 Soon to Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, general law chapter 30 a section 18, this meeting of the Board of Health is being conducted via remote participation. We will have a roll call to check and make sure everyone on the committee and staff's video and audio is working. The meeting is being recorded to the web and can be shown on Amherst media and broadcast on the town of Amherst YouTube channel, so I will take attendance and then call the meeting to order. So Steve. Here. John. Here. Maureen. Here. Tim. Here. Nancy and I'm here. So our first agenda item is we're going to go into a brief public hearing. We had the public hearing at our April meeting, but due to a technical error. It might not have been completely open. So we're going to hold it again. So the Amherst Board of Health is responsible for protection and promotion of public health. Control of disease and the promotion of sanitary living conditions for the town of Amherst. The Board oversees health regulations for the town, including creation of new regulations review of existing regulations and review and determination on variance requests for existing regulations. The Board is seeking to update their 2010 regulation prohibiting smoking in workplaces and public places to the revised regulation prohibiting smoking and vaping in workplaces and public places. And this is a review and the revision of one of our three town regulations addressing tobacco and nicotine products. The purpose of this hearing is to hear testimony from businesses and residents and other interested parties. The Amherst Board of Health is a five member board that is appointed for a three year term. The board derives its authority from the Massachusetts legislature. And our members are Nancy Gilbert Chair, Stephen George, John Tobias, and Timothy Ranvier, and Maureen Malay. Emma Dragon is the director for the Amherst Health Department. She is an employee of Amherst. Her, the director's duty is to carry out the wishes of the board and assist in the enforcement of our regulations to deal with the day to day operations of the health department. With the exception of Title V regulations, it's not legally required for the board to hold a public hearing on proposed regulations before them. Even though all proposed regulations are addressed at meetings to which public is invited. Due to the broad interest of tobacco and nicotine products and the control of these substances, every effort has been made to provide a public forum. As the purpose of the public hearing is to collect information and opinions, the board will not ask for a vote from the audience. The board will vote on these regulations after this hearing is closed. Because this is a virtual hearing, we will be following the following procedures. I, Nancy Gilbert will be chairing the hearing. Emma Dragon is co-host and she'll be muting and unmuting participants whose hands are raised as they are recognized by the chair. Before we begin taking testimony in the interest of time, we ask that you adhere to the following rules. Before addressing the Board of Health, please be familiar with the proposed changes to the regulations. When addressing the Board of Health, please state your name and any professional affiliation you may have that impacts your comments. Identify the section of the regulation that you wish to comment on. Please limit your comments to three minutes so that other members of the audience will have a chance to speak. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation and may I have a motion to open the public hearing. I move we open the public hearing. Okay. All in favor. I have to do it. John. Steve. Steve. Whoops. I can't hear you. Are you muted? Okay. Tim. Maureen. Maureen. Are you muted? Yeah. I'll move to the second public hearing on the regulations. Anyone have any comments? From the board? From attendees? Any comments on our proposed changes to our regulations? I don't see anybody. I don't see anybody as well, Nancy. Okay. We have a motion to close the hearing. So we can close the public hearing, but we have to have a motion to close the hearing. I move we close the hearing and somebody needs to have seconds for motion. I did. Before we close it, you know, there is a hand raised. There it is. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to allow you to speak. Hi, I'm. Hi, you hear me. Okay. Right. Yes. Thank you. So I'm sorry. I got on a couple of minutes late and it's like right now you're just talking about. The smoking regulations, but. I had wanted to make a comment. About your recommendations to the town on the mosquito control issue. That will be allowed later during our regular meeting. Thank you. I'm sorry to interrupt. Okay. Okay. Just clarify it. Okay. Oh, okay. So back to, we have a motion to close the hearing. Is it seconded? Okay. So we'll vote on it, Tim. Hi, John. Hi. Maureen. Hi. Steve. Hi. Nancy. So the public hearing is closed. On the smoking regulations. So now we will go to our regular business meeting. And the first order of business is to. Review. Our two sets of minutes. Are April 18th. I mean, our April 8th meeting. And our. Meeting of last week on the masks. So is there any comments on the April 18th. Minutes. I mean, April 8th. I don't know why I keep saying 18 April 8th minutes. No. There are no comments. Can I have a motion? I move we accept the minutes. For April 8th. I'll second that. And Maureen. It's been moved and seconded. Now I'm going to have a vote. All in favor accepting the minutes. Steve. Hi. Hi. Maureen. Hi. John. Hi. Nancy. Okay. So those are accepted. And our second set of minutes are from our last week. Emergency meeting on the masks, whether to continue it for one more month. So there are any comments or changes for the May 6th. Meeting minutes. I saw one small thing probably should be fixed. So in the second sentence of the part about. The emergency, the mask. Order the second sentence of the first part of the meeting there it says. The word only is maybe in the wrong place. It says. The new state order mandates mask wearing outside in public places. Only if. Six foot distancing is not possible. Okay. I think it would be fine. But because there are people in some people who say. People should not wear masks. Maybe that only should be in front of mandates. Because if it says it mandates. Mask wearing only if distancing is not possible. It might seem to say you shouldn't wear a mask if six foot distancing is possible. It might seem to say you shouldn't wear a mask if six foot distancing is not possible. You can just put only in front of mandates, which is what it's intended to modify. Okay. Does that make any sense to anybody? Okay. Steve, can I ask why the word only is needed at all? Yeah. What's wrong with just mandates mask wearing outside in a couple of places. Okay. So we're only as needed there. You're right. Any other changes or comments? May have a motion to accept. The minutes as amended with one word removed. I'll move to accept the minutes with the correction. Second. Second. I'll second. Second. Okay. All in favor. John. Hi. Steve. Hi, Tim. Hi. Maureen. Hi, Nancy. Hi. Okay. So that's done now. We're going to move on to old business. So we're going to vote on prohibiting smoking in workplace. And public places. And it's been changed to. The. The vaping one. Any comments on the new regulations. The amended regulations. Regulation prohibiting smoking and vaping in workplaces and public places. Well, Alisa Brewer brought up some comments. I don't know if everybody took a look at those. About expanding some of the areas where. You know, some of the areas where the food trucks are. And people sit on the wall and smoke. And. I don't know. If people have had time to consider that. Well, in. In. In, In, In, In, In, In, In, In, In, In, In, In. I don't know. If people have had time to consider that. Well, and in, What's the unpaid. That was in the public comments. On page four, it says. In all outdoor areas where food and or beverages are served to the public. By employees, restaurants, bars and taverns. Could we add food trucks there. That's an area where people I guess are waiting. It's kind of an informal area in a lot of ways. And there was also another comment about the waiting areas for the ride share vehicles. And I just wondered if we want to consider those questions again. We have town on playgrounds, parks, recreation areas, athletic fears and swimming areas. Wouldn't the town common be included in that? I think she thought it wasn't included. It has a different definition. I don't know that for, you know, as it's not something I would recognize. And when we did them 10 years ago, or what was it? We didn't specifically say the common because of the ganja festival. And there was a big to do about that. So we just left the common, but we can say the common in parks because we have three downtown parks. Yeah. Are we concerned at all about recreation areas, not recreation areas, but conservation areas where people might gather? Like there aren't too many of those, to be honest. And most of them are pretty low density, but maybe a place like Mount Pollux might have people hanging out for extended periods of time. I'm not saying we should do this, but I think at least raise those questions. And I thought we should just like consider whether we make any changes at this point. I didn't see those. Where were they? Nancy sent out revised like an annotated version of these updated regulations with her comments at some point. I guess I didn't see them either. If you, it was kind of hard because you had to go to the review view to see them. They were like... Oh, that's right. She did send that. And then I looked at it, but I couldn't quite. Yeah, I missed it. Yeah. So I don't know if we want to take a chance. I mean, this is part of the public comments. I wonder if we should postpone any vote and have a chance to reevaluate those comments before we make that, take that vote. I think so. Yeah, I really wouldn't feel comfortable without seeing them. I'm really sorry. I just didn't realize there was something hidden there. And they were pretty... I guess what I was wondering was why we were getting that and it took a little digging to figure it out. I really think we should... Those are important things and we should talk about them or think about them. It's just some of the definitions of what we're talking about because I guess some of our parks aren't really defined and except for, you know, there are a few parks that are defined as parks, but a lot are like recreation areas or conservation areas or have other designations. And the comments, I guess, has its own designation as not being a park. Maureen, could you resend that out? I will forward that back to people. And should we postpone the vote until our June meeting then until after we all look at it? Yes. Yes. Okay. Then we'll have to hook up. It was forwarded on April 30th. If you want to check your email. What was the date again? April 30th. I think Nancy forwarded it. I looked on the town website and there was a map. It says town of Amherst parks, open space and recreational facilities. And the commons not included on that map. No. That's why I... How about Sweetsters or Kendrick? Are they on it? Yes. They are. Not on this one. Not on this particular one. But maybe it's all the one. I'm going to... The list of parks includes those parks. I saw somewhere. It's listed. Graf Park, Mill River, War Memorial, Sweetser, Kendrick, Kwanis. Where are they listed? It's on the website, Amherstmass.gov. Yeah. Parks and all the way at the bottom, it lists the parks in Amherst. Which department? I was just looking for some maps. I went to some maps. I did a search. Public Works, Tree and Grounds, and Parks. Yeah, okay. Parks, yeah. Got it. So there were several small issues raised about the definitions of where we wanted to restrict smoking and vaping. So I think it makes sense to step back and take a look at them and come back to it. Can I have a motion to postpone the vote until our June meeting? I'll move the postpone the vote on the updated smoking and vaping regulations until the June meeting. Second. I second it. Okay, it's been moved and seconded to postpone our vote until we review the comments. All in favor? Tim? Aye. Maureen? Aye. Steve? Aye. John? Aye. Nancy? Aye. Okay. Nancy, can I ask one thing for people to think about on that, that you're mentioning about the food court, food truck? Yeah. The phrase that addresses that, I'm just curious why it's written that are served to the public and then it says buy employees of restaurants, bars, and taverns. Why is that necessary? If you just said are served to the public, wouldn't that cover everything? I mean... Yeah, then we can amend that. I don't know, just thinking about it. I'd just ask us to think about it because why if you run your own food truck, you're an employee of your own thing. But... Vending machines. Vending machines wouldn't require that. Are served to the public. I guess that's the meaning, yeah. I'd be okay with no smoking near vending machines. Yeah. Where are they? They're no outdoor vending machines. Probably true. There's not many. I think the employees are mentioned only because of the exposure, I believe. Right, right. Because of a workplace situation too. Yeah, you're right. Okay. But I think our concern, the food truck concern is, is the public exposing the public as opposed to the public exposing the employees. Right? Right. I think so. Yeah. Right, and then there's that fine line where promoting health versus being punitive to a certain disenfranchised or vulnerable population, which would be the people without permanent residences who hang out there. So we have to really balance that out. Okay, so next on our agenda is, we have the, I don't know why, it's the emergency order of the Board of Health because we've already done that. Yep, so it's because this agenda was posted before we had our special meeting. Okay. Yep. Actually, I think it might be fortuitous. I think we maybe ought to think about this again, just briefly, okay? Because there's a couple of changes for one thing today. Exactly. But even if not, even notwithstanding today from the CDC, it seems to me that we really should stop this, even if forget the CDC said today, even without that, we should stop it by June 1st because if people are around town between the first 10 days of June, there won't be many people, people who see that sign, knowing that there is no reason why they should be masked. This calls, I think they're gonna think the Board of Health is either lazy or arrogant or misinformed and they're going to, it undermines the acceptance of future regulations. So what we could do, even before we talk about what the CDC said today is we could just say Emma, as our agent, could say we're gonna stop the mask wearing in the downtown area by June 1st unless the health director decides if there's some spike in local thing. Of course, it could be put back until the June meeting, but why can't we just say right now it's over June 1st? Comment? I would agree with that. I thought that we could do that at our special meeting just to end it then after the last of the graduations and it'd be coinciding where the state is planning to open things up somewhat more on May 29th. Yeah, I would agree with that. I just looked up Emma's call. I didn't have any question there. Commencement's May 30th. Right, which is why I'm thinking- So I would first line up with that. I'd be supportive of that, saying that we lift our order as of June 1st. Any other comments? So the commencement is on May 30th? Emma's college. Okay. And then May 31st is Memorial Day holiday, so make it June 1st just to be- And you mass us tomorrow. Right. There was one today, the grad ceremony was just ended just before our meeting. The in-person grad ceremony. Can I have a motion? Okay, I'll move that the board's order of August 2020 will be rescinded on June 30th, 2021. No. June 30th? June 1st. June 1st. June 1st, June 1st. Sorry, yeah. As of June 1st. Yeah. Second? I second it. Any more discussion? Okay, let's call the vote. John. Aye. Tim. Aye. Steve. Aye. Maureen. Aye. Nancy. Aye. Okay. Of course, we also have today's announcement saying that no one who's vaccinated needs to wear a mask anywhere. I don't know what authority they have to say that. The state requirement is still there, that surely you can't go into a supermarket without a mask. So I don't know what that means. Yeah. So I do just want to urge people that yes, the CDC has made their statements, but certainly we are living in Massachusetts. We have to follow the regulations and the guidance of our state and the Department of Public Health and Governor Baker Polito. So for right now, nothing has changed with our Massachusetts mask wearing expectations. Okay. So next on the agenda is community needs assessment. And I, so I'm going to put this in two pieces. The community needs assessment and then a listening session. So the community needs assessment, I almost have the whole proposal finished and I will get that out to you in the next week to 10 days. I've been in contact with the University of Massachusetts School of Public Health, Mary Ellen Luzano who is the Director of Career Planning and Amy Gilbert who is the Assistant Director for Internships. And they are very interested in having students work on this as a project, either a practicum or an independent project. And I will submit to them the project details, the description, the scope of the project and the outcomes, plus the community assessment form that we can have them work on. And the reason this is important is assessment is one of the core functions of public health. We say that it is part of our mission statement. It also is recommended on the blueprint for public health excellence, recommendations for improved effectiveness and efficiency of local public health projects, projections, report of the special commission on local and regional public health published June 2019 by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. If the health department ever wanted to become accredited, it is a requirement of accreditation. And as we start to make any plans, we really need some assessment data to develop our plans from. So that is in the process. And prior to that, does anyone have any questions on that? Well, for a non-specialist in this field, could you say, well, what are they assessing exactly? Is it just like what people say or is there actual data? No, it's data. It's very, it's very, let's see. It's very comprehensive. It has the history of the town. It has demographics by census, by the total town and by census tract, general health status, populations, viral statistics, morbidity and mortality, crude death rate, infant mortality, infectious diseases, chronic diseases, life expectancy, population years of potential life lost. And then for the social determinants of health, housing, transportation, workplace, recreation, education, places of library services. It's very, very law enforcement, fire, communication, employment distribution, leading industries in the community, education levels of people over 25, family income, renter and own properties, healthcare services, policy making, healthcare disparities. And I will have- What does it mean though? In other words, they're students, okay? What are they going to do when they say housing? How are they going to be evaluated in housing? But what are they supposed to do? I will send you all of this and- Oh, okay, okay, okay. Because the listening session came up and we want to do that before, so I didn't want to confuse the two, but I wanted to just give you an update on it. One question I had, is that just going into various databases? Are they doing any kind of actual surveying of people? They'll be doing surveys. They'd be doing focus groups. They'd be in, would be interviewing key stakeholders. It's a pretty involved process. I know Cooley Dickinson has done one. Did anyone listen to the Zoom on the reparations committee, their assessment data? Did anyone go on? Because what they did for the Black, African American community, it's very similar, but it would be for the whole community. And it would be broken down also by census tracks. That data doesn't come out until August. So, and I'll send that out to you before the June meeting. But the reason I then went more to the listening session, I met with Emma last week. We're gonna try and meet a week to 10 days before our Board of Health meetings, just so that we review the agenda in other issues that come up. And there's a potential to have funds for the health department to be spending. And they would be COVID related federal funds, the CARES Act, state funds and vaccine administration reimbursement fees. And I asked Emma, Emma has a very good idea about having a mobile van. But we were talking about, well, how would it be used? What's the exact need? So we thought if we got input from the community about what the health department has done and was helpful to them during the pandemic, what has the health department done during the time that has been a hindrance or a barrier to the health and wellbeing of the community? What was absent, but at present would have been helpful to the health and wellbeing of the community? And what program resources services would you like to see added to the health department? And how would you recommend the health department using any additional funding available this year? And these questions sort of come from a nurse researcher Virginia Henderson and I've used them in other studies that I've done in the past. I sent the proposal out to you. I also sent it to Emma, Jen Brown and Mary Beth from the senior center and I talked with Anita Saro over and she saw it, she was been at the clinic and she was is on the reparations assessment team. Thoughts, comments, and it would give Emma information as she makes decisions of the health department Emma, do you have anything to say? Yeah, I know, I'm new in my role. So trying to be really thoughtful and science-based with how we're moving forward as a health department, making sure that we're meeting the needs of our community is very important to me. So an assessment like this would be very helpful. So an assessment like this would be very helpful in terms of that with where are we right now? And then when I think about healthy people 2030 and just how we're gonna connect all of those things together this'll be really helpful to move that forward. So just to have a question, just how the sequence of things go, I mean, the beating with the community would come first and that would guide because it seems like that will be available to you in time to consider how to spend any funds that you have. It seems like the other assessment is going to take some time and would that also relate to how funds would be spent or is that going to be too late and just maybe a baseline for work in the future? Yeah, I think at the end you kind of hit it. They're two different things. The listening session is with those stakeholders to get a sense in terms of COVID, how has the community experience been deficits and things we've done well? So we can challenge ourselves to think differently and do differently at this time. The community health assessment is a very thorough deep dive assessment that looks not just at COVID but Amherst as a community as a whole with those environmental justice populations, social determinants of health, all of those things that we think of with public health. I know Nancy speaks much more eloquently than I. So I try to chug along here, but they are two very different things. The community listening session would give us more feedback quickly than this long-term assessment. But they both are very helpful in different ways. I guess I just wanted in terms of getting funds or spending funds, is that the time frame of those funds is that could they wait till after the assessment or those are gonna have to be requested or used prior to that information that comes from the full assessment? I'm just curious. Yeah, I mean, I would have to speak with Sean, the finance director. I mean, there are, if we do have any objectives to try and meet with COVID related money, there is an expiration date for that, so. Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah. Yeah, and I was going under the idea that it had to be spent in this calendar year and it has to be COVID related, those funds, whereas community assessment is a much broader focus. Just wanted to clarify. Is there an estimate of how much funds are available, which we could ask for? I don't have those numbers right now. As a whole, they aren't really, I think, shared with department heads, but I know that Sean from finance has those numbers. I do know that when I was putting a proposal about the possibility of the mobile van to help with testing and vaccination, education, maybe homeless clinics, in terms of medical clinics or other uses, when I did put forward the proposal for that and how much that would cost, that specialized Sprinter van that has zero emissions was about 180,000. But that would be under CARES money. I don't have a big sense, Tim, but I at least know what I submitted for, which has not been moved forward, but that was not immediately discarded because of the cost either. So this listening session is not for the needs of our department, or is it something totally different part of money? Because I think there are two different things. We are seeing what we need. And then the next one is we are asking what will be the good for the community in terms of funding. Right, so the listening session, since it's directly related for COVID, we could definitely tie that in and request CARES funding for that. We also have some funding still available under our health department-specific Pioneer Valley Planning Commission money grants that we had come in. And for the listening session, I don't anticipate that being a lot of money. It would maybe be some, the physical space, maybe some, not condiments, but we're not supposed to serve a ton of food, but like that's it's a pandemic, but those are the things I typically think of, right? When people would come to these sessions, some flyers, maybe if we did some surveys. So printing those out, the time put into that. Nancy, do you have any other thoughts? No, I was gonna try and meet with you next week and work on this. Yeah. I put a big effort and then I sort of stepped back a little bit. Back to funding, what Tim mentioned, has anyone given you any idea of what's happening with the insurance reimbursement? Because as of March 15th, after before March 15th, the formula was different, but from March 15th on Medicare and some insurances were paying $40 for each injection of the COVID vaccine. Has anyone given you an idea of how they're doing and if they're using the ICD-10 codes? I always wanna say ICD-9, but they're now ICD-10. Have you given you a hint on how that they're billing for that reimbursement and what's coming into town? Because that's a lot of money. So I've been working with Commonwealth Medicine with that. We're not sure exactly how much is coming back. We should be starting to see our first processes with Medicare and Mass Health coming through this month and then private insurances before the end of the fiscal year. And in terms of how the town is allocating those funds, I'm not sure. I haven't been given a clear answer. I believe they're going into the general fund and not directly to our Department of Public Health. But as a town, I've heard that they're coming back into the general fund. Okay, yeah, because it costs to do the clinic. So everybody who's put in time should get some of that into their department. But I think the Health Department should get some funds from it. Yeah, I hear you, Nancy. Okay. Yep. Okay. Any more discussion on the listening session? What I'll do is I will, after this meeting, I'll meet with Emma next week and sort of formulate it more and get it out to you. Comments? Okay. It seems to me overall a great idea. Do we need to vote on this? Just, we're doing it. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, now we're moving on to new business. Board of Health member appointments. So I know we had previously had this discussion and we, I had reached out to Marco, who unfortunately said he's not available for the Board of Health, but thanked me so much for my call. After some time, I did reach out to Dr. Christian Guzman and Dr. Emily Kumpel and left voice mails, but wasn't able to hear back from them. So as of this time, we have not been able to secure someone for John C. Yeah. Thanks for that update. I was thinking about that this morning. Didn't know if you'd reached out to Christian or Emily, which you said you've left them a message, but on their work, vote voice mails? On their voice mails. Okay. I didn't want to start off with an email. I wanted to try and be more, yeah. All right. I mean, I can touch, I'll touch base with them. That would be wonderful. Yeah. Well, Christian will be a parent as of the fall of a young baby and Emily has already a toddler. So yeah, there's challenges there in addition to their pre-10 year faculty position. So it's pretty non-ideal for me. If I wear my department head hat, know something way. But anyway, I'll communicate more with them. Great. Thank you so much. So one issue with the voice mails at UMass, a lot of times people don't check for many days. So it goes to the UMass system. So I usually check once in a week or a couple of weeks. So emails might be an ideal one for reaching quickly. Yeah. And I don't even know if either of those people have a landline to tell you the truth. So I mean, if they don't, that's actually good. That has changed with people here, but most actually most people get them just to have a place that people can find them. That's not their cell phone. So, but I have no idea what if they're checking or not. All right. Well, I will try email to reach out to them then. Try. Does anyone? I'd like to, yeah. I really try to think of someone else. The only other, did Jack Gemsick come up? Yeah, he's on, I talked to him. He's chair of the planning. Oh, I forgot that. Right now. He said when his term on planning is up, he would be consider the board of health. But right now he's pretty planning. Yeah, I forgot about that. So more to come. I guess I'm wondering if would next steps, I believe they also take people of interest for board positions at town hall, correct Nancy? Right. They get a list. So I'm wondering if, if in addition to reaching out to Christian and Emily, if we're at that point where we should, I should do that and reach out to that list. Yes. Great. I mean, not great that we're in this position. Yes. How wonderful that there's that list. Right. It was a public forum too. It is. It's very important to have a knowledge base with Tim and John with the septic and the wells and the net zero buildings and things like that. So that when you look at it, you know what you're looking at the plans. Okay. So now we're going to move on to this mosquito control because the, the, I always want to say the town counselors, there's a thing from Governor Baker to opt out of spraying and it goes to, went to the town council. And if you opt out, you have to have a comprehensive mosquito control plan. There's been a lot of fear. I don't think there's been adequate. I think there's been a lot of misinformation. So it's come to the board to talk about this. So I'm going to turn it over to Emma because Emma did send out on May 4th the mosquito control position statements. Yeah. So thank you, Nancy. So in regards to Amherst, we do not have a specific mosquito control plan nor is the town of Amherst part of a mosquito control district. We follow the Massachusetts DPH of Arbovirus Surveillance Response Plan and their assessment risk to guide our phased response. The current risk response is low and information can be found at the mass.gov Arbovirus site. It is only after exhausting recommended responses from the state, including expanding surveillance to detect geographic distribution, identifying possible habitat and potential breeding sites, cleanups, educational efforts on personal prevention and source production with the mass DPH recommended spraying of chemical pesticides to kill mosquitoes. Spraying is only considered when we're monitoring indicates that the disease risk is high and targeted intervention is warranted. So it is a multi-step process. There is the state mosquito control board that partners with Mass DPH, the Department of Environmental Protection, the Environmental Office of Affairs, the Department of Conservation and Recreation. It is a huge effort. This is with people who have spent a lot of time and doing a lot of thoughtful research with this. In terms of triple E, there is no treatment for triple E and in Massachusetts, about half of the people identified, that's actually about, it's actually 66% of people identified with triple E die from it, from that infection. And those of the people who do survive will often be permanently disabled. As well as with West Nile virus, there is no specific treatment for West Nile virus infections. And people with mild West Nile virus infections usually recover on their own, but people with severe infections of West Nile virus almost always require hospitalization and their symptoms may last several weeks and neurological effects may be permanent for them. Approximately 10 of those people, 10% of people who develop severe illness from West Nile virus will die from the infection. So one of the things that in this multi-step process with mosquito control plans, the first step is education, but then doing community education is not really a complete plan. There are a basic plan would at least include surveillance and we don't have a surveillance plan. We also don't have the financial means to independently run or employ a number of employees to run a plan or resources. What I would recommend is for the town of Amherst to join the Pioneer Valley Mosquito Control District that their only job or position that they do, if we were to work with them, if we were to do an MOU and be in their Mosquito Control District would be surveillance. As of this time, they don't do any larvicide, they don't do adulta sighting or any of those other things. Those are hopefully projected for the end of this year or next year, but as of this time, they would do those active things of surveillance with fixed and long-term trap sites, supplemental trap sites, testing of those mosquitoes that are trapped as well as some avian surveillance, animal surveillance and then human surveillance, which is also done by DPH. And while the Department of Public Health does have some overreaching surveillance that's done, the staffing for them is very scant. I think historically we've known the majority of their work is done in the Eastern part of the state and really being able to have a local regional partner to increase the surveillance. So we can truly know the rate of infectious mosquitoes in our area would be very helpful, not just for the people of Amherst but all of our other local towns around us as well for our community. So that's what I would propose. So thank you, Emma. I looked into the Pioneer Valley Mosquito Control too and they're extremely conservative. And towns, I think East Hampton has opted out because they belong to the Pioneer Valley Mosquito Control so that they have a plan. As well as Greenfield, Greenfield too, Nancy. It's, yep. And they also help with catch basin cleaning and examining catch basins. Their big thing is surveillance and having tracks to track the mosquitoes. And you would get a weekly report and end of season report. So we would have really up-to-date data to see what's happening in town. I know about five or six years ago when EE was high, the then health director as an agent of the Board of Health had all worked with the school. All school sports ended a half an hour before sunset. It was in the fall. So you had to have it a half hour before sunset because sunset kept changing. And then the education with the repellents and wearing long sleeves and being very careful. And as you pointed out, the real worrisome thing is the deaths. And when you look at medical research, it's about 30% of cases end up in death. However, when you look at the Massachusetts report, as you pointed out, it wasn't in a year was I think over a decade that there were 38 cases of triple E with 20 deaths and 208 cases of West Nile with 12 deaths and that triple E comes out to 66% death rate. So that's very concerning, especially with climate changing and everything that's done. Other comments? Emma, when you said that if we joined the finer valley mosquito control district, they now only provide surveillance. If in the future, they have programs that involve say spraying or something like that, would that compel Amherst to participate or do we have any say in it? So we would be part of the district. We could always have a say as being part of that district and have a voice at the table. When I spoke to Chris, who is their program director, he was very receptive and in terms of spraying, I mean, as of right now, the only items that are in their plans other than surveillance and doing those catch basins things would be larva sighting and adult sighting. There's no aerial spraying. There's no, I mean, yes, the adult sighting is the truck mounted sprayers, but in terms of when I look at, they don't do the monument, monum, I can't say it, that's embarrassing. Mono molecular films to suffocate the larvae or pope, they don't do those and they certainly don't do this aerial spraying. It's my understanding from, and I'm not an expert, but I tried to look at this a lot and that if you're part of one of the districts and then there is a public health emergency, then the state will spray. If it doesn't help you opt out of the spraying. I think what all these things do, the surveillance and the working on culverts and other kind of drainage issues is to kind of get ahead of the problem and try to use the lower level mitigation steps and avoid the need for any kind of spraying either by truck or by aerial spraying. But I think if the state declares it's an emergency and they think it would be warrant the spraying, they have control of that. The district can't say no to that. Well, I think there's two parts to this because people are part of the Pioneer Valley Mosquito Control District and other control districts and have opted out of spraying, Greenfield just did, but they are still part of the district. So I think we're kind of talking about things. Yeah, we can work. I think we're talking about two different parts. But right now the town of Amherst isn't doing either part. And I think this is an opportunity where if the town council decides and votes that they would like to opt out, in my position, it feels uncomfortable if we were to opt out and didn't have some kind of surveillance plan or mitigation strategy, prevention strategy, really looking at what's going on in our climate. I agree with that. A point of clarification, when I read the opt out, if a city or town opts out, they have to have an alternative management plan for mosquitoes. So you can opt out unless you have a plan. Correct. Is that correct? Correct. One thing about this opting out, so yes, I understand that the state can, in what they declare as an emergency, they can spray no matter what. But it is kind of disturbing then that if you don't opt out, then apparently they can spray when it's not an emergency. No, they don't. No. No. If you look at the state plan, they don't do it unless DPH says it's a public health emergency. So then the opt out has no effect at all, you're saying. No. The opt out is empty because they, if they're only going to spray when there's an emergency and if they have the right to spray when there's an emergency, not withstanding anybody who opts out, there's no point in opting out. What's opting out mean? No, the opt out means that if there's a high risk that they won't spray. If the... Risks are not an emergency. Yes, if the new regulations that came out through the state control, mosquito control board, town municipalities had to create an alternative plan to be able to opt out out of aerial spraying even when there was a high emergency. But the state only sprays after a multi-step process as the absolute last resort when our high risk has been stated and declared by the Department of Public Health. And then it goes to the state board and the algorithm is that they think that aerial adult deciding with other emergency response should be considered. And then there's a further step where it has to go to MDAR, DPH and the AG to discuss options and move forward with planning. So it's not just a simple... I mean, this is the picture that they give me. And Emma, it's my understanding that they would do very spot truck spraying first before aerial spraying. And aerial spraying was done in the southeastern part of the state where West Nile, I mean, where Tripoli and West Nile was soaring and people were dying. Correct, that was in Plymouth County. I still am a little confused about can you have kind of this hybrid model where you're part of one of the districts for certain activities like the surveillance and kind of dealing with standing water and that kind of thing. And then, but also have the town's own plan about deciding about spraying, you know? So that's confusing to me. Yeah, so that's the whole law that came out that you can be part of a mosquito control district, but in order to opt out as a municipality, you have to have some kind of mosquito control plan and to be able to opt out, the town of Amherst does not have any plan. Right. And other municipalities in our local, regional mosquito control district, some have opted out and other towns as well where they're a part of other mosquito control districts. So those who have opted out, what type of plan do they have? Is it a simple plan or a very expensive one? Green. What is the expectation, you know? Yeah, Greenfield's part of the Pioneer Valley Mosquito Control District. Does that mean that's the plan? Is that the plan being a member? Yeah, that the Pioneer Valley Mosquito Control District has the thorough plan. So just being a member means that the town has a plan. Right, because they do all the surveillance and everything and testing and then get back to us with all the data like Nancy said. And it's my understanding, I think it's about $5,000 to join. Correct. That's what the PowerPoint presentation that you shared says. Yeah. So you mentioned that the Pioneer Valley Mosquito Control District does only surveillance. I mean, if there is an emergency, will there be, should we have a plan for mosquito control itself beyond surveillance? So the Pioneer Valley Mosquito Control has a plan for beyond surveillance. Right now they don't do any activity beyond surveillance. So that's part of their developed plan. Even if it's not part of their plan, that's where the Massachusetts, oh, I gotta find it out of my piles. So Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Arborvirus and Surveillance and Response Plan comes into play. Which is another 50 page plan. I'm not sure if this is the time for comments, Nancy, but I am seeing at the end of the model. Okay, that's just what I was looking for. I don't see. I see a Brandy Kennedy Davies. Oh, there it is. Okay. Can you unmute, Brenda? Yep, Brenda. Hi there. Can you hear me now? Yes. Hi there. This has been a wonderful process listening to all of you who are so incredibly thoughtful. It's great to meet some of you remotely. I'm a resident of Amherst. I'm a member of Zero Waste Amherst, I'm a committee in town and was on the listening session for the DEP a while back. And I'm delighted to hear that Amherst plans to opt out. I can share screen if you would like. I have many copies of alternative plans that other towns have submitted. And it's a small, easy process. Towns I know that have already opted out and there's many that are already in the works. Glendale, Ashby, Montague, Gloucester, Uxbridge, Pepperyl, Harvard. And I don't know if I need to go into like all the concerns. Yeah, we mentioned the human deaths, which actually to be exact according to the mass.gov site on EEE since the first case was identified in 1938, just over 110 cases have occurred. That's it. That's it since 1938. And again, this alternative plan is just a couple of pages and it's checking off things. So I'm happy to show that. And again, there's many statistics about the concerns beyond the humans. That is a small number. But of course, there's wildlife, there's water source. There's, as you know, as the rates, we are 50% higher than the rest of the country. So there's a huge amount of reasons to not to do this non discerning aerial spray strategy. But I have been kind of involved in this for a little bit. So I do have a bunch of, like I said, templates and information about what other towns are doing. So it sounds like the town council will meet on the 17th and they will look at your recommendations. And I know that they want to vote to opt out. So I'm thanking you for the, kind of judgment that you're using to, and it's unfortunate that it's an opt out situation instead of an opt in. But that's what I have to share for now. Thank you. Brenda, could you send that material to Emma and she could send it out to us? Sure. Let me take down Emma's email. Is that what I would use? Yes. Okay. I'm still muted, which wasn't helpful. Okay, sorry. It's D-R-A-G-O-N as in Nancy. D-R, I'm sorry, I'm still here. D-R-A-J-O-N. G as in George. G as in George. Thank you. O-N. E as in Emma at amherstma.gov. Amherst.gov. Great. Thanks, Emma. You're welcome. You're welcome. Are there any other comments? I don't know. Other than Brenda's hand up, Lenore here. I'm going to unmute you. Unmute you, and Lenore. Am I unmuted? Yeah, you are. You are. Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for your important good service and the careful way you do it. My main input was in an email that I sent to Steve today to share with all of you, which has a lot of well-documented information from expert sources, which I am not, including plans that Brenda mentioned and other plans to model our plan after, and also to apply some common sense versus some fear-based strategies that might only offer a false sense of security as an aerial spraying. And I hope that it is understood that we do need to opt out as a town. And I, that even if we're in the district, we still need to opt out if we don't want to be part of spraying. And since all of everything I've read, all the evidence shows that physical interventions actually work better than spraying. I urge you to urge Amherst to opt out. And as Brenda's saying, it's not that difficult. So I wanted to just pull a few fun facts from some of the websites that I was looking at when I was sending you information, which also there's some attached documents in there that I think will be helpful. But one irony I have to state is that some of the reasons for the outbreaks of disease-carrying mosquitoes often result from habitat disturbance such as deforestation and paring wetlands, spraying insecticides, and that restoring the health of ecosystems actually helps keep mosquitoes under control. And yet the solutions that would be presented in a national state of emergency would degrade the ecosystem further. So what we really need is local and state public policy for long-term solutions. And with any health strategy, right? We want to pick solutions that are based on doing the least harm with the least unintended consequences with the most efficiency and efficacy. And pesticides are not actually the silver bullet we like them to be, especially this killing adult mosquitoes after they're hatched and flying and biting people is the least effective approach to mosquito management, even according to the CDC. Because you need to knock them down at a 90% rate and aerosol plumes from even the truck-mounted ULV spraying doesn't make adequate contact. Like it's impossible for a truck to reach over and in between foliage and buildings and other structures where mosquitoes might reside. So 99% of the spray chemicals go off into the environment where they can have detrimental effects and they leave 0.10% to actually hit the target pest. That's not efficient. And repeated spraying is likely to foster pesticide resistance, there was an article that showed that long range effects of pesticide spraying can actually increase the number of mosquitoes by destroying their natural predators. And that mosquito surviving the spraying may pass on genes for resistance to the pesticide. So that's not very efficient. Not to mention that the adulticide are chemically engineered to have greater toxicity in longer breakdown times, which increase, and they're like combined with synergists which increases the potency and compromises our body's ability to detoxify that pesticide, which we know are endocrine disruptors, they're linked to cancers, they have inordinate effects on people with asthma and pollen allergies. And the EPA doesn't even review these synergistic effects of the active and the inner ingredients in the same product or with different products. So we don't really understand the effect of the combinations of pesticides that haven't been tested to rule out effects, especially in vulnerable populations. Not to mention financially, there's a, because of the high potential for sprays to miss their target, there was this professor of entomology from Cornell that said, so suppose your city spends $500,000 for mosquito control and one insecticide droplet in a million hits of mosquito, that means it costs you 50 cents of the taxpayer money to result in the killing of one mosquito, which does not seem that practical. So of course we want to take care of this, but we wanna do it in the smartest way possible. And the smartest way possible is absolutely not through truck and aerial spraying. It's through public education campaigns and getting rid of the breeding grounds and good surveillance and implementing source reduction techniques and conducting least toxic larval control and using biological controls, et cetera, et cetera. All of that is listed in the information that I sent you. So I hope that that gives you reason to urge the town to opt out. Thank you. Thank you. Steve, you got that material? Yes, I did. I got an email. Yes, I got an email from the norm, but I just saw it just before our meeting. So I will forward all of that to everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments? I know I wanna thank Leonora and Brenda for their statements. I think what I've heard from our board discussion is that certainly we don't advocately support spraying. We rather do wanna pursue as Maureen has said, these thoughtful ways of doing that surveillance to be able to get ahead with the breeding and everything like that. I think that that's part of why I'm suggesting that we join the Pioneer Valley Mosquito Control District so that way we can be able to do those things successfully to avoid potentially needing, even needing possibly the spraying and keeping our risk level low as a community. So thank you for speaking, Leonora and Brenda. Other comments from the board? I still have one question. I still don't understand what exactly is it that the town would be opting out of if we let's say join the Mosquito Control District and then opt out? What are we opting out of? Yep, municipalities that are part of a Mosquito Control District that wish to opt out of spraying conducted by the State Mosquito Control Board would apply with submitting a plan for approval for that. So, and even if you're a part of a Mosquito Control District, you can select to opt out of spraying. But the state can override that. Not if you've opted out. Not even in a diary in your agency? That's the way that this is written. I do wanna say that you are highlighting that that is something that is concerning to me, that if suddenly there was this, we have been very lucky that the town of Amherst has not required spraying or had very severe levels. But if we did opt out and this was still in effect, then we could not do spraying. That would be maybe be something that we would ask the town to reconsider at the time because you could opt back in. But we would have to manually flip that back to opting into spraying, Steve. So this is opting out of the states making the decision for us? Right. And I gather this is a year by year opt out? Yeah, this is a new process that came through as part of that new law that was passed last year. And this is as a municipality opt out. There still continues to be the private property opt out where you can do that on the plan for your own property. And there are also many other areas that aren't able to be sprayed. Protected areas, water reservoirs. I can't think of them all, but there's many protected areas that aren't able to be sprayed as well. Organic farms. Organic farms is what you're right now. Yes. So... In an emergency. I know that. So a couple of questions. One is the district, if you're planning on joining a district, they do some sort of a risk assessment. Is that right? Mm-hmm. How frequently and how do they do that? I see that the five classes of one is very critical. In 2019, it was, you know, South Hadley was showing a critical in September 6th. I'm just wondering if a town is facing a critical status, what are our options? You know, if we opt out and will the district do some sort of a help in that or? Our only opportunity to opt out in this fiscal year, the deadlines by May 28th, and that's after an extension that they already gave. So if the town of Amherst decides to opt out of spraying, it would have to, the alternative, the mosquito control plan would have to be submitted to the state mosquito control board by May 28th. So I support Emma's task that we opt out of the state, but join the Pioneer Valley Mosquito Control District because as they know, they're extremely conservative and we would get surveillance, which is our first line of defense. And then we would do education. In the past decade, we had that one emergency. Amherst did not spray, but as I mentioned earlier, we educated people, we stopped all sports events a half hour before sunset and there was a lot of education on how to remain safe. And that was when the triple E numbers were going up in the county. I think there were some in horses in Granby or something. I believe a horse died, two horses. One in Belcher Town and one in Granby. Two horses died, I believe. I remember that too, I was at Mount Holyoke and we stopped the sporting events after, you know, before sunset. So I really see what Emma's suggesting is supporting that and what we've done in the past, but we would add surveillance and we would have experts through the district to help us. Other comments? One thing I read is I think this district, the one Pioneer Valley seems to be a conservative district that has a plan to use integrated pest management programs and not to, you know, go to spraying. Other districts, however, not this one, spray more than the state recommends. And that's an issue for other towns in other districts, but it's interesting to know that, that the state is actually trying to get everybody to do best practices, which in some areas means less spraying. And my also, my understanding from reading this is this is like a two-year window until this board that's kind of reviewing in mosquito management makes some recommendations to the state. So it's just trying to get into a better practices in the state as a whole in terms of mosquito control. So I agree, I agree. If we can opt out and be part of this Pioneer Valley district, I think that's a good plan. Other comments, any attendees want to make comments? I see, I'm not sure if Brenda and Leon or still have a comment. I know their hands are still raised. Yeah, Brenda, I'm unmuting you. Do you have any additional comments? If you unmute Brenda, if you have, do you have anything to say? Hi, can you hear me now? Yes. Great, I just wanted to clarify what the steps are going forward. Would you plan to be joining the district by the deadline on the 28th? So therefore submitting the Greenfield district plan, is that possible in that short of time? Or would you just be taking a look at the sample plans, which I've already just sent to Emma, again, which is quite short in order to submit that by, I don't know if it's you or if it's the town council that's a question to have to submit this alternative plan to DEP by the 28th. Emma, it's my belief that it's the town council. We're just giving our input to the town council. Is that correct, Emma? Correct. Okay, and is your recommendation going to be to opt up by the 28th, regardless of, I don't know what the plan is to join the district? My recommendation is to join the Pioneer Valley Mosquito Control District. And I don't believe that an education just based off education of the public is a thoughtful plan for the town and that we really need to have some kind of surveillance practice in place if we are going to opt out. Okay, so are you saying that, how soon can you join the district? And is your recommendation to opt out and then, and join the district as soon as you can? Yup, so Chris, the head of the district said that if as soon as we got the green light from the town that we would like to join the district, then that could occur. There's a number of other towns in the same position that we are at that are having simultaneous conversations with them. So it does appear that the Pioneer Valley Mosquito District is going to grow this year, which would be very nice to see some regional efforts. So in terms of their end, it doesn't look like joining them would be a hindrance to get this through before May 28th. And I know that the town council meeting is coming up this Monday. So I really look forward to having my presentation and discussions with them at that time. Great, maybe there's even a bulk reduction rate if multiple towns join at once, you can split the 5,000. Wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't that be great? Yeah. Okay, thanks Emma. You're welcome, thank you for coming. Sure, thanks so much for allowing. I thought I saw George Ryan's hand raised, but it's not. Lenore, do you have any other comments? I'll unmute you. Yes, thank you. I had the same questions as Brenda and I just wanna make sure that it's not, that the order is not going to be joining the district and then opting out because it can all happen at the same time and things take time for the town council to do. So if you're going to recommend that they opt out, I would hope you do that right away and that they act on that right away. Knowing that you're gonna join the district is sort of a simultaneous action because they both need to happen. And I agree, Emma, that education's not enough and the plan that you would be submitting to the state is a very comprehensive plan. There's towns that have already done it. You can just do the same thing, honestly. And I'm sure that everything that I sent you and that Brenda sent you would be enough for the town to have a template for a plan that's very comprehensive and effective. The other point that I wanted to make when it was referred to that residents can, property owners and tenants can opt out, that opting out doesn't hold any water if the state initiates a state plan in an emergency. So it is important for that reason too, that the town opt out, because it's only the town opting out that allows Amherst or any town to intervene, to use physical interventions and measures as opposed to what we're learning on less effective measures because the state's plan is very outdated at this point. And we have information and strategies at our fingertips that are more updated. And the more towns that do that, the more that'll push the state to also kind of get with the program in the 21st century. The other thing is even if organic farms are exempted, there's air drift. So if it's happening near you, it's happening on you. So another reason that it's very important for the town to opt out with all of our precious agricultural land. Thank you, Lenore. I see George Ryan's hand is raised, so I am going to. Can you unmute yourself, George? Yes, I think. Thank you. I just want to follow up on your Lenore's comment. And the town council does not move quickly. And so I will reach out to Lynn this evening and let her know that this is coming. Perhaps you will also be doing that. But if you were to wait until the evening of the 17th to present your suggestion or your recommendation to the council, that could be a problem because I don't think there is another council meeting before May 28, at least not a regular council meeting. So if this is okay, I would alert Lynn that this is coming and I would urge you to reach out to her in advance. And you're probably going to do this anyway, but for us to act at least on the 17th, we'd need to have something on the agenda in some kind of written form that we could vote on. We would not be able to vote on something if it wasn't actually written up in some official way. So just my thought that the time is of the essence. And so my thought would be I would let Lynn know that I was here and that I heard that this is coming and I would urge you to reach out to her as well in advance of that meeting. Thank you. Yes, thank you. Okay, any other comments? I have a quick one. So the last year's Arbovirus survey, sometimes it comes in June, is that right? June, July, that time? Pardon me? I missed the beginning of what you said. So it's the Arbovirus results for this. It usually comes in June, July. And last year we had some sort of positive cases both Eastern and EEE as well as WNV. I'm just wondering, our prognosis for the 2021, if the results come in in June, July, will there be some sort of a recourse or if there is any emergency or critical classification of Amherst? So we need to have a plan. I'm just saying that we are operating on historical data. But if there is a new survey comes in in 2021, in June or July, and if our town is classified as critical, what will we do? So I just want to put that. My understanding is that these come in cycles and often they last two or three years and I think we're kind of in the middle of one of those. 2019 was pretty bad, 2020 was pretty bad, 21 who knows, but they start like they build as the season goes on. So if you're looking at the mosquitoes in June and July, they usually aren't that high, but as you get into August, September, that's the real time is up to the frost is are the more critical times. Generally speaking, so I don't think we're gonna see a crisis in June or July. I think that would be really rare, but the question comes up later in the summer and into the fall usually. I don't know that that changes anything except that we should have some of these plans more in place at that time. No, definitely I think the integrated pest management, the IPM is the way to go. That's what the Department of Agriculture is promoting. And so if you're part of the district, probably they will have some plans for that type of critical situations, right? Yeah. Go on, John, and then I'll say something. I was just, I looked at the state, the websites about this and it's very clear. And to me, if the board was to recommend that my thought is we would be to recommend that the town of Amherst join the district, the town of Amherst submit their application for a plan and only when you have a plan submitted and approved can you opt out. So we have to do those things first. That's what the site says. You have to submit the plan and then you vote to opt out and that we can just recommend something. The council obviously has to do this. So it seems to me it's a three step, two parts of the plan joining the district and having a plan and then opting out. And if we join and opt out, it fits in with the mission because with the district, we would have assessment data for surveillance. Then we would be able to develop our policy, which would be following that, which would then give assurance to ensure that town people are safe. So I guess I might ask if the board would consider having a vote on that. Okay, so that's great. So I'll even make a motion that we direct Emma to provide the town council with information to opt out from the state spraying as it was requested by the state that our alternative management plan is joining the Pioneer Valley Mosquito District that would allow us to fulfill our mission. Does anyone wanna second that? I can second it. Okay, open for discussion. I mean, I don't know. I think joining at least reading this, I don't think joining the district is complete a plan. We have to have a plan. And one part of it is joining a district. Well, John, I looked at the application to for the alternative mosquito management plan. And at this time, the only thing that's required is education on that plan. I think that's too little. I think I heard Emma say the same thing, but that form asks who's providing what services like education, source reduction, it's a form that you could fill out that you need to fill out and it asks who's doing what on that. So it's not like you have to make up the plan, but it asks who's doing the parts of the activities that you need for the plan. It's not so clear to me how you check all those boxes, Emma. Well, yeah, it's a nine page form. I know I've looked at it a lot of times over the last couple of weeks. And John, to answer for you, if being part of the Pioneer Valley Mosquito Control District that is our plan. They're the ones that have- But if you have a nine page form that doesn't have that box on it. But no, being part of a mosquito control district is on that plan. Oh, good. Yeah. It's on the form. Yeah, sorry. Does it obviate the form? If you checked that, you skipped a page six of the form. Oh, good. I like that. No, so I mean, I just, on your motion, and it just seems to me the order would be to my feeling from us is that we would recommend that the town join, join the Pioneer Valley Mosquito Control, whatever the district is, as its plan, as an alternative mosquito control plan facilitating the ability of the town to opt out of the area widespread. Something like that. Okay, fine. I don't know that, but poor Steve here is working on the words. I'm just trying to get one fourth of them down. That's all. Our word Smith over there. Yeah, right. So John, do you want a word Smith? I don't know. We're saying the same thing in a different order. Yeah, we are. So I was saying opt out with our plan being the mosquito district. Do you say join the Mosquino district and then opt out? Yeah, they have to accept the plan before. Yeah, that's why. It's because the state requires you to have a plan and then you can vote up opt out. That's all. That's the only rationale. Fine. Engineer here, remember. Okay. Okay, so, I don't know if Brenda has her hand raised again. Brenda, do you want to say something? Nope, not at this point. You are all covering all the bases. Okay. Thank you. Oh, your hand. Okay. Yeah, it's hard to tell if it's up or down. Can you un... Yeah, thank you. There. Thanks. Thank you. So in the application form, it asks for specifics on mosquito control, right? Services to be provided. Who will provide it? And is it the contractor or the municipal staff? And I'm just curious, who will be filling those information? Will the district will do it? So, right. It's that the Pine Valley Mosquito Control District is our partner and takes care of all of that. That's all covered into this $5,000 fee. Our DPW workers don't have to do any of this. Our health department with our minimal staff doesn't have to do any of this. Or contract for the testing of the samples that all being part of this district, all of those actions that are under that nine page form that you're looking at, Tim, are able to occur as under the surveillance that they would do. And then the reporting for all that great data that we're gonna get back. Now, I'm just looking at that sense to skip to page six or something. Do we still have to do our own education plan or is that also part of the mosquito control district? So I think it's thoughtful to always kind of do a little bit of our own plan. We have historically, we have some pliers, pamphlets in our bucket and that we've done in previous years when Julie Federman was still here. Thank you, Julie, for having that. With that being said, they do have some education ability and as well as public outreach, they're willing to come out if we were to have a fair or to speak, if we were able to have people in schools to speak, if they're willing to help partner with that, so yeah. Okay, so John, do you wanna repeat the motion? I guess the motion would be that the Board of Health recommends the town of Amherst join the Pioneer Valley Mosquito, whatever it's called. District. As a primary component of its alternate plan, whatever the right words are, alternate mosquito. Mosquito management plan. So we're recommending that they do that and to facilitate the application to opt out of the area-wide spraying thing, whatever it's called. Second? Anybody, I'll second. It's my little wordsmith of that. I guess, I think we might just say spraying because that covers both aerial spraying and truck-based spraying or we could say aerial spraying and truck-based spraying just to be clear, I guess, that it's both types of spraying. I think if there's a general word of spraying that covers them, but if we just said aerial spraying, I think it could suggest that we allow truck-based spraying. On the state website, the phrase is opt out from wide area pesticide applications. That's a phrase. That should cover it. Wide area. How many meters is a watch here? But anyway, we'll get into that, but... I just thought we should be careful about the wording of that part. The phrase at the state thing is wide area pesticide application. So that's probably the one we should do. Okay, so we have a motion. I need it seconded. I can second it. All in favor. Now, wait a second. Now hold it for just a second. So if you use the word facilitate. And so there's what I want to know is, what this opting out, so what if there is a serious situation that requires some spraying locally of some kind, including possibly aerial? Is there any way to go back on this quickly? Because you're eliminating something that is objectionable if it is not really needed because of all the reasons that people have given, but it could be very life-saving. So what are we saying here? We as a board recommending flatly that we should opt out of all spraying. To me personally, and I don't know that what's behind the regulation that Emma would read, I would hope that the Pioneer Valley Mosquito Control District as part of the plan would acknowledge that there's need for a possible need for an area spray. And I mentioned it in there. In other words, I would assume or hope that that's part of a plan. From what I read and Emma, can you second this that they're extremely conservative? And that would be the last, last option after Larva side. She seems to be part of a plan. Yeah. There has to be a stepwise plan. So Emma, I guess it's your charge to see what that plan is. Yeah, I mean, I'm very clear with that mosquito management is not my expertise. There are people that do this as their job and the Pioneer Valley Mosquito Control District is one of them. And many other towns in our area go with them. So I would encourage, if we're thinking about it, a thoughtful mosquito control plan that isn't just education, then that's what I would recommend. Yes, fine, fine, fine. I feel sure we all want to join this district. What about opting out though? That's what's interesting to me. Because the district, in their PowerPoint that they say, adult deciding involves application of pesticide from truck mounted sprayers to reduce adult mosquito population when their numbers are extremely high and or the risk of mosquito-borne disease is high. We plan to, on using an integrated pest management approach to reduce the need to adult decide as much as possible. PVMCD plans to be extremely conservative with adult deciding and only conduct sprays based on public health risk. And with that, before that slide, Maureen, it says future of the Pioneer Valley Mosquito Control District. They don't even do that right now. But that says 2021 to 2022, which is- Right, but when I spoke to Chris last week, he's not even completely clear if they're gonna even possibly do that this year. Okay. But that's a great question. So I think your question, Steve, is about opting in if there is an emergency. Yeah. Like if all of a sudden the town of Amherst has said, no, no, we wanna opt out. And then all of a sudden a million mosquitoes are here and the sky is opening up. I don't think there has been clear statements on how you would opt back in. But I do know that I had an email with the EEA going around on the, a couple of days ago, and that basically a town could just, could vote and say that they wanna opt back in. But certainly, I mean, this is a new process. Sometimes things sound much nicer than how they end up out in the wash. So I don't wanna say something that's untrue. Brenda has her hand up again. So I'll unmute her. Brenda, are you there? Technicality, I have found the correct email for Emma. It was kicked back. I'm all set. Thank you. Oh, okay. You're all done now? All set. Yep. Thank you. I think just looking at the PowerPoint from the district, you know, if there is any some sort of a, during the surveillance, there was a critical need. They will do a lot of things like probably spraying or alternating the removing tires or spraying the catch basins and everything. But here, the question is the wide area of spraying. That's what Steve was mentioning, right? I mean, my question is, do we need it? You know, if you are doing this on-site things, you know. My sense is similar to what Lenore maybe was saying that the evidence that wide area spraying helps is really thin. I mean, it may reduce mosquito populations briefly for a couple of days, but new mosquitoes come in, new ones hatch out. And the evidence that that actually helps is really low. And in fact, the toxicity to fish, the kind of which eat the mosquito larvae, you know, may make the mosquito populations a little higher. So this is from the EPA. That it's just the evidence for that. It doesn't seem like you're missing too much of something. I don't know if you're not doing area, wide area spraying. And I'm a very risk averse person. So I, you know, I'm not an expert on it, but it doesn't seem like, you know, it doesn't seem like it's something that's as useful as people may think it is. And it's been done for years and years in some parts of the state. But. So this makes it very important to distinguish between the wide area, essentially aerial spraying and the possibility of ground based spraying when it's really needed. And that is encompassed in the district plan. So they could do it if needed. That makes me feel more comfortable with going along with saying opt out. So only situation I could see the wide area becoming important is some remote areas. Yeah. Like for example, you have wetland complex, very far out, you know, and it could be a potential mosquito breeding grounds. And those are the areas, you know, you can't go with truck or anything like that. So that's looks like. Why that far in general either? No, I mean, your population can come from any place, right? The source of the population can be, you know, and then the adults can migrate, you know. So I mean, that's the only situation I'm seeing, but it's probably a remote one in. Yeah. I think it's where there's a close match between population and the mosquito, infected mosquitoes and that becomes a problem. And the West Nile virus breeds in tiny things as small as like a bottle cap. And it tends to be more urban and into developed areas whereas Tripoli is more in the swamp, swampier areas, which, you know, certainly, I know we have a lot of swampy areas in Amherst, but. I mean, here we are not talking about wetland areas only in Amherst. It's a more a regional one, you know, so. Yeah. We don't have control over those other areas. Yeah, exactly. Ooh. I'm not sure if Lenore has her hand raised again. Gotta get done here for him. I do. I do. Okay. I think if you read the documentation that I sent you, your mind will be a little bit more at ease on the efficacy and efficiency and wisdom of using other kinds of interventions that, because if the goal is to keep us safe on every level, that's the goal. The goal is not to use a particular strategy. So that's one thing. And the other thing is that you're all pointing out, it is a regional, I mean, we have to act as a town to opt out, but it is a regional issue. And so I think joining the district can help with that too, you know, with the fact that we'll have a more regional strategy. But just educating yourself on what the experts are saying, you know, not necessarily the chemical industry, you know, experts, but really the people that study how these vector-borne diseases are spread and what's happening in the ecosystem and all of that. There's a lot of good documentation and it's been going on for decades, but it keeps getting updated. So I think that that will put your mind at ease that you're doing the right thing for the greater good. Thank you. And surveillance is a big, big, big, big piece. Okay, so Brenda, do you have your hand raised again? No, okay. All right. Anyone else on the board to make comments? So in terms of this mosquito control district, I'm just curious, is it the three counties involved or is it just in the, around the Connecticut River? I'm just curious about what is the extent of this district? So this district, let me pull up, of course, I just closed that page. The story of my life. It's not all three counties because there's a Western control district, like the Berkshires, which encompasses some. So when I look at... I think it's most of Franklin Hampshire in here. Yeah, and the map, goodness. It's really hard to see, they have a, oh, like a... There's this, this is non-helpful. Show and tell, I feel like I'm in first grade. So there's like, there's this map, Tim. Yeah. And so here's Berkshire County. And really all of Eastern Mass has been part of mosquito control district for quite some time. And honestly, here in the Piner Valley mosquito control district, which is parts of Franklin County, Hampshire County and Hamden County, we're the last ones to the show. So, but in terms of exactly what counties I can't, I think... It says established in 2017, it provides mosquito control services to and in currently membership from municipalities in Franklin, Hampshire and Hamden counties. So the three. And then it has a list of who has joined as of, and this was August 2020, so it's a while ago, Bernhardstin Deerfield, East Longmeadow, Granby, Greenfield, Hadley, Heath, Holy Oak, North Hampton, Palmer, Rowe, Schuetsbury, South Hampton, South Hadley and West Springfield. But that was, you know, 10 months ago. Why I was asking is if there is some sort of a regional coordination in terms of those districts, you know, to be enrolled in this muscular control district to be more effective. Steve, do you have a motion? You can read like the call that's a question. I think we know what we want. So we need to move on. Two hours into this meeting. Yeah. How about this? Okay, the Board of Health recommends that the town of Amherst join the Piner Valley Mosquito Control District. And to use its mosquito management plan to facilitate opting out of wide area pesticide application. Okay, and Maureen seconded it. So actually Tim, I think, but I don't know. Tim, yeah. Tim. So ready for the vote? All in favor? You're gonna have to ask anyway, so. Okay, Steve. Aye. Tim. John. Aye. Maureen. Aye. Nancy. Aye. Okay, so the ayes have it. Okay, thank you, everybody. And thank you for our attendees for their input. Okay, now the director's report. Don't worry, I'll be fast, John. So in terms of if we think about clinics, how those have been going, those have been going amazingly well. As of the end of this week, we will have done over 11,000 vaccines at our clinics. As of this morning, we were doing our first vaccines for those 12 and older. I think we had about four, or I can't say the exact number, a little bit over 12, but we did have good representation in that age group this morning, as well as we had 24 walk-ins to our clinic, which was a great success. And at our clinics, we are offering primarily Pfizer, and then I call it the house special of the day for the Johnson and Johnson, if those prefer to get that Johnson and Johnson. And with that, we also do the education that's required under the revised EUA from ASAP for the Johnson and Johnson administration. We did have a clinic at the high school last week for students 16 plus, which that went well. There was a great representation of BIPOC community members, students that had English as a second language, as well as special needs students and those from Summit Academy. So that was really nice to see those, all of those young adults there getting their vaccines. Tomorrow, we are having an outdoor clinic under the tent by the district offices at the Amherst Regional Middle School, and that is full. We weren't sure how that was gonna be received, but we have 165 spots for that. And those filled up in 11 minutes. Whoa. And we have a waiting list of 100 students that I did email after their guardians and just saying that we are happy to have them join us at our clinic at the Bang Center during our clinic hours. And I highlighted the hours that are outside of school hours. So our Monday from three to five and then sometimes our Friday clinics here as well as our Saturday day clinics that we are gonna have. So home bounds going well to date. We've done 279 patients of those 127 have gotten second doses. And because we were doing some Johnson and Johnson in there as well with the one and done, we've had, we have completed 226 patients with their full vaccine schedule. So that's really exciting. And then let me see, I'm gonna pull, can I pull this over? It's gonna be difficult. I had a graph, but maybe I'll share it with you because we all wanna go on now, but it shows a breakout of where we've been doing all those vaccines for our regional area, which has been exciting. Massachusetts is number four in the whole country for the whole population in the state getting vaccinated. In Hampshire County, we have about 37.35%, about 60,000 individuals that are fully vaccinated. And then when I look at the Amherst data, we're doing very well. We do have room to grow with our populations of color. And I know that with that, our next focus and that started really primarily being our focacus as we shift off of clinics was to do more work with those vulnerable populations, do outreach, work with the Survival Center, mobile markets, getting out there, I'm blanking on the name of all of the other great groups that we're gonna dive and emailing back and forth with, but we are really eager to do that work. In terms of case counts, they do continue to decrease, which is nice. Locally, our numbers in the last week were a little bit higher than last week. We had a total of 15 cases, but that is still what I consider fairly low. 14 of them were UMass related. Only one was a town of Amherst resident without a university connection. And then we have, in terms of director stuff, Ed was gonna come and talk about a well that had an application, but the person held off for a bit with that construction. We did have notification of herbicide spray around the railroad that I did forward to you all. And then with commencement coming up, our local mask mandate, which I know we thoughtfully discussed and that will expire as of June 1st, we did send out reminders to the university, our colleges, the bit in the chamber with the mandatory mask zone, and then just reinforcing that those gathering limits are still in place with the 10 people indoors and 25 outdoors. And then event venues, those the different limits for that as well with being the 100 inside and the 150. So we've been really busy here as a health department with things always shifting, but it's a great time to be doing this work. I think we're all starting to enjoy the sunshine and the color. I know my eyes occasionally remind me of the pollen, but I know it feels renewing to me also seeing so many young students, the tween age if you will, us having this, I call it a problem, but it's not a problem worrying, but of the clinic being full. No, it isn't a problem, it's a good problem. Yeah, but I just was looking at the flow and I'm thinking, oh, yes. We adjusted and added two vaccinators for tomorrow. Yeah, I saw that. I saw that. So Manny Hens on deck, it'll make light work. It's gonna be fun. Really, really fun. So it's a great thing. That's fantastic, Emma. Thank you. Great work. Yeah. Okay, I think that's it. Emma, for our next meeting, if you can just give us an update on that tobacco handlers quiz and how that's going. Yep, we'll do. Other than that, can I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Okay, all in favor. Steve. Aye. John. Aye. Maureen. Aye. Tim. Aye. Nancy. Aye. Okay, have a good month and I'll see you June. Whoops, wait a minute. Have a good night. Sounds right. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Thank you, everybody. Second Thursday, bye. Thank you, everybody. Bye, bye, bye. Thank you.