The Marblehead News is pleased to be supplementing its coverage of public meetings with Observer Reports provided by volunteers from the Marblehead League of Women Voters. To learn more about the League and its activities, see my.lwv.org/massachusetts/marblehead.
Board: Board of Health
Date: Tuesday, July 12
Observer: Thomas Krueger
Attendance: Chairperson Todd Belf-Becker, Joanne Greer Miller, Helaine Hazlett, Health Director Andrew Petty and Secretary Andrea Flaxer
Meeting highlights:
- Helaine Hazlett was welcomed back to the board after her re-election. But she eschewed past practice of taking the chairperson’s seat, requesting that Belf-Becker continue in the role instead. The request was approved.
- Board members and Petty engaged in a discussion of the town’s latest COVID numbers and how the data would be tracked moving forward.
- The results of a traffic study were presented as part of an update on the transfer station project. The recommendation was to have traffic access the transfer station traffic from Green Street, allowing vehicles to queue deeper into the site.
- Petty’s report included a report on weekly testing of water quality at the town’s beaches. He noted that the town began seeing problems with elevated bacterial counts at Grace-Oliver and Gashouse beaches in 2018, the cause of which is still being investigated.
- In the public comment period, a resident who had been frustrated after attempting to access the meeting remotely via Zoom noted that he had been able to scramble and attend in person because he lived nearby, but others may not have been able to do so. Board members expressed surprise, noting that the technology had been tested earlier in the day.
Read the full report below.
