Board of Health

CITY OF SALEM BOARD OF HEALTH MEETING MINUTES March 10, 2020 MEMBERS PRESENT: Dr. Jeremy Schiller, Geraldine Yuhas, Datanis Elias, Sara Moore EXCUSED: Paul Kirby, Maureen Davis, Clerk of the Board OTHERS PRESENT: David Greenbaum, Health Agent, Suzanne Darmody, Public Health Nurse, Patti Morsillo, City Council Liaison, students from SSU and Regis College (observing) TOPIC DISCUSSION/ACTION 1. Call to Order 7:01pm 2. Sean Talbot – 5 Laurent Road – D. Greenbaum said the hearing for Sean Talbot will be moved to the next Trash Violation Hearing meeting. Mr. Talbot claims he did not get the notification in time to retain counsel. He sent pictures today and it looks like some of the concerns have been addressed. We will make sure he is invited to the April meeting in plenty of time so there are no excuses. S. Moore asked what a trash violation hearing entails. D. Greenbaum said he has been dealing with this property for many years. They were dumping hundreds of trash bags all over the outside of the property. He ordered them to clean it up. In an order there is a clause called the aggrieved clause which gives the defendant the right to an appeal. The Board would then decide if the order was reasonable and uphold it or modify it or rescind it. G. Yuhas asked what the penalty is if he doesn’t clean up. D. Greenbaum said we can write fines, but he prefers to take them to court and try to get it resolved. He would have to wait 21 days after writing a fine before he could take them to court, so he would rather go right to court. 3. Approval of Minutes S. Moore motioned to approve the minutes. G. Yuhas 2 nd. All in favor. (February 11, 2020) Motion passed. 4. Chairperson Communications J. Schiller said with reference to the coronavirus disease, in the hospital things are changing by the day. Lectures and conferences are totally cancelled, and even small gatherings are not happening. He has a sense that we will see a tremendous amount of cases. Testing is a massive issue. The amount of testing is dramatically more in other countries. In the U.S. there are only 5 tests per one million people as opposed to South Korea where they are testing over 5,000 per one million. The virus is clearly being community spread. 5. Monthly Reports-Updates a. Public Health J. Schiller asked how the buyback program is going. Nurse’s Report D. Greenbaum said it rolled out March 2 nd. He is in the process of getting funds from NSMC to purchase gift cards. They have five students enrolled in the cessation program to take part in the buyback. He figured we may have one or two, so to have five is impressive. It is open to the high school, the charter school and both the alternative schools. The Teen 1|Page  Health Center at the high school is going to track all the data and check in with them in three, six, nine and twelve months to see how they are doing with the cessation. J. Schiller asked if S. Darmody has given many flu shots. She said she gave just one in her office. She was hoping for more. She still has a lot of the over 65 high-dose vaccines available. She was glad to hear a public health official announce on tv that it is still not too late to get a flu shot. G. Yuhas asked about the effectiveness of the flu shot this year. S. Darmody said they have found it to be about 50% effective. Copy available at the BOH office. b. Health Agent’s Report D. Greenbaum said his report is incomplete this month due to illness in the office, etc. He will update the inspectional numbers for the Board in April. Most everything is revolving around COVID-19 right now. Cases in MA are starting to spike. Most of the current cases came from the Biogen conference. The Governor declared a state of emergency today. We are following all the CDC guidelines. S. Darmody said DPH will notify her of anyone that has returned from China and anyone who is a contact of a known COVID-19 case. They give her the contact information and she follows up with them and makes sure they are self-quarantining. She speaks with them on a daily basis and instructs them what to do should they develop symptoms. She records their temperatures am and pm on MAVEN. J. Schiller asked about mandatory quarantining. D. Greenbaum said if we had to do a mandatory quarantine the authority would come from the Board. School closures are decided by the School Committee and the Mayor, but they have been very good about talking to us and asking us our recommendations. He met with the Superintendent and principals last Thursday because they had concerns about students coming back from February vacation and traveling during April vacation, so they wanted information to put their minds at ease. S. Darmody and he will be meeting with the Superintendent and the school nurses tomorrow to talk about protocols if a child presents with some kind of respiratory illness; where are they going to be isolated to and how are they getting home. He talked to the schools’ facility director, Ryan Monks, who told him they are disinfecting and cleaning as frequently as they can. They bought new equipment to make it easier for them to spray, etc. They are being very proactive. S. Moore asked if we have any idea of the duration of the disease. D. Greenbaum said it could be several months. China has peaked and is just now seeing a decline in cases. It is a very fluid situation and is changing by the minute now. J. Schiller said China was drastic with their limiting of mobility and basically cordoned off the whole province to millions of people. D. Greenbaum said the coronavirus is a novel illness and we have never seen this strain before. In the world there are hundreds of thousands of cases of flu with thousands of deaths attributed to it. In the U.S. we have about a thousand cases of coronavirus with 25-30 deaths. We are trying to minimize the spread of the disease. The recommendations are not to go to large gatherings. Many meetings will be done through video conferencing, etc. 2|Page  Copy available at the BOH office. c. Administrative Report Report not available at time of meeting. Will be provided at the April meeting. d. Council Liaison Updates P. Morsillo said the inclusionary zoning ordinance was introduced that works on affordable housing at a deeper affordability level. It will be at 60% of the median income level as opposed to 80% before. Accessory dwelling unit ordinance will also be taken up. There is a target date of March 30th to start public hearings with the Planning Board and the City Council. D. Elias motioned to accept the reports presented. G. Yuhas 2 nd. All in favor. Motion passed. 6. New Business/Scheduling of D. Greenbaum said it is budget season. He met with the Finance Director Future Agenda Items on Monday to talk about our payroll budget. He requested a part-time inspector be made full-time. That position would allow us to spread out the workload a little. He has his budget meeting with the Mayor on Friday. This year the budget process was done a little differently; instead of filling out a form, he met with the Finance Director to tell her what we’re looking for in our payroll budget and she completes that portion of the budget for us. The mission statement, goals, objectives and achievements throughout the year will be done by him. J. Schiller said to let the Board know if they can do anything to help. D. Greenbaum said we will get a full-time community coordinator through the Healing Communities Study. That will be exciting. There is lots going on. G. Yuhas asked who selects the person for the position. D. Greenbaum said he will be part of the selection committee. Candidates are sending their resumes to Human Resources. The Executive Director at the health center would like to be part of it and if a Board member wanted to be a part of it that would be great. We have a few resumes, but he is hoping we get more so we have a larger pool to choose from. S. Moore asked if there were any updates on the hookah person. D. Greenbaum said the gentleman that was proposing a hookah bar never requested to appear before the Board. Joyce Redford from tobacco control did some compliance checks in Salem in the last couple of weeks. We did have a couple of sales that will fall under the new fining schedule based on the State law. We are currently using a combination of the State law for fines and our local regulation for suspensions. Any violation besides sales to minors or flavored tobacco sales would carry the fines in our current regulation, so there is kind of a dual fining schedule at this point until we update our regulation to align with the State. A student asked what the three major concerns are for the Board. D. Greenbaum said communicable disease surveillance and tracking, right now COVID-19. J. Schiller said the issue of smoking is a big one. There is also opioid addiction. Housing. Banning plastic bags, etc. There are several issues. 3|Page  - 5 Laurent Road trash violation hearing in April MEETING ADJOURNED: S. Moore motioned to adjourn. D. Elias 2nd. All in favor. Motion passed. 7:35pm Respectfully submitted, Maureen Davis Clerk of the Board Next regularly scheduled meeting is Tuesday, April 14, 2020 at 7:00pm At City Hall Annex, 98 Washington Street, 1st Floor, Salem, MA 4|Page