The Swampscott public health nurse position is guaranteed through the end of July, following budget discussions that put the role at risk as part of efforts to reduce the town’s annual spending.

At a Board of Health meeting on Wednesday, Director of Public Health Jeffrey Vaughan confirmed the position is funded through July and said the town is “looking at ways to get the funding for the whole year.” The public health nurse role was placed in jeopardy after voters approved the town’s proposed budget at the May Town Meeting.

“Nothing is promised,” Vaughan said. “We still have a good chance.”

Public health nurses typically oversee health education, disease prevention, and wellness initiatives within the community. They collaborate with key community members, such as the school, public safety officials and other partners. 

Swampscott established its full-time public health nurse position in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Three weeks earlier, at a meeting in June, the Board of Health said they felt blindsided by the decision to eliminate the nurse position. Select Board Chair Katie Phelan had told the board that “through the budget process, there were conversations about cuts to a myriad of potential individual departments.” 

Some staff members were reportedly unaware their positions were at risk of being cut. That is why there was no budget line set to zero because “we would never tell a staff member through a budget conversation that their position may potentially be cut,” according to Phelan. Phelan said the money was supposed to be “offset by the salary reserve.”

In Wednesday’s meeting, Board of Health Chair Gargi Cooper asked if it was possible to secure Public Health Nurse Neia Illingworth’s position by using “any of the opioid abatement funds given that she’s the one programmatically running all of the programs.”

“She’s doing a lot of work with running meetings,” Cooper said, adding that the funds are over a million dollars. “Even if that covers 25 or 30% of what she does, she is implementing the use of those funds to provide town programming to the residents. She does Narcan training. In other towns, they’re doing RFRs (request for responses) for people to do the work, so it’d make sense to me that it could be used.”

Vaughan said some of the opioid abatement funds could be used toward Illingworth’s salary.

Cooper noted she had met with interim Town Administrator Gino Cresta between the two meetings. She also provided a letter to the Select Board, sharing the “high-level highlights of what a nurse does.”

“My personal suggestion is that I think we should have an executive session with the Select Board,” Cooper said. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to be talking about a town personnel’s job in front of them in this way. I think that’s preserved for an executive session.” 

Illingworth was not present at the Board of Health meeting.

Cooper proposed that the executive session would take place at the beginning of August.

“These are hard times, but I do think that it deserves a conversation with the Select Board,” Cooper said. “We just need to have a conversation.”