001while you do that um i will read the um so we are an open session i'll just go right ahead and read the virtual meeting introduction um tonight's meeting will be conducted on the zoom platform and streamed on cohasset 143tv as well as cohasset's facebook momentarily the public is invited to participate on the zoom platform which can be accessed using the link provided at the top of the posted agenda for tonight's meeting members of the board and other scheduled participants will be able to participate when called on by the chair board members will be able to ask questions of any participant all votes taken at this meeting will be by roll call members of the public who wish to ask questions are asked to utilize the question and answer feature on zoom please note that
002comments will not be monitored on facebook if you're registering on zoom to speak please include your full name and address for the public record the chair will review the questions and if appropriate direct them to a participant for response please note that comments on platforms other than zone will not be monitored as i said this meeting is being recorded and will be available for later viewing on cohasset 143tv and the first thing we are going to do is the pledge of allegiance and i think jack has a flag in his background so 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 i know that's visually awkward first up is a public comment um
003so welcome to those of you who are watching i know there's at least somebody who would like to make a public comment um and uh we just came out of executive session and we are happy to see you i think chris can you promote or tracy promote peter pescatore he had reached out and said he wanted to speak during public comment peter when you get in if you could just give your name and address for the record chris you're muted i'm he's uh he's joining us shortly great you there peter we do look forward to the day when we meet in person i don't see anything else in the q and a diana monitoring yep thank you carrie [Music] so peter is showing uh no microphone so he may have to log out and log
004back in okay if he wants to just type this question you can but we're not showing a microphone so sometimes it doesn't always connect yeah peter i think peter just wanted to update us on the trail markers that were put in to um i think it was will wright park um so peter if you can hear us we're gonna move on and if you come back in um i will take you out of order if that's okay with the board um just so you can um update us on the the trail marker work that's been done by the open space and rec committee um okay so let's move on to the next item which is the state election warrant chris can you just um i mean this is this is standard operating procedure we need
005to do it but one of the things i i would like if if you have the information is um to let the public know and us know about the dates you know that people will be expecting their mail-in ballot if they requested that or when the um early voting begins um so we actually are in preparation of a video that will do all of those wonderful things um so the clerk's office took part um with our communications firm and shooting a video which has which i'm afraid i cannot unveil for you tonight because it's still in production but we shot at the end of the week and it shows how to how to vote where to vote uh chose the ballot box that you know how to drop the vote we're gonna drop the votes
006outside and all the dates and stuff are in there um so i'm hoping that will be uh unveiled um thursday i think is the goal i believe the first day of early voting is actually the 17th um and um and i see carrying out in your head and i believe the registration deadline is the week after that um and um but all of those dates and a lot will be in this cool video that's been produced and again i was hoping unfortunately the first the team producing it um wasn't able to get it done for us so um before tonight we'll have it by the end of the week so can you when that's available can you make sure you share it with us so we can put it on our social media platforms in
007addition to whatever the town does we will share it far and wide um so the goal is to have it is why the distributor is possible i see kerry raising a hand yeah are we going to be doing the same thing with the drop off mailbox in front of town hall the same thing that we did for the primary yeah in fact we actually ordered a bigger box great because because we're not just it was originally you know when we put it in seven years ago um it wasn't used a lot but obviously it's been used a ton lately people are putting all kinds of things in there and it's during you know the the the early voting period runs two consecutive weeks like every day so people are here on the weekend stepped in
008the box out um i said we decided a bigger box would be better particularly as we get closer so i believe that's going to be installed in two weeks there's a back order on everything right now believe it or not wow and carol's office was great they went out and actually they were pursuing additional grant money so they found a grant that's going to allow us to pay for this new box which is awesome that's terrific so um that'll be a ballot box and it'll also be um the regular drop-off box for town right you can put bill payments and everything else else in there too so it'll be i think it's about twice as big as that the one that's out there now so that'll pay until we're ready to install the other one
009so uh but that will be carry that will be uh will be thank you if you get uh absolute ballot at home now i know the mailing has gone has started to go out you'll start to receive them uh you can drop them that box now so you can either put it in the mail but if you're in town and you have your option to your at-home ballot you can just drop it in that silver box today if you haven't okay great so um we we need we do not need to vote is my understanding the election warrant because this is part of our just general responsibilities is that correct i believe you just have to officially sign it we just have to officially sign it i believe it's being distributed to all of you
010like we've done with some other documents i think uh and i'll confirm that with tracy in just a second okay so this is basically just the the like the warrant for town meeting outlines the the votes that will be taken um it's it just yeah it's literally what you're just signing off with the ballot because it's an official act and and so then the question is whether we um should stop by tomorrow or when it's going to be available for signature um i will confirm with you shortly if it's coming around to your home okay meanwhile peter pescatore has returned so maybe we could paul so this not only is the ballot but it's also the uh the two questions on the the ballot as well who are on that that warrant yep questions one
011and two it's pretty thin it was in our packets peter's peter's performance all he has to do is turn on his video on his audio and you can hear from him peter welcome you turn on your video and audio and would love to get your update just that video i gave him the option to type the comment thank you carrie i think i know he wants to share his good news of his committee work so we'll give them a minute takes a while when you do it one finger at a time cause are we on facebook are you still having trouble with that it's got a message from a resident saying that they can't find us on facebook i love that our fans are asking about us corey fans yeah justin um somewhat of a
012public comment you know i i'm sure a lot of you have received comments from people in town just wondering about return to public meetings and obviously that's something we can't do yet but you know um i am anxious and as soon as it's healthy and safe and recommended that we're able to do that i um i'll be the first one there good evening one second but at the same time this uncomfortable format does reach out to a lot of people and and i think that um we'll take a lot of positive takeaways from this uh peter the floor is yours quickly uh thank you uh sorry i couldn't get the video to come on but here we are um i just want to report that the open space and recreation committee has finished one of
013its key action items for the open space and rec plan that was to provide uh signage for the trails at wheelwright park and we actually did the paper reservation as well so over the last two weekends um the the committee plus the help from the boy scouts put up all the signs in wheel right mocking the trails giving people directional signs how to get back to forrest ave or main street etc so they're all done uh completed the committee they planned the whole thing did you know scope out all of the trails uh the names of the trails and get the appropriate signs needed to cover the park organize the manufacturing of the signs and put them up so that's what i wanted to report thank you that's that's terrific and you guys have been
014pretty busy the last uh month five weeks we're staying busy yes that's true right okay all right i think there's a whole bunch of people that are never going to get lost there now after the number of years i've lived here there's one person a year that gets lost oh people get lost there i i've directed several people to how to get out of there so and we've got we you know there's many many more people uh walking in the parks now because of what so it's it's actually there's a lot of new people who don't know the trail so i think this is very timely great so again um have a good meeting all right thanks peter thank you thanks chris did you have a chance to find out how where's where to sign
015this election warrant so uh they're going to be coming knocking on your door so um tonight oh yeah this evening okay is everybody at home as usual i think so right yep i i'm in my office which is in the in behind my house right okay i'll let trace uh well tracy's watching so she'll let the police officer come knocking okay well maybe if we have an efficient meeting um it'll be after the meeting which would be a lot easier um okay they haven't been here you have to come here you have to come here to pick it up they haven't done that yet i got it okay that's good that'll be a good time corey chris did you sort out uh the the facebook streaming are you still having trouble with that yeah i'm
016still having trouble i've tried three times and it gets me to the page it sets it up and it stops so and what page is it because we've got tanako has it and we were on classic live streaming but did you see i know i i've tried it i've tried it both ways and it just won't do it so i'm going to try it again but it's being very temperamental tonight and i don't know why could you just put up i'm sorry would you mind putting a post on live streaming just say that you know we're working on it that way people aren't confused about where it's supposed to be thanks thank you okay next up on our agenda is the approval of the letter to the faa um as you probably know uh we
017also received an email from ralph dormitzer who is the appointed member of the town um to the massport logan airport um committee he endorses this is a regional letter um advocating for um or approving the study that was done by the faa and um unless there's any questions which i will not be able to answer um i would um you know ask you for any comments and then if not a motion to approve um signing on to this letter i'll just i mean quickly just i went over it and you know basically for the public out there it's uh it was a study for a different flight path which brings some planes farther out to the ocean and farther all around hull a lot of planes kind of come overhaul now and this really benefits
018hull more than us uh and you know it'll have a minimum impact on us but any impact it has is positive because it moves air traffic out towards the ocean so uh you know i've it's got my full support thank you for summarizing kerry yeah this has been an issue that a lot of residents have been talking about for a while and i do think this is a positive step towards getting some planes farther out and not as over our heads as they have been well it's interesting because they i think it used to be worse and then it got better and then it got worse again um so this is a constant battle for the south shore communities and rep moschino and and mostly hull and uh and i appreciate ralph's work and and
019you know we used to every few years have ralph for every year so ralph come to us and give us sort of an update because he's he gets himself out to milton or wherever they have these meetings and and and you know kind of fights the good fight on behalf of these smaller communities that are less impacted than some somebody like like milton but really keep keep our concerns at the forefront jack uh i was i have to tell you i was on a plane come flying in logan and the woman next to me i talked to her turns out she's an faa official oh interesting certainly she certainly knew ralph dorman sir so we are well represented absolutely people might be interested in knowing part of this is is they've gotten technology and the
020gps were fine-tuned they've been experimenting with having flight paths a little closer together and et cetera and so on the fact that we in the our fellow communities have been able to clearly state that that's fine make it work better but don't have planes you know going low and slow over cohasset good work yep great thank you all right so um this this letter is being signed off um on by the by the town managers of the communities that are participating so if we could just uh maybe make a motion to um support chris uh support this letter and um allow the town manager to sign off on behalf of the town i'd like to move that we support what's how how should we describe the letter the uh the regional letter um letter the
021tri-town letter to the faa i'd like to move that the town of cohasset supports the triton letter to the faa second okay roll call vote jack craig and i corey evans eye diane kennedy i paul schubert harry thompson i great all right that's all set um next is our series what i hope will be a series of check-ins on uh master plan implementation working groups and any other committees that um that we can that we are liaising with or that we can um make a comment on and um i i'm i'm hoping that we can put this at the beginning of most agendas um just just as a as a touch point to see if there's any action that's going to be forthcoming and that'll help me as me and kerry as well kind of
022look look ahead at agenda items um so this week um speed round if you have nothing to say that's okay but um we'll go through the committees that exist and the first is economic um is it vitality it's economic economic task force questions right right it's very specific so uh so we uh we've got our questionnaire finished and business owners in town should expect to see that in their inbox later this week we're asking everybody to fill it out basically by next wednesday just a week's time it's a short survey about two minutes uh we've had a few meetings of the group and we've got some initial ideas uh that are pretty ground level uh and uh we're excited to kind of start getting some input from from business owners and and working from there
023that's our update great one thing um just that to kind of flag for your committee is maybe reaching out to the um cohasset cultural council so the cohasset cultural council is a um it's actually a state prescribed um council in each town and and the council members are appointed by the select board and they their job is re-granting money that the state gives them to arts and cultural organizations in the community which actually have some kind of a pulse obviously um less so today than they they do on a regular basis but it just might be a resource to to get some of those folks into the you know into your conversation at some point um because they're all you know they're support they have access to state funding uh on a per capita basis
024and they're going to be looking to give those to organizations that are offering cultural activities that's wonderful and one thing that we've talked about we've identified is you know what makes cohasset unique i mean obviously there's a lot of things but one thing that we have kind of in spades is is the artistic cultural community um you know with seltzer art center and the different things we we have in town the music circus that's really unique to cohasser so that's definitely we would love to get some input from them we also have one seat remaining on our committee uh so anyone out there who's listening who would uh is excited about making sure that our town stays vibrant we'd love to hear from you and we'll be appointing members to cultural council at our meeting
025on october 20th so um we can talk offline that you know there that might be an opportunity to um kind of liaise have somebody liaise from the cultural council great affordable housing so two very good things uh one is that the affordable housing trust uh now has what looks to be the final legal transfer of 808 jerusalem road once that is through the plan would be to pursue an rfp for possible development options that are there the other thing the steering committee affordable housing steering committee is looking at five separate locations in town properties for potential um affordable housing locations this is a mixed group of properties i'm not going to tell you where they are but they're looking at a wide assortment of town versus town property private properties and potentially mixed use so
026it looks good with with the goal of being on the affordable housing trust with the goal obviously of projects that can be come online as soon as possible and so you know ideas to get this up and going so that there's good faith effort plus affordable housing units that are available for um to keep us under the ten percent yep great jack zoning well in zoning actually this is good to be right after paul because the uh where zoning and affordable housing intersect is what's called an accessory dwelling and for those who are not up to the the latest terminology that just means a dwelling within a the main house that could be used for an in-law we would understand it also it could be used as a rental and they're generally smaller and there's
027been some issues however that does a couple of things if zoning can figure out how to make it possible while retaining a residential nature is it allows uh number one in-laws of course but also elderly people a little bit of extra income they can stay in their home having somebody younger you know sharing the same uh house housing lot help for emergencies snow shoveling there's a lot of good things and this is something that would help us bring us under the ten percent which is important for the character of cohasset but it does require that the we have to figure out some smart zoning um we're also going to be dealing with the large homes the what's called the floor area ratio which is basically how much square footage of dwellings that you're going to
028put on a lot there's talk about the height we can have we allow basically 35 feet but 35 feet in like a village historic area where houses are right up against the street is different than 35 feet from a house that has a setback of 100 feet so there's lots of things in the zoning and our zoning really has not been updated in years so i would encourage anybody who has some thoughts and innovative smart thoughts to let us know because we're really open for that so this isn't important and this sets the guideline for how our neighborhoods develop it also and people should be aware of this it allows them to protect their neighborhood so it retains the same character that we all want to keep great very exciting and and i think this
029was sort of the genius of how the master plan played out and how some of these working group um started to spin out because and why it's important for us to keep each other informed because everything impacts everything else and and so with elm street corridor um i think i updated at our last meeting that we had met and kind of divided into two uh areas one sort of being more of a conceptual design ideas and then a sort of a data group that's trying to collect you know what really are the challenges with parking and where does it exist and what's what opportunities do we have to you know um with traffic calming on elm street but elm street corridor as i keep saying is more than just the corridor it's actually what's going
030on in the harbor which clearly will impact whatever the plan is for elm street and then when we were talking about parking how does that impact the village and parking and how does that impact the parking lot behind the you know the the south main street um properties so um so we were supposed to have a meeting today um it was canceled um for some reason so um more more to report but we'll just keep these conversations going on sewer which doesn't have its own regional um its own working group um because we've elevated it to a different level of discussion um i'll talk later in the night but i want the board the select board members to have an opportunity to have a conversation amongst ourselves and really dig into some of our thoughts
031about sewer particularly as it relates to some of these other town priorities um and we will probably end up scheduling a meeting um later in october with just that and maybe some other quick business that we need to take care of and including maybe what we were discussing earlier this evening so so stay tuned on that um there's a lot going on we expect the last we left was that we were going to hear from the sewer commission in november um but i i want us to kind of have a round table discussion public obviously is invited uh beforehand so okay uh next up is we still have some board committee appointments and this is uh we we appoint two cohasset residents to the ware river estuary park committee which is uh made up of
032um people in cohasset and hull and we have two um reappointments one is dick avery um and the other is tom bell both of whom have been on the committee for um a few years um so if anybody would like to make a motion or have a question fire i'd like to move that we appoint uh richard avery and tom bell to wear river estuary park committee is there a section okay uh roll call jack creighton i corey evans eye diane kennedy i paul schubert carrie thompson i great and we're still doing appointments i know that we have somebody for as corey said the economic tasks for economic development task force we have cohasser cultural council we have co-house at 143tv so keep spreading the word um two or three are my committees so i
033don't know i feel about that yeah i don't know corey don't take it personally um actually that shows that shows your um diligence finding those those committees that really need some great energy thanks um okay so um chris i don't know if you want to pop in and uh i know that dawn's in the waiting room i don't know if he was planning to speak on this but um let me just give you a sort of a general overview of of how we've handled the budget message each year the budget message is really sort of a general kind of um macro painting of where we would like the town manager to go with respect to building next year's budget so the fy 22 budget um the tradition has been that the chair drafts it i
034did send you all a draft tonight but we're not going to really talk about my draft until our next meeting but what we're going to talk about is what has been sent to us in a memo from the advisory committee and chris you were at that meeting right yes okay so if you wouldn't mind just kind of like walking us through some of their recommendations and and you know how we should approach it as a board or what things we need to think about as as we flesh out the details of the budget message from us do you want me to pop it up on the screen yeah if you want so another just another thing on the budget that i you know depending on typically we would do this in late september early october
035we would approve it um but this year is going to be very different we don't even have the fy 21 state approved budget but the the fiscal year that we're in we're still waiting for those fiscal numbers which is actually another reason why special town meeting might not you know should should wait till we get at least the state budget so getting numbers state even a glimpse of what the state numbers might look at look like for fy 22 is anyone's guess as to when that's going to play out but again it's more important that we just stay on top of it and we're doing so every month paul you got to talk about those great revenues so so honestly the the revenues were they're terrible the previous months but the last month revenues for
036september are are 1.2 percent down from last year now last year was was quite a good revenue year so it looks like the sales tax and the income taxes are starting to roll in at a more recovering level than i would have thought which is good so that's helpful kind of surprising okay so back to the advisory committee's guidance which is standard operating procedure for us as we look at developing a budget message for fy 22. so uh don and i met with the advisor committee two weeks ago last i i gotta tell you the days just flow together yeah it's still april um uh so um and uh they've done this for several years and um they spent a fair amount of time talking so it was really productive conversation so they presented uh
037a seven point message and um or or and the first one is actually i think and just it's an important procedure something i think is really good that we have uh continue to follow and and and improve the policies you know with the town's been governed by uh a series of fiscal policies for about a decade now that we've continued to build upon they're in the budget document so if anybody wants to look at them and we've continued to update them and it's i think it's been a real important part of getting to triple a maintaining triple a and quite frankly just maintaining a good strong financial system when you have rules you tend to follow them you talk about them and and now more than ever i think it's critical to have these so
038they basically ever recommend you double down and keep doing it and we are by the way and we'll be reporting some recommendations for some updates on policies later this fall the second point they made was i think the the crux of this entire document and and uh basically without reading this whole thing which people aren't free to read and you all have seen is basically covariance endemic is having uncertain impacts we have to be very careful as we move forward so it's a little more eloquently than that and um their their recommendation is that we pay a lot of close attention to what's going on and as dan pointed out the state doesn't even have a budget in fact tomorrow they're going to be having a hearing uh to talk about where we are today
039so it's going to be a public meet and again if paul if you have time tomorrow you can log on i watch it on zoom i believe that it's going to be live and if you don't have a link i'll send it to you uh the uh they're going to be having an open committee meeting between ways and means senate ways that means house and figure out where they are and uh they really don't know now they've committed to at this point keeping local aid the same uh which we had budgeted a decrease so that's been a good thing for us that said they can still change that and going forward we don't know fy22 as i think we've been talking about governments are tend to be lagging indicators particularly at the local level where
040we we get our impacts later and we recover later so um so what the advisor committee said is basically pay lots of attention be very focused and uh plan for and be prepared for a much tighter financial situation so uh that's number two um they've continued to recommend that the town move towards a one percent reserve fund um uh recognizing that um you know you may not get there today uh because you know to get from 238 to 402 would mean ripping 160 thousand out of the budget that's that is a goal that we should continue to seek though whether or not in the current fiscal climate it can be achieved in one year is another question and they continue to say stick with the uh free cash three to four percent number really important
041um they continue to say hey we're doing we're doing good work on capital but we're not done we need to continue to double down on the 10 year plan which by the way we're actually working on now with departments um and uh continue to build on that and with that continue to work on financing now we actually do have a uh don has created a great spreadsheet which we've been working with capital and departments with and all of you have seen it as well where we you know using different inputs and apples we figure out where we are where we're going to be as the years go forward um so we can we continue to work to work that those to see how we put extra money in that we haven't free cash or if
042we you know increase our percentages where do we get um and then you know something that we've most certainly talked about uh continue to maintain our capital assets and uh the town last two years ago upgraded what's called um uh facilities dude it's our stop to share it's our uh it's our software that runs the work orders and runs the maintenance department and we were as part of that there was a top to bottom assessment of all of our major facilities so for the first time we had a a a a a log of every major component of every major building now one of the challenges that some of them are already coming to saying hey you probably should start fixing some of this so we can't do it all at once that said uh
043nick berardi mark kelly and the team are really on top of this and they're using this data build capital plans going forward which is great so we uh we have a really great assessment and a benchmark which we didn't have until in this past year uh and we have been putting more resources uh and training resources uh and support resources in the facilities unit because that you know we're only as good as the team that keeps it all going so and they've been doing tons of work over the schools as you can imagine that's where a lot of the resources spent recently uh in terms of time and energy uh they've done some work here and if any of you have been uh town hall you can see the work that they've done to help
044secure the building you know we've replaced some windows and some countertops and changed how the uh the intake goes so they've been doing a lot of work on things like that too so um so that was that was the advantage of this message it basically was like pay a lot of attention which at the same time don and i have been briefing the monthly just like this board on where we are financially so we're having an ongoing dialogue with them we're going to continue to do that monthly and they're going to pick up a conversation as part of the long you know looking at the future we're going to be briefing them on collective bargaining at the end of the month and i believe that's a very good thing for us to do collectively with
045all of you in an executive session later in the month to start setting up you know a tone and a direction as to where we can go uh one of the biggest challenges right now is is just the uncertainty um you know i think we'll start to have a little bit of clarity in a month i hope as to where things are going though that's not going to end anything uh it's just the beginning of the next chapter so i think there was an ask about washington that more stimulant you know more covered really funny is dead right now so we have what we have uh in fact i just feel that a inquiry from the school uh committee chair today about some other uh improvements they might want to make so we're exploring those
046um so we're trying to resource the money that we have uh as as best as possible and stretch it as far as possible to make sure we get the best bang for our buck on in the grant money and don is tracking monthly and and putting money into working to get reimbursements from um fema so we can stretch the dollars as far as we can so uh but in some they basically say hey you know we're doing good stuff continue to build capital continue to build maintenance uh continue to pay attention to the long-term things like opeb and the reserve funds at the same time coven crisis has had a real impact on the economy and we have to we have to watch it closely right um so just in in terms of the select
047board budget message the draft that i shared with you literally right before the meeting so i don't expect that anybody had read it but i incorporated pretty much everything in that the advisory committee recommended into a similar format to what we've used um in the past although i i retweeted a little bit and under the operational um budget and the capital budget um i put in some of the the pieces that we've identified as our priorities so for example um under operational priorities i mean other than the status quo if you will or sustaining the programs that we have which is the commitment that this budget document makes assuming we um approve it is to you know doing what we can within the budget to support and enhance the programs of safe harbor because i
048think that has clearly become a priority for all of us and also streamlining and establishing a communications plan um which we've made great strides on this year just to having a pr person and then but we all know there's still a long way to go um and operational needs within the master and harbor plans and then similarly under capital calling out very specific priorities that we know of or general priorities that we haven't identified yet with respect to the priorities of the master plan so um so what i would like to suggest um obviously ask if anybody has any questions now great but just um review this review this in the context of the advisory recommendations think about things that either make sense or don't make sense or might be missing and then we'll have
049a more fulsome conversation about this document later in the month um the other thing is collective bargaining this is a year where where chris and team are going to be negotiating all of the um all of the union contracts as well as you know whatever annual raises for non-union employees um so um we're gonna have input on that after the advisory committee gets up to speed just in general about how the whole process will play out and we'll have an executive session on that um in a few weeks as well um jack yeah um that advisory letter was extraordinarily uh not only well written but it raised some very important things and it's just a example of how small towns can really govern themselves looking to their citizens i would like to see that comment
050put on a town website i think everybody in town who is so inclined would benefit greatly from from reading it it's i was very impressed by it and i'd like to thank the advisory committee for their work great thank you absolutely maybe as part of chris just almost building a portfolio of the budget discussions and documents as they morph their way into the ultimate budget presentation that we'll get whenever um in early fall again early winter because we that's where we you know that's our launching pad for the for the winter spring meetings and obviously annual town meeting um any other questions concerns the um you know the the reserve fund one percent is is aspirational i i wrote it that way in our um in the budget document so i'm flagging that just to
051pay attention to flagging obviously collective bargaining discussions and then again the priorities that we have both operationally and um in terms of capital so everybody good great thanks and you know chris i think dawn usually comes at the end of the month um the 20th would be our monthly budget update and we could we could discuss this further on that date but i'm also thinking and we can talk about this later in the meeting tonight that um that meeting is going to be pretty heavy because we also have a hearing a liquor license hearing um so we may need to consider having another kind of regular select board meeting this month that makes sense yep okay well the 27th is open um so you can all think over the next half hour see if that's
052okay with your schedules all right let's talk about that when we get to select board comments uh so donna's been watching us tonight but he's ready to jump in next next time so well guess what right on target with the agenda at 8 15 is an update on our select board goal number one which is the big one that is all-encompassing but probably more important than anything because if we don't do this stuff right um you know the cards start the cookie starts to crumble so um i assume miriam's gonna walk us through this and welcome i'm gonna i'm gonna start and then marry a chunk of it um so what i will do first if if i i will show the slide that shows the seven components of community health um as we've defined
053them this year as you've defined this year um and we had added one if you recall uh public health uh which we'll talk about more because we have pam fahey here tonight to talk about that affordable housing i think you've touched on already economic fatality you've already touched on with the working group a response to addiction mental health and substance abuse nicole balashi's here to talk more about that and what we're doing with safe harbor plus community engagement is something that we all need to continue to talk about that's something the board has kind of taken on us as a big task of its own and we're obviously here to support that uh miriam's here to talk about inclusion and diversity and i'll talk a little bit more about open accessible government in terms of
054communications and what we've been doing so uh if that works as an order um sounds great we'll have uh is are you ready to jump in there pam i actually have your do you want to show your video i have your powerpoint ready if you want me to run it for you yeah if you wouldn't mind chris that'd be great okay and and i just want to let everybody know we didn't have our public um emergency management team start our meeting off for the first time in a long time um more because things you know there's not a whole lot new to report but um they're still very active and engaged especially with the school's opening and other other topics which i think pam will touch on in this segment yeah there's definitely a lot
055going on uh covert never stops but here we go i am going to talk about um the class of public health goals that are outside of coven so if you wouldn't mind going to the first slide chris so we actually have our short-term goal which i'm going to discuss and then we have a series of three longer-term goals so this year the short-term goal is to increase vaccination rates which is looking to be somewhat of a problem because of cova because a lot of people have kind of let some vaccinations lapse because of the fear of going into hospital settings so the board of health is going to increase the number of flu shot doses that we provide to the public last season 600 doses were purchased 150 doses for seniors and 450 standard doses
056of that 150 were returned so this year 450 were ordered you know which is how many were given last year but we've also got another 250 on back order for a total of 700 doses so we really think we could give or we being really mary goodwin could um to give the 700 doses because right now there's three clinics um scheduled the first one is completely completely filled up the second one is almost filled up and then the third one has some spaces the third one will be the actual indoor one in november the first two are drive-throughs in october so we are going to promote a campaign to increase awareness um keeping up with immunity we're going to post on the new blog that's been established by the um the pr firm that we've
057recently contracted with and will emphasize the importance of getting back all your vaccinations not just the flu vaccination um so to see how we've done you know in terms of number wise at the end of the like flu season say like in june or something we'll be able to check with cvs walgreens and stop and shop pharmacies because they actually keep um records of the number of vaccines that they give out and you know hopefully we'll see an increase in the total number of vaccinations just a quick question on that pam do they keep they keep track of where the people live so you know well there is there is some a little bit of mixing of you know maybe hall on one end of the town and situated down the other end of town
058and they don't break it out by um type of vaccines like they don't break out flu versus other vaccinations but um i think overall if we can look at it like big numbers like i think um you know they give out several thousand so you know if there's an overall increase right it should be pretty significant i think okay and then the blog that you have is that is that up and running and where can people find that that is up and running and it is um on the town website and i think it's replaced the previous coveted page we had i think if you click on that other the previous button it will take you to the new blog now i'll show a link to that later diane if you want all right that
059would be great um and so then the final thing is we are in preparations already for um hopefully we'll get a vaccine maybe like in the wintertime so we've been you know having planning meetings we've had training exercises and how to do it in the schools and stuff and so um hopefully it will be ready when it comes down the pike and the cdc will be looking to them for actually um how to prioritize it because it probably won't be enough initially for everybody so the cdc will be the ones that will tell us you know i think it will be like safety people first you know like police and fire and then obviously the medical community and then it will probably be elderly people and so anyway we won't be the ones making up
060the rules we'll get that from the cdc there a question uh pam quick question do we have a very low temperature refrigerator freezer rather because it looks like two of the vaccines will be requiring very cold temperatures for the cold chain i agree and so um mary just received her freezer today we got a brand new freezer refrigerator freezer so we're good to go that's good well yeah hop back thanks chris so that's that's our short-term goal for 2020. so we have longer term public health goals and so those are going to be more of like two to three year public education campaigns to increase awareness and prevention of vector-borne illnesses and skin cancer next slide so skin cancer is actually an issue in cohasit each year the massachusetts state cancer registry puts out reports
061and each town gets their own report and it describes the incident rates for 23 types of cancer plus an overall cancer rate and it's broken down between men and women so of all those different cancer types the one high incidence rate greater than expected is skin cancer in women so for example for a town the size of coasted it would be expected that there'd be five cancer cases a year of melanoma but there are 15 cases per year so it's three times higher than would be expected so we're going to focus on sun awareness we're going to work in collaboration with the children's melanoma foundation and the south shore skin cancer center so at the the town health and rec fair each year the people from the children's melanoma prevention they'll have a set up
062where they have kind of like a mirror where you can look into it and see um some maybe some damage to your skin and the beginnings of maybe um you know damage you need to be careful of there's also where you can like put lotion on your face and then it shows like where you've missed spots and stuff and then we go to sandy beach each summer and we have dr lara butler from the south shore skin cancer she's there to look at anybody that walks by and and you know kind of do a brief look at their skin and just let them know where there may be some spots or areas that look a little concerning like we didn't do it this year because of covet but last year like she was checking out
063all the lifeguards they were letting her you know let them look at their skin and um so it's been really helpful and we're definitely going to continue to do that more and we'll have product giveaways at farmers market we didn't do anything this year because 2020 is all food but hopefully next year we'll be at the farmers market make our presence felt there again health and rec fair sandy beach will distribute free little sample bottles of sunscreen and we're hoping to post some more on social media um we've been talking about like the town getting instagram accounts and i was just talking to giant orm a little bit more about that today and we definitely think that's a good idea we're going to push forward with that and as the health department will make sure
064we're regular contributors to that next slide so you know tick related illnesses are an increase in massachusetts and really in the northeast in particular it's due to a combination of residential development and warmer climate it's only going to keep getting worse so um you know nowadays almost everybody knows somebody who's had lyme disease who has or has had it so it's a really important public health issue to raise awareness about so we're going to try using available tools such as quest 143tv to kind of put out psas where again we're going to use that um blog that we have the pr firm set up we'll use social media like our instagram account and facebook we're going to develop 100 posters we just had to put a number on something we were saying 100 posters distribute
065free educational materials at park entrances i think that's like a really key place like wheel wright park you know when you walk in they'll be like one of those little um boxes we could take one you know what does it take look like how do you remove it that type of thing and we're gonna have one speaker each year we've had blake genius in the past he's a plymouth county entomologist he's excellent he gives a really good presentation it's not just educational it's really entertaining he's a great speaker um we haven't had great attendance when we have had him so i think we need to brainstorm and maybe get him into like a school assembly or something his presentation is really great for kids so we're going to work a little harder to push blake
066on people i think last slide then mosquito-borne illnesses are another really big issue um you know mosquitoes spread rare but often deadly triple e as well as west nile virus so we're currently in year two of a three year high recycle for tripoli i think we lucked out this year because well sadly because we're in a really severe drought but i think the drought really helped knock down the mosquitoes so we're going to continue to have plymouth county mosquito control provide lava siding and catch basins and storm drains to knock out the lava and in terms of targeting the adult mosquitoes this year for the first time i had them do like a routine spraying every friday they went to eight targeted areas like the ball fields and some parks in the town hall area
067so we did that throughout the whole high risk season and then we'll also continue to use social media media posting as well about you know how to protect yourself from mosquitoes so those are the big big things um right again a combo of short-term and long-term and a lot of public education is pam is the pr firm helping also with kind of understanding how to use some of the social media in terms of what what messaging works are they pretty much working on more long-form content um to this point we haven't used them for that but that's a really great point i mean again you know i've been so crazy with the covet thing but at some point it'll settle down and i think yeah that would be great i could definitely use some lessons
068from them yeah we you know in my business we we just in well we've laid people off we've actually hired somebody to really help us hone in and build schedules via platform and what works better on instagram and facebook and blogs and that kind of thing so it might be worth seeing if that's something they have expertise in definitely that's a great idea thank you carrie yeah a lot of our younger residents are on instagram more than facebook facebook tends to skew a little bit older now so i love that idea of a town instagram page especially when it comes to issues like this and i especially really love tackling the sunscreen sun damage issue pam i think that's really important i think we're not talking about that enough as a community and i especially
069think we should figure out how to target young people with that as well to try to set those good habits but it's it's definitely something i'm really happy to hear you talk about and i can't wait to help you okay good thank you anybody else or move along thanks so much pam good work all right thank you uh we have next with us tonight uh nicole balashi from safe harbor um so she has a presentation which you want to show uh nicole you want me to do it um if you have it up that would be great i haven't i i hope you're gonna tell us how your um ground cafe at the beach went last friday oh yes i i have some pictures this year excellent okay here we go i'm praying my dog
070does not start to cry behind me um all right so i am the i really just kind of taken the chair position of the substance use addiction and mental health piece of the community health school um but everyone who's been working on this you can see their logos here this is really um to have a community health goal you have to have the community behind it so um there's a lot of initiatives that are taking place um cross department cross organization um the next slide please so our target goals um really to decrease underage substance use and that's all substances with the overall goal of reducing adulthood addiction and then also decreasing stress in mental health issues amongst the youth and adult and again this would would in turn reduce substance use as a coping
071skill so these are our targets but it really encompasses prevention and treatment for both substance use and mental health next slide so pre-covered and in postcovid we have continued efforts and i won't read them all off for you here but um just a few that i wanted to highlight um we have the prescription kiosk at cohasset police department and that's 24 7. um and that is for anyone who has prescription that they didn't use olive or if it has expired just for the community to know that that is a resource that is again there 24 7. um and also the interface referral service i don't know if this gets enough publicity um cohasset is extremely fortunate to have this as a resource it's free to every single resident in cohasset um it's it's from nine
072to five monday through friday if i'm not mistaken um and it's a resource to the residents for anyone who is struggling with mental health whether it's themselves or a loved one they can call this number and all the information is found on safe harbor and also on if you just google the interface referral service the number pops up but they do all of the work for you because in that situation it's already super overwhelming and draining the last thing you want to do is research who takes your insurance and who's available who doesn't have a waitlist et cetera so interface referral service is a huge piece and i can't thank the town and schools enough for funding that service it's just not utilized as much as it should be so anyone watching i just want
073to make sure that they know that that is a resource uh referral service is that the william james college uh okay good yeah that was supported with um both of our senator and representatives for gosh three or four years uh in a row in the past three or four years yeah that's a tremendous service it is it really isn't um during covet as we all know um there were we've seen an uptick in mental health issues and it's only projected to go up as we kind of go into our new normal and into the winter um so we really tried to push and i can't thank diane and um chris senior and all the other town leaders that participated in the psa that we recorded during coolbid just to really get the information out there
074to let the community know that it is there um and then one other one the mental health education piece this again mental health is an underlying issue to substance use so the schools have implemented the free mental health modules that safe harbor sponsored into their freshman wellness curriculum and i just got an email today that they just saw an influx from cohasset accessing those modules so that's awesome to hear um but all these are efforts that continue to um be of service next slide so in postcovid we of course are focusing on the entire community but with an additional youth focus um again because of the mental health and substances that we've seen so one of those um includes the teen center i know that this has been a topic of conversation um and again
075i am just cheer chairing this initiative but it is all the departments that you see on the cohasset survey it's a town wide initiative um right now we have 304 responses of the 500 so what we need to move forward before we take any preceding steps would be um cohasset middle school john mills is um he's already pledged to email it out to all the students grades six through eight through their aspen email and then reiterate it through morning announcements and then youth ambassadors we brought it to their attention last week to complete the survey and also spread to their friends and we're going to reiterate it again this thursday and then ask that they bring it to their parents as well um and then we need you so when i say you not just
076specifically talking to the select board members but also any community members that are watching and tuning in um we really just need the community that the we need the voice of the community because um this really is what you want to see in your town um we need your voice to be heard and when we say you it's you and your children um and then again for everyone who isn't cohasted to share it on their social platform so to complete the survey it takes one minute if that and then share it if i share it in cohasset 143 i'm not a resident of cohasset so it kind of gets um blown over so if you are as a resident to share it on facebook and your personal facebook um instagram twitter the more that people
077see it the more we can get to the 500 responses and then move forward um based on the feedback that we get and then it's currently on the main page of the ten of classes nicole quick question just in terms i'm glad that the middle school school's pushing it out um is i took it like when it was first available like in early march but remind me do we capture whether the respondent is a student or an adult do we ask for their age yeah we do ask for the age yeah so right now um the majority is age 30 to 60. okay right so we really do need a little bit of the kids to weigh in because they're gonna put it you know and if we got 60 or 90 kids to weigh
078in even if we're short of the 500 like that's that's the population we want to listen to exactly great thank you yeah yeah nicole yeah yeah it's uh jack creighton um i think it's important for everybody to know the good work that you're doing on actually getting our teen center and the meeting that that you had with myself and corey to and the unanimous support of the select board for having a teen center and i think it's important for people to know that the town is taking a leading role in moving this and we are so grateful for the work that you and safe harbor does in guiding us along the way thank you very much thank you jack i appreciate it and so the next slide will show what we're doing in the meantime
079um so until we get all those responses we are trying to provide services to the town of cohasset so we have our cohasset virtual youth center which will be live on the main page of botanical assets starting thursday and this is just going to be a central location of all the programs that are virtual and a few very few that are in person just a central location for everyone to navigate so if you go to the next slide there's a screenshot of what it will look like once you press the button into the youth center and we have tiles here and all these programs are from the library rec safe harbor and elder affairs other affairs does um they're amazing and do a lot of intergenerational programs um so these will be updated and monitored
080by us but jen orem really did all this work she is a wizard and then um all of our our personal department websites will also be here but again it's just one central location because we are even though we're a small town we have various departments and there's five million ways to find what's going on so this will be one central way for the town to figure out what programs are available for the youth that's fantastic the idea of the virtual teen center i love that yeah we're excited yeah so again that will be thursday and then next slide um we also are still providing the youth ambassador program we had a very overwhelming response we honestly weren't expecting it we were projecting around 25 students and we ended up having 50 registered students and
081these the majority is from central central cohasset public schools and then we have a few from south shore vogue bc high and derby academy and this is a mixture between grades six through twelve um and this group primarily wants to focus on advocacy mental health and substance education this year so we're excited about that they meet every thursday 4 30 to 6 and they're facilitated um when if either myself or chris collin are in a meeting we are technical assistants our camera is off and we're just there if they need help um with zoom so the meetings are completely facilitated by four leaders who are grades um 11 and 12 and then two leaders in training so they're kind of the leaders are mentoring two freshmen and sophomores and then they had a mandatory training
082that really kicked off this year that i just needed to speak to because it was amazing it was three hours 40 of the 50 students were able to attend again due to the maximum that we had with our training contract but it focused on welcoming all walks of life accepting everyone whether it's a visible or invisible difference and then of course leadership and presentation skills and i just thought that this spoke volumes um because these are the the youth this is our future generation and to have this type of mentality start from the bottom up um is only going to benefit the entire community so we were super excited and got great feedback from that training next slide um as diane mentioned we had our pop-up ground level cafe in the time of kovid um
083we cannot we typically ground level cafe which is an alternative friday night activity takes place at the rec center downtown it's too small to have the amount of students that typically attend on average there's about 40 students so we've tried to get creative and um had our first pop-up event at sandy beach associate sandy beach um thank you to sandy beach association we were so grateful and we had 22 students attend and they were all phenomenal socially distant wore their masks um performed some great music and just hung out and i think they were just really excited to be around one another even though it was six feet apart and then we had known as their providing treats it was a little chilly but we had a rainbow and and it was great it was
084all worth the cold fingers the next slide so our big to-do is our community-wide pumpkin contest um with this whole goal of community health our goal here is to collaborate with various sectors of the community to provide an alternative to halloween the typical trick-or-treating is obviously going to be limited so this will be an alternative activity that's healthy and also safe during a high-risk time and when i say high-risk time that means covered but also halloween is a high-risk time for underage substance use primarily alcohol here in cohasset then the other goal is to boost the mental health giving and providing something that is enjoyable for all to look forward to parents and children next slide so like i said this is a goal the real goal is to collaborate across the town it's not
085just safe harbor putting this on we have a lot of partners that are our key players so the asp um youth ambassadors the chamber of commerce social service league recreation um next slide we'll show a little more so what is the community-wide pumpkin contest um this will be uh basically the community can sign up we'll have 300 pumpkins and the first 300 to sign up gets a free pumpkin um and they can pick it up at asp at wheel wright park their pumpkin patch on october 15th and 16th and then the drop-off date will be october 23rd in the commons and everyone who participates gets a goodie bag upon drop off of their pumpkin and there will be some goodies and then also um some information from safe harbor just about healthy alternatives and the
086nine yards there and then community judging so this is where the business sector comes into play all the pumpkins that are entered would be displayed in the business window fronts in cohasset village and the community will be the judges um we have the youth ambassadors developing qr codes so that it'll be contactless and you can just go around and invoke um and then the winners there will be um with these age groups that you see here three different categories within each age group and the winner the three winners of each age group would get a gift card to the local businesses we're trying to give back to our community that um has been affected by kovid so we had a great donor social service league donated a good amount of money for us to um
087purchase those gift cards so it's really tying in the business community it's tying in the adults the children um and then our other organizations like asb wreck helping out stuff in goody bags etc that's good practically perfect uh to be honest that's really terrific what about the pumpkins from asp am i frozen or did you did i freeze yeah sorry um and i'm not on wi-fi um did you do you have financial support and need financial support for the um the uh the pumpkins from asp so we yes we are still looking for um a little a few more donors for the pumpkins themselves we christine murphy and phil were able to donate 500 to go towards pumpkins but they are expensive um so we are looking for donors and also volunteers because there's going
088to be a lot of manual labor putting pumpkins into the windows and also stuffing goodie bags and going to buy the supplies and whatnot so volunteers and donors are needed for sure is that something you can put like a press release out so that we can push that out and help you collect money in people absolutely that'd be wonderful and i think there were one or two last slides and then that should be my wrap up um and then lastly we have some virtual education for the community um on october 28th these are all on zoom they're free 5 pm and then november 4th which i know is the day after election um but there will be a virtual education piece on that next day at 5 pm as well so this is we're teaming
089up with health imperatives and the first one will be on relationships and substances kind of how they're intertwined and then social media boundaries this goes over online safety and these are for adults and for adults with children and if you don't have children that is completely fine as well they're they're really relevant to the community at large um so if you are interested there is limited capacity so please register um all of this can be found at safeharborcohasset.org and the last slide and then additional resources um when we are talking about mental health and um substance use there i do want to just bring up that we do have a parent advisor um through the town of cohasset who is it's anonymous again that information can be found at safe harbor cohasset um it's also
090going through the recovery recovery coach academy if i'm not mistaken um so that will be another resource that we're we're trying to get provided to the cohasset residents and then lastly the whole reason for these virtual education pieces and also the the whole pumpkin contest as a whole youth who are connected to their community are um are uh i was thinking chris on the very last side are um at a decreased risk for substance use to mental health and violence in their adulthood so that's really why we're pushing for this community-wide feeling and trying to get everyone connected youth again as our target and then these are just where you can find us subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on instagram facebook and twitter thank you so much nicole a quick question that just
091came to my mind um is you know with with all of your students willing to take leadership roles as the ambassadors um you know maybe be thinking about whether there's something in the kind of municipal management side of things that they could get involved and engaged with and you know i'm thinking like maybe we could create a youth position on cohasset 143 programming you know position for example or maybe you know they want to take a leadership role in and be on the cultural council or something that that actually might interest them or or or interest you know or address their interests in getting involved in the community um at you know at our at our level and i mean that just in in terms of the conversations we're having so you know if there's
092any sort of leaders that you can funnel toward us i we would be i think happy to make some accommodations to get them engaged and you know i know one kid in in college a few years ago said i'm so excited i love old buildings i love cohasset and i said good you're going to be on the town hall building committee and he's been on it for about four or five years and i'm sure there's a lot of others too that could be um channeled into a role like that yeah that that would actually be phenomenal and if there are if you have a list of committees that come to mind that would be helpful as well because we do have we have a very good group and like i said we were not expecting
093the the influx a lot of high schoolers so we have a lot of leaders to funnel your way just let me know where i can put them right like technically you know you have to be 18 and a registered voter but that doesn't preclude somebody from being added as a liaison role or something you know unofficial so great thank you i think you said corey but you're muted um yeah nicole i just um i'm just i'm so excited about the youth ambassadors program and we talked about this offline but one thing i'd like to suggest and bring to the board is maybe the idea of publicly recognizing um these kids i mean this is you know how we get to to kids is through other kids through other youth i mean this is bottom up
094that's how you get these messages out and having i mean 50 students in cohasset just think about the reach and i want to you know i'm excited to see how if this program can continue to grow we keep investing in it and part of that is us i think as a select board publicly recognizing the role these these these students these youths play so i'd love to have that idea i also want to say thank you again to christine murphy and i think you said phil it's phil lear i'm guessing um for their donation for the pumpkins that's super kind so thank you both very much for that carrie there maybe could be a way that we could channel some of their talents to nicole into helping with our new town social media accounts or
095some type of like health public service announcements or something so i would love to chat with you about that more because i think that we could use their talent for sure also did you give details about the community judging for the pumpkins no i did not so um our so there's a lot of ongoing pieces as this is kind of all coming together if you don't know all the details yet the vision is that with these qr codes um they'll all be kind of sectioned off by ages within the businesses and then community members can just go it'll be numbered so with the qr code will bring you to the page and then you say i like pumpkin 44 and 126. okay [Music] i love the qr code that's so high that that was a
096thing and that you're able to do that i brought it to the youth ambassadors on thursday and they're like oh yeah we'll just create a qr code yes i just want to post on social media and help plug it for you so let us know when you know that thank you yes it should be live tomorrow or thursday at the latest okay um and to corey's point i did mention um to the leaders about some type of recognition for their work um so if that does occur they are very excited we're gonna need a whole new zoom platform for that just the six liters yeah oh okay no thank you very much nicole thank you all okay so uh um those are two really big ones and i want to thank pam and nicole a
097lot they're very different but they're really really important and i think it shows the depth and breadth of the the talent that we have both on staff and volunteers together to make this stuff come come together for the town i want to pivot to um one that's new not that the other ones aren't but which is inclusive inclusion and diversity and um you know this is something that's not just uh a a an employee and staff driven one this is obviously one that all of you were driving too uh so mira was gonna give us an update as to where we are on the staff side and where we're looking to go uh there's still a lot of conversations about this um it's not it's uh it's something we have to do um the right
098way and i know that miriam's trying to get us on the right page on this so uh i will turn this over to mary thanks chris um so to start with some of the things that we've always done we will continue to do which is you know to search for diversity when we are hiring as an employer um you know cohasset being a seaside town not easy to get to um is a little challenging to bring in uh folks um without long long commutes and but we continue to do that um we continue to work with employees who have um situations that make them uncomfortable and um it's not typically a racial issue but we have diversity in generations in um gender in um sexual orientation we have a number of different ways in which
099our employees are uh diverse and we continue to work with them a lot of times that is done in a very confidential way but it's a big part of what we do chris do you have the slide um that i sent you about some of the things that we'd like to add to what we normally do if not he's pulling that up miriam do do um is there any required uh like modules and and i know we we talked about the word training versus education but i know on the on the maya board we've discussed it um and just in my professional life you know there's required you know modules of implicit bias or sexual orientation you know implicit bias and that kind of stuff that was required of us on an annual basis to
100go through those trainings what is um required by law is annual anti-discrimination and anti uh or sexual harassment policy great meaning uh and we do most of that online and virtually um and chris if you can't find it i will pull it up you have it okay great next page great so adding to you know our normal operations um in support of inclusion and diversity uh we took a look at how we can approach this in a broader sense and so we've really broken it down to three different streams if you will adding to the employee oriented programs we would include unconscious bias or implicit bias training it's not something that we typically have done in the past we started actually i spent most of monday with one of our departments doing some communication style
101training um you know it's not the diversity that we think about but uh we've had people who are having hard times understanding each other because they come from very different perspectives so we did some of that and we will continue to do that with our employee group um and then of course the annual required anti-discrimination and sexual harassment training then um the second stream of activity we'd like to do is um add some annual anti-discrimination sexual harassment training for boards and committees uh what i'd like to do and i know at least duxbury has done it is to do it live to video it um and the and in the covid world live means a very small group so instead of doing it ten times we would do it with one group and then uh
102make it available virtually um and unconscious uh bias training can be done virtually i believe i mean all of these i think are much richer if you can do them in person but with covid as well as everyone's schedule it becomes very very challenging to do things in person so i i i think the board and committee oriented program should include communication style training i know i'd love that for some of my public phone calls on the weekends and and certainly we could do that um we can certainly do that um and then the third stream would be uh programs offered to the public and um we've had some conversations with the library and some con conversations with wilcock commons already as to developing programs and i don't have any that i can share with
103you today but i've asked them to look at as they develop their programs for the remainder of the year can we have a book club can we have an author can we have um some you know training for our older generation who may have some um some need for understanding some of the terminology and some of the impacts of behavior so they are both working on coming together to develop programs for the public that will be supporting inclusion and diversity so that's what we're thinking uh for this year just um a comment or suggestion i actually met with a few colleagues who become friends of mine in norwell who are select women in nor on the norwell board and they they're obviously struggling with some of these same issues as we all are in terms
104of how to how to open up community-wide conversations on these relatively sensitive but very very important um topics um and you know they were talking about how they have they have a diversity committee that's appointed by the select board and how the committee never meets and they can't get a quorum and and and and i said well what if you took that and made that you know just not the town's committee but actually have it come from from the community and you know maybe that would be and we have a diversity committee in cohasset and i think being kind of out of the town structure for public meetings makes things a little more organic and helps things flourish a little quicker but one thing that cohasset did a number of years ago and it didn't
105specifically address diversity equity and inclusion issues but it was a community reads and it was a really great opportunity for the community in general at all levels the schools so you pick whatever the topic is and let's say it's wales just you know w-h-a-l-e-s right so the kindergarten through second grade have a book on wales and then the third through six and and so on and so on and then there the adults read moby dick or whatever it is um and and it was very it was just a great community event and everybody got invested in it and you know we would have an author talk and and that kind of thing and maybe this particular subject is something that we you know the library could develop a a community read and especially now where
106people are so isolated having a book having a discussion group online but something that's a topic that's all throughout the community i think might be just something something really rallying around um now yes i'm i know i i i see over my shoulder pretty your kitty's pretty um so i you know i will certainly share that with the library because i think they could spearhead it most effectively absolutely and uh i think that's a wonderful idea and it's a suggestion right but maybe it'll lead to something even better yeah yeah yeah miriam there are a lot of other towns in mass whose libraries have been doing similar things tell our library i think it's a great springboard to start these conversations and we need to be having them in our community and i think there
107really is a desire to do that so i do love the library angle here thank you okay we're good thank you mary of any last minute question any last questions from miriam now i'll have my dog whining all right great miriam thank you so much you're welcome so let me pivot uh again we've had some really good conversations here uh to uh accessibility of information and communication so um as we we've uh over the last few years we've kind of we've made major strides that said we still need to continue to make them uh one of the things we need to do and we've been talking internally and we're going to take an ownership of that here in our office um here and we're gonna have a staff member justine will take uh on the
108uh ability to start posting our meetings regularly although select board and school committee are regularly posted anyway there's all these others that we're recording we need to get them up and get them more accessible so justine is gonna take responsibility for that we've already been talking i t so uh we have a youtube page we have a 10 youtube page and we're going to start getting this up more regularly so uh she's working on some of the tech aspects of that and it's a lot of just some of it's just processing we have some software that allows you to convert the zoom to a youtube format and um so we're good to go and corey sent me something too so i think um i think we're you know we're on the path part of the
109challenge here these are things that we never did before we never had to do that before so now it's just to find our friend but now i have to do tasks gotta find time for somebody to do it so justine's gonna take on more of a social media role in the office just it's just really important to have it here to have someone who loves it more i mean i don't i don't go to facebook much to be honest uh my friends who laugh at me for that but i just i just i look at twitter more than i do other things so um the um that said so let me let me show you some of the things one of the one of the things that we've done now we don't need to be
110you know some communities that are much larger than us have actually created communications departments you know governments are kind of laggers laggards on a lot of things hr right seven years ago there was nothing here now we actually have a functional department we're doing some great stuff we didn't really have i.t here we have that other communities have now full-time communications people i don't know we're quite big enough for that maybe at some point if we do something generally with schools and have some kind of communications position something to talk about that said what we've done is we've brought in a communications firm that's done a lot of work for us and uh quite frankly it's it's a monthly fee it's not that expensive and there's no op costs they don't take sick days they
111on call all weekend we get an update every every friday there's always someone on call if you need them for something uh and to talk about that health bugs the first thing we'll be able to do so let me show you so this is a front of the town's web page right you see we've had this emergency alert oh the covet blog if you click on that now this is where you go you go to the nice clean tano class juices cover 19 site and up on top here is all the information that was there before so you can see here this is the weekly press release we put out so you can see what the uh you know what the numbers are what's going on uh and here's you know other information that um
112that is curated okay and it's in this back what's mass 211 you know and this will link you right to the match too on my website right so kristen this is the same firm that's doing the that's helping with the video on elections yes yes and so in fact uh one of the things they're doing and let me get back to that um um the um one of the things they're doing is videos as well so all of you i think we showed you the video so that's again this is the code so you can click on from here and there you go you can click on it from here it'll bring you there um and if you go from here you still have this page here and that's the survey we're talking about for
113click on here you have to do a we can't directly link to it so you just click right here you're going to go to the page so um the uh and again it's a great if they're they're maintaining a force they're pushing information we can do it it just it's cleaner the next phase of this uh will be to do a news block just like this so uh we're working with them on establishing that format so uh every week they take the five things update i do and other information they get and they'll do updates like the over the weekend you know we had that unfortunate uh oui accident at four staff right so um uh the bill put the information together um he sent it over they pulled it together they sent it out
114and there were stories in the globe and all and the community was updated right the information was right there as to what happened um we were and again on a more you know regular routine you know we've done just have been some stories about the special police officers and all of that uh you know what what's with the safe harbor vigil there's all kinds of things we're able to do in terms of videos they also again we pay a little extra for those they did the uh how to get to town hall video which is still posted you can watch and they shot two of them for us last week went on flu shots uh and getting the flu and why it's important how to do it and when that when those clinics are coming
115up and then one on elections so uh that'll those will both be posted i said i hope later in the week uh and we can continue to do this bill's working on one bill quickly with the police department kind of like an intro video and he's paying for that out of some gift funds he's been given so um it's going to be like a little i think two three minute like a little video about the classic police will be on the web page we may try to do more of those you know we you know lauren lauren actually did one lauren linda our um town planner on just how to navigate how to pass file plans she did that that's actually up and available we i think we'd like to do more of those and
116um you know we again whenever we can partner with 143 as resources are available uh we'd love to at the same time they have their own mission and they have a lot to do so if you know these folks came down and they were in and out of here in less than an hour and they were able to um you know do both of those videos uh and they actually got some some background because of that the act there was an accident that day too unfortunately nobody got hurt so they got some some uh b-roll for the for the police video so they uh it's a great resource i mean the local office is in braintree so they're kind of right around the corner from us uh and um they have staff that are that
117are on call so you know the their staff has has worked in tv and local media um they're easy to work with and again there's no health benefits they're not taking sick time uh and we have no op liability so and again it's pretty inexpensive right now we're paying a little less than fifteen hundred dollars a month uh and because it's all covered related we're paying for it that way at the moment but i think it's something that's worth building in the budget going forward uh i do really allowed us to do more and will continue to allow us to do more including stuff on instagram page i think they're gonna be helpful with us on all of those friends but it's it's a resource that has made our lives a lot easier in communicating
118i think and it will continue to help as we go chris do you think um some of the i'm thinking specifically about the water department whether they could utilize um the pr firm to help them just with some of their messaging um i spoke with leonora and you know there was somebody just on facebook one day writes why are our water bills so high and then it just devolves from there into a lot of misinformation and half stories and some facts and and then you don't know how to sift through it and you know and i said to her maybe you should like do a press release or do sort of a campaign to just inform people a little more specifically about what their budget is or you know what their bill looks like and
119what it entails and how it builds into the future and and just kind of get the information straight and put a stake in the ground on that so i think that might be something if they can utilize that that would be very helpful for them um and obviously for a whole bunch of other big projects coming along the way for us what they're you know it's just it's not that there aren't ideas it's just a matter of time to pull this stuff off right i mean you know we can do some recording and we did some of this you know during the pandemic with with our phones right and we can still do some of that um the part of it is having a high enough production value you want to have it look good
120so people will watch it uh and it it's important that uh and again these folks do this all the time i mean the cameras they brought down were like this big and they're like you know thought you know was it uh uh uhd stuff right uh that they use as they're filming it now uh it's clearer than real life so uh they uh and again they do it regularly so they boom boom they come in they come out they get it and um again we have to do it all the time i don't think we need to do this you know every week or something but right you know there's been some key things like the flu shots like like the you know the entrance to town hall like the elections um and again i
121think helping package some of this stuff up we've talked about doing something on finance right so don and i are talking about uh also one of the other things we can do is utilize facebook uh more and zoom uh so we we we're going to try to do something this fall where we do some uh uh you know just kind of live talks with a few people around the table and we'll chat probably with the advice to focus on advisory and or and talk and we'll have it open to questions so people want to watch and ask questions from home and it'll be available on the web we could talk about some of the you know not like it like a three hour seminar but maybe like a 20 minute quick snap you know we'll
122go through some of the things that people need to understand how the budget works we're going to try to do some of those things because we can do this now don could be in at home i can be here and we can do a nice zoom chat bring folks in and answer questions and then answer some live questions we're going to do that i think in november and december uh and do some other live videos which we've always talked about doing but now we have the tools that we didn't have before to to actually do these regularly so i think we're going to try to do more of that and uh and see how people respond and some communities that's really cool i don't think we're going to quite get to the level of um
123some some communities i've seen that do like these fun budget videos um you know they want to did like a crazy cat video with city in texas i would have to go quite that far but um you know getting some of these things visual even if just quick and short just helps explain things but the goal is to do more of that uh in fact and the one yeah the one nice thing about um social the social media platforms is that you can get analytics you can you can understand how many people are really reading or reacting and and to the extent that you can build some of that around it then that'll help us know where the information should be and should be pushed out um when there is important information so you know
124one of the other things i have to say obstruct ahead no go ahead chris i can go after you no no i was gonna say so one of the things we've also done is work with 143 and you know don twist environment for a long time to get us to do the show because you know there's a couple of there's some great shows the community had hosted for a long time and people you know they have other things to do in their lives they move on uh so i've been i've been i was drafted to hosting this class at common show which i've been happy to do and by the way i'm happy anytime someone wants to take over um i've actually had fun doing it i've had departments like last week we kind of
125scrambled a couple of segments we wanted to do that didn't come together so bill uh quickly offered up his special police officers great high school police and uh and the folks doing their atv so just a little behind the scenes what are they what are they doing what's going on uh and uh next week we're working to get the schools i think actually this this week i think like uh pat sullivan really wants to get into the schools and show what's going on so people can see great what's going on and uh we we've talked about getting into the fire department and getting into an ambulance you know so you can see what really goes on there i mean not not with a live person being saved hopefully but uh i don't think they'll allow
126us to film that but you know they're really mobile emergency rooms and people don't get to see them hopefully you don't get to see them right except um you know when you're so but people you know we're spending four thousand dollars on this thing people should understand what it is and what the folks do and i think some of the departments have actually after they've gotten out of their shells i've had kind of fun doing this i know there's some folks in the police department that love this i think that i think we're going to finally get to a ride-along and just show what it's like to patrol for a little while there's also great local stories you know the the business community we're trying to get more of those folks engaged um so you
127know we're happy to partner on that and i think it's important to tell the story of what people's tax dollars are going to every day you know what's happening you know you know we did a great show there was a great spot done on the meals on wheels program showing what's going on um and uh i think those kind of stories uh lend themselves to videos and i think they've been illuminating you know because cohasset really is people volunteering and into you know there's a great web of connectivity here and uh look jackie dartmouth has had fun we're actually planning to go to government island uh and uh and talk about the things next time you go to walk your dog or hang out some of the historic sites you might even know are right
128there so uh we're gonna do that in october i'm glad you mentioned that because i have a jackie thing to bring up in um selectmen comment period but carrie i know you had a question or comment yeah i i love the collab we're doing with 143 and i do think there is that need for the more formal videos but i also don't think we live in a world anymore that people are expecting videos to be formal and i think i would love to see our town have both a twitter and instagram page in addition to facebook i know our police and fire departments do a really good job on twitter i do think we need that but i also think that we need to get more comfortable doing quicker videos and storytelling on social media
129that we're seeing a lot of younger people do that isn't formal and that's what people expect you know shorter clips of videos less than a minute long showing what's going on each day showing quick pictures we have such amazing technology with our phones now i don't think we always are going to be needing to do as many formal things as we think i think that a lot of our town employees and everyone can get more comfortable with that faster storytelling and i think that will bring in more people that we're not reaching right now you know amen i just sat through a webinar um for fundraisers and and and just a quick little you know walking literally with your phone in front of you through the woods and just saying hey i just had five
130minutes i want to you know you know i just want to say thank you for everything you've done for us or you know i'm going to get my flu shot look at this it's literally a minute and i can't even tell you how excited people are to just get that you know texted to them or sent in an email um it really doesn't have to be high production and i come from a a theater company that you know everything has to be staged and lit and costumed and actually it doesn't it's just those quick little thinking of you or here's how you can do this and it can be as short as 30 seconds and it will make a real difference so i just have one comment through all this and i don't want to
131be a wet blanket but we should also be very aware that with the social media and all that being done by the government i think we should be very very careful that we we don't delve into opinion opinion journalism that this is the government we're running the town government and if other people want to do that we can facilitate that but i'm not sure the town needs to be necessarily a producer of all of all of this we have other vehicles that can do that not saying we shouldn't support it but i think we should be very very much aware of you know government always you know historically has the ability to indoctrinate so we should be aware of that yeah i think we're just talking information i hope that we're all just you know
132why point exactly right go down and look at your pumpkins in the window kind of thing yep yes and i'll address that in my selectmen's comments by the way great thank you pumpkins in the window maybe that too all right um anybody else for chris otherwise uh corey thanks all right so there's a lot there but i just want to unpack a little bit to just kind of recap for people um you know the thing that chris mentioned in the beginning is videos all of these zoom videos all these zoom meetings with the different town boards are being recorded and i think you know i've said it before it's important to me that we get all these videos out in public i don't like having recordings of citizens sitting on a hard drive somewhere not
133in public so thank you chris for putting the resources to getting this forward this is part of what i think is very important is just people understand how decisions are made a lot of the questions i get from people is you know basically expressing frustration that they feel like things were done you know in the hidden process so this is part of that and i hope we can continue that second thing i brought this up a couple weeks ago and i think i'm still a little bit concerned about it obviously we're in the beginning stages of having a new uh you know communications firm or communication style here but i still i'm seeing the beginnings of a fracturing which i think is just going to add more confusion for instance yesterday water department sent a
134text about the water ban but i don't see that on any of the of the you know the town website or on this new coven page having two separate websites is just functionally kind of a mess so you know i just i'm going to keep stressing this because i don't want us to to develop these silos where there isn't one unified thing i love that we're using an outside firm to kind of produce stuff but you know i do want to keep the discussion open about hey what are we doing and could this be done in a better way that's more centralized um whether that's you know a staff person running it or a communications director formally or we we hand it off i think we need to bring it together because i'm just i'm
135seeing fraying happen and i think that's just going to make things more difficult um you know i don't know if anyone else has seen that type of thing but my response on that could i suggest because there's there's a lot there that i'm really curious about but i don't want to go too far down that rabbit hole i i totally you know you and i have talked about the putting the videos up and obviously that's one thing but i think just in terms of general communications and developing a style developing a a rhythm you know unified you know strategy kind of the vision communication strategy um yes and maybe that's something we'll put on a soon agenda so that we can make sure we're all comfortable with how that's being rolled out totally it's not
136going to happen overnight and i think you know this is part of the the growing pain so so i'm encouraged uh but at the same time i want to keep uh keep our antennas up for things that may be not what we want to continue doing absolutely that's why you know that's why a strategy and a plan is good and and um [Music] and you muted i can't breathe too much on it anyway yeah that's a sign let's start wrapping this up um but we'll put that on our future agenda thanks okay everybody good the last piece the last piece was uh just uh engagement community engagement and i think uh this board has taken that on as a real effort to try to get more people on committees and all that so you know
137continue to tell us it's interesting and that's i i think maybe i might put that together with this communication strategy um discussion on it on an agenda to talk about because i had some ideas about just community engagement the idea of all of these committees are now meeting virtually and and there is there are recordings and you know what can we do to generally support the committees differently now that the form mat is different and there are more people you know on the sidelines watching i think because they can jump into a zoom meeting so i think we need to have a bigger discussion about how to handle manage and encourage all of that going forward so we'll do that um chris do you have anything for town manager update or is that just i
138think we've covered a lot and it's kind of uh somebody has any questions for me i think uh i've already covered touch base on in the reports already so i'm good great okay select board comments jack you want to go first uh yes um you you and people may have noticed that um on when approving minutes that as that i have abstained from voting on them i thought i would explain the the reason behind that um i'm a clerk of the select board and they'll and i'm somewhat supposed to oversee the accuracy of the minutes and quite honestly um our selection our way of handling the minutes is is archaic chris referred to it earlier and corey's referred to it and basically we have all of this technology and yet we have um we have
139the recordings which are kept but they're kept on 143 um and corey's doing a very good job with that but they're not necessarily public record i think they need to be a public record i also think that we have minutes right now the the minutes are taken by tracy and then she writes up the minutes and um after they have been voted on um by law she the i think the town manager but they can be thrown away they don't have to be they i believe they should be archived i believe until we vote on them they are clearly under the open meeting law part of uh uptown records they could only be disposed upon after the minutes have been passed by the select board or the or the various boards i think they should
140be kept but i also think that all board meetings should be recorded and that should be considered part of the permanent public record and a couple of of reasons why this is important number one you know we're no longer in the 19th century we do have video um it's very often there are things that come up that you are not captured in the minutes and there are disputes on those facts and the way to sell the dispute is the facts and we have the ability to have those so i think that we need to move forward and make sure that this town adopts a policy that the all meetings are recorded and if they can't be recorded video at least the tapes and conservation we kept the tapes and i found out at one point
141those tapes had been thrown away and i don't think they should and then if we go back to ascertain something that happened in the past it's very important for transparency to have accurate records so i just wanted everybody to know that's why i'm abstaining and i strongly urge this board to move forward with drafting a policy which says that all public meetings shall be recorded and that recording shall be considered a permanent record and part of for the under the purposes of the open meeting law so thank you this the pretty substantive and i um i don't want to address it because it's not on an agenda and i think it's really worthy of an agenda discussion why do we do that i would just like to say that you know everything we do in
142the practice that we have done is is um is meets open meeting law and the requirements and the council of town council so i would like him actually to be help us with that conversation because i think i've talked to you jack before he i think he would he he would give us guidance different from what i think you feel it would be optimal so i think we need to have a very substantive conversation about that and make sure we um come to an agreement amongst us as to how we want to go forward with that so great thank you so much i agree but i'm not sure uh we're having a discussion on this if the that i would say that nothing that i suggested suggests anything other than we add another layer of
143transparency and permanency to the records i'm very much aware of what we do for town meeting there are some tapes that have disappeared i don't know the facts on that but i don't think we necessarily have to go over what may have happened in the past but i think we want to make sure that going forward we're very clear i know we did in conservation we just passed the resolution uh that the conservation commission directed that those tapes should be kept forever and i think the town can do something i know yeah and it is important to note too that all of the zoo meetings are recorded and um and and are maintained the question is the maintenance of those um i don't think 143 should be burdened with doing that i think it's a
144proper function of government to do that and just to secure them corey's doing a great job with 143. i don't think 143 should be burdened with that i think it's a it's a municipal uh responsibility yeah and i i agree that's why um i think justine is now taking over that and hopefully we'll get that and of course that goes into the clerk's office so we we will work all that um out in a discussion amongst all of us at a future meeting so yep all right thanks jack all right that's correct me uh were we going to discuss uh water band during our topics not anticipated or i can was going to say we're not going to discuss it as a as a topic but you can certainly bring it up now yeah so
145just uh if you know uh some people have gotten texts but we are now the water department announced yesterday we are in uh a full water band which means no irrigation um systems whatsoever and uh regardless of the day of the week uh and hand-held watering only for like uh ornamental plants and vegetables that kind of thing uh we are uh at critical levels and we haven't had any rain so please limit your water usage um you know we want to keep our reservoirs at healthy levels until we get through this this happened before and we just have to adjust uh other thing is uh thanks again to everybody that helped out that's helping out with safe harbor and the pumpkin patch that's really just you know safe harbor is a really special community with
146i sat in a meeting and uh people that are really engaged and i think that's just a special thing so thanks to everybody that that made that program happen and is part of it now that's it thank you thanks corey paul so i think i'll be the um broken record although the water ban you stole my thunder darn it um but yeah again the water ban is very important because if you drive by the scituate reservoir it's empty on one side of the street so we don't want that here and we do have water but be careful um the other thing is get the flu shot i can't underscore how important it is um that will help you through the the winter when the flu season hits we can push down the numbers we can
147prevent over you know overuse in the hospitals of people with the flu in addition complications with covid plus the flu it dramatically rises the mortality and morbidity um so the town's done very well we've not had a lot of cases um but we need to keep the same compulsive caution with you know masks and distancing and being just very careful with large groups that's about it thanks paul kerry yeah the voter registration deadline if you are not registered to vote i hope you are if you're watching this meeting is october 24th people can still register to vote i know elections are coming up elections matter a lot and i'm just really proud of how we've been dealing with things on a local level i'm really proud of how great things have been going with our
148schools as we're heading into halloween and the holidays people just need to stay vigilant and we need to try to keep our community safe so we can keep our kids going to school in person and so we can keep having some of the freedoms that we've been allowed to in our town so this is just really hard and i know it's really frustrating every week and we're all really trying to give this town as much freedom as possible and still so safe and just thank you to everyone who's been trying as hard as all of as all of us are i know this is way longer than we ever expected it to be but we're holding strong pulling strong and um just good good segway i'll just just kudos to um all of you on
149this board and and the staff and uh the committees that have been meeting and really i i mean it's just amazing how much work and how much progress we've made over the past couple of months while frankly you know most of us are probably in grumpy moods because of everything else going on so it's challenging and and um i'm just proud of the entire community and then the people that have been um doing the work of the municipal management so thank you on that um just throwing it out there whether the board members would be available if we added a meeting on tuesday october 27th we know at the very least that um on the october 20th we're going to have a liquor license hearing which is probably going to be a good hour hour
150and a half and there's you know a financial update we've got the budget message and all the other items we've mentioned earlier in the evening so um you don't have to tell me now but if you could get back to tracy and or me in the next 48 hours and let me know whether that's a possibility for you um and if if if most of if all of us can do it we'll do it i'm not um in favor of doing meetings where all of us can't be there um unless it's an emergency for some reason or um you know i don't want to plan a new meeting that um we can't all be at so let me know about that and then um also jackie dormancer sent me an email earlier that i just
151want to update you on which is that the fisherman's well marker which we had um approved which is the engraved kind of a round granite stone in the um sydney square which is the green across from the cohasset harbor and has been installed so she recommends that we go and visit it and also thanks us for um the support for that project so that's another another nice thing that's happened in the community recently so um and that is it from me um we have two sets of minutes um from uh september 21st and september 22nd corey um i just i've you know i reviewed september the 21st meeting said i've got some things that i like to kind of review and clarify so if we could hold off on those hold off on 21st i'm
152okay with 22nd but 21st is one i'd like to go through a few more that's fine if you could um send any changes that you want to tracy um and that that goes for anybody else if there's anything in there that you would like edited it and then it'll come back to us for approval or discussion at another meeting okay great um is there a motion on the september 22nd minutes i move that we approve the minutes from september 22nd 2020. okay is there a second second okay uh we'll do a roll call vote jack absent jack creighton abstain corey evans eye diane kennedy i paul schuberth harry pompson i okay great um thank you i don't have any topics not reasonably anticipated within 48 hours thanks for um the last three hours um and
153i will take a motion to adjourn is that a second okay oh jeez stay here well i'm going home quick all right emotion in a second uh roll call vote jack right now corey evans eye diane kennedy i paul short act harry thompson i great thank you very much the meeting is adjourned good night everybody thanks everybody have a good night