Health, Education & Welfare Committee — 2015-10-08
Attendance
Robert A. Boisselle ; Donald L. Conn Jr. ; Gail Infurna ; Jennifer L. Lemmerman ; Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis ; Monica C. Medeiros ; John N. Tramontozzi
Agenda
- Call to Order
- Public Participation
- Orders
- ORDER-2016-37 : Appointment of Francis Paglia, 1 Nason Drive, Apt. 519, to the Melrose Housing Authority Board of Commissioners to fill the unexpired term of Anna Marie DeFilippo; said term to expire on the first Monday of March, 2018
- ORDER-2016-39 : Be it ordered that the Board of Aldermen request the Melrose Board of Health to review and modify its tobacco regulations to include banning chewing tobacco on all fields and parks in the City of Melrose.
- Adjournment
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE HEALTH, EDUCATION & WELFARE COMMITTEE CALENDAR● OCTOBER 8, 2015 Aldermanic Chamber Committee Meeting 7:40 PM The public should take notice that the Melrose Board of Aldermen may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the Board of Aldermen consisting of both voting and non-voting members. Members attending this duly posted meeting are participating and deliberating only in conjunction with the business of the standing committee. Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Robert A. Boisselle Chairman Present Jennifer L. Lemmerman Vice Chairman Present Monica C. Medeiros Alderman at Large Present Gail M. Infurna Ward 5 Alderman Present Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis Alderman at Large Present Donald L. Conn Jr. President/Ex-Officio Member Present John N. Tramontozzi Nonvoting Member Present In Attendance: Maureen Buzby, Regional Tobacco Coordinator
ORDER-2016-37 Appointment Appointment of Francis Paglia, 1 Nason Drive, Apt. 519, to the Melrose Housing Authority Board of Commissioners to fill the unexpired term of Anna Marie DeFilippo; said term to expire on the first Monday of March, 2018 Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen
ORDER-2016-39 Request Be it ordered that the Board of Aldermen request the Melrose Board of Health to review and modify its tobacco regulations to include banning chewing tobacco on all fields and parks in the City of Melrose. Recommend Place on File Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 10/9/2015 4:58 PM
Transcript
▶ 8:26 Robert A. Boisselle: discussion on October 19th as recommended. Thank you. Motion to adjourn. Congratulations again. We have a motion to adjourn. Seconded by Alderman Lehman. All in favor? Aye. That concludes our business for protection and license. Stay tuned for HEW, Health, Education, and Welfare. Health, Education, and Welfare Committee is now in session. The order that we have, the chair is Alderman Boissel, the vice chair is Alderman Lemmerman, and voting members is Alderman Medeiros, Alderman Inferna, and Alderman McAteer-Margolis. We also have the president, Alderman Kahn, and we also have Alderman Tramontozzi. The first order that we have on this evening is order 2016-37, the appointment of Frances Paglia,
▶ 9:44 Robert A. Boisselle: of One Nason Drive, apartment 519, to the Merrill's Housing Authority Board of Commissioners to fill the unexpired term of Anna Marie de Filippo's said term to expire on first Monday of March 2018. Mr. Paglia, would you like to come forward? Mr. Chairman, should we open the floor for public participation first? Second. Thank you very much. One moment, Mr. Paglia. Second. Open the meeting for public participation by Alderman Lemmerman. Second. Second by Alderman McDarrells. Anyone wishing in the audience to come forward at this time? Motion to close public participation. Motion to close, second. And now we're back to Mr. Paglia. And a motion to suspend the rules to have Mr. Paglia come before us.
▶ 10:32 And there's a second for that? Second. Second, thank you very much. Mr. Paglia. Mm-hm. Would you like to tell us about yourself and so forth, and you're becoming a member of the Board of Commissioners? Okay, originally I'm an electrician, still am. And I worked for the state for a long time, and then I went into business for myself. And through, shall we say, divorce and foolishness on all our parts, I ended up here. And we sold property and things like that. So, here we are. Very good. Any questions from the Alderman? Alderman, President Kahn. Yeah, so Mr. Pegley, you would be the tenant representative on the housing authority, is that correct? Yes. And how long have you been living at the Steelhouse?
▶ 11:29 John N. Tramontozzi: February will be five years. Five years. And do you have any experience doing anything else like this before? No, it's all kind of foreign at the moment. Okay, okay, that's all I have right now, Mr. Chairman. Any other questions? Alderman Tramontozzi. Good evening, sir. I just wanted to say thank you as the representative of board one of which the Steele House is a part of. And very many residents of the Steele House who are very active in the community and very supportive of the community. appreciate you coming forward uh for this uh this position and i'm sure you'll do a great job you might not have as much experience but you'll get on hand experience because i know you can handle that um in your prior experience as an electrician and other real estate work so welcome thank you
▶ 12:27 for coming forth and we'll appreciate your um your support uh on the uh on the uh as a tenants Thank you. Thank you. Alvin Medeiros. Thank you. And I understand that you were elected by your fellow residents. And what caused you to become interested in seeking this position? The most part is nobody really wanted to get involved. And in my experience over the years, The idea of getting involved, sometimes you get in too deep, but that never mattered to me. Things have to be done, people need to be talked to, same thing in business. Okay, very good. Well, we appreciate your service and thank you for stepping up to the plate, thanks. Motion to recommend. Motion to recommend, is there a second?
▶ 13:23 Robert A. Boisselle: Second. Second also. All those in favor? Aye. Against? Thank you. Congratulations, Mr. Puglia. Thank you. You don't have to be here for the next meeting. This will be recommended for passage. We all set. Thank you. When will the meetings commence, as they say? When will I have to be here? You don't have to come back. Your appointment will be allowed by the full board if the board votes in favor of it on October 19th. Okay. You don't have to come to that meeting. The housing authority will be in contact with you. Okay. Thank you very much. Good to see you all. Thank you. Thank you very much. Moving on to the last order for this evening, we have order 2016-39. Be it ordered that the Board of Aldermen request the Melrose Board of Health to review and modify its tobacco regulations
▶ 14:20 Robert A. Boisselle: to include banning chewing tobacco on all fields and parks in the city of Melrose. We, we're in suspension of the rules. We have a representative here from the health department to give us a discussion on chewing tobacco. I see she has a whole folder. And I'm going to read every document to you. Hi, I'm Maureen Busby and I'll be happy to give you a brief overview of what, you know, chewing tobacco ban might, might entail if that would be helpful to the board. This is something that only three communities, three cities in the United States have done. San Francisco passed a ban followed by Boston very recently and the most recently was Los Angeles. Smoking is banned in most venues. It's certainly banned in Massachusetts workplaces.
▶ 15:13 It's also banned on all our athletic fields that belong to the school system or belong to the city. and but not any parks that are privately managed chewing tobacco however is not part of that ban because it's not a smoked substance it's a smokeless substance so that has been a concern to health care professionals and it's a special concern mostly in baseball at baseball fields and baseball games because players using chewing tobacco at a baseball field are in full view of of spectators and especially our young players. When Boston decided, or Mayor Marty Walsh actually asked his city council to pass an ordinance banning chewing tobacco in all Boston public and private parks, which included Fenway Park,
▶ 16:06 and as people testified for why they were behind this ban, and one of the parties that spoke out in favor of the ban was actually the Boston Red Sox, Mainly it had to do with the role that our athletes, our professional athletes play in the lives of our young children. So we have little league baseball players who watch their hero baseball players using chewing tobacco and they wanna be the big hitter that David Ortiz is or whoever and then they pick up that habit of chewing tobacco. Most high school players who use chewing tobacco didn't start it in high school, they started it earlier than that. It starts with, you know, using the big lead chew, which is bubble gum made to look like chewing tobacco, and then they progress to real tobacco.
▶ 16:55 Unfortunately, chewing tobacco is an addictive substance. It's also a health risk. People get mouth cancers, gum cancers. You may have heard that San Diego Padres player Tony Gwynn died of mouth cancer, and he believes that his mouth cancer was caused by his lifetime addiction to chewing tobacco. More recently, Curt Schilling admitted that he was treated for mouth cancer and he also believes that his mouth cancer was caused by his addiction to chewing tobacco from the time that he was 14 years old. And he said that his head and mouth radiation was on a, he compared his treatment pain for his mouth and mouth cancer to the bloody sock incident and he said the bloody sock incident that ankle pain was about a 5 on a 1 to 10 scale and his mouth
▶ 17:49 radiation was a 500 and he said if he got this cancer again he's not sure he would go through treatment again so clearly we don't want anybody to use chewing tobacco because it's addictive unfortunately we know that kids are influenced by sports heroes and and influenced by coaches and other adults around them and what we want to make sure of is that none of our adults on our playing fields whether they're public or private are using chewing tobacco in front of our young kids so that's behind that I do have a couple of documents to leave with you one is advocacy groups statement to the Boston city council supporting their passage of a similar measure and since Melrose doesn't have the same clout as Boston we didn't get the same kind of
▶ 18:37 documentation directly but I thought the information in this would be helpful to this body to read and to have and the other is a is a letter to again the city of Boston another letter of support and it comes from a group called tobacco free mass and a number of um health advocates advocacy groups signed on to this letter again supporting passage of this measure so it's groups like american lung association american heart association many many others and by the way the melrose board of health did write a letter to the um tobacco free mass group and wanted to sign on to their letter to boston they just did it a day late and so Melrose didn't get listed on the letter that you'll see here but I do know that
▶ 19:24 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: the health board has or the board of health has reviewed this issue and I believe is in favor of moving on this issue thank you Mr. Chairman as the maker of this order first of all I'd like to request that the documents that Ms. Busby has be entered into the record so that they're available for all the rest of the committee and the board to review I've worked with Maureen on the substance abuse prevention coalition for a number of years and we've made really great strides in our tobacco regulations this is one area where Maureen and the substance abuse coalition I think felt we had sort of a vacuum and we really needed to you know develop some new regulations rather than this board attempting to create an ordinance
▶ 20:24 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: because of the rest of our regulations pertaining to public health are under the Board of Health we we felt it was really best to just ask that the on behalf of the Board of Aldermen that the Board of Health developed the regulations and the specifics and in that way they can also provide the enforcement of it but I would just you know encourage my fellow members to support this it is as miss Bosby has said kind of a hidden public health risk in that it's not as obvious as smoking or even the smokeless tobacco but I think if you spent an hour or so with Maureen and she showed you as many of You have seen the various tobacco products that are not cigarettes that young people are buying at the convenience stores.
▶ 21:17 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: You would understand that this is a serious risk to our youth and it is something that is being used. I mean, we've talked to the coaches about it and the administration in the high school and you know as much as they do attempt to regulate it and to control it it is something that the kids not only see but many of them do use on the side so thank you thank you any other questions thank you I was wondering I'm not sure how many public private parks and fields we have in Melrose but I'm wondering if if we've alerted them that we're considering this regulation or if if anybody's spoken to any of the the user groups of the fields that let them know that we're considering this I believe all the parks are through the chair to Alderman Medeiros I spoke with
▶ 22:23 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Joan Bell the director of our public parks and she is in support of this ban they're the only public park I believe that is not covered currently by the two other tobacco regulations would be incarnate and it's not public it's private is incarnation field and we have not spoken to them but I do think that that they have some of their own regulations in place but we just felt like it would be better to be more inclusive than to eliminate anyone anyone miss Bell felt like it was not going to be a hardship to alert her users that they shouldn't you know that this regulation was coming thank you thank you so this is specific to fields and parks but I was wondering it's just something that I don't have knowledge of is is it already banned in city
▶ 23:22 buildings um actually it isn't so what is banned in city buildings is smoking so I don't you know I've never seen anybody that I thought was using chewing tobacco because the the regular old-fashioned chewing tobacco is pretty easy to spot because you have a big lump in your cheek the newer versions are smaller and somebody could discreetly use chewing tobacco so the if it's if If it's very discreet, one, I'm not going to know it, but two, our children probably aren't going to know it either. So what this would really help us with is the very obvious use of coaches or older student athletes that are admired by younger student athletes so that you don't get that model of behavior in front of the little league kids.
▶ 24:10 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Sure. And that makes sense, I understand, sort of the sports connection. Francisco LA Boston were they specific to parks and fields or did they go further into city buildings and I can't remember I remember the oral arguments and discussions had more to do with the it does say it does say all venues building you know what it does say buildings and even specific to Fenway Park it talks about training rooms runways clubhouses it does it's coming back to me now very specific about it okay I mean it does seem to me that if you know the city chooses to to really take a stand on the health issues here that you know it might be something worth looking into to kind of look at other venues and that's a very good point thank you thank you thank you
▶ 24:59 president Khan I don't know if you've progressed to this stage or not yet but what would be the sanction for somebody who violated this regulation and would Did the sanction be applied against the person who was using the product or would it run to the entity that was running the facility? Yeah, because the Board of Health hasn't had a real discussion about it, other than the night that they voted to have their names be added to the groups that were supporting the Boston initiative, encouraging Boston City Council to do so, they haven't had an involved discussion about it. But I do know that in Boston, their fine rate is $250 for a person using it. So the fine goes to the individual who is caught using it.
▶ 25:50 Robert A. Boisselle: Are we contemplating something like that or do we not know? Yeah, I don't know that at this time. I'm sure the board would discuss what would make sense in our local community. That's all, Mr. Chairman. Any other questions from the board or from the committee? I would motion to place this order on file. Motion to place on file. Is there a second? Second. Second by Alderman Lemmerman. All those in favor? Aye. Gens? We will place on file. And please leave your copies of documents, please. Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. HEW is closed.