Published May 15, 2020
By MARK SARDELLA
MELROSE – Given the financial devastation that local restaurants have suffered and are likely to continue suffering as a result of the COVID-19 shutdown, the Boards of Health in Melrose and Wakefield will give food establishments a break on the fees they pay for their permits for the coming year.
Meeting in a joint session last night via Zoom teleconference, the boards agreed to give food establishments a 25 percent reduction on their permit fees for the coming year. For example, the annual fee for a full-service restaurant with 100 or more seats is $200, so the fee would be reduced to $150.
Board members acknowledged that even though many restaurants have remained open for takeout, they have lost their dining room business.
“Restaurants are taking a big hit,” Wakefield Board of Health chair Laurel Gourville said, adding that even if they are allowed to reopen their dining rooms in the coming months, it will not be at full capacity.
In Melrose, food permits expire at the end of May. In Wakefield they expire at the end of June. The fee reductions would apply when restaurants renew their permits for the coming year.
Melrose and Wakefield share a Health Department and Ruth Clay is Health Director for both communities. She reminded the boards that they will need to hold a public hearing before they can modify the fees. That hearing is scheduled for Thursday, May 21 at 7 p.m. on Zoom. While no vote was taken last night, there was unanimous consensus that board members intend to reduce the fees.
Clay said that if restaurants have already submitted checks along with their renewal applications, those checks will not be processed and arrangements will be made to apply the reduction.
Clay said that in Melrose, where the food permits expire at the end of May, food establishments will be advised via email to hold off on submitting checks until the fee reduction is official after next Thursday’s hearing. They can go ahead and submit the rest of their renewal paperwork now, Clay said.
—————
Clay reported that most of the $100,000 in emergency funding that the district had received has been spent on paying nurses to do contact tracing, purchasing masks for both communities and reserving hotel rooms at the Sheraton Four Points Hotel in Wakefield for use by individuals who needed to quarantine but could not isolate at home. She said that she would talk to Wakefield Emergency Management Director Tom Walsh about the possibility of paying for individual rooms on an as needed basis going forward, rather than holding a fixed number of rooms.
Clay noted that all communities are due to receive another chunk of money through the CARES Act, although these funds will not be going directly to Health Departments but will be administered by the municipalities generally. Clay said that she has asked both Melrose mayor Paul Brodeur and Wakefield Town Administrator Stephen P. Maio to set aside some funds to continue the contact tracing work.
—————
Clay also reported that there have been some “very preliminary” discussions regarding opening City Hall in Melrose and Town Hall in Wakefield. She noted that the governor has come out with some basic re-opening standards but the communities will still have to wait for the state’s OK before any re-opening can occur.
She said that having spoken with staff in both buildings to hear their concerns, she knew that many, but not all, municipal interactions can be done online. She said that there had been discussions about placing plexiglass barriers at public service counters.
Clay said that there was no word on when municipal boards and committees can go back to meeting in person.
Meanwhile, she said, everyone is still awaiting guidance on how and when summer camps, pools and other seasonal activities can resume.