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The Westport Board of Health met on September 14, 2026, with Vice-Chair Philip M. Weinberg and Secretary Donna M. Amaral present, while Chair Tanja Ryden was absent. Director of Public Health Matthew J. Armendo provided departmental updates, noting ongoing coordination with the Town Administrator regarding staffing and Animal Control coverage, new tick signage slated for beach and trailhead areas, and the hiring of a split full-time clerk shared with the Building Department starting in mid-November. The Board formally endorsed three Director-approved septic repair and new construction plans on Robert Street, Tickle Road, and Mason Street. During board member updates, Amaral reported on a submitted local newspaper column regarding active shooter prevention and outlined the Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Committee's work to create a shared school and municipal substance use and mental health advocate position. Weinberg discussed an upcoming trip to Truro to review their cesspool phase-out regulations, reviewed town tick data from the Maven system in collaboration with staff, and initiated a review of Title 5 septic inspection compliance during local property transfers. The Board then held a hearing for 231C Tickle Road and unanimously approved variances allowing reduced separation between water lines and sewer infrastructure for an accessory dwelling unit garage conversion.
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City Officials
Public / Other
Uh welcome to the September 14th uh uh Westport Board of Health meeting and we will start uh oh and under master rule chapter 38 section 20I the meeting is being recorded and we're going to do the pledge of allegiance now.
0:18I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
0:36All right. So, we'll start with the director's written report. Is there any comments about that?
0:42I have none.
0:43I have none. All right. Then, u your verbal report.
0:51So, uh, yeah, I've been, uh, quite busy, you know, trying to keep up with inspections, perks, and, um, keep all that afloat plan reviews. But I've been met with the town administrator a few times last week to try to, you know, get a sense of where we are with hiring and the positions that we have open and the administrator's working on it. and you know there's some work to be done on his
1:17end to try to get you know to where we need to be but he is you know doing as best he can as fast as he can so I appreciate that um transfer station um you know good you know no issues um animal control we're working on bringing in um somebody strategizing with the town administrator on a plan on how we could do that. I'm hoping to meet with them before Wednesday to kind of talk
1:47about um that a little bit more.
1:52Other than that, I have the new tick signs made up. Um they're up upstairs on the conference table and um just a matter of do you want to put them out this year or do you want to wait till next year? I would preferably probably would not want to leave them out all winter, right? Um, but I'll something we could talk about and just let me know how you guys want to proceed with that. But my
2:16thought is to put them at the entrance to Cherry Web Beach, one of them.
2:19Okay.
2:20Cuz the people who go through the dunes down there, you know, get takes on them.
2:25And maybe at some of the trail heads to some of the hiking areas or conservation areas.
2:29Yeah. That that that are town owned or or are like land trust and stuff like that.
2:37They could be Yeah. any it could be land trust if they if they agree to it and town places.
2:43I mean I think the information is important to put them wherever they need to go.
2:47Yeah. So, I've at least which I think I talked about before, but um you know, so I reached out to Ross um uh who the head of the U land trust um about this a while ago and well, we didn't have the signs then. Um and so u now that we have the final signs, I'm going to talk to him about it. I don't know that um I think he was receptive to the idea.
3:18Uh and I just don't know if uh what he'll think about this the sign itself.
3:25So we may have some other ideas about what he wants to put up. So okay.
3:32And I don't know about the timing, you know uh uh maybe it'd be okay next season.
3:40So all right. Yeah.
3:43Uh that's all I have uh for an update at the moment. I can uh if you want I can move it to the director approved plans.
3:50Yeah, sure.
3:51Okay.
3:54We have a two-bedroom uh new construction on a 20,000t lot at 47 Robert Street for a Josh Cavalo. This is a Quig 4 utilizing a singular air and it's been through Concom and a two-bedroom deed restriction is required. We have a three-bedroom repair on a 45,540 foot lot on 148 tickle road for Andrew Reprooo and Jenna Mode um spent through Concom and this one is replacing a cess poolool
4:25and we have a three-bedroom repair on a 13,921 ft lot for a Katherine Burns at 20 Mason Street and this has been through Concom and this one is also replacing a cess poolool on this one is going to require a three-bedroom deed restriction.
4:46Okay. Would you like to make a motion?
4:48Sure. So, I move to endorse the director approved plans for 47 Robin Street, Robert Street with a two-bedroom deep restriction, 148 Tickle Road, and 20 Mason Street with a three-bedroom deed restriction.
5:05Um, second that motion.
5:08All in favor? I I Okay. Um, so in the other business, we're passing over both of those. The Do you want to Okay, we'll just pass over them and Well, the next meeting.
5:28Can we look at possible dates and then um we can at least like know when we're available?
5:37Yeah. Yeah. The only thing is we don't know when Tanya's we don't I'd have to ask Tanya so if we have multiple dates I can run those by her.
5:46I know that the um this month I'm not I don't know I forget which one's up first but for the working meeting this month would have to be sometime in October for that. And um and as far as the meeting for Columbus Day we'd have to reschedule that one.
6:03Well, I think meeting scheduling is one of the things that you know you can you can do with emails without holding a public meeting on it.
6:11Yeah, I can send I'll send so you could Yeah, I could the email will just come for me and you guys can just answer me back individually.
6:17Yeah. Yeah, you can just suggest things talk. You've had it whatever.
6:21Okay. Um so board member updates.
6:26Um the only update Well, I have two updates really. Um the um I submitted a Shorelines article or column. Um I sent it to Tanya to edit and um it is about um my experience um at the active shooter um training and from the perspective of prevention as opposed to being responding in a crisis from that standpoint. and and I pulled from the previous article I had done on um on gun
7:03violence. Um so so that should be in this week's shorelines. I submitted it but I wasn't fast enough to get it in to last week's. So, um, and we have another opioid settlement fund advisory committee meeting tomorrow, and our focus is on crafting a, um, job description and everything that would go along with hiring a person who would work both in the school department and in the town um to address
7:37substance use, focusing on opioid settlement, opioid um, use disorder and mental health. And that person would be an advocate. It wouldn't be treatment.
7:48It would be somebody who would be available in the community for all departments to go to um to get help with connecting with services, knowing what resources are in the community. And this person would also be involved in all the education and outreach um communitywide, but the bulk of what they would do would be within the school department. and some of the time will be in the
8:12community. So, we haven't ironed out all that. And this is our this is what we would advise the select board to do.
8:20And whether or not this would be through an RFP or it would be through actually hiring somebody. If it's through the school department, it's going to be hiring somebody. If it's um if it is another um if there's another avenue to do it, it would be through putting out an RFP and seeing if any agencies want to fill that spot. But right now, we're working on crafting that. So, if anybody
8:42wants to come to the meeting tomorrow um at 6:00 um at the town hall on the second floor, we're meeting um to really focus on that and crafting that and we look for community input.
8:57That sounds really good.
8:59See what happens.
9:00We'll see what happens. The the wheels of progress were slow, but we've worked for two years. I mean, we've been we've had people from all different agencies come to our meetings.
9:11We've um done some surveys. We've had one um uh uh focus group. Um you know, we we've gotten community input and that was one of the primary objectives of the abatement agreement, right?
9:28So, we've done that and then we've done the second we did stage one and stage two. Now, we're working on stage three and four. So if you look at the um the goals, so this is now in creating and then implementation.
9:45So that's my update.
9:50Um so um I have um just three things. So one is that I'm going to uh go to Truro the middle of this week. And the reason I'm mentioning that is that um I've been arranging um to sit down with the person who has been involved in the cesspool closeout implementation of the cesspool closeout in Truro and just to um and I had we had spoken before um and I've looked at their regulations
10:31and I just thought it was an opportunity just to see what they were doing and how they were doing it. So if you know so that's one thing. Um uh the other thing was that um I think at the last meeting we had this conversation about Maven and the tick results and so I don't know you may know this what I did already or not but anyway so I reached out to Olive about
11:01this and it kind of in my mind tied into um the uh climate resilience committee report, you know, which ranks um tick infestation as one of the highest climate related risks. And I um and so I thought that well, you know, it might be we'll just pause. A one of the things that is really challenging about doing this report is relating it to Westport because climate you know starts global
11:42state watershed but then when you actually get down to the town level it's it's you know it's very it's hard to translate all those models down to that level but we had this data about ticks and so I met with all and uh um Elenia Elelliana Elelliana and um and and she and I and I I said well what's the kind of are there any trends about this and she put together this incredible report that
12:20have you seen it? Yeah. Yeah. So it's really good. Yes.
12:23And uh uh you know with a lot of information and and this I was going to you this one particular table um which just showed how there's been like this drop off in so what's measuring is the number of lab tests you know that have been taken because that's what Maven collects or and you know has had dropped off in 2026 as compared to 2024. before 2025. Um, so
12:56I just thought it was an a good, you know, a good piece of information, you know, to have and something to track and then I think it could be related just to not really taking credit just for us, but just the awareness of it and the public outreach that has happened, you know, in all the various media and what we've been doing to make people aware of what they can do to avoid ticks.
13:25Um when when you say the number of lab tests, number of lab tests of ticks that were tested or of people who went in.
13:36No, people went in.
13:38Okay.
13:38I that's what I believe it is. Yeah.
13:39People who had who have had blood tests and there may be other criteria that fall under that. Um and there's a lot of other information, you know, in the report. Um, and uh, I was just going to bring you the the chart just kind of as a way to um, so anyway, and Olive just kind of took that on and turned it around. So that was that was really so that was really good and I
14:09think it's a way that we can, you know, keep track of it. Um, so, um, we need to buy a program and for for that data she's working on to translate over to something that we can put up on our web page so we can look on our web page like you're seeing it.
14:30Yeah.
14:30So, we're in the process of getting that done.
14:32Oh, great.
14:33So, we'll be able to do that. Also, um I want to talk with Olive and Elelliana about putting some together for the COA to talk about some of the do some tick education uh up at the COA because our covering nurse has, you know, goes up to COA and does blood pressure and um she says really that the folks who go up to the COA could really use a a course about ticks and tickborn
15:00illnesses because they really don't have much in the way of education for them up there.
15:05Yeah.
15:05So, I'm going to see if we can get something together to go up there and do that.
15:08Yeah.
15:08There's a new director up there now. So, um be a good excuse to go talk with her, right? Yeah. Yeah. because just without belaboring the point but that you know so I mean one of the things that you know the CRC report is supposed to do you know is you know kind of lay out a strategy of okay here's the risk you know what's the response going to be and
15:35for a number of these things that we might look at is how do we measure in some way whether the uh strategy Y when it's implemented is successful or not. And u and so having this kind of data is really helpful uh to do it or to under you know to look at it you know if it if it would spike up or whatever might happen you know what are the conditions that cause that
16:06and then how you know how how how we might address that. Um okay. And then the last you know um self initiative I did uh is um which relates you know back to um discussions we've had about the cess poolool closure is um you know are transfers are title trans are we getting um septic inspection reports you know as required by title five when there's transfer of title, you know, setting aside all the
16:46exceptions and all that kind of stuff.
16:49And so, and this struck me because I uh cuz when I was looking at the shorelines, I realized, well, every week they publish what the title transactions are for Westport. And um and so I had a couple of additions around and uh I you know made a list of them and then I came to the office on on the weekend and I looked in the files and u you know
17:22realized there was you know not uh uh there was a out of a fairly short list. There's maybe half of them. There were no reports in the file. Then I reached out to Nancy. You may also know all this. So then I reached out to Nancy because realizing, well, there's probably a stack of um inspection reports that just haven't been filed, which of course there are.
17:46Um, but I just thought that um that uh and I don't know Matt, you you you may know enough about this to to think that there is very like there's a very high percentage of compliance with those. But um and I also went to the assessor's office just to see if we get a list kind of go back in time um you know like for all of 2026
18:16or 25 and 26 and just um see if um you know if there's a problem with compliance with that um because I think that as because I think the requirement for doing inspections is one of the tools that we have um you know to upgrade systems that need to be upgraded.
18:44So So I'm just tinkering around with that.
18:48Well, so glad you're tinkering because we'll see what happens. Yeah, we have and uh have to address this. Um yeah, but it's almost like a deja vu kind of thing about like going through the files and finding out how many ces pools there were, you know, and how many and so I think this may be a little bit easier because you know it's a much smaller universe and you know maybe some
19:13of them are exceptions but I think if the ones that are um not have not been inspected um then we should you know we have a strategy that what we might what we might want to do about that. Okay.
19:30So, that is the mischief that I think.
19:35Well, we still have 8 minutes before the 4:30 appointment. Um, do we have any unanticipated things now?
19:49What topics are? We can talk about those two while we're waiting for the appointment.
19:56want to talk about topics for the next meeting.
19:58Sure.
20:00Yeah.
20:01Well, that might come out of our working meeting depending on what it is, I guess.
20:06I don't know what we decided for topics.
20:08So, last time we were in the meeting.
20:11So, I know that I'll just say that um we have a part-time clerk starting uh but not until after the elections. Uh uh somebody in house bid on the position. So they're going to come over after the elections. I think it's mid November. They're going to be coming over. Um and that'll help. We're going to The position was um initially just a board of health part-time clerk, but then the building department at some
20:37point needed a clerk, so we decided to make this into a full-time split clerk position.
20:43Mhm. for the simple fact that I think we can attract a better candidate pool if we're offering a full-time job versus a limited part-time job. So, um, we've got I think we've got that out to bid now.
20:54How you doing? Uh, up out to bid now.
20:57So, um, we'll see if we get um I'm sorry, that's already been bid on and the person starting. I got I got distracted. So, um, yeah. So that should be a big help for for us with getting things caught up like the stack of inspection reports that need to be scanned and filed.
21:16And we have about 100 to 200 plans since we had all all of our filing done uh scanning done.
21:23We've amassed another, you know, like I said, 100 to 50 to 200 plans that need to be scanned and put into the system, right? So, this would be great to get us caught up and then from there um you know train the the parthonon clerk on some other stuff as we go along.
21:39Yeah, that's great.
21:40Yeah.
21:41Yeah.
21:42Um but it's um it's up to you if you want to. There's nobody's involved here.
21:46You want to call them up?
21:48Yeah, we're ready for we're ready to hear you and Yeah, cuz we we've had a short agenda and um Yeah.
22:05copies.
22:06Yeah, thank you.
22:12See if
22:20good evening. For the record, Stevie Kavalo of Parl on behalf of Thomas Basset. Um what the applicant's looking to do is convert an existing garage structure into an accessory dwelling unit. Um there's an existing uh system fairly new uh two compartment tank H20 rated kind of planned for the accessory dwelling unit when he put that in. Um and he's just looking to connect the garage um as far as the the building
22:51plumbing, water and sewer. Due to the tightness of uh the lot there, he's asking for variances with regards to separation uh of the uh water service and septic tank and sewer line. Um, we are proposing to sleeve the proposed water service inside of a 4M schedule 40 pipe as an added protection. Um, be happy to answer any questions.
23:23Okay, the question here from this is pretty straightforward. The system that's existing is fairly new.
23:30Um, like you said, they're just converting a building into an ADU and they need to connect it to the existing system. Um they just need a couple of uh local approval upgrades for that. This is not an increase in flow situation.
23:44Yeah.
23:44So um should be allowable and ideally I would have liked to have you know not drag him in for something so simple but because it's an LUA he had they had to come in.
23:54I can't find the well on your plan.
23:58So the well is actually
24:09he's got it. So it's it's I don't know if you put the shed over the well, but the record plan had it where the well where this the shed is that um just to the west thing.
24:31Yeah. So here's the record plan.
24:34You can see below it's it's right about here.
24:41It's not visible. So, there's no well head or anything like that. Um, we're not sure if it's he placed there. It's just kind of like a portable pipe shed or if it's under that garden, but it's in that area there.
24:55Okay.
24:57I just wanted to make sure cuz I that's one of the first things I look for when I'm looking. And there there was a concern of ours, but there we noticed that the septic tank and the leeching field um when they designed the plan, how old was this?
25:12What was kind of a little unique about it is normally when we do a setback Mhm.
25:17we know what the distance is, the difference between what the rig requires and what the variance is, you know. So it's so the 10 feet but we don't know that it's whether it's one foot or eight feet.
25:33That's that I think that and it's not on the plan I guess.
25:36So so the setback the variance we're asking for is for the septic line to the proposed water line that's it's less than 10 ft but we don't know how many feet how many feet on there. the the usual protocol is that someone comes in and says it's not that it's less than, but it it's really it's really tight there. My guess is he's probably going to try to
25:59be like four or 5 ft apart. Um if if the com uh the board wants to condition the variance on a specified distance, he'd be amendable to that.
26:10Okay.
26:12Are you okay, Matt, with the plan the way it is?
26:15I am. I I think um you know you can email me with the the specified distance and I'll just print it out and put it with the plan.
26:22Oh, that's fine.
26:23Yeah, totally.
26:23Okay.
26:26All right.
26:30Okay. So, I guess we could set it up and say um you know not not closer than 5T without the director's approval.
26:45something like that.
26:46Sure.
26:47Okay.
26:52All right. So, I'll move that we approve the plan for 231C Tickle Road plan dated August 10th, 2026.
27:06um with the variances of allowing less than 10 ft from the water service to the tank um but not less than 5 ft and allow less than 10 ft from the water source to the existing and proposed sewer service but not less than 5 ft um with the following conditions. whole harmless agreement, three-bedroom deed restriction, and then with the specification distance um of not less than five feet on the plan.
27:38And is this constant? I don't think it is.
27:41No, cuz he just gave them to me.
27:44Okay. But just a question about the motion.
27:48Yeah.
27:49What if it comes back at four feet? Do you want them to come back or do you want that me to look at it and approve it?
27:53I I think we're giving you discretion.
27:55Okay. I just didn't say that.
27:56All right. with um the director's discretion.
28:02Do you have that, Bob?
28:05Okay.
28:07And concom review.
28:09Yeah. I mean, I think the general idea is is that you would have the least amount kind of maximum feasible compliance. So, you know, if you could do it at 6 ft, you should, you know, do it or 8 ft, whatever it is, you should just do the least amount of intrusion on the 10 foot setbacks.
28:31And do we know then how far the well is from like the tank or it's on that?
28:39I didn't It's an inch and 20 scale, but I didn't bring my ruler down with me.
28:43Um, it doesn't I think it might have a 50 foot long set back on that. Looks like it should be further than that because the SAS is way at the end is far. So according to this plan, it does say right there 50T well set back. So from the well to the tank.
29:04Oh, from the well to the tank. Just wanted to make sure.
29:07Okay.
29:08Okay. Um second the motion. All in favor?
29:13I All right. Thanks.
29:18Set time for the well is 50 ft.
29:23The variance.
29:25That's not a variance. It's It needed to be 50 ft.
29:28Yeah, that that was for the record design.
29:32Yeah.
29:32Is it part of the motion?
29:34No, it's not part of the motion.
29:36I'm sorry.
29:36They're just asking for an a waiver for the distance from the sewer line uh proximity to the well, not the tank.
29:45I plan on Thank you.
29:49Thank you.
29:49Thanks.
29:52Okay.
29:55I would entertain uh Well, do we have any motion to adjourn?
30:05No topics. Reasonably not reasonably anticipated though.
30:11Oh, yeah. Is there anything not anticipated? I don't think so.
30:15Other than the fact that Tanya wasn't here, but that's okay. All right. So then I move that we adjourn this meeting at 4:32.
30:25Second. All in favor? I'm like