also important to note that if we do step out of the regional relationship with Marblehead, that we will be making a reduction in the base salary, but certainly I hope that that's a relationship that goes on for the next few years.

[Speaker 6] (13:24 - 13:30)
Okay, John, we're all kind of convincing here, as you may notice. I think you said it correctly. I think the document was part of it.

[Speaker 4] (13:30 - 13:33)
Yeah, I did. Okay, but you said it correctly.

[Speaker 3] (13:33 - 13:38)
I did, right? Yes. So we made an adjustment.

Sorry that this did not get updated. That's okay.

[Speaker 4] (13:39 - 13:47)
So the adjustment on this document in front of us is from 20 to 25? 25 to 20.

[Speaker 17] (13:48 - 13:51)
You actually all have the motion from the executive.

[Speaker 10] (13:52 - 13:56)
So it's taking out the retention bonus and it's putting a performance bonus.

[Speaker 6] (13:58 - 13:59)
Oh, it's in that third page.

[Speaker 10] (13:59 - 14:02)
It is, yeah. There is a page there that has the motion.

[Speaker 6] (14:02 - 14:43)
There it is. Yes, okay. So I'd like to make a motion to revise and extend the building commissioners base salary for FY25-115 and performance bonus of up to $3,500, FY26-120 base salary and performance bonus up to $3,500, FY27-125 base salary and performance bonus up to $3,500, and longevity payment of $500 starting in 25?

Yes. I think 500 was each year. After three years, right?

After three years, but Steve has been here.

[Speaker 3] (14:44 - 14:53)
Yeah, I'm sorry. He will get that longevity bonus in FY27. Just in FY27, okay.

Yeah.

[Speaker 4] (14:54 - 15:31)
All in favor? Aye. And I am a no.

And I would like to explain my no. My no, is not based on Mr. Cummings performance, just the opposite. My no is based on Mr. Cummings. I will not be voting on contracts that are still in effect up until 2025. So that is the reason why I'm a no on this contract. that.

Thank you. So motion passes. The next contract up is the police chief.

[Speaker 3] (15:32 - 17:28)
All right. Pleased to recommend extending police chief Ruben Posada's contract. Chief Posada has worked over the last two years to really help lead our police department forward in a number of critical areas.

I think last December, you know, we were able to support the hiring of a number of really upstanding candidates. A number of these candidates are going to be graduating this month from a police academy. It has been a really important two years since we've stepped out of civil service and I'm really proud of the work that chief Posada has done to address a number of challenges.

Swampskate is leading on that front and he and frankly the Swampskate police department can be proud of that work. This contract recommends that we increase the chief's base salary to $175,000 in FY25 with a uniform allowance of $1,500. In FY26, that will jump to $180,000 and uniform allowance will stay at $101,500.

FY27, this will move to $185,000 with a $500 longevity beginning in FY27 and a $1,500 uniform allowance. This also includes an annual performance bonus of up to $5,000 for each of these. Again, I feel as though Chief Posada over the last two years has demonstrated that he has the vision and the passion for helping to lead the police department forward and would recommend that we support this contract.

[Speaker 4] (17:28 - 17:51)
I have a question on here. Is this contract, my understanding was we were voting on contracts that are the same as last year with the only changes were dollars and this looks different. Is this contract different than the past contract?

[Speaker 3] (17:53 - 17:57)
No, I believe that this was just, we just changed the dollars.

[Speaker 4] (17:57 - 18:01)
You just changed the dollars so vacation and everything else is the same?

[Speaker 3] (18:01 - 18:01)
That's correct.

[Speaker 6] (18:09 - 18:21)
I'd like to make a comment if you want some more time to compare. I could comment on something different while you're comparing.

[Speaker 4] (18:22 - 18:23)
You can comment on something different.

[Speaker 6] (18:24 - 20:06)
I think in particular with the police chief's contract, but it applies to all of these, one thing we didn't say is that for those that pay very close attention, we've spending a fair amount of time in executive session really thinking all of this through extremely carefully and doing a lot of work to understand the nuances here of each of these critical leaders in town, getting information from the broader marketplace and making sure that we're getting this whole system to be hopefully more consistent, more in line with the marketplace, as you may be hearing about performance bonuses, what the base salary is, performance bonuses, clear standards for that, all of those pieces. Hopefully people in town, well, maybe a few people that will dig into the details, feel free.

Happy to answer questions about it. I feel very comfortable that we are putting ourselves in a strong position to ensure that we're retaining high quality leadership and not letting the market lure people away for whom the only problem would be that we didn't really keep up with what the right base salary was. And that's, for me, the impetus for doing some of these contracts, what some people may say early, and so I just wanted to kind of lay out my thinking for that approach.

[Speaker 2] (20:07 - 22:04)
On that note, I'd actually like to make a comment similar to Doug's, just to expand. Previously, I was very much against voting on any contracts that were not expiring in 2024. I didn't really want to consider anything for 2025.

And after hearing from the town administrator that these were contract talks that had been going on prior to my arrival on the board, I didn't want to penalize the employees by having them wait and having it be drawn out. I am and was very concerned about the process and how it happens. And Doug is right.

We did a lot of work creating markets, comparing markets, and peer towns, creating ranges, if you will, that never existed before, so that we could really understand what the competitive market looked like for these positions. In this particular position for the police chief, I'm very encouraged to vote for it because I do believe he was brought in severely under market, and we found that out very quickly when we did our market analysis. And obviously he's done a wonderful job, as Sean had said, but I think that that was very much the impetus for me to go ahead and vote on contracts that I wouldn't previously have even considered voting for.

So we did this very diligently and put a lot of thought into it. We didn't just pluck numbers out or look at numbers that were presented in front of us and say, okay, fine. A lot of times we came back with questions and reasons for lower amounts or sometimes higher amounts and really did the due diligence necessary for this.

So I feel, that's why I feel confident voting for contracts that would be expiring in 2025 and creating new contracts for them. So again, in the case of the police chief, he's done a fabulous job. I'm happy to vote for this, as well as the building commissioner, and I thank him for all his work.

Patrick, all of these people, really, and we value them very much.

[Speaker 4] (22:04 - 22:26)
So back to my question. This is, item number three is not what we discussed. There is, under vacation.

[Speaker 6] (22:27 - 22:28)
Which one are you looking at right now?

[Speaker 10] (22:28 - 22:30)
The police chief.

[Speaker 6] (22:35 - 22:36)
Did something change?

[Speaker 4] (22:37 - 22:58)
Well, it's different. Well, we have a contract in front of us that you're looking to approve a contract. We have a contract that we would discuss in executive session.

It says, Quesada will be entitled to four weeks of vacation, sick, and three days of personnel leave, and that's left out of here.

[Speaker 3] (23:00 - 23:13)
I'm happy to kind of just include that language, Mary Ann. I'm not sure why that was changed, but certainly, we can make those changes reflect the existing contract.

[Speaker 10] (23:14 - 23:18)
Sean, is that the standard vacation allotment for most people?

[Speaker 3] (23:18 - 23:46)
Not really. You know, each of these department heads come in with different levels of experience and different levels of, you know, frankly, you know, desires. Typically, four weeks for a senior level department head is pretty standard, though, and so some ask for a little more.

I generally try to hold that as a standard that all departments have.

[Speaker 4] (23:53 - 24:01)
Well, you're also missing, I mean, is there, where is the command vehicle? Am I missing that?

[Speaker 3] (24:04 - 24:21)
I'm not sure. You know, Mary Ann, I'm going to go back. I think, you know, these were adjusted.

We'll go back and use the framework of that prior contract with updating just the financial terms.

[Speaker 4] (24:21 - 24:23)
Okay, and is the bonus in here?

[Speaker 5] (24:29 - 24:42)
Just the language. Is the language a contract as amended by the language David or Doug read? With the bonus and the one in Japanese.

[Speaker 4] (24:43 - 24:49)
Okay, it's in there? That's in the motion? It's in the motion, yeah.

Because you guys read right from here, correct?

[Speaker 5] (24:58 - 25:02)
Which is the language that Sean read, so the motion was what Sean stated.

[Speaker 4] (25:04 - 25:06)
You want to read in the motion?

[Speaker 5] (25:06 - 25:40)
Yeah, so I'll move to approve, to revise and extend the Chief of Police's base salary for fiscal year 25 to $175,000, a uniform allowance of $1,500, fiscal year 26, a base salary of $18,000, and a uniform allowance of $1,500, fiscal year 27, a base salary of $185,000, a longevity of $500, and a $1,500 uniform allowance, including a performance bonus of up to $5,000 a year for fiscal years 25, 26, and 27, given in place of a retention bonus.

[Speaker 6] (25:42 - 25:53)
And Mariela, to address your comment, in all other respects, the contract shall be as it was. Does that work right? Yes.

[Speaker 4] (25:53 - 25:54)
Does that have to be in the motion?

[Speaker 5] (25:54 - 25:59)
I can add it to the motion. Please add it to the motion. In all other aspects, the contract will remain what it was.

[Speaker 4] (26:00 - 26:22)
Second. All in favor? Aye.

And I am a no, again, because I am not going to be voting for contracts that don't expire until 2025. With that, the motion carries. Next on our agenda is Chief Graham Archer.

[Speaker 3] (26:22 - 28:01)
So I'm very pleased to recommend an extension for Chief Archer. Chief Archer is a 35-year veteran employee of the town who goes through the ranks and has done an absolutely remarkable job leading the Swanson Fire Department. He is also our Emergency Management Director, has worked through the pandemic, was highlighted and recognized by the board.

This contract extension would boost Chief Archer's salary to $159,000 for FY25, plus a $5,000 emergency management stipend, an additional $600 uniform allowance, and a longevity stipend of $1,850 for FY26. This would increase to $164,000 for a $5,000 emergency management stipend, a uniform allowance of $600, and a longevity of $1,850. For FY27, this would jump to $169,000 for a $5,000 emergency management stipend, a uniform allowance of $600, and a longevity bonus of $1,850.

Annual performance bonus is $5,000. It will be supported in the contract, and all other contract terms will remain the same.

[Speaker 4] (28:02 - 28:13)
All other contract terms will remain the same. Okay. I have a motion to make a motion to approve.

[Speaker 6] (28:14 - 29:02)
Sure, I'd be happy to. I'd like to revise and make a motion to revise and extend the Fire Chief's base salary for FY25 to $159,000, $5,000 emergency coordinator stipend, uniform allowance of $600, longevity of $1,850. In FY26, base salary of $164,000, $5,000 emergency coordinator stipend, uniform allowance of $600, and longevity of $1,850.

FY27, base salary of $169,000, $5,000 emergency coordinator stipend, uniform allowance of $600, and longevity of $1,850. Performance bonuses of up to $5,000 shall be available in FY25, 26, and 27. With everything else in the contract being the same.

I'll second that.

[Speaker 8] (29:03 - 29:40)
Before we vote, I just want to say something real quick. I just want to personally thank Chief Archer, a 35-year veteran of our Fire Department, and Graham, I just want to thank you for your exemplary leadership. Chief, you're anything but average, and the Town's lucky to have you as our Fire Chief and Head of Emergency Preparedness.

We're a better Town as a result of all of your efforts. Your work truly matters. It matters to me, it matters to this Board, and it matters to the residents of the Town of Swampskin.

I'd give you the moon and stars if I could, but since I can't, I'll support your contract.

[Speaker 4] (29:46 - 30:05)
So, can I have a motion to approve? We've already done that. Oh, a motion to, all right, sorry.

And I second. Very good. So, all in favor?

Aye. And I am a no, because I'm not, I am not supporting these contracts that don't expire for 2025.

[Speaker 3] (30:06 - 30:37)
I just want to thank the Board. I know these are difficult conversations. I appreciate the time and effort that the Board has put into this.

You know, public service is not glamorous. It has been difficult over the last few years. Your work in supporting these contracts is incredibly important.

I do want to just mention that all of the payments outlined in this fiscal year have been budgeted, so we won't need to go look for any funds.

[Speaker 4] (30:37 - 30:41)
Thank you, Sean. We have a hand raised. WD?

[Speaker 15] (30:48 - 30:49)
Yes, may I speak?

[Speaker 17] (30:52 - 30:56)
Bill, can you speak? Is he muted? I can't see that screen.

[Speaker 15] (30:56 - 31:02)
May I speak? It's Bill Demento. There he is.

May I speak?

[Speaker 4] (31:03 - 31:04)
Yes, you may speak.

[Speaker 15] (31:05 - 31:50)
It's Bill Demento, and I really have to be extremely critical of this Board by advancing these contracts. It has nothing to do with the individuals. It has to do with the principle of someone signs a contract for so many years, and then after one year or two years decides they don't want to live with it.

We have a police chief, anyone else in this advanced contract. It's just financially irresponsible. You have people in the town responsible that can't afford you getting the moon to the fire chief.

That's ridiculous. You need to be more responsible, and what you're doing is disgraceful. Thank you for the time.

[Speaker 4] (31:51 - 32:01)
Thank you, Mr. Demento. Now, we're going to move on to number three. What?

Do we have another hand? No, I think you have to move on. Okay.

[Speaker 6] (32:01 - 32:05)
Can I just, for the record, I would like to...

[Speaker 4] (32:05 - 32:12)
Hold on, please. I don't want to be commenting on resident comments, so I'd like to move now to...

[Speaker 6] (32:12 - 32:14)
We're in discussion right now, Mary Ellen.

[Speaker 4] (32:14 - 32:20)
We voted, so we're moving on.

[Speaker 8] (32:21 - 32:27)
I respectfully disagree with Mr. Demento, as do I, and I just want that to be in the record.

[Speaker 4] (32:29 - 32:34)
Okay, so now we're moving on to follow-up and possible vote on the housing production plan.

[Speaker 3] (32:36 - 34:11)
Sean? This has been updated by our Community and Economic Development Director, Marzi Kalaska. It has included or updated stats for a number of housing projects that are advancing in town.

This basically highlights one of our reporting requirements, allows us to continue to focus on the type of housing production that will improve the quality of life for residents over the next few years. The board had a presentation from Marzi a little over a month ago. This was established initially in February of 2008, and it's a Massachusetts requirement for a comprehensive permit.

We have to submit this to state agencies, and it gives us a chance to really look at, you know, where the housing challenges really exist for Swampskate, and once this is approved, it makes us eligible for some grants. Certainly happy to answer questions, but this is a report that has to be approved by the select board and submitted off to state agencies.

[Speaker 4] (34:12 - 34:35)
Does anybody have any questions? I know that there are a couple things that were going to be changed, and according to Marzi, they were actually not changed, but updated. The updates are in the plan.

Any questions? We have a motion to approve.

[Speaker 6] (34:37 - 35:03)
I'd be happy to make a motion to approve this. I'm making just a brief comment after we do that, but I make a motion to approve the housing production plan as presented to us tonight so that the town administrator can proceed with the submission process to the state, which brings us into compliance with DOH LC. I will second Mr. Thompson's motion.

[Speaker 4] (35:03 - 35:04)
All in favor?

[Speaker 6] (35:05 - 36:04)
Aye. Aye. The only quick comment I want to say is that this is, you know, just incredibly dense, you know, really important document, and, you know, we all talked about our goals a few weeks ago.

There are some very, very specific next steps in here that I know even beyond the Affordable Housing Trust last night, like, it's easy to forget about this, but if we really try to kind of hold on to this report and not sit on the shelf and kind of check a box, there's some really important things for us to try to, we think about pine trees, we think about other things that are happening in town. There's a lot of guidance in here about what we really need. You know, we need rental housing, we need housing for people who are young and kind of trying to stay in town, and we need housing for seniors who are downsizing and trying to stay in town.

And just we kind of keep that in mind as we move forward.

[Speaker 5] (36:05 - 37:00)
Yeah, I just want to echo if that's okay, something Doug had said, that the housing production plan really should reflect the values of Swampscott. And a lot of the things that we're discussing, for example, with the DE&I coordinator and our community at large is what makes the value system that is Swampscott. A lot of it's reflected right here, right?

We're we want to be an open community for folks to come in and live here and try us out, see if we fit them, see if we fit. And we want to have our seniors age in place. We want to have that community that has loved Swampscott for so long to stay in Swampscott.

And so this is just a real reflection of value. And I think to Doug's point, we have to live it. We can't just say it.

So we should champion it at all occasions to do so.

[Speaker 4] (37:01 - 38:01)
Okay. With that said, we're now moving on to number four, discussion about road and control. I've added this to our agenda tonight because we have had too much, too many complaints, too many issues.

And now I just feel like it's very important that we have the opportunity to hear from the town administrator from the Board of Health on what the plan is to help out with this issue. This is not an issue in one section of town. This is a townwide issue.

This is not an issue with one tiny piece of Humphrey Street. It's a townwide issue. So I'd just like the town administrator to give us some type of an update on what we're going to be doing.

And then we're going to keep this on our agendas to not monthly, but we're going to keep our eye on this. We need to have some control over them. Sure.

[Speaker 3] (38:02 - 39:45)
Mary Ann, I appreciate you bringing this conversation forward. We heard at our last meeting, it was a resident that had some concerns. Our health department, health director Jeff Vaughn went down, spoke to not only the individual that had the complaint, but we actually went and talked to neighbors around that property.

We know that we live in a region, frankly, a country that has issues with roads. We're no different than any other community. I don't want to make it out to seem as though we have a problem that's greater or lesser than any other community.

But when we do have issues with roads, we have to be responsive and we have to jump on this and we have to implement control measures. The town spends over $10,000 in pest control for our properties. We know that eliminating a few of the garbage disposals at the Hadley School and frankly the other school will go a long way in actually reducing some of the pests that we have in this Humphrey Street corridor and the area that we last met.

But there's more work to do and our health director is online here and he's going to step through a little bit of the challenge protocols on pest control. We have met, we are going to continue to meet, evolve public engagement protocols so that as a community we can all learn about the importance of managing pest control property by property because everybody has a responsibility for this. So Jeff, welcome.

[Speaker 7] (39:46 - 48:30)
Thank you very much. Thank you Sean and thank you to the select board. I'm happy to be here tonight.

Well I just want to explain, I meet with my regional partners for numerous matters on a regular basis and we all say the same thing. We have seen an uptick in rat complaints over the past few years. Salem, Arblehead, Beverly, Peabody, Lynn, Boston up to Cape Ann.

It's really interesting. We hope it's a cyclical type of thing like gypsy moths and jackrabbits but sadly for this humans are contributing to the population and just like all these other municipalities we have to promote good education and we have to prevent further population spread. On the health department page of the town website you can find a section of rodent education including an updated powerpoint link which I will run through tonight real quickly which gives some visual examples of what to look for around your own property.

Before that I would like to briefly run through our complaint procedure which is quite similar to other towns on the north shore. When I receive complaint directly from customer service or directly offering through customer service, I reach out to the person and try to figure out what is going on. Where is the issue?

What are they seeing? Do they have any ideas where they are seeing rats or where these rats are coming from? Then I try to make an appointment to visit their property to get a better understanding of the area and garner information.

See if I can view abutting yards, rodent runways which we'll talk about in a little bit between properties so we can see which way they're going, where are they staying, all that other fun stuff. Whether I can narrow the area of the rodent burrow or den down it helps. Either way I then send out an educational letter with guidelines to help eliminate rodent activity to a range of abutters around the complaint area that explains that we have received a complaint in your area and please adhere to the guidelines that the letter offers.

I offer to walk through anyone's private yard with permission if they are uncertain what to look for or if they think their neighbor has a possible problem. The letter also reminds them if they notice rodent activity on the problem the services will license pest control operator are recommended. Usually this letter brings more leads.

Sometimes I have to issue an order correct for causing a nuisance. If there's a wildlife feeding issue myself or the animal control officer can use the new wildlife feeding bylaw to assist us with this problem. I recently sent out a warning in fact last week.

Sometimes we may need to follow up, sometimes the problem moves to another area where food, water, and shelter are available. I also take note of trash storage, bird feeders, dilapidation. It's amazing how many sheds there are in town that are falling apart and clutter when I'm in an investigation on these concerns.

So I'd like to run through a brief PowerPoint with you guys and we can start that right now and Diane could you please move those through when I get to that point. I'd appreciate it. So facts on rats, info, actions, and education.

How can I prevent rats from becoming a problem on my property? Well to control rodents you must remove easy access to the things they need to survive. Food, shelter, and water.

Like any animal rats live in a neighborhood because they can find the resources that they need. Removal of these resources is necessary for the prevention of long-term reduction in rodent activity. So what can you do?

Use trash containers with secure lids and always keep them tightly closed. Never store trash outside of a securely closed barrel. Regularly inspect your trash cans for signs of entry by rats or squirrels and clean them periodically to discourage feeding.

Discourage feeding, excuse me. Properly replace any damaged barrels. You can contact the town hall customer service if there's a problem with your barrel, the town issue barrel, and if you are using blue bags those should be stored in a covered barrel as well.

Refrain from leaving food out for birds, stray cats, or other animals. Any food that is available to other wildlife will also be available to rats, providing them with a constant food source and allowing them to quickly multiply. Please do not leave pet waste out at night.

Do not leave dog waste or animal waste out at night because they will also eat that. Take bird feeders in at night or don't use them at all. Bird feeders are just something that will absolutely cause rodents to come to your property, especially if they have the type to fall on the ground and the ground is covered with seeds and everything.

You'll be just asking for rodents to come to your property. So let's move on to shelter. Keep outdoor plants trimmed so that they don't touch the house or other buildings.

Trim them so they are in a v-shape, allowing a clear view of the ground that will discourage burrowing. Store boxes, firewood, and equipment off the ground at least 18 inches and away from walls. Remove trash and yard debris frequently and eliminate possible burrowing areas.

And the final thing is water. Empty any sources of standing water so that they don't sit out overnight, such as bird baths, water bowls for pets, and other outdoor items that can hold water. Repair water leaks or drips at faucets, hoses, and AC units that could cause long-term standing water.

As we move into some pictures, some graphics here, just as important as identifying a problem, we need to know what burrow holes are, right? If you don't have, if you never had a problem, what do you look for? You might not have any idea.

So below you will see some pictures, which lead, burrow holes will lead to an underground rat's nest. They will generally, around two to four inches with smooth edges, they tend to be found under plants or items stored outdoors, so it's important to regularly and proactively search for them. Rat nests usually have more than one entrance, so it is likely that you will find multiple holes, as you can see here.

All these pictures, except for the one on the next page, which I was definitely not going to take a picture and handle myself, these are all from town. All from, I could name the spots, but I'm not going to embarrass anybody. So, droppings.

Rat droppings are around a half an inch to three quarters of an inch long with blunt edges. They tend to be found near trash and other food sources. You can tell the difference between new droppings and older ones by how they look, which can help identify how recently the rat activity was in the area.

Newer ones are dark and shiny. We knew that. Well, old droppings are chalky and dry, and that's a picture I was not going to handle myself.

Gnaw marks, G-N-A-W, gnaw marks. Like many of the other rodent species, including squirrels, rat teeth grow continuously. They keep habitually, they habitually chew on things like to file them down and keep them short.

Thus, looking for recent marks from rat chewing on things like garbage cans, fences, and under porches can also indicate where rats are getting their food, where they're living, and all the routes they're going to travel between the two. As you can see with the lattice work, there's also a lot of dirt at the bottom of that hole in the lattice. It was underneath a staircase to a multifamily going outside.

And you can also tell till signs there's dirt pushed out, which you can see on the ground there. And there's also on the bottom of that, you'll see a really dirty area underneath that hole that they built, and that's the grease and dirt from their stomachs when they're running around. It just goes in, they just scrape over that when they go into the thing.

So that's another telltale sign that you have some active stuff going on in your property. Runways that I mentioned earlier, these are just basically ways for them to get from yard to yard. You can see these underneath picket fences, you can see them going underneath walls, you can see them anywhere that these guys are going back and forth.

So rats take the same pathways called runways over and over between their burrows and their food sources. The runways may extend over several properties as rats may live at one location and feed at another. This repeated movement leaves certain signs that make it possible to identify the rat presence in located the burrows or food sources.

Runways are generally located along a vertical fence such as a wall or a fence. And just a side thought, keep in mind that unlike squirrels, which love being up in the air and love being on top of things, rats are just so different. They don't want to be seen, they'll go right along the walls, they'll go behind all shrubbery along fences, they'll do whatever they can not to be seen until it gets dark out, and then they try to sneak around when it's quiet.

And lastly, just a quick note, Town of Swampscot bylaw, feeding of wildlife, which we enacted, I believe, one or two years ago. This can be found on the Town website, and please read through it if you have any questions. Like I said, the first violation is a warning, then there's a increasing fine along the way.

And that's what I have so far, and if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

[Speaker 4] (48:31 - 48:35)
I have some questions. And does anybody on the board have any questions?

[Speaker 2] (48:36 - 48:38)
Daniel, I have some comments and questions.

[Speaker 10] (48:40 - 48:45)
I'm struck by the fact that everything that you just mentioned was geared toward the homeowner.

[Speaker 2] (48:46 - 49:09)
And what I'd really like to know is what you, as the head of the Board of Health, are proposing to do that might be outside of the box or on the Town side to combat this problem. Because I don't think the problem is just everybody being educated about their property and how to store their trash and how to use a closed barrel, right?

[Speaker 10] (49:09 - 50:14)
I think it's a little bit more serious than that. And I think we need to think a little bit more outside of the box in terms of what Swampscot is going to do to help the people of this town with this issue, as opposed to just putting it on the homeowner. I don't think that's really the direction that's fair, right?

I think there's a piece of this that Swampscot needs to try to mitigate. We need to step in here and either, I don't know if we're issuing tickets for people that have their trash out the night before, or we're paying attention to things of that nature, but we need to develop more of a solution to how we're going to deal with this. This isn't just in one area of town, you're right, it's everywhere.

And it might be up and down the seashore, but it doesn't mean that, oh hey, it's a problem for everyone, we're just going to ignore it. We need some action. And action to me is not educating people who I think are fairly educated in general about how they look in their yard to see if they've got holes or whether or not their trash is secure.

We need a plan, a concrete plan as to how we're going to help people in this town deal with this. Do you have anything in that vein?

[Speaker 7] (50:15 - 50:41)
Well, I can tell you that I routinely check on businesses as well to make sure they're doing what they should be doing, because that's a major issue as well. And whenever I'm out and around, I do see something where trash is not in the proper thing. I have to make a note and then I have to send this resident a letter or this business a letter.

So there are a couple things right there that we are doing. Generally, we don't go on private property and offer pest control, if that's what you're insinuating. I wasn't quite sure on that.

[Speaker 10] (50:42 - 50:50)
I was thinking more in line of what the City of Boston is doing to combat the rat problem from a city perspective or from a town perspective.

[Speaker 2] (50:50 - 50:54)
What other methods are we thinking about that we can employ?

[Speaker 3] (50:54 - 52:00)
Danielle, actually, I sent that plan off to staff this week, last week, and we met this week and we talked about things that we could do differently. And I agree with you that what we've done today is just not enough. We need to have targeted responses, because when these populations pop up, we've got to pop up and we've got to approach this throughout the town.

And it isn't a residential versus commercial thing. We are a town. And when we see infestations, we've got to respond to this.

And as I mentioned earlier, we've got over $10,000 in the town budget to deal with pest control. We may have to think about how to allocate some additional funding as we see spikes and increases regionally, but also here. And we're committed to doing that and coming back and providing forward with additional updates as we try to enhance our ability to work through these I just don't want to stigmatize, you know, any area or town, because it's everywhere.

[Speaker 4] (52:01 - 52:02)
So, hold on. Doug had his hand up.

[Speaker 6] (52:04 - 52:17)
Oh, you're just waving? Yeah, I was waving. So, can you be more specific, Danielle or Sean?

Like, what is the, what, the City of Boston? Like, what are they?

[Speaker 10] (52:18 - 52:19)
They have a major rat problem, Doug.

[Speaker 6] (52:19 - 52:23)
No, no, no, but what are they doing? Is there something specific? Oh, wait, can I say something?

[Speaker 4] (52:23 - 52:43)
Can I just give me one second? What I'd like to do is I'd like to have Sean, I'd like to give Sean the opportunity and Jeff to go back and to come up with a plan and come up with updates on how we're going to be attacking this and come back and report to us in the near future. Would that, would that be okay with everybody?

[Speaker 6] (52:43 - 52:50)
Sure, it just, it sounded like there was like some, like, secret bullet that, you know, we're just not doing. No, I'm sorry, there's no secret bullet.

[Speaker 2] (52:50 - 52:59)
I was saying with Katie, and it's been like, getting people to learn and discuss, you know, ways of combating it, different than just having homeowners come to the trash.

[Speaker 12] (52:59 - 53:01)
Right, so I'm just interested what that is, but yeah.

[Speaker 5] (53:02 - 54:27)
Katie? So, I have been in contact with the Town Administrator since April, maybe, about the rat issue, specifically along the monument. And there was a lot of conversation about the dog waste bags that were popping up and people thought it was dog owners leaving dog waste bags.

It actually wasn't, it was rats taking them out of the trash barrel. And then, you know, that had to be cleaned up and kids were walking to school and neighbors were walking around and they noticed this. And so, you know, we have spoken on it a number of times.

Some of the, what the plan might include is a changeover of some of the trash barrels in that area. I know that's not going to solve problems universally, but those trash barrels are open. Actually, the bottom of them, the way that they're slatted, the rats can get inside, they can chew through the plastic, they can pull the trash out.

So, I know other, there have been other suggestions made, which we forwarded to the Town Administrator to look at from residents that I have received. So, I think Mary Ellen's plan to have some of those compiled and put together to see what is financially feasible for the problem right now and then what is the plan going forward to rectify some of the outstanding issues we know are not helping the rat problem. How we sort of phase some of those out in a responsible manner going forward.

I think that's a great plan and we should go behind to do that.

[Speaker 4] (54:27 - 54:53)
So, Sean, if you could be in touch with the Board of Health and with the Solid Waste Committee, the Chairman of the Solid Waste Committee, actually, they were talking about this at their last meeting. I'm going to use it and we'll give you the update there. So, they have a number of recommendations on how we can make a dent in this.

So, if you can go back and come up with a gold star plan on how we're going to tackle this.

[Speaker 3] (54:54 - 55:48)
I do just want to mention on Monument Avocated, I appreciate you highlighting that. We did hire a company. We used some technology, CO2, to actually address the infestation and we were able to address that problem.

But it does require us to take aggressive steps when the problems pop up. We need to know about them and we need to hire professionals. I would be remiss not to mention that generally we don't want poison to be used as a tool we want, you know, better pest control strategies that will help protect other wildlife.

We don't want to see, you know, other animals be killed because we're using poison that those animals.

[Speaker 21] (55:49 - 55:50)
You've been very clear about that.

[Speaker 3] (55:50 - 56:18)
A little bit more mindful about the environment and in these efforts, you know, there's plenty of ways that we can do this. I'm happy to follow up with the Board of Health and the Director of Health and frankly have code enforcement officials and come back to the Board with more detailed plans.

[Speaker 4] (56:18 - 56:41)
So, what we're going to do is we're just going to be bringing this up again and have a better plan. And I did say if anybody wanted to comment on this, but we've already said we're going to come up with a plan. So, if anybody has a comment that they really need to have, then let me know, but I really don't think anybody needs to have it because we are going to address it at our next meeting.

[Speaker 16] (56:42 - 56:42)
Okay?

[Speaker 4] (56:43 - 1:00:07)
Okay. So, and one issue is really important. This is an issue at our schools, an issue at the middle school, and I know that for a fact, and that is a real big topic that's got to get addressed.

All right. So, now we're going to move on to discussion on appointment process and boards and commissions. And this is, Diane, if you can put this up.

This is something that I actually brought up a while ago. So, it's been like a little work in progress and I actually met with David a while ago on this. So, ready?

Oh, no, we have to go to the process. All right. So, one of the concerns that I had was the process in which we pick boards and committees, and I think we need to tweak our system so that we can have more transparency and more opportunity for people throughout the town to apply.

So, this is my recommendation when I'm just asking the select board members to look at my recommendation and then to, you know, get back with other ideas and we can just, you know, tweak this along and hopefully get something together, you know, possibly by the next meeting or the meeting after that. So, my recommendation is in March and February, committee chairs ask their existing committee members who wants to be considered for another term. And then so, that's February, March.

February, March. February, late February, they say who wants to be considered, people give in their names, and then we get to the next slide, March and April, and we're advertising across all of our social media, our website, everything we can to ask anybody who wants to apply for any of our boards and committees. On May 1st, applications are sent to select board members.

The select board members go through the applications and they grade the applications on a scale of one to five, and they make recommendations as to who they feel would best serve the committee. And then that recommendation goes to the committee liaison. The reason it goes to the committee liaison, that liaison should have the best understanding of the committee, and then the liaison should be able to make a recommendation to the select board.

During this time in the month of May, select board members, if they should choose, can call and interview people and get more information as to why they want to serve or what they can add to the committee. Then it goes to liaison. And then June, the select board votes on boards and committees.

Applications are received throughout the year. Applications stay on file for the three years before they're removed, or unless somebody wants to remove them. And if we have a vacancy in mid-year, what we would do is we would pull any application that's already in there, but we would still advertise it for 30 days, and we would just follow the process.

[Speaker 8] (1:00:08 - 1:00:22)
Yeah, just a quick question. I mean, it's similar. It certainly lays out the process, but where is the involvement of our talent and professional staff?

[Speaker 4] (1:00:23 - 1:00:33)
Well, these are the committees. So I'm really focused on the committees that are advisory committees to the select board. So that's why I'm keeping it on the shoulders of the select board.

[Speaker 8] (1:00:34 - 1:01:04)
Okay, because some of these are highly technical committees, such as water, sewer infrastructure advisory committee, which would, in my opinion, I would like to have the opinion, the thought from our DPW director, from our county administrator. For some of these other committees, maybe we have the input from HR. So I like the timeline, but I do think that input from our professional staff in some instances is certainly important.

[Speaker 4] (1:01:05 - 1:01:06)
All right, let's try to figure that one out.

[Speaker 5] (1:01:12 - 1:01:46)
I just worry about the vacancies being advertised for 30 days. Some of these committees meet monthly, and while I don't want to discourage the timeline for people to get involved, to be missing a member could be detrimental for 30 to 60 days, because we're saying the vacancy is going to be advertised for 30 days, but then we still have to make a decision. So if we don't make it in the first select board after that 30 days, we're looking at actually 60 days before we approve that.

So you're going on two months without a committee member.

[Speaker 2] (1:01:46 - 1:01:47)
So what would you recommend?

[Speaker 5] (1:01:48 - 1:02:20)
I would say 15, so long as we're going to opine to vote within that first select board meeting after those 15 days for these vacancies to be filled. And we're not going to drag feet, because we're just putting it on the backs of the committee members who are already participating and giving a lot of their time and energy. I don't want to overburden them or work them to the point where they now want to leave a committee because they're not feeling supported.

So I just want to be cognizant of that. Would 10 days be too short?

[Speaker 4] (1:02:22 - 1:02:30)
Or are you good with 15? Two weeks. Yeah, two weeks.

I mean, I just want people to think about this.

[Speaker 5] (1:02:30 - 1:02:58)
I think two weeks seems like enough time, but I would hate for somebody, somebody could still apply for a position even if there wasn't an open one. And keep their application on file for three years. So even if they missed the 15-day or 14-day window, they would still have a bite at the apple when our annual applications were reviewed.

So long as we're making sure that those opportunities are left available.

[Speaker 4] (1:02:59 - 1:03:06)
Okay, so that's my introduction, and we can come back and visit this at our next meeting.

[Speaker 6] (1:03:06 - 1:03:10)
What about the current situation?

[Speaker 4] (1:03:12 - 1:03:30)
The current situation is, I have to go over the information. We have a couple of committees that actually, I did some research at the end of last week, that already are pretty much in compliance with taking people off of the list, making phone calls, and interviewing people. So we're pretty close to that.

[Speaker 6] (1:03:31 - 1:03:33)
I meant more in terms of the reappointment stuff.

[Speaker 3] (1:03:33 - 1:03:39)
Yeah, I've interviewed a couple people over the last week, and I'll be advancing some recommendations.

[Speaker 5] (1:03:40 - 1:03:41)
But we had a list of recommendations.

[Speaker 6] (1:03:42 - 1:03:47)
I'm just talking about very simply people who have been on committees and just re-upping.

[Speaker 4] (1:03:47 - 1:04:21)
Right, so we'll see that at our next meeting. Okay. All right, now we're moving on to number six.

Number six is on the agenda, discussion on new traffic pattern for Reddington streets. There's no vote for this tonight. This is just a recommendation, and to see what the board feels, I'd like you to know that there are a number of residents in that area that are requesting that this goes back to the old pattern.

[Speaker 3] (1:04:23 - 1:05:38)
John, I've heard from a number of residents. You know, we changed Reddington to a one-way street when we relocated the elementary school to the Adley and St. John's School. We had a lot of traffic in the neighborhood at this point.

We also have heard that it would be helpful as we think about the redevelopment of the Adley Hotel, that that actually has a two-way traffic pattern. I have asked our public safety teams to look into this, and I think at a future meeting, we can invite them along with our UPW director in for a formal recommendation if the board's inclined to take this up. I think at this point, it would make sense, and given the concerns of some of the neighbors, I think a two-way traffic pattern would work out well for the neighborhood.

I have had a couple people ask me to leave it as a one-way, so I don't think we should be surprised to hear from some folks that may think that leaving it as a one-way was an enhancement for safety.

[Speaker 4] (1:05:38 - 1:05:43)
Does this require a public hearing if we go to change it?

[Speaker 3] (1:05:44 - 1:05:46)
No, but it requires a vote of the board.

[Speaker 4] (1:05:47 - 1:06:02)
Okay, so would everybody be okay with this coming up on the next agenda and we give a yes or no? Does everybody want to see, do you want the law enforcement to come in and give you a reason to vote yes or no?

[Speaker 14] (1:06:04 - 1:06:12)
I would like to hear it from our public safety team. Okay, so here we go. So, as a resident, how do I get input into that decision?

[Speaker 4] (1:06:16 - 1:06:28)
All right, so this will be on an agenda in the future, and there will be public comment available.

[Speaker 3] (1:06:31 - 1:06:37)
I'm happy if you want to come in and meet with me as well. I'm happy to meet with you. I'm just saying the public safety is going to meet.

[Speaker 14] (1:06:37 - 1:06:40)
I'd like to go to that meeting before it comes here.

[Speaker 4] (1:06:41 - 1:06:53)
Did you want to comment on that tonight? Oh yeah, so if you want to comment tonight, Brian, you want to go ahead and comment on it tonight? Anymore?

[Speaker 14] (1:06:54 - 1:07:24)
I was so happy when you changed it one way because going down Reddington Street would take a right heading to Linn. Because of the bump out, everybody's tires goes over the granite, and you want to swing out and not hit the granite bump out, you have to go into the oncoming lane of the left turn traffic. And so, to me, it was much safer making that turn when you have one way, because the bump out is really strong.

It takes you right to the turn.

[Speaker 3] (1:07:25 - 1:07:27)
It's a good point.

[Speaker 18] (1:07:30 - 1:07:31)
Okay.

[Speaker 4] (1:07:39 - 1:07:52)
All right, so next Next on our agenda, we will be discussing our I&I update.

[Speaker 20] (1:07:53 - 1:07:58)
And Amy is here. She's online and she's going to do the presentation. Okay.

[Speaker 11] (1:07:59 - 1:10:16)
Hi everyone. Okay, I will keep this short and sweet, and I know Steve Cummings is in the back in case you have any technical questions for him as well. So this is just a quick overview of what is I&I, the infiltration and inflow.

And I kindly borrow this graphic from the 2021 presentation when this was first voted. So the infiltration is just unwanted groundwater that enters the sewer system through cracks and structural defects. And the inflow is unwanted rainwater that enters the sewer system through roof leaks, sump pumps, cellar drains, etc.

The I&I offset policy was adopted in December of 2021, and can be revised in the future by the board. It is applicable to newer sewer permits with flows greater than 1000 gallons per day. And then this slide just shows the calculation.

So I put the wording that's in the policy and underneath it, I put how that actually works out mathematically. So the I&I offset ratio that was adopted is a 4 to 1. The offset fee is $5.

And then it's $110 per bedroom, which is the industry standard on that. But the $5 and the 4 to 1 offset ratio can be revoted or revisited by the board at any time. These revenues can support any projects that would mitigate I&I.

And to date, no funds have actually been expended from this. So this slide just shows what we have brought in date. So fiscal year 22, when this was adopted, we received one fee, which is $2,200.

In fiscal year 23, we received seven, so $24,200. FY 24, we received seven. And so far, we've received one in FY 25, which just started.

[Speaker 4] (1:10:18 - 1:10:28)
Can I ask you a quick question? Sorry. Are you saying that if I add a bedroom to my house, what's the cost going to be if I add one bedroom to my house?

[Speaker 6] (1:10:32 - 1:10:35)
But only if it's over 1000 gallons per day, right?

[Speaker 4] (1:10:36 - 1:10:42)
Okay. So it's $2,200.

[Speaker 11] (1:10:43 - 1:10:47)
Yeah. Based off the calculation, $2,200 is the lowest the fee goes.

[Speaker 4] (1:10:52 - 1:10:56)
And our total revenue since the inception of 2022?

[Speaker 11] (1:10:57 - 1:10:58)
Is almost $60,000.

[Speaker 4] (1:10:59 - 1:11:09)
Right. And I have said this before. The big issue was that was originally forecasted to be, I don't know, was it $250,000 a year?

[Speaker 11] (1:11:10 - 1:11:13)
It was $500,000. I looked back at the 21 presentation.

[Speaker 3] (1:11:14 - 1:11:41)
Yeah. At that point, I think we were looking at multifamilies, a number of you know, projects that were in the pipeline. And several of, well, a major, the Elm Street property had, came in as a 40B and the ZBA exempted the project from the I&I.

[Speaker 4] (1:11:41 - 1:11:45)
Right. The ZBA exempted that project from I&I.

[Speaker 3] (1:11:45 - 1:12:10)
And so we've got to be better about making sure that that does not get exempted for any of these projects. The infrastructure really has to use these dollars to help maintain that status quo. What about wake work?

That was approved before this was implemented.

[Speaker 4] (1:12:11 - 1:12:19)
So you're saying in 2024, we only added seven bedrooms? In Swarovski? A little bit more than that.

[Speaker 11] (1:12:21 - 1:12:30)
Yeah, there were seven permits paid. So there was one permit that was paid for $11,000 and the other ones were about $2,200.

[Speaker 8] (1:12:32 - 1:12:40)
So, Mary Ellen, if somebody tears down a house and they have three bedrooms and they're putting back three bedrooms, they get the credit.

[Speaker 4] (1:12:40 - 1:12:51)
I get that. Thank you, Steve. It just seems like, I guess, I just thought that there were, there's more building going on in Swarovski.

[Speaker 5] (1:12:51 - 1:12:54)
There definitely is. Not bedrooms, maybe kitchens and bathrooms.

[Speaker 4] (1:12:54 - 1:12:54)
Right.

[Speaker 3] (1:12:55 - 1:12:57)
This is the world. This is the lap of the world.

[Speaker 16] (1:12:58 - 1:12:58)
Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (1:12:59 - 1:13:05)
Yeah, you know, we did see a lag after the pandemic. Hopefully things will start to pick up.

[Speaker 16] (1:13:05 - 1:13:05)
Okay.

[Speaker 6] (1:13:06 - 1:13:23)
So just to press on that point, I can think of a couple of streets I can think of that I think there's like seven houses that have had definitely bedrooms built in the last couple of years. But maybe these are the seven. I don't know.

So who tracks this? How does it get tracked?

[Speaker 3] (1:13:24 - 1:13:30)
Building departments. The fees are paid when they apply for a permit.

[Speaker 10] (1:13:32 - 1:13:38)
So this is only people that are applying for permits, right? People could be actually creating bedrooms that we don't know about, maybe.

[Speaker 8] (1:13:38 - 1:13:51)
Yeah, I mean, some people are getting a little cute about it and learning about it. You know, maybe they're going to put it in an office on paper. I mean, you know, that's the way it is.

[Speaker 4] (1:13:53 - 1:13:56)
Huh. So how do you stop something like that?

[Speaker 3] (1:13:59 - 1:14:22)
You know, I think part of it is, you know, we can, you know, with the assessing function, we can go in and inspect properties. We have suspicions about bedrooms. There may be ways for us to evaluate that.

We can't get in, we can assume.

[Speaker 6] (1:14:24 - 1:14:35)
So this kind of made me like really favorite everybody. Why is it that only new development was subject to this?

[Speaker 3] (1:14:35 - 1:15:17)
Hard to go back retroactively and say, hey, everybody's got to, you know. And how does this play in with the lateral conversation? It really doesn't.

The lateral, we have to talk about. At some point, I think that we've talked about that previously a number of times. It's really important conversation about, you know, homeowner responsibility.

Town did some good things to try to address some laterals. Part of the first phase of the Kings Beach work, but, you know, we have to circle back around because it's a big part of the IAI.

[Speaker 2] (1:15:19 - 1:15:32)
Okay. So, Amy, this was statutorily required. No, it wasn't.

[Speaker 3] (1:15:32 - 1:15:35)
No, we did this voluntarily without any.

[Speaker 2] (1:15:35 - 1:15:47)
It was a legal requirement according to the presentation in 2021. And so I think some of your questions describe what needs to be done. We went above and beyond.

[Speaker 3] (1:15:48 - 1:15:52)
The IAI was not a legal requirement in the consent order from the EPA.

[Speaker 2] (1:15:52 - 1:16:11)
No, no, it was because of our timing with the water. I think if you go back, so I'm just saying it was. All right.

It's a statute that underlies this.

[Speaker 3] (1:16:11 - 1:16:31)
That's not my understanding, but it was my understanding that we were taking this as an initiative because we actually wanted to generate some additional revenue. The EPA has issued these administrative orders to require them to adopt I&I. We did this without that administrative order.

We did it because it's the right thing to do.

[Speaker 4] (1:16:33 - 1:16:40)
All right. Are there any other questions for the I&I update? Any more questions?

[Speaker 5] (1:16:42 - 1:16:56)
Amy, could you just review what the things are that we can re-evaluate as a board if we wanted to change this at all?

[Speaker 11] (1:16:58 - 1:17:25)
So you can re-evaluate the offset ratio, which is currently the four to one. And you can also re-evaluate the I&I offset fee, which is the dollars per gallon per day. So basically the four and the five dollars.

You can re-evaluate the 110, but it is kind of the industry standard. So I'd say take that with a grain of salt. And that comes from Gino Cresta.

[Speaker 5] (1:17:26 - 1:17:37)
She was in the house tonight, so he can confirm some of that. Yeah. And are there any communities who are not following just the per bedroom use?

[Speaker 11] (1:17:39 - 1:17:40)
I'm not aware.

[Speaker 5] (1:17:41 - 1:18:04)
Kitchens, bathrooms. I mean, we're talking about what actually is going to affect the flow of water. Like understanding a bedroom generally needs an extra person.

So that affects flow of water. I get that. But also like bathrooms, kitchens, the additions of bathrooms also affect the flow of water.

So I don't know if any other community looks at that.

[Speaker 8] (1:18:04 - 1:18:48)
So Katie, one thing, you know, basically if you have a one bedroom house and you have four bathrooms and you're only one person, you're using the same water versus if you have four bedrooms and one bathroom, you're using that much water. I think we should maybe look into commercial usage, the new commercial. We just have a brand new dentist's office going in.

Some commercial places probably won't use a lot of water. New restaurants in Minnesota, the dentist's office, doctor's office. I think that's a lot of water that we could look at potentially how we could get fees out of that new stuff coming.

[Speaker 4] (1:18:50 - 1:18:54)
All right. So what is the process? So what's their process to look into that, Sean?

[Speaker 3] (1:18:55 - 1:19:20)
I can meet with the team and come back with the recommendation if the board's interest is getting a recommendation to enhance the revenue from the I&I, I'm happy to come back. We thought this was the first kind of toe in and I think we can frankly ask our infrastructure committee to evaluate this and come back with a recommendation. That would be a pretty good exercise for the committee.

[Speaker 6] (1:19:27 - 1:19:46)
Unless my question is just totally dumb because I look at this and I think just the new construction, I still don't get why it's just the new construction that's tangled with this. I mean, there's roots, there's I&I happening in my house and every house.

[Speaker 3] (1:19:47 - 1:19:58)
I don't understand why. It is a different tool. And so I think if you want to get into the laterals, I think there's a conversation about ensuring that we inspect the laterals.

[Speaker 4] (1:19:59 - 1:20:01)
Laterals is a different conversation.

[Speaker 3] (1:20:01 - 1:20:12)
Yeah. But going right to or applying I&I for every household adding a tax to additional tax burden. Yeah, I know.

[Speaker 6] (1:20:12 - 1:20:19)
It's a winning issue for sure. I mean, just logically, I don't quite get why.

[Speaker 3] (1:20:19 - 1:20:34)
I haven't seen it, Doug. I haven't. We looked at some I&I fees.

Typically it's the new construction. That's where you it's sort of an impact fee. And so we don't have impact fees in Massachusetts.

Everyone else is grandfathered in basically in a way. It's the additional burden.

[Speaker 2] (1:20:34 - 1:20:51)
Yeah, exactly. It's because when you're adding to the system, if you're not adding anything, that's why if you tear down a house with two beddings and you build a house with three beddings, you don't have to pay it. But if you add a fourth bedding, then you are supposed to pay it.

[Speaker 6] (1:20:51 - 1:20:55)
Yeah, but we all have these systems. And they're all deteriorating. And they're all adding to...

[Speaker 8] (1:20:57 - 1:21:57)
I don't pay the water bills and sewer bills. I don't take care. We also have to stay very diligent.

I'm an inspector myself. I know it's a small contributor, but every little bit helps. So when we do go into a house and we see a symptom, we do address it if it's going into a sewer.

We don't just overlook it like, hey, it's been here. So we do try to stay diligent on that stuff and help the cause. And when people do, you know, when they come for the new bedroom or, you know, I do give them a little feel about it's not just a tax.

How it affects the town that they're, you know, coming to and the beaches and the infrastructure. So I don't just say, here's a fee, live with it. I explain it.

Usually when I explain it to them, they're pretty happy to, you know, hold me up for money. I think guys don't like to do it with developers, but most of the homeowners are pretty receptive.

[Speaker 4] (1:21:58 - 1:22:06)
It doesn't really look like there's too many developers lining up anywhere looking at these numbers. Oh, Katie, feel.

[Speaker 5] (1:22:06 - 1:23:03)
Yeah, just to echo what the inspector was saying. I just want to be clear that it's the reason we would be revisiting these numbers or looking at creative ways to figure some of this out. It's not because we want to boost revenue, right?

It's because we want to put that revenue back into our system, which is aged at best, and will need major repairs just from use, not aside from the other related problems we have in town as it relates to water and sewer. We need to be thinking proactively about taking care of our water and sewer and not reactively. And we have been thinking reactively for so long.

I mean, the pump house situation and other things that could at any time go. We need to be thinking about those things. So just try to be proactive about it.

[Speaker 4] (1:23:03 - 1:23:08)
All right. So, Sean, you're going to work with the Water and Sewer Infrastructure Committee.

[Speaker 3] (1:23:10 - 1:24:04)
Yeah, I just want to just mention one of the things that we haven't recommended, but probably we should evaluate along with changes from the I&I is the stormwater fee. That's another piece of infrastructure Swampskate really hasn't spent enough time thinking about and talking about. That's just drainage.

We talk about sewer. We talk about water. We really need to come up with a funding mechanism for stormwater and drainage.

That's a fee that, similar to I&I, we can evaluate and see if it can complement a lot of these other responsibilities that we're responsible for. Katie, I do appreciate this sense that we're not looking for just new revenue. We have so many decades of deferred investment.

We're trying to catch up, and we've just got to come up with some of these strategies.

[Speaker 4] (1:24:05 - 1:25:20)
Okay. So we'll put that on our future agenda. And now we're going to our last and final topic, Water and Sewer Infrastructure Advisory Committee update.

And before we do go to this update, I just want to give recognition to the hard work and the citizen push to really make some serious changes to our system and with King's Beach and with everything that we're doing here. And I think it's incredibly amazing. I want to thank Andrea Omori, Chris Mancini, Robin Grace, John Allen, Christopher James, Dr. Friedman. And I know there's people that I don't even have on this list. I just started writing a list from listening to them. It's hard work, a lot of advocacy.

We have a new committee that's doing great work, and they're going to give us the update. So I just want to recognize all of them and say thank you. And now we'll have our Water and Sewer Committee.

[Speaker 10] (1:25:20 - 1:25:26)
Where do you want us to do this from? Can I actually stand in the sand?

[Speaker 4] (1:25:26 - 1:25:28)
We're going to actually present this.

[Speaker 17] (1:25:32 - 1:25:43)
It's going to be on the screen, isn't it? Yes, he's going to show it. Chris, are you going to be able to show it, share it?

Yeah. Do you want to sit here?

[Speaker 5] (1:25:46 - 1:25:51)
There's a wheeled podium right there, too, if you want to place it here.

[Speaker 2] (1:26:00 - 1:26:06)
No, I'll stand in it. I don't mind standing, because I'm going to see it well.

[Speaker 16] (1:26:10 - 1:26:11)
Nobody at home can steal, sorry.

[Speaker 19] (1:26:12 - 1:26:22)
I know. Does it feel like that door has a pretty good camera angle? That door has a pretty good camera angle.

[Speaker 16] (1:26:24 - 1:26:25)
Get your good side.

[Speaker 13] (1:26:26 - 1:26:28)
You're good, you're good.

[Speaker 2] (1:26:35 - 1:27:19)
So I'm Liz Smith, the chair of the new Water and Sewer Infrastructure Advisory Committee. Chris Lafley, vice chair of the committee. We have Terry Danstow, an alternate member.

Brian Dominic, an alternate member. Pat Campbell, an alternate member. And Gia Fraser, who is our director of DPW.

Yeah, our extra special crew member. Okay, how do I? Okay, so we were asked to come tonight and do an update for you on the work that we've done so far.

[Speaker 4] (1:27:22 - 1:27:24)
There's some screws underneath there.

[Speaker 16] (1:27:27 - 1:27:29)
Here we go, all right.

[Speaker 2] (1:27:33 - 1:32:55)
I think it's solid now. Okay, so back in November, the Select Board, by unanimous vote, voted to form a committee. In January, on January 30th, the Select Board appointed 12 members, eight regular members, and four alternates.

And I just want to say that our alternates attend every meeting. I mean, this is really a committee of 12. And there is virtually no distinction.

Every meeting, because we're eight official voting members, we have to vote in, or actually we just, I appoint any alternate that needs to stand in for a missing member. But that rarely happens, either in person or remotely. Almost every member attends almost every meeting.

We meet two times a month, so it's a little bit heavier burden than some committees, because we have a lot to do and a lot to cover. Our charge is to advise the Select Board on all things water resources related. We have to ensure a safe and reliable supply of water, ensure the system is in a state of good repair and has adequate capacity, stormwater drainage, state of good repair, and comply with the Clean Water Act.

And we also have the financial advisory capacity to identify capital projects and ensure that funds are available. For the first six months, we focused on several things. Educating committee members who came in, engineers, scientists, business people.

Some had worked on committees in town before, some never had a wide age range. So we had to kind of level set everybody and get some basic understanding of what this responsibility is. We reviewed the asset management plan.

We reviewed water resource financials and funding. And by water resource, whenever I say water resource, it's water sewers or water-slash-drains. We launched IDD and beach water data gathering.

You'll hear more about that. We monitored the EPA consent decree. Sewer may have more.

And we have started to enhance communication to the public about water resources. So for education, we, as I said, level set everybody for water, sewer, and drainage fundamentals. We did that in a number of different ways.

Documents. GINA helped a lot with that. We reviewed and monitored consent decree requirements.

Everybody had access to the consent decree and read through it. We developed a glossary of common terms. There's a link in the presentation, which will be available online.

And the glossary is available on our webpage. And as I said, GINA provided invaluable history and experience to bring people up to speech. Financially, we formed a water and sewer rates working group.

Because the old water and sewer rate committee was collapsed into our group. But two of the members are also members of the infrastructure committee. We reviewed the fiscal year 25 capital plan.

We reviewed the water and sewer rate increases for fiscal year 25. We have monitored and we're reviewing the Antwerp loan application, which is due Friday. For 3.5 million per sewer we have. Monitored funding of sewer IDDE and repair work. And we will be making capital plan recommendations for fiscal year 26 and beyond. So just a little bit of information to ground everybody in the sewer funding.

From fiscal year 15 to 22. 15 is when the EPA consent decree was signed by the town and EPA. Since then we spent at least 6.5 million in work to rehab and repair and line our sewer pipes. That is related to phase one of the stasis brook slash Kings Beach work. And we're now starting phase two. In May of 2024 at town meeting, $1.8 million was authorized for Kings Beach and 1.7 million. Sorry, that's wrong. It's 1.7. Oh, no. I'm sorry.

1.7 million from the Kings Beach ARPA funds. For Kings Beach work and 1.8 for fishermen. And then in May of 2024 the select board voted to dedicate 1.5 million of the non-Kings Beach ARPA dollars also to fishermen. So we are really accelerating our spending.

[Speaker 6] (1:32:56 - 1:33:04)
I think you're missing another 1.7. Because at town meeting we actually did do 3.5. We did.

[Speaker 2] (1:33:04 - 1:33:15)
We did the 1.8. What? No, it wasn't. Oh, you're right.

You're right. You're right. There's another 1.7. You're right. The 1.7 is on top of the ARPA funds. So that's, I guess, correct.

[Speaker 6] (1:33:18 - 1:33:27)
In town meeting we did 1.8. We did 3.5 in total sewer enterprise fund. And there already was that 1.7 from the old ARPA.

[Speaker 2] (1:33:27 - 1:33:45)
Then in May we did the additional 1.5. We already had the ARPA and we approved 3.5 for town meeting. So the 3.5 is correct for town meeting. But it was on top of, if I'm correct, 1.7 of ARPA. See, we're still getting it all right.

[Speaker 6] (1:33:45 - 1:33:47)
So much money dedicated to this. It's hard to keep track of it.

[Speaker 2] (1:33:48 - 1:37:46)
That's what we want everyone to know. Town meeting also approved $187,000 for IGBB work, the town meeting ARPA funds. And there's a glossary at the end of this which explains some of these terms.

But the IGBB stands for illicit discharge detection and elimination. And it is a process that every town that discharges water, discharges into a public body of water has to constantly be checking their outfalls and making sure that they are not contaminating those bodies of water. And then, as I said before, we're submitting a clean water trust state revolving fund loan application this week for another $3.5 million, which that's an application process. We're pretty sure to get that money. And that will become available next year. Laura, is ARPA going in this week?

We are. Yep. And then water funding.

One thing we've learned is that we've spent pretty consistently a half a million dollars a year on clean water trust also state revolving fund loans, but those are at 0%. Sewer loans are at about 2%. So since 2015, we've spent about $4 million, $500,000 a year repairing water mains.

And town meeting, again, appropriated or authorized $500,000. So the borrowing of SRF still has to go through the town meeting process. In May, we began a review of the asset manager plan, which is a 180-plus page document that Kleinfelder worked on with a grant from the DEP, Department of Environmental Protection, to review all of the assets that the town has related to water resources.

As you can imagine, that's a big job. So we formed three working groups, water, sewer, and drainage, to chunk it down into manageable pieces and be able to have people focusing on each piece of that. And we also participated in a meeting with the EPA and DEP on June 8th to get an update for them on consent decree compliance work.

They were very pleased with the progress we're making about the King's Beach and the planned progress at Fisherman's. So just a little update on the consent decree work related to Kings and Fisherman's. At that meeting, we discussed King's Beach phase two.

That is a design and sampling process of testing water in manholes and in the outfalls, putting CCTV cameras up all the sewers in that area, and identifying areas of concern. The next step is putting cameras in the drainage pipes and doing smoke and dye tests to really pinpoint the areas of rehab focus for phase two. The design should be complete by December with the work starting in the first quarter of 2025.

The Marshall outfall, which you will hear a lot more about a little bit later in this presentation, but the Fisherman's Beach project, which has been ready for a number of years, and the problem has been known for some years. The bid process is starting next week, and we believe the work will be starting in the fourth quarter of this year. And Cassidy Park outfall, which is the one at the far end of Fisherman's, that IDD work, the sampling of that outfall will begin this fall.

[Speaker 6] (1:37:48 - 1:37:50)
Is that, are both of them, can I ask a question?

[Speaker 2] (1:37:50 - 1:37:51)
Yes, go ahead.

[Speaker 6] (1:37:51 - 1:37:56)
Is that, both of those are part of the 1.7 million?

[Speaker 4] (1:37:57 - 1:38:03)
No, 1.7 is just related to the Marshall Street outfall. I think that's related to the 187. Sorry?

[Speaker 6] (1:38:03 - 1:38:05)
What is Cassidy? What covers Cassidy?

[Speaker 4] (1:38:06 - 1:38:08)
The 50,000 that came.

[Speaker 6] (1:38:08 - 1:38:10)
Oh, it's like MS4 type? Okay.

[Speaker 4] (1:38:10 - 1:38:15)
And then do we have 187 in our capital for?

[Speaker 2] (1:38:16 - 1:38:40)
Yeah, but it was 187, and then we pulled out 50 of it and used ARP funds, and then the balance was 130. That was for the Fisherman's, and then the balance of it is for the rest of town. They call it the areas beyond Stacey's Park.

First chunk is the Cassidy Park outfall.

[Speaker 4] (1:38:41 - 1:38:52)
I just want to ask a quick question on the IDDE work. Does that, does that really, is that pretty much just going in and you're checking manholes, you're checking areas, and you're testing what's in there?

[Speaker 2] (1:38:53 - 1:39:04)
That's a big part of it, but that's not all that it is. No, there's some testing, guide testing, really trying to pinpoint where the issues are coming from. When you find any issues with the sampling, pinpointing where it's coming from.

[Speaker 3] (1:39:04 - 1:39:07)
Okay, got it. Elimination, it's investigating.

[Speaker 5] (1:39:08 - 1:39:18)
That's been actively happening all summer. Yeah, you can see the box truck going down the street. We'll cover, that's what's happening there.

[Speaker 2] (1:39:18 - 1:43:43)
Right, that's part of the Kings Beach Basin. Okay, 187, if you have to count, that starts in the fall. Okay, and then, as many of you know, we have a big project going on, which is IDDE and beach water data gathering.

So one of the things that we discussed in the community is that, you know, we know we have some issues with beach water. We want to know more about those. We want to be able to give people a comfort level, knowing that's what's remaining status in the Marshall outfall.

We found out a year ago, it tested very, very, very high for bacteria. But we also felt like if we could bring that testing in-house, we could bring in the cost and give ourselves, with UPW, the capability to do spot checking when we think it forms, when and where we want to do it. We don't have to wait for clients to come in and do it for us.

We don't have to send out these things to get it done in a state lab. Chris was instrumental in helping us to set up this laboratory. And using that laboratory and using the testing equipment that we purchased, or that town purchased, Sean's approval, we're testing six locations at Fisherman's Beach daily.

We have done testing at outfalls low at Preston, Iceman's, and Fisherman's. And we have tested Iceman's Beach specifically, the beach water at three locations on two locations so far. We launched the Fisherman's Beach water quality dashboard, which is available on our website.

Matt Allen was instrumental in helping us to set up all the technology that's related to this. It's a really specific knowledge base. And we're really fortunate that we have these two guys to help us with this.

We installed a weather station on the pier at Fisherman's Beach this week. And we've met with the board of health to discuss the public health impacts. We are using, as I said, the in-house capability to enhance IED efforts.

And we analyze data to understand the factors that are affecting the spread of contamination. We have a whole section on this. So if you want to ask questions, if you hold them until we get to that section, you'll get a lot more detail.

And then for communication, we designed outfall warning signs for beaches and outfalls. We've had 10 installed at Kings and Fisherman's. In the next part, you'll see an example of that sign.

And we have signs on water for remaining outfalls. We developed the glossary of terms, as I said. We launched the dashboard.

We used technology to present historical testing data. That's in process. Matt's working on that.

And we have the capability to slice and dice the information that we're getting, both from the testing capability and from the weather station and the area time charts, and really try to understand what's going on when we have contamination coming out, what's happening to it once it gets to the beach and gets into the water. So that is definitely ongoing. And each working group is going to be responsible for enhancing communications in their specific area.

And we are going to be meeting with the Board of Health on March 21st. So this really just repeats everything that I said. It wasn't really until I started listing and talking to people about what we've accomplished that, for a really new committee with people that never worked together before, and something that hadn't been done before, I think we've accomplished quite a bit in the first six months.

Is there any questions to date? I have questions, comments. So I first want to say I want to thank you all.

Dr. Bauchle, Chris, sorry. Matt, and all of the volunteers. You people, what you've done would have cost millions of dollars if we didn't have those volunteers.

So hats off to you. I don't think everybody in town really recognizes the amount of time, the commitment level.

[Speaker 10] (1:43:44 - 1:43:54)
I mean, we're testing beaches based on something you created, Chris, right, like that's enabling us to give this dashboard creation.

[Speaker 2] (1:43:55 - 1:43:59)
It's astonishing, really. I want to thank you for your commitment and for your time.

[Speaker 10] (1:44:00 - 1:44:37)
Of course, with that said, I am greedy, and I would love to see, I've said this before, daily testing of all of the beaches, right, because that just, during the summer season anyway, when it's, you know, all of our people are going to Phillips or they're going to Eismont where there's, you know, potentially something happening, or Wales, whatever it is. I just think that, you know, it's on us to make people aware of what potentially they're swimming in, right, and that's why the signage was a key piece that I feel like we talked about for two months, and, you know, we're halfway there, and getting the signs up, and we're like, you know, swim season's almost over, right.

[Speaker 2] (1:44:37 - 1:47:40)
So while I really, I just commend you for all your work, and I thank you for it, and just, I mean, it sets the bar for other towns, the way you've created the system, and that's been recognized on a national level at this point, but I want more, right, so I want to see how we can really continue. We're here to do, and we've heard that, and we've talked about it a lot, and let me just do my last slide for this section, and then we'll go into details, and we'll talk to you, because we'll wait until the next session. Menu of options.

Menu of options, and also the data that we've got, we really want to be data-driven, because we want to be fiscally responsible, and we want to make choices that make sense. So we'll just go to what we're planning for the next six months. We are going to recommend five-week capital plan for water, sewer, and drainage, and we'll form a peer review working group to identify the scope and process for that.

That was something that came up in the ARPA discussions. We need to establish levels of service or standards for water, sewer, and drainage. That is actually a fundamental part of an asset management plan and hasn't been done yet, so we'll be working into that.

We're going to investigate options to establish a stormwater enterprise fund or utility fund. Some of them are regional. There are a lot of different options, so we know that's really important, because as Sean said, we don't have a way to fund that work right now, except out of the general fund.

We'll set targets and methods for infiltration and inflow reduction, and we'll talk about the I&I offset fee and roll that into that discussion. We'll develop options for the sewer service customer lateral policy, which also came up earlier, and is something that has been tossed around for a few years, but lots of communities, most communities have dealt with this and have different ways of approaching it, so we want to do some research and come to a proposal. That makes sense, or a couple of options.

We're reviewing the data systems and GIS mapping capabilities. That was something that came out of the asset management plan that a lot of our records are still paper records, and they need to be digitized, and that will allow us to have a full scope of GIS mapping capabilities, so we can pull up a map and say, okay, we repair these pipes, we wind these pipes, and we can do anything over here, and we can really get into the nitty-gritty of what is being done to bring our systems up into a state of good repair, and always, always enhancing communication and education for the public across the spectrum of areas. With that, here's your, just go to our webpage, and you'll get pages of definitions and abbreviations.

I'd like to leave it to Chris to go over the testing program in more detail.

[Speaker 1] (1:47:40 - 1:50:00)
Okay, before we jump in, I just wanted to thank so many parts of the town government who have been involved in this so far. It's been a really extraordinary thing to see so many people work together, and it's been a puzzle to get everything together, and we've done it really, really quickly, but it's been extraordinary to see support from the Select Board, extraordinary support from the Town Administrator, extraordinary support from PPW, the Health Department, the Board of Health, Recreation, all over the place. So it's just been, it's been government really working, so I'm really pleased with that aspect of this.

So, before we dive into what we've done, I wanted to sort of give everybody a background primer of what we've been doing. So we, for decades now, have done weekly testing at all of the beaches in town. We know from this summer's data, so each of these bars is a test point for each week, and the red line at the top of each of these plots is the EPA cutoff, which is 104 for bacteria levels of some pterococci testing.

And an extraordinary point on all of this is that we haven't had any exceedances from this testing so far. However, we know that at Kings Beach and at Fisherman's Beach, we do have additional problems, and really what I'm talking about there is point sources of pollution, where we know that there's large amounts of bacteria that are being deposited on the beaches, and we know this through the consent decree and from other work that we've done prior to the formation of the committee. But, this- Can I ask a question, just to clarify a little more?

Sure. But we know Kings has been closed. Kings has been closed, and the reason that Kings has been closed is that we close- well, we don't close Kings.

A health department has agreed to close Kings based on testing that comes from the entirety of Kings. So, Kings is tested every day on the DCR side, so the wind side, and there have been exceedances on that side of the beach. So, even though Kings has been closed for a significant portion of the summer, the data points that have led to those closures have actually not been on the Swampstead side.

[Speaker 6] (1:50:01 - 1:50:10)
I was kind of- I know that. I was kind of giving you a softball there, like that- just showing the power of the daily versus the weekly. Is that not- It's true.

[Speaker 1] (1:50:10 - 1:51:43)
Well, in some- actually, it's a great- that is the softball. So, part of it is that daily versus weekly is useful, but the other part of it is- and what's really remarkable is that we definitely see pockets where there's much higher contamination than others, and we'll get into that soon. But, fishermen's is where that gets very exciting.

So, in any case, we started this testing program. We test six sites at Fisherman's Beach, seven days a week. We've got a dashboard that's been updated daily.

There's a screen capture of the dashboard there on the bottom left. So far, we've done 261 tests. This is staffed by six volunteers.

Three of them are college students, two of whom work for REC as well. There's two Water and Sewer Committee members, and Matt has- Two of us. And Matt has done an extraordinary lift on getting all the back end of the dashboard to actually work and working with town staff to get the website to do the things we needed to do.

So, it's been a fun thing to get established. Here are three summer students, Ryan Beegan, Lola Mintu, and Lindley Raymond, who are all environmental engineering or environmental science or chemistry students who are eager to be involved. So, they're out there collecting samples, setting up tests, creating tests on a daily basis, seven days a week.

That's amazing.

[Speaker 16] (1:51:44 - 1:51:45)
Yeah, we're lucky to know.

[Speaker 1] (1:51:45 - 1:52:34)
Yeah, it's awesome. And it's honestly, it's been one of the best parts of this whole thing, like working with these young people who are super jazzed about this. And they are planning to go into careers that are related to this, so it gives them very useful experience.

So, I'm really pleased that we've got this dimension of this. So, yeah, can't thank them enough. So, this is data that's generated from outfall testing.

So, outfalls, as Liz mentioned, are pipes that empty out onto beaches. And so, we've got a handful of outfalls across town. On Kings Beach, we have two.

There's, they form the confluence of Stacey's Brook. So, testing the, on two days in July, here we just tested all the outfalls.

[Speaker 2] (1:52:36 - 1:52:40)
We tested Lynn, so we can see what's going on here.

[Speaker 10] (1:52:40 - 1:52:47)
So, this is saying that Marshall Street is that much worse than Stacey's Brook, Lynn? Yes, yes.

[Speaker 1] (1:52:47 - 1:53:07)
And so, what I really want to highlight, actually, the take home, thank you for pointing that out. Fisherman's, the Marshall Street outfall on Fisherman's Beach is 700 times higher than what's coming out of the Cassidy outfall, 465 times higher than what's coming out of Neisman's, 384 times higher than what's on Preston, and 141 times higher than what's on Kings.

[Speaker 5] (1:53:10 - 1:53:11)
King's Swampscott.

[Speaker 1] (1:53:11 - 1:53:17)
King's Swampscott, sorry. Sorry, yes, which is the only one that we have any ability to control.

[Speaker 4] (1:53:18 - 1:53:21)
So, King's Swampscott is clean. No, these are all clean water.

[Speaker 1] (1:53:22 - 1:53:41)
But, it is much cleaner, and I'll say that this relationship has, although we're looking at two days, this is actually one day, each outfall was tested once for this plot, but that relationship exists across many days. So, we've actually looked at this on other occasions.

[Speaker 10] (1:53:42 - 1:53:44)
It's not a one-off, is it? No, it is not a one-off.

[Speaker 1] (1:53:44 - 1:54:12)
The numbers have gone up as the summer has gotten warmer. This is not a surprise because bacteria grow more over these kind of warm conditions. But, that's something I'm not really going to get into tonight, but it is something we should have a serious conversation about somewhere.

Because I think that this is evidence that some of the IDE work that we've been doing, that we've invested six and a half million dollars in this project, I think that this is evidence that some of that is bearing fruit. We're not done. There's a long way to go.

Exciting times.

[Speaker 13] (1:54:14 - 1:54:16)
Chris, is this after a rainstorm?

[Speaker 1] (1:54:17 - 1:54:30)
This was not after a rainstorm. This was on a dry day. I think it had been three days before the rainstorm.

On this one, this is dry weather.

[Speaker 6] (1:54:33 - 1:54:41)
Can you see this relationship? Have you tested all these beaches enough days that this gen, whether it's the magnitude, but the general relationship between all these is...

[Speaker 1] (1:54:42 - 1:55:13)
We haven't tested all of them as many times as we've tested Marshall and the ones at King's. Just focus on those for the moment. Is this a general relationship there?

Yeah, absolutely. If you look at the town dashboard, you'll often see this number 24,196. That's the maximum that we can get from our test without changing the way we do the test.

We don't have a good way, because of weird computer stuff, to have a greater than symbol in our dashboard. Stupid technical annoying thing, but that's how it is.

[Speaker 10] (1:55:15 - 1:55:16)
So it could be higher.

[Speaker 1] (1:55:16 - 1:55:19)
Oh, it is higher. The number next to it, right there, is what it is.

[Speaker 10] (1:55:19 - 1:55:19)
It's always higher.

[Speaker 1] (1:55:21 - 1:55:33)
Well, when we actually do the protocol to dilute it down, and test that diluted sample, it was 112,000. Oh, just a little 112,000 on five times the max. Yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 10] (1:55:34 - 1:55:35)
Thank you, our money.

[Speaker 1] (1:55:36 - 1:55:39)
Yeah, I mean, I think that... Yeah, so when...

[Speaker 2] (1:55:41 - 1:56:02)
If you recall the test that we did two years ago, at this outfall, that were reported to the UK last year ago, they were 120,000, 177,000, 140,000. And you were like, how can that possibly be? So this is not inconsistent with those results.

[Speaker 13] (1:56:03 - 1:56:03)
It's getting better.

[Speaker 2] (1:56:03 - 1:56:05)
Okay, that's a time gap.

[Speaker 1] (1:56:07 - 1:57:28)
Well, so, and yeah, it's astoundingly high. So in any case, when we talk about why we test so intensively at Fishermans, and why we've really done a laser focus on Fishermans, you know, these are the numbers that back up that discussion. And, you know, for example, whenever we look at Iceman's, which is 241, still a Clean Water Act violation, but the other thing that we don't consider when we report these numbers, but we do when we think about the problem, is the amount of flow.

If you look at Stacey's Brook, it's like, I don't know, how many thousands of gallons an hour comes out of there. Tens of thousands of gallons an hour comes out of there. I'll show you a picture of what comes out of Iceman's outfall in a few slides, but it's like slower than my kitchen sink.

So the number of like 241, and we even have some tests, Iceman's that have tested higher in the outfall, but it's literally slower than my kitchen sink. So, you know, it's still worth thinking about because it's a Clean Water Act violation, but in terms of gallonage that's actually making it to the swimming area, I think that the data that we see from the health department sort of reflects the fact that we do have very little of that water getting to the beach, to the swimming area.

[Speaker 10] (1:57:28 - 1:57:34)
So you say it's a Clean Water Act violation, but it's something you can still swim in that water, right?

[Speaker 1] (1:57:34 - 1:57:47)
Oh, well, so technically you shouldn't swim in any of these outfalls, and that's something... You shouldn't even be near them, you should be on Iceman's beach. Well, no, no, no, and that's a good point, but like, sorry.

[Speaker 5] (1:57:48 - 1:58:06)
I was going to say the outfall for where you take the sample is not the water for which you're swimming in, right? Yeah. So some of the feedback, like on Fisherman's, where you're testing in the outfall, but when you take the sample from the water, even...

[Speaker 1] (1:58:06 - 1:58:07)
It's just dirty sometimes.

[Speaker 5] (1:58:09 - 1:58:11)
Sometimes it's clean, you want to go forward.

[Speaker 1] (1:58:11 - 1:59:40)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, so before I go into this, I just want to give you a 15 second primer about the way I'm going to show you this data. This is in log scale on the y-axis.

So it goes 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000. It's the only way I can put a plot that shows you a sample of 10 and a sample of 10,000 in a graph that won't make the sample of 10 look like a zero. So, sorry.

So this is the swimming side of Fisherman's beach. So Fisherman's beach, for those who don't know, is bisected by the pier. There's a private side, which is beyond the pier if you're starting in Town Hall, and there's the swimming side.

There have been a handful of days in which we've had exceedances that surpass the cutoff of 104, indicated by asterisks here. Using testing-based closures, only one of these would have caused the beach closure, and in fact did, because we need two consecutive days of high testing. Given the extreme contamination that comes out of Marshall Street outfall, which is a medium-flow outfall, it probably makes sense for us to think about alternative ways of handling that.

Was the big day of rain there or not? I've got a slide for you. Sorry, I've got a slide for you.

[Speaker 2] (1:59:40 - 1:59:52)
I promise. Doug's still open. It's the rain.

Can I just add, so the health director tests Fisherman's at a point somewhere between the pier and the...

[Speaker 1] (1:59:52 - 1:59:52)
The red arrow.

[Speaker 2] (1:59:53 - 2:00:00)
Yeah, and we test in two places, so we're getting two data points in the swimming area, not just one.

[Speaker 5] (2:00:02 - 2:00:05)
And there's only one test at Fisherman's by the health director?

[Speaker 1] (2:00:05 - 2:00:05)
Yes.

[Speaker 5] (2:00:05 - 2:00:06)
That's the only test.

[Speaker 1] (2:00:07 - 2:00:13)
That's all that's required by the state. They've been fulfilling that requirement.

[Speaker 5] (2:00:13 - 2:00:15)
Did the state say where to do the test?

[Speaker 2] (2:00:16 - 2:00:28)
Yes, the regulations say in the middle of the area of greatest swimmer concentration. So more of the subjectivity is based on where are people swimming.

[Speaker 1] (2:00:28 - 2:02:40)
And for all of these, you're supposed to walk out to a depth of three feet and sample 12 inches below the surface of the water. Okay, so now if we look at all five sites across Fisherman's Beach, we see that the story is a little bit different. On the private side, especially where the green area is, you can see the green bars in the histogram here.

These are all offshore of that outfall where we have exceedances that sometimes max out our tests in the water. And so this was a really... There was a great move made by WREC and the town to move their stand-up paddle boarding program.

It was a hard choice to make, I think, but it ultimately paid off hugely. Because if you look at the number of bars here that are either yellow, green, or orange that are way above the standards, we really sort of dodged one there. So it's just a nice instance of the information actually being useful on an operational basis.

So looking at Eisman's, which is where the paddle boarding program moved to. So on the left, in the black bars, we have the health department data, which Jeff Vaughan tests. Those numbers have been very clean.

So 104 is our cutoff. The highest one we've observed there is 31. So that is sort of consistent with the differences in outfall concentrations.

And our arrows here, blue, red, yellow, are the different positions on this histogram here, these histograms here. So 20, 20, 30, and 10, 10, 10. And so anytime you look at 10s on this data, by the way, it's similar to the situation with the 24,000 number.

We can't say zero, we can say less than 10. So that's where that 10 number pops up a lot. Sometimes we've got no data that supports there being bacteria there, but our ability to say so stops at 10.

[Speaker 18] (2:02:40 - 2:02:47)
So we're saying here that based on the weekly testing of Eisenman's Beach, having paddle board there is safe to do.

[Speaker 1] (2:02:48 - 2:03:01)
Absolutely. Not only that, but since the health department only tests one location, we felt like it was important to test multiple locations. And when we did that, we saw the same thing.

So, you know.

[Speaker 4] (2:03:01 - 2:03:17)
What is your opinion on, should we be testing here more than just once a week? We're hearing from many, many people that they want to see testing. They want to see more testing.

But are you saying that it's clean over here? We don't need to be testing?

[Speaker 1] (2:03:17 - 2:03:51)
I would take my one-year-old swimming there any day of the week. I would take them there without any more data than already exists. I wouldn't hesitate.

I wouldn't think twice about it. I would also never let my kids play in any outfall on any beach. And I would also not take my children to the beach after a rainstorm.

And those are the two pieces of information if we get two take-home messages that I want everyone here to drill into every constituent that you talk with about this issue. Avoid the outfalls. Do not go to the beach after it rains.

That'll cover most of it.

[Speaker 16] (2:03:51 - 2:03:51)
Yes.

[Speaker 8] (2:03:51 - 2:04:02)
Chris, so after a rain event. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear you.

So how many tide cycles, how many cycles do we need for the beach to test clean? Is that a softball for you?

[Speaker 1] (2:04:02 - 2:04:36)
That is a softball. And we're going to get there. We're going to get there, I promise.

So there's a fantastic slide at the end of this. It's way too complicated, but it shows the relationship between bacteria and rain. And the punchline is that we often get rainstorms that influence bacteria significantly.

They drive up our counts. They drive up our counts starting almost immediately. Sometimes they clear out in a day.

Sometimes it takes two days. But if we were to start thinking about this in terms of rain events, we would be much, much, much better off. Got it.

[Speaker 5] (2:04:37 - 2:04:40)
Can you just speak to how you do the testing at Eisen given the tides?

[Speaker 1] (2:04:40 - 2:04:41)
We go at low tide.

[Speaker 5] (2:04:41 - 2:04:45)
You go at low tide at every... So you test from generally the same spot.

[Speaker 1] (2:04:45 - 2:04:47)
Well, where these arrows are is where we test.

[Speaker 5] (2:04:47 - 2:05:13)
Yeah, but I mean, like, the tide's always low. So that's some... I'm just trying to get at why the data sometimes is delayed.

We generally try to test around low tide because then we can get that outfall. Yeah, and then you guys take those tests and they need to cure for 24 hours and then you read the data and then the data gets uploaded. So that's why there's not a consistency to why the data's not always available at 7 a.m. every single morning. There's a 24 hour delay.

[Speaker 1] (2:05:13 - 2:05:14)
At least 24 hours.

[Speaker 5] (2:05:14 - 2:05:19)
At least 24 hours. So depending on the tide, it could be greater because...

[Speaker 1] (2:05:19 - 2:05:25)
And there are definitely operational ways to change how we do that, but those ways are not like the way we do it.

[Speaker 4] (2:05:25 - 2:05:34)
Yes. If you're not testing at high tide, does there make a difference if that outflow isn't actually flowing into the water?

[Speaker 1] (2:05:35 - 2:06:03)
I don't know. I think that the amount of water that comes out of the outflow is probably pretty consistent as long as there's not additional rain. Maybe the tide washes into it to some degree and comes back down out.

You know, honestly, we've only tested ice fins a couple of times and so we don't have a huge wealth of information like we do for fishermen. The fishermen were not quite as picky about the tide cycle. We just want to make sure that we can still sample Marshall Street so that we can get everything to light up again.

[Speaker 4] (2:06:05 - 2:06:09)
I think my concern is, if the tide is in, does it light up even higher?

[Speaker 1] (2:06:11 - 2:06:13)
I think that that's something that... I'm sorry.

[Speaker 5] (2:06:14 - 2:06:30)
The opposite of that might be that when the tide is higher and the water is going in, it actually dilutes the bacteria count. And I hate to say that, but I'm talking about the solution. Oh, dilution is a solution.

Or pollution. We've heard it many, many times, that might skew the data.

[Speaker 1] (2:06:31 - 2:06:32)
I mean, there are many, many, many factors.

[Speaker 4] (2:06:35 - 2:06:40)
I mean, I would like to know if dilution is a solution.

[Speaker 2] (2:06:41 - 2:06:48)
Well, dilution is clearly some of the solution, right? We know that once it gets out there... Fixing the pipes is the solution to pollution.

[Speaker 4] (2:06:49 - 2:06:50)
If you listen to what the board meetings were...

[Speaker 1] (2:06:53 - 2:06:54)
I'm not trying to pick on you guys.

[Speaker 2] (2:06:55 - 2:07:08)
But one of the things that we don't have information on is what happens at high tide, what happens at low tide, what happens if it's really calm and there's no wind and there hasn't been rain in three days, and maybe it just gets out there and sits. Or if there's...

[Speaker 1] (2:07:08 - 2:07:36)
And really, to the point of sitting, one of the things that we see at Fisherman's is this pockets of pollution that come up and then they're not present. Fisherman's Beach is 2,000 feet long. Less than 2,000 feet long.

It's a small beach. We're testing five sites and we're getting wildly different numbers at one site, 200 feet away from another site, it can be less than 10. At another site, it can be 24,000.

Right. Wild.

[Speaker 2] (2:07:37 - 2:07:53)
It tends to hang out at Cassidy. On the pier, too. It tends to hang out at the pier, but also at the far...

Cassidy Park outfall. Because I think, because of the way the rocks kind of curve around, it tends to kind of hold it.

[Speaker 1] (2:07:54 - 2:15:33)
Yeah. But I think that to get to some of these more sophisticated questions that you guys are asking, if we want to start diving into that, we really would need to test many sites at each. So it kind of gets to this question of where is the sweet spot for investment?

Like I said, we can talk about a menu of options toward the end of this, but there are ways to do that, but they are not this way to do that. So it's definitely like... And then this picture at the bottom right of that map is just what I wanted to show you guys, the outfall.

That's taken on a day that we did testing. It's practically impossible to get a syringe in there to pull out a sample because there's so little water flowing. Because you don't want to touch the syringe to the bottom of the pipe.

So like getting a 10 mil syringe in there to actually get a sample, like there's... But I did it. She did it.

Moving on. Moving on. We've been putting out outfall signs.

All these arrows indicate where they're going. There's a lot of them. Every entrance to Kings, every entrance to Fisherman's, we've got them planned for Eisenman's.

They're on order. They haven't been placed yet. We've got them for Preston.

They haven't been placed yet. This is what the sign looks like. It's in three languages, English, Spanish, and Russian.

It says don't wade and swim near the outfall stream. One of my favorite moments with this project was one of my Russian-speaking neighbors texted me a picture of the sign and it came in as a text message from one of their Russian-speaking friends and said, did you know about this? Of course, I don't speak Russian, so I took them at their word that that's what it said.

But the message is getting out there. That's important to me. In addition to that, we've been doing stenciling that's all done through Gino and VQW.

So here's an example of the stenciling they've already done at Cassidy Park. They've also done it at Preston. They're planning on doing the outfalls on Eisenman's and Kings this week.

The Marshall Street outfall actually needs some concrete repair, so they're going to be doing that next week. But all of this is happening. So we've also got notice now making it more clear that the public swimming area ends at the pier.

Just for folks to know, because sometimes when I'm making, all the time, closure of Fisherman's Beach, those decisions are based on what's happening on the town hall side of the pier, not what's happening on the other side of the pier. Also something that maybe we should be thinking about. And this is the grand mess of a plot that shows the rain and the fisherman's data.

Gift to duck. So overlaid with the blue line, which is plotted on the right y-axis, we have the amount of rain that's fallen in the 24-hour period. And can you see here?

So basically, we have lots of rain. We have high tests. We have rain.

We have high tests. We have no rain. We have low tests.

We have rain. We have high tests in the next 48 hours. We have more rain.

There's even more high tests. And then there's high tests for the next several days after a rainstorm. There were a few anomalies here where we had no rain, but we still had some high tests, and I don't know what went on there.

It wouldn't necessarily solve everything to say let's just do dispatch and rain, but I think we'd get like 85% of the way there if we started to think about rainfall as our way to shut down at least fishermen's where we've got such a high amount of pollution. And so, yeah, this takes us through the fisherman's data. Because we're so interested in rain, we just got and installed a weather system that was also instrumental in acquiring that.

NGO and UPW helped us mount it there at the end of the pier. We're collecting all sorts of data about weather, and we're going to be logging all of this. And so one of our goals for the fall is to start integrating these data and to learn as much as we can beyond just the quick and dirty graph that I showed you.

There's a huge need for public education about this stuff. The amount of misinformation on both sides of this issue is huge. We've got people who swear that every beach in town is a Superfund site.

We've got people in town who think there's nothing wrong, it's just some algae that smells bad. So we need to find a way to collectively meet in the middle because both of those extremes are very, very wrong. I think that like ratcheting this down to information-driven conclusions is where we all need to be.

I think that we're, as elected officials, you guys are contacted very, very frequently. We want to get you guys the most up-to-date information so that you have it. So when you talk to people, you can share it.

And toward that end, our committee is coming up with a fact sheet that's going to describe what's going on. So you can have some good one-liners to say this is what the situation is. This is how the town is dealing with it.

There's a sense in town that nobody's doing anything about this. We've just heard about the huge amount of investment that's going into this. So while perhaps over 100 years there's been neglect, I think that in select board, especially in town meeting, deserves a lot of credit for appropriating these funds and Sean as well for supporting all of this.

So I'm personally very optimistic about a lot of this stuff. I think that we need to educate beachgoers about safety and testing, about the existence of the data. And really like to drive in this idea, if it's rained, don't go swimming.

If there's an outfall nearby, don't plan the outfall. And really just get the message across that not all the beaches in town are a disaster. There are a couple that really need some attention, but we have no data to support some of the claims that are made about our beaches and the very negative concerns.

And so I'm hoping that we can use data to encourage people to feel confident about using these resource areas and feeling good about it because they're beautiful. Ongoing program objectives. We're doing additional testing at all the wet outfalls where there's normally water flowing through.

And we're going to look and see if there's really a need for more extended testing. We're going to test outfalls at all the beaches after rains, which is a time when, of course, there's more going on. We're going to be integrating with more weather station data.

We specifically want to work on outreach with the environmental science teachers at the high school and middle school, because I think that there are clubs and teachers who would be really excited to learn about this and to have the lesson in the context of their hometown would be fun and informative. And ultimately, I think that in the next, you know, over the winter, we need to be thinking about what we want to do with this next year. So, you know, has this had a positive impact?

Is this something we want to keep doing? Is this something we want to do more of? Is this something we want to do less of?

Like just getting a sense and, you know, you guys, I'm sure, will be instrumental in that discussion. Yeah. So now, do you guys have any questions for who am I?

[Speaker 4] (2:15:37 - 2:15:38)
Katie Fields? Sorry.

[Speaker 5] (2:15:40 - 2:15:56)
So I just want to be really clear about the language we're using involving testing at other beaches. It's not that we have no data. It's that we have no data to justify additional testing because we have data, right?

We have weekly data at all the beaches.

[Speaker 1] (2:15:57 - 2:16:10)
Very encouraging, clean water. And we have outfall testing data that shows that while outfalls are not pristine, you shouldn't swim in the outfall. But if you had to pick an outfall, swimming.

[Speaker 5] (2:16:13 - 2:16:50)
But I just want to be clear because I don't want to say that we are avoiding the other beaches. We're not. We have data that shows that those beaches that if we had all the resources available and all the time and energy to give, we could absolutely procure more data.

But we know there are big problems and the focus needs to be on those problems. We are not ignoring any other beach in town. We are still testing those other beaches and we hope to find that they remain not a big problem.

If they should, then you'll come back to us and you'll talk to us and you'll tell us those things.

[Speaker 1] (2:16:50 - 2:17:43)
I would go a step further and say that even if we had unlimited resources in the sense of fiscal responsibility, I feel like testing something that gives you a zero all the time or a 10 all the time or never gives you, you know, I don't know. I mean, there's an argument to be made for it, but like we test the Marshall Street outfall every day. It always maxes out the test.

We basically know that it always maxes out the test. The reason we keep doing it is because in the spring, it actually didn't max out the test. And actually one of the things that I would love to crowdsource to you guys or anyone in the audience or anyone watching or anyone in town who cares is to think about reasons other than just temperature, because I think this is way more than temperature, that we may have seasonality to these numbers.

For me to go from 1,400 in May to 112,000 in July is something's happening.

[Speaker 3] (2:17:45 - 2:17:49)
You think? A lot of things. I mean, not just one thing.

It's a bunch. I don't know.

[Speaker 4] (2:17:50 - 2:18:06)
So my biggest concern is not Fisherman's but the other beaches. And what I'm hearing you say is just testing once a week at these other beaches should give everybody peace of mind that we're good to go, except for when it rains.

[Speaker 1] (2:18:07 - 2:18:55)
Yes, and except for the exact proximity outfall. And, you know, there are always going to be people who want everyday testing. I would say if we do everyday testing, let's do it in a smart way.

Let's find a problem. Let's do it really robustly like we did at Fisherman's. Let's test multiple sites on that beach.

You know, if, for example, we, you know, become concerned that, say, something comes up in an outfall on whales that we never expected. Right. There's no wet outfall on whales.

But something did. My solution would not be to test one site on whales every day. It'd be to test lots of sites on whales every day.

Let's really drill in, understand the basis of the problem, understand the basis of the impact. No half measures. Do it right.

I don't think we need to do that at this point for the other beaches.

[Speaker 2] (2:18:56 - 2:19:17)
Well, I think we still have more to learn on Fisherman's because we see anomalies. If you showed your chart again, you would see that. You don't have.

There are times where there's not rain and we have high readings and it's, you know, it's at Cassidy or it's next to the pier or it's down at the other end. And it's it's kind of pathetic.

[Speaker 6] (2:19:17 - 2:19:26)
But I think you guys are working with Gino to think about where those outfalls really come from, tracing it back. Like, is it coming from the golf course? Is it coming from, you know, like where is it traced back to?

[Speaker 1] (2:19:27 - 2:20:21)
So one of the really cool things that's been happening that sort of we've touched on briefly, but what Kleinfelder works on is to go in and open every manhole, test every manhole, figure out when you go from a high test to a low test or from a low test to a high test and looking at the direction of the water flow and the storm drain system to figure out, you know, if you think of this as a big tree, like where is the driver? And that's sort of part of the whole INI thing. They're testing for bacteria, but they're also testing for things like excreted pharmaceuticals.

It's really neat. And they're being extremely surgical. So, you know, the call with GPA that we had to discuss all of this, they were surprisingly positive.

I mean, considering that we're in consensuality with them, I think that, you know, they said three or four times in the call that they were happy with how aggressively we were doing that type of testing. So I found it very encouraging.

[Speaker 4] (2:20:22 - 2:20:32)
I just have two issues. One is proper signage at the beach after a rainfall. So I'm going to talk to Sean about that after.

[Speaker 1] (2:20:33 - 2:20:34)
We just ordered signs.

[Speaker 4] (2:20:34 - 2:20:35)
No, after it rains.

[Speaker 1] (2:20:35 - 2:20:41)
Oh, you mean to be posted immediately after it rains? Or sorry.

[Speaker 4] (2:20:41 - 2:20:45)
Yes, that's what I'm supposed to say. OK.

[Speaker 13] (2:20:46 - 2:20:52)
The signs we ordered today say do not swim. We don't recommend swimming until 24 or 48 hours after heavy rain.

[Speaker 1] (2:20:53 - 2:20:53)
It actually took off.

[Speaker 10] (2:20:53 - 2:20:54)
Permanently posted.

[Speaker 1] (2:20:55 - 2:21:32)
So there's a permanent one. But I actually agree with you, Mary Ellen, that it would start to make sense for us to really seriously consider using rain as a thing to post. And to that point, keeping in mind the 24 hour lag and the fact that sometimes a contamination event only lasts 24 hours.

If we test the beach after a big rainstorm, we get our data back the next day. It's terrible. We take another sample that day.

It's beautiful. We now close it down at a time that, you know, we missed it. You know, we missed it.

We missed the difficult part.

[Speaker 18] (2:21:32 - 2:21:38)
So you're saying to post another sign after rain saying, you know, a big sandwich board.

[Speaker 4] (2:21:38 - 2:21:58)
I'm saying put a sandwich board that says don't, you know, please don't, you know, you're swimming at your own risk, you know. So if somebody just happens to get out of their car and I mean, this happened. This happened recently.

Guy was out there with this kid swimming and I went down and said, maybe I want to be doing this.

[Speaker 2] (2:21:58 - 2:22:15)
But I think there's a sandwich board there just getting people many, many communities across the country post their beaches. Yeah. Oh, because of rain.

It's preemptively caused because they know that the rain causes bacteria to spike and they won't catch it in a test until the next day.

[Speaker 4] (2:22:15 - 2:23:05)
So my other my other question or slash issue is a King's Beach. I would like to have data showing that the swimming water, the swamps got swimming water at King's Beach. What is that?

Is that polluted? Is that not polluted? High bacteria?

I'd like to actually know for ourselves what that means. We close that beach just to stay in, you know, in regulation of what so there's no confusion. You know, two years ago, we kept it open when Lynn was closing theirs.

Last year, we decided, you know what, just to avoid any confusion, we're going to close it down. I just want the data because especially if we have development or hotel come in, I'd like to make sure that, you know, we are pretty clear that where we can say bacteria is high or low.

[Speaker 2] (2:23:05 - 2:23:19)
We would have to do multiple sites because, you know, because, well, and because you have the outfall right there. We know the outfall is contaminated. I mean, one spot isn't going to, I don't think, tell you what's really going on.

[Speaker 6] (2:23:19 - 2:23:30)
Although we do get an inkling, right? I mean, when we do test the one time that Jeff tests, and that's the clearest swamps outside, the readings are dramatically lower than the outfall. So I don't know if we would.

[Speaker 2] (2:23:31 - 2:23:34)
Yes, just like in fishermen's, which we have heard these anomalies.

[Speaker 1] (2:23:34 - 2:24:28)
I would just, I would be hesitant to judge based on, you know, a handful of data points. We have five. I mean, from one site, I really think that if we're going to dive in deep, you know, we dive in deep, that would be my advice and do a couple of sites, continually monitor the outfall and continually monitor those outfalls to make sure that we're keeping track of our I&I responsibilities and our IDDB responsibilities.

You know, there have been times when Stacey's Brook on the Swampskate side has been below the 104. Wow. But there have been times when you literally could have been swimming in the pipe.

I'm not suggesting it, but we've seen the data for that. So, you know, that's, it doesn't really matter because we have two pipes there. And so, anyway.

[Speaker 5] (2:24:28 - 2:25:08)
I think it's an equity thing, too, because you're saying if the Swampskate side could be open, I mean, all that beach is accessible to more public because of the way the parking is. The same thing at Fisherman's, right? Like the what's left of the Swampskate beaches are permanent only, basically, right?

Like just for Swampskate residents. There's no place that if Kings Beach is closed for swimming on the Lynn side and put open on the Swampskate side, it could still allow for some usage for other communities to enjoy. Not just for Swampskate, but, you know, you'd be welcome in an open community.

[Speaker 6] (2:25:09 - 2:25:23)
Well, and if we really get surgical about it or really sophisticated, maybe then you work with DCR like a lot of the way other side of Kings could actually be open as well, right? You don't necessarily have to shut the whole thing down. Well, we don't shut down.

[Speaker 2] (2:25:23 - 2:25:36)
I know, I'm just saying. They used to open section by section. State test free sections.

But then two years ago, they said, well, this is really confusing people because they don't, they don't, you know, they don't want to shame wear.

[Speaker 1] (2:25:37 - 2:25:45)
And yeah, part of the problem was that you get enough sites where you say, well, this site is good, but that site is bad. But then this site is good. And like, well, where is this site versus that site?

[Speaker 18] (2:25:45 - 2:25:45)
Yeah, right.

[Speaker 5] (2:25:46 - 2:26:26)
The fact of the matter is it's being utilized anyways. I mean, we see it every single day. But my kids were saying the pledge of allegiance.

They say, Mom, why are those kids swimming in poop water? Like they just don't like they don't. It's happening, whether we want to face it or not.

So if we could think about a responsible way to have sections open, it might allow for now that we're more educating, more folks about it, putting up signage, really bringing it to the forefront of a lot of news outlets and things like that. Maybe it's a better recipe for opening sections than we were two years ago.

[Speaker 1] (2:26:26 - 2:26:41)
My biggest concern about that and the entire section thing in general is that sometimes like in the 24 hours that it takes, it's not like the same section as always shifts around. So anyway, I think we're taking up a lot of your time.

[Speaker 4] (2:26:42 - 2:26:45)
Yes. So hold on a second. We have someone has their hand up.

[Speaker 1] (2:26:45 - 2:26:49)
A.A. Arnold.

[Speaker 4] (2:26:50 - 2:26:53)
Just going to let one person online and then go to you.

[Speaker 17] (2:27:02 - 2:27:04)
Andrew, I think you can talk.

[Speaker 9] (2:27:06 - 2:28:16)
Hey guys, can you hear me? Andrea, can you hear me? Okay, perfect.

First of all, really appreciative of this comprehensive report of what's been going on. I think it adds a lot of color that we were previously missing. So really appreciative of so many players who were able to put all this together.

I just had a couple of comments as I was listening and recommendations. One, Chris, when you talked about fishermen, how it was generally, we'll call it better at the outfall before the summer. I wonder if seasonality of real estate has a play here because obviously we know that some properties are seasonal, right?

A lot of people just travel to Swampscott for the summer months and then they leave again. So I wonder if that has any role here and perhaps it might be worth investigating if there are a large amount of properties on Fisherman's Beach, which properties and perhaps that might be a good starting point to try to tackle some of the issues there.

[Speaker 1] (2:28:18 - 2:28:20)
Throw that down with water use or something.

[Speaker 9] (2:28:23 - 2:30:22)
Sorry, I didn't catch that. I also wanted to make a recommendation to test the Stacey's Brook outfall daily. I know that Lynn is beginning to capture more systematic data from that.

And I think it's, I mean, I'm loving seeing Stacey's Brook on the Swampscott side looking again, better, not great in terms of like the numbers that we're seeing posted. But I think that, again, to your point, Chris, if we want to get surgical about this, doing daily testing will allow us to measure as we are doing some of these, like the work that we're going to be doing, are we actually getting better over time? Like what does that bar graph look like over time?

Because we all know that weekly testing is immensely flawed, right? If you look at the Fisherman's Beach weekly testing versus the daily testing, there's a big discrepancy there. So I do think that that might be an issue, that might be a situation where it's warranted to spend another $5 a day to test Stacey's Brook itself.

So that way we can ensure, is the progress that we're making with the pipes translating to better water quality at the end of those pipes? And if not, why not, right? Where do we need to look backwards in that system?

I would also make a recommendation similar to what you guys had talked about, but I would love to see the beach closed immediately, systematically after a heavy rainfall, like not 24 hours later, closed when the rain is in. Because we saw that really, really intense closing a week ago, I think it was, a week and a half ago at Fisherman's Beach. And that is something where I know the test was taken just after the rainfall happened.

So that shows me that the rainfall happens, and then we see these really immense numbers of bacteria in the water. And therefore it should have been closed that day, it should have been closed the next day, in my opinion as well.

[Speaker 1] (2:30:23 - 2:30:28)
So that's specifically what we're recommending.

[Speaker 9] (2:30:30 - 2:30:35)
Oh, so you're recommending immediate closure, like that day kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. Okay, awesome.

[Speaker 1] (2:30:36 - 2:30:38)
Because there is a lag in the data generation.

[Speaker 9] (2:30:40 - 2:32:02)
Excellent. And then I think to branch off of that, one thing that I've seen the town utilize well for other situations is social media, right? I think the town does overall a really good job of promoting things on social media, spreading awareness, doing events.

And I would love to see, not like a daily inundation of that here, but I would love to see that utilized in a more systematic way when, for example, something like Fisherman's Beach is closed. Hey, reminder, there was a heavy rainfall today, don't go to local beaches, right? Maybe visit a pool instead, right?

Something like that. Or if we want to be more pinpointed about it, don't choose Fisherman's Beach today, for example, right? Choose Eisman's, choose Preston, choose Phillip.

It's going to be elevated, but it's not going to be elevated as much as Fisherman's. I do think that that kind of messaging on social media is going to have a much higher impact than just simply putting a sign up, which should be required too, because not everybody is following the town of Swanscott's website. But I think a lot of people in town do get those notifications and word can travel faster, especially as families are making plans for the day.

I do think that that would be a better way to disseminate information and educate folks on the fact that you shouldn't be going swimming in these places after a heavy rainfall. So I digress. Thank you everybody for their collaboration here.

I'm really, really happy to see the positive momentum that we're making.

[Speaker 4] (2:32:03 - 2:32:09)
Andrea, thank you for all your hard work. I don't think we'd be here without all your hard work.

[Speaker 9] (2:32:11 - 2:32:15)
Always happy to help where I can. Dr. Friedman.

[Speaker 13] (2:32:16 - 2:33:09)
Thank you. Art Friedman, Precinct 4. First of all, I want to thank Sean for getting the funds for the testing.

I also want to thank the Water and Sewage and Reconstruction Committee for getting this going. I think it's really important. It's a really important part of this whole process until we get the pipes taken care of.

And I wonder whether we could have a flag maybe on top of the fish house or somewhere like pointed out red or something right away without, because the signs are going to be there. But if you have a flag, people know that it's no swimming. You know, fish house somewhere there.

I know it's here, but somewhere, boom, right away. It's down when it's not. But in some way that the public knows, they should say the rain.

But then they're going to, kids aren't going to read it.

[Speaker 1] (2:33:09 - 2:33:15)
I'd go a step further and say it would be great if the flags were the same as the ones they had at Gates. So that there was no ambiguity.

[Speaker 13] (2:33:15 - 2:33:43)
Literally by the exact same flag that they have, and everyone understands. I think a good flag, like a Gale-Wanning sign for boaters, pollution would be great. You mentioned earlier, just briefly talking to you, that there are some ways to get quicker testing results.

It's going to cost more, obviously. But maybe we can think about that next season. So to put a little bit more detail into it costs more.

[Speaker 1] (2:33:43 - 2:33:52)
I would say that your setup cost would be at least $500,000. And your staffing cost would probably be $1,000,000 to $2,000,000.

[Speaker 4] (2:33:53 - 2:33:53)
I didn't realize.

[Speaker 1] (2:33:53 - 2:34:01)
Sit down now. So possible. Yes, and Chicago does do this.

But Chicago is very different. Well, yeah, I didn't realize there was that much of a chance here.

[Speaker 13] (2:34:02 - 2:34:32)
But I do think, I do appreciate what you're doing. I think it's making a step forward until we can get the flags. And also mentioning, you mentioned to me earlier in talking that some of the work that has already been done to mitigate it has made a difference in Stacybrook and the Swanscott side, correct?

So they were much lower than they had been before these pipes were fixed, correct? The town is getting it done. I appreciate that.

The people thought we weren't doing anything. No, it was being done. There's sort of a silent background.

[Speaker 1] (2:34:32 - 2:34:49)
And Gino has been working on this. And Sean has been working on this since 2015. This isn't new.

This isn't done in the past two years or three years. No one individual in this room has driven at all. This has been percolating for a very long time.

[Speaker 8] (2:34:50 - 2:35:29)
Are there any more questions? Yes, just one. Andrea had mentioned daily testing at Stacybrook.

And we had had an earlier part of the presentation that talked about the design phase ends phase two. And in December of 24, construction would start Q1 of 25. It makes sense from that perspective since construction is going to start in Q1 of 25, potentially look at the daily testing next year.

So starting in April or May to see if the impact of phase two construction is...

[Speaker 1] (2:35:29 - 2:35:50)
And I appreciate you thinking about the longer time horizon here. We are talking about this as if we're going to be doing this constantly. But the summer is ending for the swimming season.

I think that as we go through the winter, we're going to start thinking more about the IDP use of this technology and really thinking long term how we can find the most value for the town.

[Speaker 14] (2:35:54 - 2:36:10)
Chris, you say you plan to keep testing fishermen through Survivor Second. Yes. And your three college volunteers would more likely leave the third week of August.

We're looking for volunteers to last two weeks perhaps to look for help out there. We're going to...

[Speaker 4] (2:36:10 - 2:36:13)
I think we have two members that are qualified. Didn't you guys get your certification?

[Speaker 1] (2:36:14 - 2:36:14)
We're certified.

[Speaker 4] (2:36:15 - 2:36:17)
You have stellar sites. So we've got them.

[Speaker 1] (2:36:20 - 2:36:24)
We're working on a plan for the last week. We're good.

[Speaker 4] (2:36:25 - 2:36:27)
So thank you very much. Thank you, guys.

[Speaker 16] (2:36:27 - 2:36:28)
Excellent job.

[Speaker 4] (2:36:34 - 2:36:38)
All right. So with that, we are going to skip the town administrator's report.

[Speaker 6] (2:36:38 - 2:36:39)
What?

[Speaker 4] (2:36:39 - 2:36:42)
Because we're running late. Agenda.

[Speaker 6] (2:36:42 - 2:36:44)
That is twice in a row.

[Speaker 4] (2:36:47 - 2:37:09)
Now we're going to move to the consent agenda. And we can take anything out if we'd like to take it out. I would like to take out...

Well, I'd like to take out 629.24. Agreed. And other than that, can I have a motion to accept the rest of the consent agenda?

[Speaker 6] (2:37:10 - 2:37:24)
The only thing... I just want to make sure. We've got these different versions floating around.

And a couple of these. Like, so 417, do we have different...

[Speaker 17] (2:37:24 - 2:37:28)
You should have one set that at the top, I think, says to disregard everything else.

[Speaker 6] (2:37:29 - 2:37:33)
Well, that says it on May 29th for me. Yeah, I'll have that.

[Speaker 17] (2:37:34 - 2:37:42)
So the ones that say 417... I think there's a bunch of edits at the bottom.

[Speaker 6] (2:37:44 - 2:37:47)
Right, we've got two different versions floating around, right?

[Speaker 17] (2:37:47 - 2:37:47)
Yep, one or both.

[Speaker 6] (2:37:47 - 2:37:57)
One with extensive comments from one person... ...at open meeting, public comment, and one with more normal abbreviated comments.

[Speaker 4] (2:37:57 - 2:38:26)
So I think what it is is the comments are... The question is whether or not to roll the comments from a resident comment into an attachment, or to have them posted into the minutes. And I have sent in to have them posted in the minutes because the individual was actually here making the comments.

They didn't email it in or anything like that. So that's what you...

[Speaker 6] (2:38:28 - 2:38:41)
I appreciate that distinction, for sure, between being here versus the email. On the other hand, is it mean that we're going to verbatim put in the minutes everything everyone says in public comment then?

[Speaker 4] (2:38:42 - 2:38:49)
I think if someone stands up and says, this is my public comment, and I want my public comment added to the minutes, that's what we need to do.

[Speaker 8] (2:38:50 - 2:39:18)
I personally don't believe that. I think we've had a good process where we've summarized the comments. If there's an attachment, we can attach it to the minutes.

This would be a diversion of the previous ways that the select board has handled minutes. I'm uncomfortable with providing one individual a verbatim and other individuals summary comments.

[Speaker 4] (2:39:19 - 2:39:44)
So I don't think it's really a diversion from what we've done before. Sometimes people stand up and just talk and say things. But what you have is you have an individual who stood up and was very clear what they wanted added into the minutes.

And I don't think that we can make the decision, well, we're going to just summarize what you're saying, and we'll add something later. I think we have a difference of opinion.

[Speaker 8] (2:39:44 - 2:39:47)
I think it's exactly what we can do as a board.

[Speaker 4] (2:39:50 - 2:40:06)
Number one, I'm not worried. Why would I want to have someone come to public comment and not want to put their public comment in there if they're saying, I want my public comment added into the minutes? That's where I'm coming from.

[Speaker 5] (2:40:07 - 2:40:22)
But on the 29th of May, where we had email comments come in, we just said, see attached email. So why wouldn't we just say, why wouldn't we just give a brief synopsis and then say, see written comments attached?

[Speaker 4] (2:40:22 - 2:40:49)
The reason I'm saying, the reason I, my argument is the person was here. The person, the person's body was here. Let me finish what I'm saying.

The person's body was here. The person said, this is what I want. I want my minutes.

I want my minutes on the agenda. The other people sent in there, sent in an email, and that email was an attachment. So I don't, I can't, I don't, I don't support attachments.

I just, why not just put them in there?

[Speaker 5] (2:40:50 - 2:40:53)
Well, if that's the case, then why don't we just put all the emails in there?

[Speaker 4] (2:40:53 - 2:40:54)
I'm good with that too.

[Speaker 5] (2:40:54 - 2:41:02)
I mean, I just think for consistency sake, let's just pick a way and stick with it rather than doing something some way just so it doesn't feel like anybody's.

[Speaker 4] (2:41:02 - 2:41:03)
I'm good with that too.

[Speaker 8] (2:41:03 - 2:41:13)
Yeah, I agree. So I would, I would, so I would, so I would make a motion for the meeting minutes of 4.17 to summarize and add the comments in full as an attachment.

[Speaker 4] (2:41:18 - 2:41:29)
So I think what you're, what you're saying is I'm sorry, go ahead. So does anybody want to second this motion? All right, so let's go.

[Speaker 5] (2:41:29 - 2:42:19)
I think the flip side of the motion is in any of the minutes where there is an email that will be attached, instead of attaching it, it will appear just as the public comments on, in public comments, this doesn't have a date on it. So I don't know which one this is, but. 4.17. 4.17, thank you. So it will appear just as in 4.17, where it'll say the person's name, their address, and then the email or their reading of their statement will appear in full in public comment. And going forward, we'll try to maintain that. So if somebody comes and reads something from public comment and would like it to be verbatim into the minutes, they should say so.

And then they should give it to Diane or email it to the select board and it will appear in the minutes verbatim.

[Speaker 6] (2:42:19 - 2:42:19)
Is that a motion?

[Speaker 5] (2:42:19 - 2:42:20)
So, yeah.

[Speaker 10] (2:42:20 - 2:42:25)
And that goes for us too. So I know that when we say, I want this noted in minutes, right?

[Speaker 5] (2:42:25 - 2:42:35)
Right, to Diane and Diane. We put it out there. The whole thing, not an attachment.

Yeah, so it's consistent across all parties. So that is my motion. Second.

[Speaker 6] (2:42:39 - 2:42:43)
So that's, that's basically.

[Speaker 4] (2:42:44 - 2:42:46)
Can we have a, we show of hands in support.

[Speaker 6] (2:42:47 - 2:42:53)
But is your motion about the whole consent agenda, except for 629 using that strategy?

[Speaker 4] (2:42:53 - 2:43:05)
Yes, the whole consent agenda, which includes a discussion of possible vote, grant permission for Shabbat House, Swarm Scouts 5K for their lives on Sunday, August 4th, 2024 at 10 a.m. and for our minutes.

[Speaker 8] (2:43:07 - 2:43:11)
With this format. So wait, what's the issue with 629?

[Speaker 4] (2:43:13 - 2:43:14)
So we just have to add.

[Speaker 6] (2:43:16 - 2:43:17)
I don't think the notes are really complete.

[Speaker 4] (2:43:18 - 2:43:43)
Yeah, we just have to get it OK, I mean, I'm happy with it because all my stuff is in there, but it doesn't have to be a little bit more descriptive. All right, so all in favor? All in favor?

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Opposed? No opposed. Now we're at select board time.

And does anybody have, Katie, anything for select board time?

[Speaker 8] (2:43:44 - 2:44:44)
David? Yeah, I do. I just want to thank Danielle Strauss and Jackie Carmelingo and specifically Andrew and Gemi for saving the day last night during the viewing of Jaws.

We probably had three, 400 people on the beach last night. There were some people who were scared. It's shocking because it was a 50 year old movie, but it was an awesome community event and it was really exciting to see so many people from all ages, all around town, even some of our friends from Marblehead attending this great event on the fishermen's and I look forward to many more.

It was awesome. And then this upcoming weekend on Saturday is the Bentwater Native Beach. So two to nine, fishermen's beach, 21 plus events, music, beer, community.

Come on down. Hopefully we'll have a beautiful day of community building with Bentwater Native Beach.

[Speaker 5] (2:44:45 - 2:44:47)
Bring your 50-50 raffle money to support.

[Speaker 8] (2:44:47 - 2:44:49)
Big blue bargains.

[Speaker 5] (2:44:50 - 2:44:50)
Doug?

[Speaker 6] (2:44:51 - 2:45:20)
Just three things that I think I've had some discussion with the chair about these, the three things for upcoming agendas. One is our next step on the goals to kind of follow in our handbook process. Second is, you know, getting to that financial summit and know where that's coming and removing any ambiguity about our select board handbook.

And making sure we're all in approval of that.

[Speaker 5] (2:45:21 - 2:45:26)
Danielle? I don't have anything. I have something if you don't mind.

[Speaker 4] (2:45:26 - 2:45:27)
I don't mind.

[Speaker 5] (2:45:27 - 2:45:45)
Good, go ahead. I know I brought this up with the chair before and I know we discussed it very briefly today about having boards and committees who have applicants ready and willing to participate. It's on our agenda for next time.

So I just want boards and committees who've reached out to me to know that.

[Speaker 4] (2:45:45 - 2:45:56)
They were contacted to me. And Sean, if there's a possibility if we could get recreation to run that new machine to show the Olympics.

[Speaker 3] (2:45:58 - 2:46:02)
Great. Did you want karaoke as well or any other?

[Speaker 4] (2:46:02 - 2:46:03)
I'm good with that.

[Speaker 8] (2:46:03 - 2:46:17)
We did talk about that last night. And that was something that Danielle and Jackie had also discussed. So they're thinking potentially on town hall lawn or potentially on Jason.

[Speaker 3] (2:46:18 - 2:46:22)
Yeah, we got baseball games, all sports events. It'll be a lot of...

[Speaker 4] (2:46:22 - 2:46:45)
If you do it by the Little League, they can also open up the snacks. Yeah. And I think, Sean, the upper part of Humphrey Street where the restaurants are, we need a little bit of help with making that sidewalk ADA compliant.

We have a real serious challenge there and we've got to get that addressed. Okay.

[Speaker 3] (2:46:46 - 2:46:56)
I will reach out to you tomorrow and we'll have the DPW and the building commissioner head up there and assess it for accessibility.

[Speaker 4] (2:46:56 - 2:47:00)
Okay. So with that said, motion to adjourn.

[Speaker 19] (2:47:02 - 2:47:03)
All right, so moved.

[Speaker 4] (2:47:03 - 2:47:04)
All in favor?

[Speaker 21] (2:47:04 - 2:47:07)
Aye. All right, good night. Good night.