Dental offices were among inaccessible services during the months of April and May, as the coronavirus pandemic had Massachusetts at a commercial standstill. As a result, insurance premiums paid by town employees could not result in access to dental care. In response, Delta Dental has issued $6,336.40 in refunds to Rochester, which splits the cost with active town employees paying for dental coverage and those on a pension plan.

            The refund, according to Town Treasurer Cynthia Mello, represents 30 percent of total premiums paid for April and May.

            Mello asked the Rochester Board of Selectmen during its June 24 meeting, “Should we split this as a 50/50 or let the employees take the entire refund since they are more affected by it? We have an awful lot of people on dental (insurance) so I want you to realize what that means. If we only have the 50 percent, if you had an individual plan, you would be getting $9.25, which is a two-month payment so in other words, it’s $4.50 a month that you’re being refunded – period. That doesn’t sound like an awful lot to me; when you break it down at that level it’s kind of crazy so if we so if we gave them 100 percent on an individual plan they get $18.50. That would be their refund so it doesn’t seem like much when you break it down that way. The town would be giving up, however, $3,154.56.”

            The board batted the matter around and then asked Town Administrator Suzanne Szyndlar for her thoughts on the matter.

            “They get no benefit (for April or May), but they have the whole year to get their benefit,” observed Szyndlar. “I will refer it to the board… My thought is the town paid half and the employee paid half. It seems it should go back the way it was paid out, but that’s just my opinion… You still can go to a dentist; it just got delayed.”

            Selectman Woody Hartley said, “The townspeople paid half, they should certainly get back their half. But I don’t think it’s right for us to be giving out everyone else’s taxes to a select few. I think it should stay in the general fund.”

            Board Chairman Paul Ciaburri agreed, and so it was moved and approved that the employees would receive a refund in the amount of half of what was sent back by Delta Dental.

            In her Town Administrator’s Report, Szyndlar said that Rochester is in the process of submitting grant-reimbursement requests for year-end (FY20) and that all reporting requirements are due July 1.

With Town Meeting delayed by a month to June 22, there is less time, she said, for acting and treasury departments to establish new rates and benefits for employees.

            The Department of Local Services allows payments of invoices and payroll no later than July 15, said Szyndlar, who plans at the next Board of Selectmen meeting to have year-end transfers ready for the members’ approval.

            Town Hall remains closed to the general public, but copies of the Town Report were to become available for residents to pick up by the lockbox, weather permitting, and also by curbside pickup.

            On June 29, Rochester town buildings heated by forced hot air were scheduled to become equipped with in-duct purifiers that filter out microbial contaminates, reduce airborne particulates, and kill 99 percent of molds and viruses.

            The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, & Economic Security (CARES) Act will cover the course. “This is all part of our plan to someday get all these buildings in compliance and open up (to the public),” said Szyndlar, noting that the Fire Department’s headquarters building has baseboard heating and will not be so treated.

            In other business, the board approved the Fire Department’s borrowing anticipation note for the pumper tanker. The members of the board were to sign the note at Town Hall. Mello told the board that Rochester had achieved a 0.95 for the year, a “super low rate.”

            Rochester has earned recognition from the Arbor Day Foundation with notification of its Tree City USA status for 2019. Rochester is one of more than 3,600 Tree City USA communities with a combined population of 155,000,000. Szyndlar said credit needs to go out to Matt Monteiro for his work helping the town with the reporting and coordination that led to the recognition that happened in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service and the National Association of State Foresters.

            Ciaburri thanked the people who orchestrated Rochester’s Town Meeting and election day. “I think it was better than we anticipated and it went so well (I’m) very happy, I thought that was a job well done by all.”

            For the month of May, Rochester received $305,017 per its trash-processing agreement with SEMASS.

            Hartley said he wanted to address the water problem at Rochester crossroads but would need to wait for Selectman Brad Morse, who did not attend the meeting. The reorganization of the Board of Selectmen is also being put off until Morse can attend.

            Town Counsel Blair Bailey will act as the town’s negotiator in the purchase of property adjacent to town hall that is owned by the First Congregation Church.

            Hartley and Town Planner Stephen Starrett will continue to represent Rochester to SRPEDD.

            The board voted to reappoint Ciaburri as its representative to the Plymouth County Advisory Board. “I would be more than happy to do it,” said Ciaburri. “I really enjoy their meetings, and it’s even better to get more information with the CARES Act. It’s very well run and very nice people to be involved with.”

            Hartley requested an executive session in the next Board of Selectmen meeting to discuss negotiations with vendors, and he said he would like to begin meeting in person.

            Due to the constraints of space in Town Hall, the board may hold a hybrid meeting in its next session in which the members of the board and Szyndlar will be present with safe spacing and anyone else will be able to access the meeting via Zoom. Bailey said that he and Starrett are working on hooking a computer into the conference room’s whiteboard that acts as a monitor.

            Friday, July 3, is the designated work-week holiday for July 4, so the board is looking to resume its traditional schedule of meetings on the first and third Mondays of the month. The next Board of Selectmen meeting is scheduled to be held on Monday, July 6, at 6:00 pm.

Rochester Board of Selectmen

By Mick Colageo

            Aspiring kelp farmer Amy Tamagini went before the Marion Marine Resources Commission at its June 29, remote access meeting to present her proposal to farm kelp in Marion waters.

            “I’d like to have a potential site off of Wing’s Cove,” she told the meeting, summarizing a plan to grow the algae seaweed in depths of 16 feet, using the nearby boat ramp to access the water.

            From Wareham but now living in Marion, Tamagini was wild-harvesting quahogs, but said she did not have a license for what she wants to do next. Thus, an Aquaculture Application to farm kelp in a commercial shellfishing enterprise. “I wanted to start a sea farm,” she said.

            To that end, Tamagini applied to GreenWave, was accepted and, since October 2019, has received help finding the best areas to farm. 

            GreenWave, the Connecticut-based regenerative-farming program, partners with emerging sea farmers with its own training and helps them throughout permitting and site-selection processes, along with marketing and harvesting assistance.

            The idea, explained Tamagini, is to set a 250-foot line (with 200 feet of kelp seed)  in one day in October and harvest in one day around March-April at a time when the water will not have reached 50 degrees Fahrenheit and when harvesting would not interfere with any kayaking or commercial or recreation fishing using the ramp. GreenWave would help at both ends as part of the farmer-training program.

            If approved, Tamagini plans to contact town officials and get to work mark her underwater site, but she expects the permitting process to take all year if not into 2021 so her expectations are modest for the immediate. “If I were to put it in this winter, it would be more experimental than anything,” she said.

            Her request for a two-acre plot is ambitious, considering Marion only considers a half-acre for such an applicant. But the larger matter where it concerns kelp altogether.

            “As of right now, our aquaculture regulations don’t refer to kelp… this is something we’re going to have to address. You are the first,” said Marion Marine Resources Commission Chairman Vincent Malkoski, who works for the Department of Marine Fisheries. “We’re going to have to do our own homework.”

            The upsides of kelp farming include pulling nitrogen from the water, a matter taken up this year by Board of Health member Dot Brown in a successful push for a bylaw amendment requiring new septic installations to include an upgrade designed to accomplish that very thing.

            Tamagini said she became interested in kelp because it only requires weekly maintenance. grows itself, and is “a very big benefit to the environment.”

            “I love this water and didn’t want to see the pollution continue so I wanted to do my little part,” she said. “The line will be underwater so it won’t be in plain sight of anybody or in anybody’s way.”

            Tamagini also noted that, assuming the venture is a success, Martha’s Vineyard oyster farmers Dan and Greg Martino have expressed interest in buying her kelp. The Vineyard, she said, cannot produce enough kelp to keep up with the emerging market. Someday, she hopes, she can harvest it farm-to-market with local restaurants.

            Commission member Michael Moore cautioned Tamagini to make sure her lines are properly weighted to avoid losing her crop. Commission member Joseph Guard asked what would happen if the seed leaves the site and grows in other areas, would there be any adverse effect?

            Tamagini referred to workshops she has attended and explained technique in fastening the line to the underwater rope. “You put fasteners every six inches so there’s no slope to the bottom because if it touches the mud, snails begin to eat it and it becomes foul and you can’t sell it.”

            Commission member Pete Borsari asked, after harvest, what remains in the water? Tamagini said everything comes out. Moore asked what about the moorings, to which Tamagini said she believes those also come out but will review the matter.

            Tamagini told the commission she would take heed from all suggestions and review her entire proposal, anticipating a series of meetings and revisions.

            “The Board of Selectmen will want to hear from us,” Malkoski told Tamagini. “I can’t tell you when we’ll have some updated regulations for that. We’ll try not to be a hindrance for the process.”

            In his report to the commission, Harbormaster Isaac Perry said that, since the town got out of the trash business, there have been “unintended consequences.”

            Since seasonal residents returned and visitors began populating the area, public trash has become a problem. The fish-cutting station, said Perry, is the only facility that Marion manages where it does not have a trash problem.

            “Prior to Waste Management, we called the DPW in a moment’s notice. We don’t have that luxury anymore,” said Perry, referring to the town’s outsourcing of trash removal.

            The problem, explained Perry, is not a lack of dumpsters. People are just not using them or they’re overstuffing a smaller one sitting next to a large one that remains less than half full.

            “It’s not really the trash from the boaters, it’s the general… all kind of issues we can’t seem to get around,” said Perry, adding that Wareham is encountering a similar problem. “Waste Management employees don’t get out of the truck. I can’t say there isn’t a day when we’re not picking up trash that’s blowing around. It is by far the most frustrating issue.”

            On a positive note, Perry reported that recreational fishing is busy this summer.

            “On a daily basis people are asking where the sweet spots are. I think people are going to turn over the soil and we’re going to get a good idea on what the shellfish density looks like,” he said.

            Perry publicly thanked Donna Hemphill for her tireless work under stressful circumstances in town offices. “She’s done an amazing job of getting us through it. devoting 100 percent of her attention to three things, and the numbers just don’t add up – beach stickers, transfer-station stickers, guest passes, now walk-in traffic as well. She really pulled us through this year. amazingly, I can’t say enough.”

            The next meeting of the Marion Marine Resources Commission is scheduled for Monday, July 20.

Marion Marine Resources Commission

By Mick Colageo