There has been plenty of discourse surrounding the likelihood that the Board of Health may not receive two additional members this year, even though the town voted in favor of this last summer.
Town Administrator Thatcher Kezer said the potential that the Board of Health may not receive its additional two members this year was due to a miscommunication on whose responsibility it was to maintain momentum.
“Typically, because we have so many projects that we’re managing and so many moving parts, a lot of the times, those who sponsor an action of the Select Board, (we) kind of rely on them to package it up and get it here so that we can put it on the agenda and go forward,” Kezer said. “I think it was just a case of miscommunication as to who is going to carry the ball. It wasn’t even on my radar until it was brought up a month or however many weeks ago that it should have been done.”
The paperwork has made it to the State House, and locals will have to wait and see how quickly it moves through the legislative process, although Rep. Jenny Armini did not think it was likely to move fast enough for this summer’s election.
Tom McMahon, a Board of Health member, said the increase could have been beneficial for two reasons. The first is that adding two more members to the board would allow for more ideas to be generated. But, he was quick to point out that adding more members would only be valuable if those members were willing to give it their all.
“If you’re gonna have good people join, then you’re missing out on that input,” McMahon said. “But if you’re not putting in effort, then I don’t want you on the board… It’s disrespectful to the town.”
The second benefit would have been changing how many people are needed for a quorum: the minimum number of members that must be present at any meeting. He added that having two members join the Board of Health would have changed the quorum from two to three.
This may not seem like a drastic change, but since the current quorum is only two people, that means when McMahon runs into either of his fellow Board of Health members while outside of an official meeting setting, he is unable to chit chat about anything related to the Board of Health since that would violate open meeting laws.
Regardless of whether two members will be able to join the Board of Health this year, McMahon stressed the importance of public input. One of his focuses on the Board of Health is the Transfer Station, which has been a rather contentious issue for quite some time now, and he noted that one of the great ideas being implemented right now actually came from the community rather than the board.
At the Transfer Station, Marblehead residents are able to utilize the bottom portion of the facilities to dispose of recyclables, metal, grass clippings, and more. Employees at the Transfer Station know to give Marblehead residents access to this area because they have stickers for clearance. But that doesn’t stop people from neighboring communities from using the Transfer Station because it’s not fully enforced.
“If we let other towns down there, then Marblehead is basically subsidizing other towns to throw their trash there, which is not good, obviously,” McMahon said.
He mentioned that the Board of Health is working toward switching the sticker system to a license plate reader that would be able to quickly know if the person attempting to use those facilities was a Marblehead resident.
“I’m always looking for residents to just throw out ideas, and sometimes I get some pretty good ones,” McMahon said.
