 continue. Okay. Okay. And here's Lauren. Great. Okay. So today is February 10, 2022, the Amherst Board of Health meeting. And as I open it, I will do a roll. No, I'll do the pursuant and then do the roll call. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, GLC30A section 20. This meeting of the Amherst Board of Health will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible. For information on remote participation, please see the calendar entry on the town of Amherst website. There you will find the zoom link and the telephone dial-in instructions. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access proceedings in real time via technological means, meaning our zoom. In the event that we are unable to do so, despite best efforts, we will post on the town's website an audio recording of the meeting, and meeting minutes will be posted on the Amherst Board of Health website as soon as possible after the meeting. So I will have a roll call on Nancy Gilbert. Maureen? Here. Steve? Here. Tim? Here. Lauren? Here. Okay, thank you. And Jennifer Brown, our health director is here. And Ed here? Yes, I am here. Okay, he disappeared. Our inspector. So the first order of business is to review and receive the meeting minutes from January 13th. Does anyone have any comments or make any changes, edits, and if not, may have a motion to accept them. I'll make a motion to accept the minutes. Okay, Maureen made a motion. May I have a second? I can second it. Okay, and Tim seconded. So we have a motion that's been and seconded to accept the meeting of the minutes of our January 13th, 2022 meeting. All in favor? Tim? I. Maureen? I. Lauren? Lauren? Yes, I. Steve? I. And Nancy? I. Okay, so they were accepted. All business. The first item on the agenda is the recombinant DNA regulations with Maureen and Steve. And you were emailed a whole lot of stuff. The draft of the new regulations, minutes of the Amherst College, IBC and the facility locations at Amherst College and Maureen and Steve, do you want to take over? Yeah, I think we basically are giving you what we had last time with a couple of suggestions that people made. So it's the same, all the same substantive changes that we had before, but just minor wording changes. So, you know, we think it's ready to go, but I'm going to listen to hear what people say. I did make a little table of the changes. I could put it up if that's of interest, but I think people already know the main things that are there. Maybe I'll just quickly in 30 seconds. So we're going to not have the lowest level of safety, biological safety level, BSL1 regulated by us at all. We are going to forbid all BSL4, whereas the current one allows it under some circumstances. So that's the main thing about that. And then the other things are just basically allowing the community members of their institutional biosafety committee to come from anywhere, not necessarily within the confines of the town of Amherst and not having to register. Okay, yeah. So they'll have to register if they're doing anything at BSL2 or 3, but we are not going to be in the business of permitting particular experiments, which is on the books, but which we really have not done as far as I can tell. Those are some of the main changes. Thank you. I did have one question on that. Section 5, number A, number 2, the non-affiliate representatives on the IDC shall be nominated by the institution with notice to an approval by the Board of Health. We had talked about that they had to be in the geographic area. Do we pick that up then when their names are submitted to us? Do we remember that discussion we had? Yeah, we definitely, you know, right now it says they have to be in Amherst. And before, you know, just to give them some latitude over the last few months, we said no, they could be in a nearby town. But then Maureen and I, I think, felt that, you know, they're going to deal with it. I mean, they want the people to be there. They have to have a quorum. So, in fact, it requires a certain number of people. So we just said let the people live wherever. Just not even let the institutions worry about it. Okay, so that's number 2 under Section 5A, correct? Yeah. Okay, fine. I just wanted to, I just thought that's what it was and I just wanted clarification. Fine. Thank you. With just clarification I needed. Maureen or Tim, do you have any questions? So, the non-affiliated representatives, that means they can be anywhere from the world. I mean, I'm just, we are opening a global set to choose from, right? I guess. I'm just saying, you know, because I think they have their meetings, you know, they're not expecting to have their meetings remotely. I mean, if we can, some sort of a restricted geographical area like Pioneer Valley, that is plenty of towns. At least they will have some sort of a locational interest in towards that, you know, instead of choosing someone from South America or, I don't know, India. I mean, I'm just saying, you need some sort of people to know the location, have some Western interest in that geographical area. I'm just curious if we could put some qualifiers. We could say Hampshire County. Well, my thought is, well, if you put Hampshire County, if someone's at Bay State, then you exclude them. So you could say Western Massachusetts, but then if they want someone from Worcester, because you mask Worcesters there and all, or the Boston schools, do we just say Massachusetts? And I thought, well, maybe they want someone from Hartford, but I don't know if you want to say Massachusetts. Western Massachusetts? I think it could be somebody vested in the region, really. You know, if I, I mean, we clearly, the board is going to be able to approve these people and say, they might say, well, geez, this doesn't make any sense. And does it make sense now to put some kind of boundary on it so that at least people won't go through the motions of finding somebody from far away that doesn't seem to make sense to us? I don't know. Do we want to say Western Massachusetts? Because someone could be living up in Wendell, you know, residing in Wendell. Right, in Franklin County. Yeah, I mean, or they, you know, could be in the school districts, you know, right. You know, so you could just say Western Massachusetts, or you could say Pioneer Valley sounds good, but that's, like, not well-defined. Well, Pioneer Valley goes from Northfield to Springfield. Right. And how far apart, how wide is it? All the hills sounds. Well, why do we have to limit it geographically? Because many people come here or move here, maybe for a job, and they might live somewhere else. That's not, you know, in the geographical area. But like you were saying, they might have an interest somehow or find out about this area somehow and not necessarily be living in the actual area. I think the point was that they know the valley, that they know the geographical area, that they're not. Because they live here? Or how would they know? I mean, they live somewhere else. They live here, they would know it. Steve or Maureen, do you want to address that? I don't know. I think it's like a community member with some knowledge of these issues, but also not part of Amherst College. It's like, it's not their job to be doing this. It's their interest in making sure it's being done well, I guess, and protecting the community should something arise. So I guess it's kind of confusing about what, I think currently it's, they have a retired physician who lives in Amherst and a person who teaches at the middle school, but is also strongly affiliated with UMass in science and science education. So yeah, I don't know. I think that's work, but I think the problem had been that it wasn't always easy to find somebody from Amherst itself, even though it could have been from, if we thought about Leverett or Belchertown or Hadley or whatever, that would seem fine. So I don't know if just leaving it that way and having people who in the future figure it out or just say the region, but that's very vague. I think, you know, western mass might be broad enough, but also includes reasonable. I think that finally when they do this final selection of that, they will probably have commuting distance. You know, you cannot have people five hours from now to come to attend their meeting, you know, they could do it in Zoom now, but I think, you know, yeah. So I think we can leave it at western mass and then it might be a smaller distance in a commuting distance they will choose. Okay, so we'll change it to that. Again, is that, what does that mean? It's like Hampshire, Franklin and Berkshire counties. Hampton too. Oh, Hampton too. Yeah, Hampton, Hampton, the three Bionary Valley counties in Berkshire. That's western Massachusetts. Yeah, since we do have to sign off on them, I think if we make it, if it's a little bit big, they'll will say, well, we don't want to push that because they might not accept them. So there will be reasonable. At least the one institution that has to register will be reasonable. I don't know about in the future. So maybe we just say western Massachusetts, that's fine. Okay. Is everybody happy with that? Yeah, that was my only, when I looked at it, thank you for doing this work. No problem. I've reviewed every five years. Or more often. Or more often, yes, but the old one said one year every year, and I haven't been reviewed in 10 years. Tim, you have one more. Oh, I just a quick question. Right now we only have Amherst College under this IBC requirements and stuff. Is it right? Does it include future colleges or Hampshire College? Or I'm just curious, you know. Hampshire was in the past. It includes everybody who's doing work that requires biosafety level two practices. That would be a private company that might want to move here and any college. Hampshire has not done this. They said they had a couple of student projects in some time in the distant past that would be BSL one, but they've never had BSL two and don't intend to. So the next step would be to, for us to agree on this and then post a hearing. Right. And I forget now what exactly, I mean, obviously we want to provide the text of this to the public, right? Or do we just to say the items that we were going to change? Like with the tobacco, I don't think we've provided a complete text of what we were considering. As far as I can. Yes, we did. We posted the whole entire and the whole regulation gets out. The entire regulation gets posted. Posted where? Jen does that. Jen, where do you post it? Jen or the director sets up the hearing for us in the past. I've never set up a hearing. Jen, are you there? Yeah. So go to the town calendar. Is that what you're saying? How to post a public hearing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we would, we would post it to the town calendar and then put it on our webpage. And we'd send letters to the Amherst College who's who already have that anybody who's been involved with it. Like when we did the tobacco, it was sent out to all the people who sold tobacco. So Amherst College is the only, maybe out of courtesy, we should send it to Hampshire College. Because it said it lets them off the hook. If they do have a BSL1 project, they don't have to register. Right. So I can't, I don't know anybody else that it would affect right as of now. Okay. So what I'll do is to change the residence requirement to Western Massachusetts. And then I'll, I'll just leave off all the signature part at the very end and the date and stuff like that. Okay. And send that to Jennifer. And Jennifer, you will put it on the website. Okay. No, there's a whole thing about having the hearing. And it was always the health director who set it up. Yeah, I can look into that and figure that out with opening the box. Yeah, he has to be put in the newspaper, you know, I think it specifically says it must be in the newspaper. Right. Yeah. So do we want to do this for our March meeting or do we want to do this for our April meeting? March. Okay. So Jen, are you all set to get this all set for our March meeting? Absolutely. Now, do we need to vote on our? No. No. It's after the hearing we vote. Right. Right. After the hearing we vote. Okay. Thank you. All right. So the community assessment update. So for phase one, which is all quantitative data, no interactive human data, we have put together a team of, and it's a small team, phase two would have a different team. It's myself, Anita Sorrow, who was involved with the reparations assessment. We have two students, Bailey Glenn, who is a second semester master student in the School of Public Health, and Emily Connors, who is a senior in a four plus one. So once she completes her bachelor's degree, this May, she immediately goes to the master's program in the fall. And Lillian representing the health department. Anita and I interviewed them on Monday, and we found them to be very good, very excited. And we're going to meet with them again on February 23 to have them meet Jen and Lillian. Also, I have sent out emails to both the reparations committee that's doing a assessment and the council on aging AARP with Maureen Pollack from the planning department. They're doing, through the aging and dementia friendly, they're doing a senior assessment. So I sent out an email asking that we work together rather than in silos when we can. But I haven't heard, I heard back from Michelle Miller, who's on the reparations piece, and they are going to be using the Donahue Institute out of UMass for the African American black census. And I haven't heard anything from the council on aging yet. Any questions? Okay. So that's where we are. And we will have a written in oral report at the in April from the students. And the data is going to be collected by census tract. I went in and I don't know if everything is yet on the US 2020 census data. Some of it, and I spoke with a couple of people and they said no, not everything is up yet. So they're going to do the best they can given that the government hasn't put all the data in yet for easy access. Thanks for doing all this Nancy. You make it sound so simple. I know just how much you've been working on this and pulling it together. Thank you. But I'm so excited about these students and especially with the Emily, who's the four plus one, because I talked to her about working smart. And if she could continue this into phase two as part of her master's work, help her anyway, she could do that. But she seemed pretty excited to stay on. So she would start this semester and continue all of next year is my hope. Okay. So new business, Mission Cantina and mask mandate compliance. So Jen and Ed. Me to just go ahead and make a report. Just go right ahead. I don't know if if you want to start anything to introduce this or do you want to just want to give it to Ed to go with it? I think Ed, if you want to start, we can. Okay. So I made some notes and bullet points, if you will, and I'll read through that. So this is a report to you as the board regarding recent actions taken in response to complaints from the public and from our own inspectors of no masking by employees of Mission Cantina consistent with all masking complaints received directly either to the COVID concerns line or made directly to the health or inspections department. The inspections department reached out to Mission Cantina a total of 12 occasions since June of 2020 to follow up on complaints or on our own observations of employees not masking. On the last two of these occasions during the recent surge of COVID-19 cases, fines were assessed. On 113, 2022, two employees were observed en masse when the restaurant was open and patrons were present and no medical exemptions were on record at the health department. This led to the issuance on 119, 202, excuse me, 2022 of a town bylaw violation ticket in the amount of a single $50 first violation. An email that I wrote that day to the owner, Sam Koshan of Mission Cantina stated that future compliance checks will cite every instance observed of non-exempt employees working in public areas of the restaurant. So following up to that or from that on 121, 2022, another compliance check found four unmasked employees working in the presence of patrons at the restaurant. Subsequently, on 124, a ticket was issued for the second violation, $100, as well as the third, fourth, and fifth violations at $200 each for a total of $700. Again, the owner was asked to inform all employees who wish to exercise the medical exemption to the mask order to submit documentation to the health director. None had been received at the time of the ticketing. On 127, 2022, a third compliance check found no violations, but the inspector's approach was noticed. We decided to pause on compliance checks at that time and seek the advice of the Board of Health. Following that, after several reminders, the owner did meet a late deadline on 2222, February 2, to submit payment and renewal application materials for the current, the 2022 Food Service Establishment License for the restaurant. The last two things I'll add are some relevant sections in the Food Code, the 2013 FDA Food Code is the one that the Massachusetts Sanitary Code references. In section 8-304.11, Responsibilities of the Permit Holder, the Code compels the establishment to comply with directives of the regulatory authority, including orders, warnings, and other directives issued by the regulatory authority in regard to the Permit Holder's food establishment, or in response to community emergencies. Also, in 105-CMR 590.008, which references the 2013 Food Code section 8-303.20, and this is the state minimum sanitation standards for food establishments, it states that number nine, failure to comply with local regulations and ordinances related to the operation of the facility can be taken into consideration as cause for non-renewal. The last thing I will mention is that we do have a strong statement made on the 24th of January, two members of town government stating that he intends to no longer comply with Amherst Board of Health collected decisions. So I guess I would temper this a little bit in the sense that since we decided to not go in and do further compliance checks, we haven't received more complaints from the public. So we don't have any indication, you know, independently, whether compliance is in place or not, but actions taken to this point indicate that it's unlikely, would remain to be seen. So, and that's my report. I'll give it to you in the current context of time and circumstances. I'm happy to answer your questions. Andrew, do you repeat what you said when you started talking about the license? I was a little bit, I think there was a gap there. So you said that... Oh, I'm sorry, were you trying to keep up with me? No, well, yeah, I think there was a zoom just cut out for a sec. So when you started to talk about the license on February 2nd, I guess, what was it that you said there? Oh, okay. So we had been working with establishments in town to make sure we got everybody possible renewed and reminders had been sent out initially when everybody was asked to renew. I think that was in November with a December 1st deadline. And following up, there was two reminders, I think in January and a week before February 2nd, I sent a direct, we reminded anybody that was left and specifically to Mission Kinting that we needed the materials by the following Wednesday. And we did receive those. Now, Ed, when you said payment and renewal was received, was that payment for the fines or just payment for the license? For the license. So the fines have not been paid for the mask? That's correct. Yeah. And that step taken was it's not a money making effort, certainly for the town. It's an attempt to make a point to compel compliance. We've all through the period of time following the closure of restaurants, the reopening, outdoor dining, whenever we have had a complaint from the public or a town employee or amongst the group of inspectors. If we've had an issue of non-masking, we followed up in an educational step. These are the first fines that we've assessed during the pandemic. So you received several complaints or questions and you made other visits to other food establishments related to the masks? Yeah, most and certainly with Mission, most of the early replies were just emails or phone conversations, which was consistent with what we did whenever possible with all the restaurants. And in a very few cases, we went out and actually visited in person. But our first step would be to talk to the manager or the owner and to, as you said, make an educational attempt to reach compliance. And I would say that overall in Amherst, we have had a lot of support, both from establishments and the public. Could you clarify what is the status of their license renewal now? We have the materials in hand. We are reviewing it, if you will. I know I received, someone contacted me about people not wearing masks for the takeout window and they were concerned and I directed them to, that might have been the COVID wine call. I suggested they issue a complaint to the health department. So you are asking us for guidance in relationship to? Yeah, the pandemic remains a complex dynamic situation. We have exercised a lot of judicious judgment, I think, all through the course of it by making mostly educational attempts for compliance. And this restaurant we gave many chances to. We have had certainly feedback many times from the owner that he feels as though public health measures have been excessive. I would say he has spoken with genuine feeling about the difficulties that restaurants have been put through by the pandemic and by the measures that have been taken to try to ensure the public's health. In earlier board meetings on occupancy numbers and then in our December meeting on masks and whether we were going to have vaccine requirements, the monkey bar has often been at our meetings and asked questions. And I know last year on occupancy the spoke have come to meetings and spoke and I think we've tried to be very sensitive to the restaurants knowing how difficult it is right now for them but it's difficult for lots of people. We don't want to put people out of business but there are some safety and health measures that we feel are important for the safety of the public. Other members, what are your thoughts? Are we advising about the license renewal today Ed? Is that what you want to hear from us? I think mainly what we wanted to do was we felt as though it was high time to make sure that you had some of the details of this. It's been going on since June of 2020 I would say and we have had ongoing communication with the owner but as of yet we have not achieved compliance. We have issued the fines. It is not a widespread problem in town. So would not wearing masks during the pandemic because we have made that a public health issue and regulation mean that they are not following our sanitary code amendments because that's is that what's been happening? Well currently what they're doing is they're not following a directive of the Board of Health which is clearly a violation of the food code. The code also states that it can be taken into consideration when considering renewal. Okay. And you know simply put that's what we're doing. So before renewing their license we would and we've worked with many many restaurants and the health director and you all have worked with many restaurants to make sure they're in compliance throughout the years. We would want them to show that they are using the masks appropriately according to public health safety and they would pay their fines. Those are two issues related to whether they get their license renewed correct. Is that what you're looking for? Well I mean clearly those are firm points that we could stand on. There have been some discussions with the owner about he's stated a number of times that he would go to take out only and consulting with Rob Mora the building commissioner with the language of the mask order it would appear that it directs itself towards establishments where the public enters and that and it doesn't specifically speak to employees actually. It's possible that one could consider take out only where the public does not enter the restaurant. That would probably entail a discussion whether that meets the spirit and you know is that actually enforceable? That's not a violation of your of your order. The complaint I received was about the take out only person did not have a mask on and this person did not feel safe doing that and said they weren't ever going again and what and then they issued a complaint to the town. So that even if it's take out only the take out person while there's a mask mandate would need to be wearing a mask correct? Well there are ways of doing take out if you just leave it like out on a table or something when the person comes that you wouldn't you know you wouldn't have to have that interaction but that seems extreme measure for them to take in this light of this to me but it's not but that's my feelings about wearing a mask not their feeling about wearing a mask. Yeah Lauren had her hands up. Yeah I was thinking at the same time thank you. I think when we had the open discussion meeting about restaurants being mandated to like for the public to show some kind of vaccine ID or vaccinated ID to go into certain restaurants Mission Cantina was on that call and called in and to me I I just wonder is it is it the owner who is just not wanting to comply or is it the employees that are not wanting to comply and you know from my understanding you know it's a protection for you know both people the public and the employees so if you're interacting interacting with you know the public because you work in a restaurant you to me you would want to have that protection of the mask so I just wonder you know where is the non-compliance coming from is it the employees that do not want to comply or is it the owner who maybe they're just having bad business and they just don't care I don't know that's just some of my thoughts. As inspections personnel we haven't interacted with the employees we've interacted with you know we go when we do a check or we respond to a complaint by talking to the owner as the person in charge of the business and earliest responses that we got the end of last summer as the mask order I think was going into effect were first to state broadly that the employees were exercising the medical mask exemption and that what we replied to that by saying that documentation was necessary and further clarified that and repeated it over time that the health director is in a position that she's legally enabled to verify a document from a physician and agendas the details of this for sure to ascertain whether an exemption is valid and that there's not a compromise of you know the medical confidentiality of the records that this is an occasion when that's appropriate and HIPAA does not prevent the review of records like that so we've informed the owner as the responsible person in charge make sure employees know that they need to submit documentation in order to take a mask exemption his reply has been that he does not believe that he has the authority to do that under HIPAA laws that they are protected documents and as their employer he cannot request them to do that we've replied to please inform your employees that they need to exercise this step that is part of the mask exemption so that and that's been repeated since august a number of times most times that we've written each time we've written up a violation ticket that was emphasized and Jen I think everything perfectly here I'm sorry what did you say okay I just want to to say that I thought at the end that you've done everything perfectly here with incredible patience and doing it correctly I would just say in my view of thinking about what the mask mandate says I really think that it does not apply to a takeout window because it says indoor spaces accessible to the public so if the restaurant goes to a full takeout mode you know that it's really maybe the board's fault for not thinking about that but I think that I can't see how the mask mandate could possibly cover that of course a customer would be very justified in saying I'm not going to go there under those circumstances but I don't think we could say it's not an indoor space accessible to the public if it is through a window I don't think right if it's a window it the way it is now if you want to pick up an order at Mission Cantina as you walk in the door you wait at the cash register your face to face with the person and that might take a while you know I think that could be modified obviously to make it be like no contact or like minimal hand you know handing through an opening in the building but it's not the way it is at the moment but that would mean the bar and the restaurant would be closed to the public just take it right well I guess what's the restaurant pita pockets that we're doing just takeout for a long time and they would just come to their like a half door and deal with the public that way that but they were all wearing masks too so I mean but but there's a structure that would work I think and that's what Antonio's did too yeah I don't go to many places but I've been to those two I was just gonna add that I know people still feel different ways about you know mandates and vaccinations and so forth but when you're handling food you could still cough on the food breathe on the food so I just don't I don't get like why a restaurant and the owner wouldn't want to comply with masking um and just lastly like if they're if if they're going to just do takeout only would they still have to pay the fines first and see can I just tell you that there's someone with a raised hand I don't know okay um okay does anyone else want to speak before we open up to the public so is this the is this the public comment period for all well no this is just about the masks in the mission this is just about mission cantina just about mission cantina just about mission cantina okay that's good okay so can I ask a clarifying question I know Ed mentioned it's from august 2020 is right some of the violations June 2020 June 2020 and are all these violations related to takeouts or no was there any okay indoor indoor dining issues yes there have been indoor dining issues there was the well they the the specific ones that we've been working on most recently have followed the implementation of the mask order and there was a a little there was a flurry if you will of complaints in late December and January Nancy mentioned there was a next door posting which was two of the complaints that came into next door actually came into the board of health too and I think actually maybe more than that but we followed up on both of those going back if we go back to when the inspections department the building commissioner worked with many restaurants including mission cantina to establish outdoor dining and the only issues we had during the period of outdoor dining and that would be back in the summer 2020 were people all the servers there were no complaints of people serving outside at mission cantina without masks that was consistent there were people who commented that they observed that people inside were not masked but it's the period of concern really and that has led to the tickets being issued has been since the mask mandate and then especially we had discussions between the building commissioner jen brown and I about the during the surge here what would be our response to this growing number of complaints and so that's when we we move to the compliance checks does anyone else have questions for ed okay so sam comes on has his hand up let's have him speak here jen do you want to yeah so sam if you can unmute yourself okay sam do you want to speak state your full name yeah this is sammy i'm the owner of mission cantina how are you guys okay can you see me or do i only see you i don't know how this works i make tacos so um we only see you we don't see you because you don't have your camera okay okay so you can hear me we can hear you all right so can i can i just can i just um as the business owner of 10 10 plus years uh describe what it's been like for the last two years uh of the pandemic are you willing to listen to that yes but keep it contained you know okay well 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 each year did better than the last so we were a restaurant and a business that was going in the upward in the upward trend 2020 2021 we lost two million dollars we lost more than half of our business 80 of our employees do you guys understand this yes i mean i'm not i'm not asking for sympathy or empathy but do you understand this is one business in your town in the south south part of your town that had nothing going on until we got there okay we're talking to million dollars in sales so part of that has driven me to do a lot more research in all my free time being closed and having very few employees to deal with so let me make something clear to you guys as far as permits and licensing fees goes all my licenses are paid in full for 2022 except for the health department so the cash the checks have been cashed okay except for this latest 300 fee to the town for my food license who's the scientist on the board is there a scientist on this board we just listen we don't really answer we we just you don't answer questions that's great who is there a scientist on this board we're just waiting and listening to your statement well i have i have questions for you you guys are discussing my business and i have questions for you are you willing to answer them so is there someone qualified to answer my questions during public let me read you this according to the guidelines and holding meetings pursuant to act extending certain covid measures june 16th 2021 open meeting laws do not require that public bodies allow public comment or public participation during meetings the manner that public bodies may choose to accept comment is outside the scope of the open meeting law so we allow you to make comments okay but is there anyone on this board willing to answer questions or or or or even better how do i file a grievance with questions do i have to go to suri bonds should we go to public official bonds who who's bonded on this committee we are we are talking about your mask man the masks can you please right okay yes i can keep your comments to the mask please sure sure so the understanding that i've had with the town via me asking my employees violating my employees civil rights via hippa which is a past presidential signed law okay not a mandate from a town or a state i am not allowed to ask my employees the very few that i have left by the way to show me their documents that are personal and private and that's covered under hippa now on the other hand you as a board are allowed to do that under circumstances under certain circumstances and i've invited ed via email i have them all to please come down to the restaurant at its scheduled time and violate my employees rights by asking them to produce papers regarding their personal health documents he declined multiple times i am not allowed to ask that question i'm not allowed to ask you if you come into my restaurant with a dog or an animal why you have that and to show me papers it's the same rule it's a law that has been passed and has been signed into law by a sitting president do you follow me thank you for your comments you have not addressed the fines or more of the mask um the the fines the fines have appeals attached to them which i will take to the fullest extent okay at this stage of the game with your mask mandates are any of you paying attention to what's going on in the news because every state is lifting their mask mandates all throughout this country what are you going to do about the mask mandates find a business that just lost two million dollars is that your plan has been a member of this community for 10 years that has two people in El Salvador right now that we sponsored to get citizenship enough is enough i've had it you guys won't answer questions but you'll pass down mandates and you'll pass down fines to me okay okay wake up thank you very much for your comments sam thank you very much for answering my questions okay so we'll go back to the board does the board have any other comments questions ed do you want to make any comments no i think i've i've given you an overview of the situation and um we'll continue to rely on the board and rob mora and jen browns direction on following up on this okay yes and jen is our our agent um and um we'll we'll work through through jen as our agent nancy i just i need to ask um are you allowing more public comment oh does that wait to the end we'll wait that to the end during a regular public comment so that'll be maybe six twenty or so at the end of the agenda yes thank you i have trouble keeping all these pieces zoom straight okay so we'll go to um our next agenda item and anyone who wants to speak um can speak during the public comment so i had the mosquito control put on let's see because i received two pieces of information one was from alayna cohen and today at our same time well this is going on there was a listening session on from the mosquito control task force on um mosquito spraying we also received a copy of a letter that senator joe comiford sent um i don't know if everybody got it but it was um related to mosquito spraying and local opt-out process and she wrote to the executive office of energy and environmental affairs um asking about our opt-out process and if you remember i believe it was last summer with the opt-out we decided to go with the pioneer valley control who is that we'll have a correction pvm cd pioneer valley thank you um i looked up thank you opt-out also um with this with alayna cohen i looked up and there's a mosquito control for the 21st century task force and there's a sub committee um related to the office of energy and um environmental affairs and they are looking at the opt-out um so i just wanted to bring to your attention that there is work on mosquito spraying local opt-out but i we haven't been asked for voting or any um action but i wanted you to be aware that the mosquito pesticide spraying local opt-out process is being examined um and we do have our membership and i want to make sure with gen that the town has renewed our membership um to that group so i did a little digging you know being a new director okay thank you yeah so trying to get up to speed with where we are and i want to thank the staff that helped me um sort of untangle this so as i'm i'm learning this um it looks like may 17 the town council um voted um zero uh to um become part of the pyrener valley mosquito control district and opt-out of the state reclamation and mosquito control board um so to do that there's quite a process you know there's like six steps to do so that fulfilled the first and second step we got the petition the town council voted to go ahead and do that but from our records we're just not seeing if if we became a member and i know that sounds like it should be easy to ascertain that so i'm not sure of our status of where we were um but going forward it's going to be a decision we're going to need to make do we want to join the pvm cd it's five thousand dollars per year to do that so that's where we are right now so i'm not sure where we were but this is where we are now so what are the steps we want to take so this is something i'm beginning to understand and so what are my next steps so is this something that i go to the town manager about um do we have the finances is this what we still wanted yes we voted for it in may um can we renew this is this still of what the town wants oh i still need to do a little bit of homework you know you know we the board recommended the council that the town joined the group because the five thousand is not some kind of random thing it it comes with services yes it's an a la carte kind of service um we can say uh no we don't want larvaside but we want this or we don't want any of that or we want it optional but we want assessment data so we can make that decision right and they do the mosquito trapping and and assessing whether they're carrying e e yeah yeah so and nancy are you aware that the that senator cumberford's email asks boards of health to support the changes that they're considering and we although we couldn't do it in person because they're meeting right now right we accept uh submission up until february 15 i think it is and i did send in the email just a draft or something we might want to send i don't know if you saw that just to support what what everything that senator cumberford's saying sounds exactly right me and it seems that none of the people who did try to apply to be exempted were actually allowed to be exempted so it wasn't sure i think this is part of what joe cumberford and other people are working on is what do you have to do to be have have an exemption from the state yeah i know what the situation is that all of the people who applied who were in what the state considers low risk districts were approved to opt out and none of the people that were in higher risk districts were approved we're even moderate yeah yeah we opt out so i would hope we would just send a quick thing to them saying that we support what what senator cumberford said and the specific i can put it up on the screen if you want but we can just do it later so would the board like steve to send a letter in support of this to senator joe cumberford you want to see it you want to see the text i can do it yeah where do you want to read how long is it uh i i don't have it up on mine yet right now i don't think i can share the screen so but it just says yeah we approve the changes i mean the changes recommended are some sort of a lead time is this the main request a lead time for stakeholders to be involved in making additional is it what senator is proposing it's more than that it's i it's complicated but it is mostly to make clear what the criteria are if there are their criteria besides the risk level because if it's only the risk level there's no point in having an application with taking the time there's quite time consuming to write it out you have to have a complete plan as to what you're going to do and so on so that would mostly for them to clarify what the criteria are is would be the key to make it more open and that we have a plan we have an alternative plan and that's what we are hoping through the pvm cd pioneer valley mosquito control district my support sending them so she has me as well okay so why don't we have a vote that we i'll make a motion that we have steve send the letter of support to senator comford on the mosquito spring local opt-out opt-out process would you like to make it send it to the group that's reviewing yes the law yeah why don't you make a motion and i'll second it it the board supports the efforts to review to improve and modernize the mosquito control process in massachusetts i second it so i'll have the board vote moraine do you support yes yes steve do you support yes tim hi moraine yes and nancy i okay so we all support it thank you very much steve i was going through this today okay so directors covet updates right so let me uh talk about a little bit what's going on today and these are statistics and data that i'm getting from maven uh the massachusetts virtual epidemiological network and some information from the interactive board for the dph right now we have 536 active people in isolation overnight we had 130 patients new cases come in so we're still going at a pretty steady clip here if you look at the interactive dashboard for dph you can see that the cases the case counts are coming down that's the trend i don't know how accurate that is if we are not reporting rapid antigen tests anymore so that may not include all the true cases but the trend is it's coming down but it's also mirror mirroring that is the hospitalization rate is coming down as well so it's i hope you can hear me so we're we're on the right path the trend is down but we're still high this numbers are still high for hospitalizations so when we start talking about these data and i know the mask mandate is a very important topic and it should be especially with governor baker um announcing that the statewide indoor mask mandate for schools will expire in february you know what i started thinking about is what is going to be our metric and that's a really thing important thing i want to be very um i want people to know the process i want the people to know the rigor and you know just be transparent with it but there's not one metric so it's a combination of things that we're looking at so what i did was i went back and i looked at where were we in august to make the on ramp to ask for this mandate to go on so where we were in august was um august second for example there were five cases in isolation so today there's 347 the 14-day incident rate had been uh 1.4 but then started climbing 3.2 and it's been climbing ever since then so our vaccine rate at that time i think and i'm not sure about this was about 75 percent and now we're up to 88 so i think about those things that got us here so what's going to get us out so we need to look at the local rate of transmission and that can be calculated different ways there's different things that work for different communities for example i don't believe percent positivity may work for amers because we do a lot of testing here i know they're using that in boston but if you look at the case count that's something we need to do the case is coming in if we look at our 14-day um incidence rate um if we were 1.4 when we started going on right now we're 77 we need to see that really start coming down but the other thing i think we need to think about is um vaccination rate so we have ours calculated 88 percent for the general population but what i'd like to see before we start really talking about this mass mandate being reduced from in mandate to an advisory is at least getting the opportunity for the six month to four year olds opportunity to be vaccinated so this is something that's going to be offered um i believe it's the 14th um it's starting through the process the fda cdc it jumps back and forth but if we can maybe give five weeks to at least for people to have the opportunity to vaccinate this young group you know all these things combined along with some education because you know we're definitely moving towards this model of personal responsibility and people deciding what their best practice is but we need to protect the vulnerable people as well so i think with all of these things you know we're we're getting there we know masks are going to come off and how can we educate people to get ready for this so i just want people to know that i think we're we're getting there and it'll be a few more weeks if we start thinking about april um it's going to be summer it's going to be people outside i think that's something that we can start really thinking about and opening up and having more of a discussion so that's where i am with my thinking um and i'm wondering if anyone has anything they want to contribute comments from the board um i just ask a question as you're seeing these cases is there a pattern about where they're coming from or has that changed in any way i know you've said in the past few months that it's usually been gatherings within families or friends but i didn't know if that's different you know i saw the reports from the linda manna nursing home and i didn't know if there were any issues of that nature that you were having to deal with now i'm i'm aware of these are small gatherings that are occurring and i think it's the last time i looked it was like 44 percent was between the age of of uh 17 and 21 then there's smattering that's fine so that's the high school senior college freshman um a little up group high school college i had a question yes um i i am wondering if we wouldn't have to attach the um lowering of the mandate um to advisory um why would have to be connected to the the um population that has the group you said six months before you're old that hasn't been um vaccinated yet because i know from the you know radio information top radio information mpr um the coverage that they do on um covid and vaccination um mandates is that there's a still like this idea of a growing you know concern or fear of parents who have children in this age group that they want their children to get vaccinated vaccinated but um i think there's another you know another attitude or feeling that you know the vaccinations are not good for this age group and um you know parents don't want to give their children vaccinations and also for you know people who um would be considered minorities or people of color who may not still like understand all of the medical information or you know the medical reasonings um for for the vaccinations um it's oftentimes that you know it's it's portrayed that we just are accepting of you know any kind of medicine that you know based on like fear of you know getting sick or or so forth so i just i just am a little concerned about like lifting a mandate because you know we we feel that you know this there's a certain group that still isn't vaccinated and just to remember that there's um parents and community members that may not feel like it's appropriate for this age group i said i'm not sure if i'll be able to answer that you know specifically but you know it's this combination of what we're looking at so i think in that five weeks at least i give the people that wanted to vaccinate their their children that opportunity to get the first dose second dose and then immunity after two weeks and we're not looking for an actual threshold that so many people do it but it's that opportunity jennifer are you factoring in the other issue that they you know skeptics tend to raise which is that the the pandemic is sort of evolving towards benignness to some extent is shown by the homochron variant and so just to use raw numbers of infections or incidence rate uh you know you have to also take into account that supposedly it is less serious and so you know we don't have mask mandates for other things that are not that serious yeah yeah i think that hospitalization um rate is something that i think is important to keep looking at um uh culley dickinson for example looking back at august um there were nine covid er visits and then last week at culley dickinson there are 29 covid visits um back in august 103 beds of 126 beds were used now there's 119 beds so there's still a high capacity that are that of inpatients um so we want to make sure that there's availability of the workforce and beds in the hospitals jenn when you said you say there's 113 people in the hospital with covid and culley dickinson no this is just bed occupancy you know 11 patients um are inpatient with covid did i mix those numbers up i just i just didn't understand so yeah there's so in august how many were hospitalized with covid and how many are hospitalized now in august zero were hospitalized with covid now there are 11 and i apologize if that's okay okay so that's something i think is really important it's the number of beds and it's the workforce being able to care for them um but also the workforce being able to care for anybody else that has a medical emergency if they don't have the bed or the staff uh so if if the icu beds are all filled or three quarters away filled with covid patients then you have a massive heart attack you might not get a bed in the icu so those are the things that we have to be careful of that the general public that might not have covid can get care and treatment at culley dickinson there are only 11 there's 11 people hospitalized for all kinds of reasons all kinds of different reasons 11 people hospitalized could arguably not is not going to bring but it doesn't say how many are in the intensive care unit my concern is intensive care beds and and the the type of of acute care nursing and not having the workforce or a bed for someone who might have a heart attack or be in a terrible accident or something like that um but i do i think i'll just you know say again that i think you know we're we're moving to mass coming up and what can we do to start educating people but we're not at that point yet so i believe anything else under covid 19 um just a quick question i know in january we had 600 new cases and the nowadays how many were there new cases jennifer i don't know you mentioned one third they're overnight 132 new cases so what was the total then so in in isolation right now 536 and does that include the 132 yes okay okay so it's down but not significantly down and positivity you have any i don't know the positivity um the last two weeks ago was 6.27 and the state was 15 but i don't have last weeks but then again you know i i think the positivity you know it can get watered down if there's a lot of testing in this community do we have incident do you have any incident rates the 14-day incidence rate is 77 what was it in august 1.4 1.4 yeah that says something and then just uh september 63 january it was 191 okay so the incident rate is significantly up i think you know that the data has shown now that if you are vaccinated and boosted the chances of your landing in the hospital are are much lower maybe 20 times lower but it also seems like we have like 70 times as many cases going on so i think eventually we'll get into this balance where that effect on hospitals and medical care will be similar to the way it was in the summer even though the case numbers may remain some somewhat higher so i think to look at all all these things is really important now it's really a different picture than it was in august and gosh knows we don't know what the picture will be in three months either but you know i think you need to kind of follow it and it might be a surprising place in war weeks who knows the other thing oh go online i'm sorry i just had a question then the incident um rate fluctuated instead it it went up and then it it got lower again with 77 yes so it's been it was climbing then peaked out about january 28th and now it's it's it's low it's lower and i just want to let everyone know that you know i look at the cdc site i'd like to see us you know go back to moderate that yellow color because we're still high and substantial is orange so if we can get that down and then we also we speak to north hampton and hadley and we see what the region is doing as well that's my update okay thank you and then you want to talk about black history month and the theme of health and wellness yeah so i want to talk about that it's black history month and the the theme this month is health and wellness and we have a few things going on around towns and things planned for the end of the month the 24th to celebrate it just outside the health department here we've put up some photographs and things said about surely jackson whitaker um african-american nephrologist local and dr comara jones she's an md anti-racist and an activist and i think lauren do you have anything you'd like to to say do you want to read um the racism statement i wasn't sure you asked to read the first paragraph is it yeah you know whatever you want to do because i know you you had a lot of input on this statement and it's pertinent to this this month well first um i was looking at the website um american public health association and their definition of public health and um i just wanted to read that and just give you know since i'm new on the board um remind myself and the public what you know public health encompasses so i'll just read the short statement that i put together it says according to the american public health associations definition of public health public health includes all the organized and holistic efforts to improve policy education and access to make the healthiest choice but the easiest choice public health is the work of increasing life expectancy quality of life and cover social and physical environments such as where we live go to school work and play it sets safety standards protects workers develops school nutrition programs to ensure children have access to healthy foods identifies risks and behaviors such as the use of alcohol and tobacco products sheds light on why some groups are more susceptible to disease tracks disease outbreaks seeks to prevent disease and encourages the development of safe communities this is why last year the town's board of health put together a statement of the connection between racism and health and communities and individuals we hope to continue to find ways to reach our community so they can understand this connection and take action steps to decrease the harms of racialized health care thank you lauren and lauren and i were at the town's official raising of the flag for on the first day of the month and the town council read their whereas statement and part of what lauren worked on was in part of that statement so it was very nice to know that a board of health member um had an impact on the town's statement so thank you for that lauren so it was a very nice ceremony um and jen i believe you warren and i are going to be on the february whatever date session that jennifer moisten is um organizing i'm looking forward to that i believe it's the 24th but yes we should probably have some kind of interaction before then um i can send out an email to the two of them okay anything else jennifer that's it thank you okay i have one topic not anticipated um but let me grab the statement okay so because of the filing procedures of the town of amherst rules and regulations governing the subdivision of land we received via me um this whole plan that um cindy jones is subdividing the lots uh the lot she has up on shootsbury road and market hill road that was the area that she wanted to develop into the solar panels um and then the town is working on a moratorium and when i first got the message we were getting this and i looked at it um she's not my and when i saw today's gazette which steve also said she's not subdividing it for building i believe she's subdividing it to still put solar in there and jenn is going to look up and i've looked up that all i could find is that under this section of the filing procedures the board of health has to receive a copy of the plan so we have a copy of the plans but no action is being taken per se now it has all the geographic and geological pieces on it um but it's from what i can tell it's not being subdivided into housing is that correct jenn i'm sort of text i emailed jenn back and forth saying okay i looked up this filing procedures but i i didn't see other than we're to receive a copy of this any action that we need to take there's no action that's just a copy for us but i'll i'll continue to look and make sure okay and i'll just want you to be aware that we have and i'm going to bring those over to you jenn because i don't want them sitting in my house um the the geographic maps for this subdivision for the board's information a resident contacted me who lives adjacent to and that person is somewhat concerned about water and whether the runoff situation would change whether it affect the well that they have and i you know i know we have other ways of dealing with water than the board of health but i just wanted to know there was some concern about that and i don't know something we would take up but it is a concern that you know by deforesting this land which is fully owned by the people who wanted to water and deforest it should be their right to do it i suppose but uh by deforesting you can have a change in the way water runs off and uh might have an impact on right nearby and we can watch that because if anyone else is aware i watched what was happening in williamsburg when they put in solar panels and they had a huge mess with runoff um after it was put in in the hills of of williamsburg and a lot of environmental and geological and water problems so um we can act accordingly as this process moves okay so i'm going to open this up for public comment but first i want to let people know that according to the act extending certain covid 19 measures of june 16th uh 2021 the open meeting law does not require the public bodies to allow comment or public participation during meetings the manner that the public bodies may choose to accept comment is outside the scope of the open meeting law so therefore the emmerc board of health will allow public comment um and we have the following guidelines residents may make um public comments up to two minutes during the public comment period when called on the resident will state their name their preferred pronouns an area or district address or district we will be giving priority to emmerced residents then to others who do not reside in the town of emmerced tba acknowledged commenters must have their names in their windows so we have to see your names up on the attendee list which i see and the intention of this public comment period is for the board of health members to hear comments from the public but not to engage in discussions or debates the chair has the right to deem um commenters disruptive and will end their public comment period for example noises horns music etc and if there are any questions for the health director she may be reached via email and her contact information can be found on the town's website under under the health department so with that i am going to open public comments and jenny yeah i can i can start to interrupt i can um allow people to talk and introduce them if you want to time yes and i will time them i have my little timer here oops let me get it open okay okay so let's see we have um darcy doomont can you unmute and you have two minutes introduce yourself please hi um can you hear me yes yes uh i'm darcy doomont and i live in district five my pronouns are she her i'm a member of the zero waste amherst and have been working on reforming the waste hauler system in town so that we can have more services including curbside compost pickup and basic service as you all know um for the same or less money than what we're paying now to a big national hauler i'm here tonight to update you on the work of zero waste amherst the work the hauler work group um since we last um we're here at your january meeting so uh first and we want to thank the board for its statement and support made at your last meeting that has been very helpful in moving the initiative forward so first i want to report that as of january 1st california became the first state to require all individuals and businesses to compost by way of systems set up by each municipality since last month the hauler group has been focused on meeting with the haulers to get input meeting with other towns that have contracts with the hauler and getting financial information about those contracts what we've learned is that folks in south hadley uh where they have a contract pay an annual waste hauling fee to the town of less than two hundred dollars a year for the same services we get here in amherst for approximately five to six hundred dollars a year those south hadley residents do have to pay for their trash bags but they still end up paying half of what amherst residents pay a year south hadley is served by republic services south hadley though doesn't provide curbside compost pickup so to find a town that includes that service we looked at louisville colorado which is about the same size as amherst and is also served by republic in louisville you pay according to the size of your trash toter small medium or large the residents who use a small 35 gallon toter pay under 200 a year and there's no additional charge for bags the more waste you make the more you pay but 95 percent of residents see some savings even including the extra compost pickup of services okay your two minutes are up dars me can i have 30 more seconds yes okay 30 seconds we met with us a hauling and recycling this week in our meeting with republic soon to get input about our proposal it's we're pushing this program because it'll be dramatically reduce waste and help achieve our climate goals the fact that it will save residents money is just icing on the cake so we'd be glad to answer any questions and otherwise we'll see you next month with our next update okay thank you for the update darcy okay jen all right we have shon karana if you can unmute yourself and pronounce your name correctly if i did not is your spot on with that can you guys hear me yes um ishan karana um i'm a student at u mass amherst and i'm a resident of sundaland um i have a few lingering thoughts and questions about the mass mandate i had a brief conversation with jen over email a couple of days ago um so speaking of masks i feel masks were meant to be a temporary intervention and once we had the vaccines we moved away from them over the summer we did not have a mandate um and it's worth noting that over the summer we did not have any u mass students on campus so the numbers were obviously going to be low but then we brought back the mandate and we never resented it and then it has been that way in perpetuity and um at what point do we say that okay enough is enough we have 88 percent vaccination rate everybody who wants to get a vaccine can go walk into cvs and get one um and um and i i know jen mentioned that during early spring we're gonna drop the mandate so what happens next right we're gonna have cases go back up so we're gonna bring the mandates back and the reason i bring this up is because i feel like based on my like based on what i know and what i've heard from people is that um the faith of people in public health is eroding because they feel like okay why do we even get the vaccine i got my vaccine i got my booster i did all the right things i'm a senior this is my last semester on campus i'm gonna be gone i don't remember the last time i saw human faces when i was attending my classes i go to a classroom everybody around me is boosted i am boosted but that doesn't seem to make a difference it does like a huge mental toll that's been taken on people especially when you see that people tend to dehumanize other people for merely showing their faces um hospitalizations i think on the covet dashboard of massachusetts dph we know that 50 percent of them are with covet not because of covet they're incidental with a variant as such as omicron so contagious um you go into hospital you get tested as a procedure um you happen to get tested positive right so then um two minutes is up can i get 30 minutes is up can i get 30 more seconds please okay um so i was going to wrap it up and i was going to say that i feel like so i know gen mentioned april but i feel like maybe it should be early march because you look around as sweden has declared the end of pandemic you have um other or nordic countries norway danmark england then you have within massachusetts and malden um lowell you have um um um you have say you have all these your 30 seconds is now up okay sweet thank you thank you all right mathew lachner you can pronounce your name correctly and where do you live hi thank you um yes it's matt lachner i live in district five in amherst woods and uh forgive the screaming children in the background if you can see them um i'm here just to urge you to end the mask mandate as soon as possible um it was stated that this policy now is intended to protect children who can't be vaccinated but i would say that this match's mandate is uh actively harming small children like my two-year-old who is trying to develop her speech and has to wear a mask all day at daycare i think waiting until children under five can be vaccinated makes no sense as a policy for two specific reasons first covet has always been relatively benign for children the fatality rate for young children is significantly higher from the flu versus covet and there's many things in day-to-day life we deal with that are more dangerous to children this age than covet such as car accidents drowning and so many others i don't think we should all stop driving i think we should take masks off little kids uh second masks protect the wearer so people are concerned about catching covet they can wear a mask we're not saying people shouldn't wear masks they can all protect themselves if they want to with masks but we should let children be on masks it's time for children to get back to having normal school and a normal life where they don't have to wear masks thank you okay thank you steven brevick you can say your name and where do you live please yes hi everybody i uh my name is steven brevick it's uh i live up by atkins reservoir i'm not really sure what district that is so you'll forgive me um first off just want to thank all of you guys for being a part of this board um so thank you just wanted to offer my perspective as an amherst resident as a parent of children at fort river and as a psychologist here in town i think i stand for a lot of folks um and asking that we establish some kind of benchmark for when the mask mandate will eventually drop up mostly i guess they have particular concern for the kids in school just kind of echoing matt lachter's statements um my daughter spent more than half of her life in masks and i'm hoping that the leadership displayed by the state offers guidance for us as a town to be able to consider this option and really just hoping overall that we can get some transparency as far as when this will occur so if you guys could speak to that at any point during this meeting um that'd be great thank you okay all right col Fitzpatrick if you can state your name and where you live please uh yes thank you can hear me yep so my name is col Fitzpatrick i live in district five i'm a parent of a vaccinated five-year-old at fort river as well as a three-year-old in preschool um speaking here in support of removing the mask mandate specifically in schools we're in a very different place than we were in august 2020 um omicron while more transmissible it is less severe than delta children five years and above can be vaccinated all adults can be boosted the overall vaccination rate is much higher and pax lovid uh the visor antivirals becoming increasingly available which will further prevent hospitalizations um so regarding schools children are the least at risk demographic uh with unvaccinated children facing similar hospitalization risks as boosted adults um by now the risks uh from covid to children are known to be minimum minimal what's unknown are the harms that mass impose on their social and language development uh particularly for children learning a second language as my daughter is in the common on days program um everyone five years and up has had ample time to get vaccinated and boosted and 95s are readily available for anyone who is vulnerable or still worried about covid and after the omicron wave we likely have high rate of natural immunity to go with our already high rate of vaccination uh rapid tests are finally available and that should lessen in school transmission um i'll just close by saying that for two years children have bore the brunt of the pandemic um i have a three-year-old who's also been in mass half her life just asking you tonight to make it stop as soon as possible thank you thank you Kathleen Bridgewater if you can unmute yourself stake your name and where do you live hi uh i'm Kathleen Bridgewater and i live in district two um i would i'm going to speak about the issues of public health as they relate to the upcoming uh solar bylaw i'm glad to hear that uh nancy was mentioning having uh followed some of the information about what's going on in williams town uh there is an emily cohen interview uh about what happened to her land which you can see on smart solar shoots fairy if you go to that website and you can actually see what a disaster has occurred in her backyard um i the reason why i'm speaking here tonight is that the the board of health really does have a important role to play and it's a it's both important to be knowledgeable about the concerns of solar uh ground mounted solar uh because legally the board of health is in charge of making sure that safety of the of of the public is um taken care of and what those safety issues are as um was already mentioned by steven earlier one is wells the people in district two who've already had this situation going on for a while the the process of looking into it are all on wells the whole areas on wells but it's not just our groundwater that's of concern here but also the atkins reservoir which is about 50 percent of the entire town of amherst water supply there there is an intention of putting solar panels right on top of the watershed for the atkins reservoir we are wondering whether or not you are communicating uh with the boards of health in in the um contiguous towns so that whether the amherst board of health is talking to people who are aware of these issues in shootsbury but that is that is the public health system the public um water system there there are also concerns uh about these um installations in particular the one that it was continued uh has been considered for shootsbury road will have lots of batteries these are lithium ion batteries which um have been known to cause fires okay your two minutes are up can you wrap it up I yeah I will try to do that I'm sorry okay I know uh the issue of fires the issue of of of fire fighters having to fight fires having to do with lithium ion batteries which are notoriously horrible to put out and the and the contamination of the groundwater underneath such a fire were it to occur there's also the issue of of weed killers that are used because the solar panels can't function if there's weeds growing up around them so there are many things I hope that the board of health will look into and take a role a very active role in protecting public health as related to all of the issues of solar installations thank you so much thank you Kathleen okay all right Gavin Anderson you can unmute yourself state your name and where you live please hi I'm Gavin Andresen I live in district four in Amherst and I use he him pronouns um I tuned in tonight to also urge you to end the mandates on the public uh I think we need to transition this is going from a pandemic to an endemic and the masks will come off I think they should come off uh as quickly as possible hopefully in the next couple weeks um I think one of the reasons that I haven't heard pointed out yet tonight on why uh mandates on the public should be ended is just to free up resources you heard tonight at your meeting about um concerns about masking in restaurants and I would much much rather you focus on the vulnerable people in town so think about uh ventilation and masking in healthcare settings like nursing homes I think that's it's so much more important to protect the vulnerable people and just let go of the issue of masking in restaurants and schools it just isn't important that is not where the vulnerable people are and I think it can it'll be a much better use of your time to focus on those vulnerable people thanks that's all I have to say thank you all righty Nicholas Defranco you can unmute and tell us your name and where you live hello I'm Nicholas Defranco I go to UMass Amherst um I am here also in support to remove the mask mandate I struggle to find any reason now in 2022 after the vaccines and boosters are widely available that justifies a mask mandate any longer we have an 88% vaccination rate in Amherst as per the Amherst public health website which is in the range of herd immunity listening to this meeting one would think we are still in mid 2020 without vaccines and boosters which I think does not reflect the reality of COVID in February 2022 UMass Amherst contributes to the good-looking vaccination numbers that Amherst has a campus that has a 98% vaccination rate and probably a similar similar booster rate as the booster shot was mandated the vaccines as we have seen in the past few months with Omicron do not stop the spread of the virus but that's okay the vaccine is effective the booster shot more so at protecting against serious illness hospitalizations and death so almost anyone were to get Omicron which is 90% less dangerous than Delta according to Kaiser Permanente Southern California study they will almost certainly not get seriously ill hospitalized or die also who cares about the case numbers it's frankly annoying and unnecessary to keep hearing about case numbers if everyone at UMass for example got COVID but no one died or was hospitalized why does that matter people get sick all the time the only vulnerable groups are mainly the obese and the elderly other groups like the immunocompromised or those with three or more comorbidities are at risk and they can wear a mask if they want to and they should get boosted 94% of COVID deaths are from those with three or more comorbidities according to a peer review study on the Lancet to respond to the point by the director of health claiming that four month old to four year olds are at risk that is simply untrue the death rate of children age zero to four is a whopping 0.1% over the course of the entire pandemic which is about 400 children which is going to be far far less now that the Omicron is the dominant variant it's pretty silly to mandate masks for the majority of people who are vaccinated boosted who aren't at risk anymore which is the people and amher two minutes or up can you wrap it up yes yes I have like three sentences left um Stephen made some great points that I echoed in the speech um we are at the point to take these masks off it's clearly uh where is it also I can really agree with the shine with every point he made most importantly the fact that public health authorities such as yourselves seem to be more concerned with the authority part and not the public health part considering that almost everyone that has spoken tonight is against a further mass mandate please listen to the science not your feelings and take this mask mandate off of Amherst thank you yeah thank you all right and the last person we have is Sharon Keeney if you can state your name please and where do you live hi my name is Sharon Carney and I live in district five I would also like to speak in support of removing the mask mandate I don't need to repeat what has already been said I'll just state that I am the parent of a Fort River kindergartener and a three year old who is in a preschool town and we are feeling like the masks are causing some adverse effects on their education and their development so we are also in favor of removing the mask mandate for all the reasons said previously by others and I'd also like to thank you all for your work on this board we appreciate the challenges that you're all facing and making these decisions but please know that there is support in the community for removing masks and for getting kids back to normal especially for little kids for whom there's very little risk has been stated from COVID and the risks of interfering with their development in terms of language and and other social emotional development we are strongly in favor of removing the mask mandate sooner rather than later thank you very much thank you okay Sam has this hand up oh Sam all right Sam you want to state your name unmute yourself yes this is this is Sammy again just can you hear me yes yeah so I just want to touch on a few more things it's pretty overwhelming the support against the mandates I don't think the term mandate needs to be used I think guidance could be a better use of words I think people know and that mitigated their own risks at this point if they want to go out to a restaurant or to a grocery store or to a big box store in Hadley they're going to do it with or without a mask or with three or with two or with none it's time to get back to reality folks you guys are on the line for this there is no state mask mandate except for the schools and Governor Baker has given you a deadline for that February 28th it's on you I wouldn't be here making noise if you had somewhere to to basically blame this is on you as a board and you need to actually make real decisions now because it's your option and your opportunity to do so not once have any of you pushed vitamin supplementation vitamin D3 especially in folks that are darker skinned I haven't heard that from any of you guys not once we've had this conversation nurse Brown why have you not let people know about other ways to mitigate viral upper respiratory viral infections none of you have done it you've said there's only two ways there's a mask and there's a vaccine and take it as much as you want and I'm here to say the vaccine are poisoned I'm sorry for all the you that took it you will all find out soon how bad these vaccines are if you haven't figured it out yet we need to go back to normal we need to get supplementation we need to get outside in the sun we need to go back to living that's all I got to say to you guys and I do appreciate your attention now I know your jobs are hard but wow it's time to change course like everyone else did in the last year thank you and your time is up all right okay thank you sanny all right that's it for hands I believe yeah yeah okay so that is our meeting unless a board member wants to make a comment I would like to just um say that um there is a important um study that was done by the imperial college of london that shows it's a human challenge program and it showed how COVID spreads and it gives a more accurate timeline of the infection that maybe people would want to take a look at and um I just uh I just I think that as a board and we listen to the public we we are here to um you know serve and protect the the public and not just individuals and I would just hope that you know we as a board make decisions for or you know the public as a whole and not just or you know individual opinions ourselves or or individual individuals and and it hurts and I don't know if this is a good time but if it's possible I would like to know more about the water the water wells and the other committees is it possible to invite them to our next board meeting to find out more about you know the solar um installation that you know have come up in the town council and in public conversation um and just to get like a better understanding of like how the water system in Amherst works I'd like to know if we could invite some committees like the um the water supply protection committee or the water department okay thank you Lauren we'll see what we can do um about any uh we have there is one more hand uh Eric Backrock should we let him speak I didn't see his hand before they weren't they weren't up but do you want me to allow them and Nicholas spoke let Eric speak and then we'll all right so Eric Backrock if you can pronounce your name correctly and tell us where you live please um thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to to speak it's Eric Backrock he him I live at shoot on Shootsbury Road in Amherst and what prompted my last second uh decision to raise my hand was what Lauren Lauren's request to to bring in other committee members it was in fact the water supply protection committee meeting last week um that was um that was confronting the three parcels um in the Amherst watershed that flows into the Atkins reservoir that is in Shootsbury and they're beginning to kind of deal with the consequences understand what the potential consequences are and when you clear cut that much um forest and uh in water watershed protected areas um at that at that meeting I asked uh the uh what is my protection committee a general question um their jurisdiction is the public water supply um being on Shootsbury living on Shootsbury Road our you the jurisdiction for our safe drinking water is the board of health and I was referred to the board of health when I asked how can we ensure that this the the water supply for all Amherst residents is protected I would say that um I've lived here since 1985 and everybody on in in the neighborhood has wells our well was quite deep it's over almost 400 feet deep if you know anything about wells um when I say the flow rate is low I would it our flow rate is three gallons a minute which really is we've run out of water a few times over the years but we've really had wonderful water generally I'm concerned as many of my neighbors are with what happens when you take uh take the uh the what what keeps the watershed a watershed protected area there's two minutes are up Eric do you have one other word you want to say I can have many words to say okay I'll stop there but I okay we'll take the matter of the clean drink drinking water safe drinking water our safe safety health and welfare under under a real concern okay thank you thank you so much thank you for your service to the town okay thank you okay no more comments um and I'll vote for adjournment our next meeting is March 13th um and may have a motion to adjourn so moved March 13th yeah that doesn't make sense to me March 13th today it's March 10th sorry March 10th I wrote it down March 10th thank you for picking up on that thank you for picking up on that um so March 10th sorry March 13th this is Sunday thank you for picking up on that so we have a motion to uh close the meeting adjourn and it uh need a second I'll second it then okay um in favor Maureen Tim hi Lauren hi Steve hi and Nancy hi so thank you all for your work and see you March 10th thanks everybody yeah thank you