001i have had pay cuts do you think he's going to distribute that to the players no um welcome to the december 2nd 2021 electronic meeting of the environmental commission this meeting is in accordance with executive orders from the governor to affect social distancing and mitigate the spread of the coca-19 virus we intend to conduct this meeting similarly to an in-person meeting however please be patient if there are technical issues public comment will be via telephone only to speak during any of the public comment opportunities please call 877-853-5247-488-788-0099 [Music] and enter meeting id 9 9 7 0 3 9 3 5 3 2 0 this information is also available on the published agenda in the public notices section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 att channel 99
002and online at www.a2.gov watch ctn okay so galen would you like to read the land heritage statement sure okay let's kick it off um i acknowledge that the land the city of ann arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe including the odawa ojibwe and bodhi wagnee and wyandotte peoples i further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in in the united states on lands obtained generally in unconscionable ways from indigenous people the taking of this land was formalized by the treaty of detroit in 1807 knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change past but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this past can empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals and this
003is the land heritage statement thank you galen um would you like to do the roll call now i'm going to check the uh queue i think someone's trying to get in oh okay uh commissioner graham hi yes here thank you uh commissioner needham here council member dish here uh commissioner gibb randall you're none over uh council member griswold council member griswold he's here looks like she froze up okay uh commissioner kyle ward here chair person brown uh president in ann arbor vice chairperson mitchell here in ann arbor uh commissioner vanderbilt here commissioner oriole karen ann arbor commissioner zang here from midnumber uh commissioner juno commissioner juno all right we have a uh quorum ah thanks caitlyn um so let's move on to the approval of the agenda um has everybody received the latest copy which
004just shuffled a few of the the order of a few things has previously presented is everybody okay um raise your hand i see chris graham has his hand raised because i was wondering if there was some a research paper that city did to identify the indian heritage exactly here in ann arbor and if so could we see it i presume somebody got to the bottom of who was here and who was camping in anne's harbor which i think was an indian camp uh down between state street in the allen's creek i'd sure like to see it if something was done thank you thanks chris uh rita uh i did speak briefly with this uh to missy about this and she said that she wrote it so i think we should find out from missy stouts
005the source of that information okay thank you okay um most consistent with everything i've heard uh from other sources so um it would be would surprise me if it was very different um [Music] so um um any questions about the agenda lisa yeah it's just it's in a funny order now or at least the one that i have um the uh the the um the refutation of false claims about deer management is under solid waste challenges and strategy from staff's perspective no on yours john it's not the most recent one that came from galen earlier today okay i took mine from the um thank you i took mine from the public thanks john yeah we have two attachments um the wrong legislator uh for the deer call and then there's two for solid waste okay
006um lisa did you have a further comment okay um um are there any uh suggestions to to modify the agenda hearing and seeing none um um let's vote on it um um who whoever agrees to accepts the agenda as first written now raise their hand or say hi the latest version ah yeah sorry the latest version hi yes we have the latest version um any nays raise your hand or say name any abstentions okay the the latest agenda passes um unanimously um next we'll move to the approval of the minutes of the october 28th meeting um i hope everybody's had a chance to look over the minutes um city staff has decided to after a temporary experiment um making them um populating them with more detail uh it's been decided that we would go back
007to the traditional uh means of just you know mentioning what topics were discussed and what happened because people anybody can refer back to the uh video recordings if they want to know exactly what happened okay so um so um are there any questions or any discussion do i have a motion for discussion of the minutes okay i hear i hear in c9 so let's vote on it um if you whoever approves the minutes as the draft limits as presented here on legislator raise their hands or say aye aye any of any opposed hearing and seeing none any abstentions here and see none so the minutes as posted on legistar pass unanimously so let's move on to public commentary uh this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 1-888-788-0099
008and enter meeting id zero 99703 nine three five three two zero this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and the video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there could be a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established so while we're waiting um is there
009anybody on the queue yet uh no one with their hand up but uh uh vice chairperson uh mitchell yes rita i see your hand do you want to make a public comment oh no well here's my public comment i'd like to welcome commissioner juno to the meeting she appeared later and didn't get on our roster we all have her okay yeah and we'll have we have two new members we have anne martin on that topic is uh uh is our representative from the park advisory commission she's here for the first time and we have a new solid waste coordinator i think the title is here in the city um sarah mason is here as well so um we'll have you guys introduce yourselves on during the committee reports and uh during the presentation uh for
010you sarah okay well let's see um [Music] anybody raise their hand yet caleb on the line uh no okay well this ends the public commentary period um let's move on to unfinished business the first item is the gelman plume the status of the ms4 notice of violation rita do you want to um thanks steve um this is just a short uh update i have had a conversation with evan pratt our county water resources commissioner and um the status is that there hasn't been any change in the plan for the galman plume resolution of the 1-4 dioxane infiltration of the allen creek drain that goes through through town through west park he will be contacting the county legal team to address additional comments there's some just confusion about responsibility and so i have invited him to
011attend our meeting in january so um i'll expect him then and we'll have a better update than this that i'm providing but there is a concern that there's still some one-four dioxin flowing there and then it hasn't been addressed thank you rita are there any other news about the gilman plume that anybody wants to share just raise your hand okay i hear in cmed so let's move on to the next item which is uh the deer management resolution um chris uh you have the floor chris graham so i think you all have in your hands a couple of documents that i'm presenting this evening hopefully for your support um one is a full two-page resolution um with a memorandum that precedes it that addresses um concerns those of us who who have long felt too
012many deer in ann arbor has been a very serious problem that we made great progress over over the five years that we're doing calling we cannot stop it we know we need to go back and keep doing it on a regular basis and the second document addresses the paper tigers that were thrown up uh five years ago or six years ago um suggesting what i call falsehoods about why the course that the city took wasn't a good one and i'm extremely grateful the city did what it did um my neighborhood probably benefited the most that was not intentional it had to do with the fact that the university allowed calling in the arboretum and of course the golf course here in hills and the surrounding native forest fragment woodlands near it parklands were outstanding locations
013to call deer and that made a unbelievable dent in the 100th deer or so that were roaming this neighborhood we went from being overrun to four lovely ladies who were sterilized running around and the change was unbelievable however uh one of my guys left the gate into my backyard open and one of those lovely ladies went back there and i went back there after her and chased her out and came back indoors and found a black-legged deer tick crawling down full sized female crawling down my arm sitting in my drawing studio i've lived in on this property via my family since 1960 i've never had any tick on my body working outdoors hundreds of thousands of hours in 60 years and to find a deer tick immediately after a deer went through my backyard is
014very alarming some of you may have friends who live in connecticut and long island or wisconsin who have gotten sick from the five or six different one of the five or six different bacterial diseases that deer ticks carry um [Music] and and you probably know some of them have never recovered or have had many many months of very difficult health problems from the most famous of these bacterium is called lyme disease i this critter these ticks are now very much in ann arbor and they were not here um when i was a kid uh there weren't any deer in ann arbor or anywhere near you'd have to go out in the farm fields well out in the country to find deer and then not very many because out there hunters can work with them but
015slowly the population is built up in a very amazing success story and they found very highly nutritious food in the city all of our wonderful landscape plants they've found cover they've found an area where they cannot be hunted um it's a very difficult problem to understand what to do with and there's some people who are um well i won't use i'll read the read the document that's been presented to your second document's been presented to you that make arguments that are very difficult to work with the most important of them is using rifles to kill animals in in the city is dangerous and unacceptable um generally speaking i agree however the professionals that we hired um use a handmade ammunition that breaks apart if it gets a leaf they use their weapons in restricted areas
016at night with night vision equipment with silencers they use their weapons only where deer come to bait piles that they have put out there and they are extremely close to those deer there's absolutely no room for error a lot of people say well why don't you use boats that would make us feel better well it's very difficult to be certain that you're going to kill a deer with a bow with an arrow um and if you don't then you're having to track a deer probably on the private property until you can find it and that's also not acceptable and would be cause for great alarm they take one shot the deer falls on the ground the meat is eaten by food gatherers and distributed there are people who process the meat at much reduced cost
017so it can be given away very inexpensively and there probably is not a better meat protein to eat than deer it's extremely lean meat very low fat um very good for people if you eat meat um so i'm going to stop spouting i'm i'm hoping that um someone will second the motion here and that we can approve it and request then that the council go back and reconsider its decision to eliminate this work from the budget last spring i'll put the motion on the table well chloe do i have a uh a second okay brian how about needing seconded so let's open the floor for discussion uh please raise your hand if you would like to make a comment about um i i just wanted to thank commissioner graham for uh picking up the the
018ball on this uh after i dropped it somewhat uh due to some uh family issues um and i appreciate uh all the hard work that's gone into the the resolution before us tonight um i it it seems very clear to me based on what we've heard from professor dick and others that uh the deer population is is currently at a level that's doing serious long-term harm to our ecosystem and i i think the call is a regrettable necessity at this point that's that's what it comes down to for me john you have the floor yeah uh thanks also i also want to add my thanks to chris for putting this together just had two items on the resolution one a question and one a friendly suggestion one of the most compelling things i found was
019the statue included about the natural area programs impact and i'm wondering if that can be backed up with any documentation or explanation i went back to your may 2021 message to council and saw it there but i was looking looking for something else just to kind of bolster that that fact so that can be um further explained how you got to 15 million or referenced with some type of you know documentation that would be great and then in the fourth paragraph [Applause] that begins it is difficult my suggestion just to kind of keep people you know invite people into this i would suggest rewriting that to say in order to better understand how deer browsing can impact ann arbor's treasured natural areas comma the city hired and then the data are clear so just a
020friendly suggestion on editing that there the city passed a millage back in the early 1990s and it's a very interesting story to tell you that because it was the beginning very beginnings of protecting natural features in the city and um there were a group of baroques growing east of the veterans administration hospital that were placed smack in the way of a relocation of fuller road and oakway that used to go up in the middle of the hospital and there was a meeting where we got the mayor and most of the council out there to look at these trees and out of that came an agreement with the university to move the road to the east and save the trees but also out of that meeting came in a recognition because we looked at the understory
021under the trees completely full of very mature buckthorn and hammer honeysuckle that our parks were in big trouble from invasion by invasive shrubs and from that recognition came uh leadership from the sierra club members of those of that group were at this meeting who then asked the council to support a millage to start the naturalize program in the parks department of the city it's it's that amount of money that has been spent by the people of ann arbor through the millage supporting that program since then that amounts to 15 million or so and of course a lot of the work at clearing invasive species from our parks in order of their importance to our biological diversity has come from volunteers and dave bourneman estimated what the number of hours of volunteer help has been over
022all these 30 years so the this number comes from these numbers come from the horse's mouth we've had one leader of the natural areas program since the beginning dave bourneman um he's been very special and i can only quantify that by saying when i first started and back then almost no one in ann arbor knew about invasive species almost no one knew about buckthorn or hammer honeysuckle and now i don't encounter anybody who does not know about invasive species now we have many more garlic mustard is very famous i appreciate that all that i still think it needs to be clear in the document it's so that we don't get pushback on it uh okay so um thanks john so that was a friendly amendment um chris uh are you gonna amend the uh resolution
023that's suggested um i'm not sure i can write it on the spot but if you trust me to do so i will okay yeah before you submit it to galen right um um shannon your name is uh your hand is up um i am fully in support of of uh the work that chris did here and i would just like to share one um anecdote um that ties some of these things together that i i think is a powerful story which is um i moved into my house that backs up to a ravine that is connected to west park about 18 years ago and i have been the park steward for this natural area for that whole time and there's been a kind of a small group of us that have been working on this
024area and um we have systematically been in the beginning it was garbage and things like that and and we have removed all kinds of invasive species and part of the joy of doing that is that we um introduced sunlight onto the forest floor in this area and we started getting a really wonderful display of our native wood and wildflowers that came in through here um specifically hundreds and hundreds of blood root which are one of the first wildflowers to bloom in the spring and are extremely important uh food for overwintering uh bumblebee queens because they come they hibernate and they come out and that's like their first food they're not they're not going into the daffodils the non-native things they're going into these native wildflowers and that's probably the first one that comes up and
025uh it was a real joy to see all of this happen and respond with all the work that the volunteers and i have done over the years starting about four years ago um they just depleted one year and we saw dear prince all over and we are now down to about four or five blood roots in an area that had hundreds and hundreds of them all over the hillside so there really is no way to be able to calculate the impact of what that has on our ecosystems not just the plants but all those relationships that happen with the um with the other critters that are part of our systems and uh i see this in my work all the time i can go into a woods and just tell you the deer is browsing
026everything because there's only about five native wildflowers that grow that tolerate the deer and normally i would see 25 or 30 different species it really is just having a huge huge impact on our ecosystems so it's not just people's hostas in their yards it's really our natural areas too so i really urge us to be able to take this next step and try to get this in front of um our city council and in front of the um the people of ann arbor again to be able to um really take the bull by the horns and try to make this happen so shannon's probably in a neighborhood where there's not enough room to be safe to call oh probably not um so uh yes it is like right in right near west park um i
027definitely saw a difference in the call in the outer areas and especially the areas along the river in in clients yards on the landscape arctic and i saw that um i saw a big impact in that way but there's areas within the city that are a little tight in terms of being able to have the call happen there um but i think all of it makes a big difference though i really truly believe that so um you know i know some areas will not benefit as much as others but i know also that it's not just my little ravine it's important it's it's all these other areas around too so i feel like it's super important to have this call happen so i'm hoping that if we have an established program that doesn't go away
028that a couple of things will go on one is that we'll work with surrounding townships from which a lot of deer come into the city and get them on board to doing the management that's needed to slow this whole infiltration process down which is slow but sure the second problem is that everything to do with what we do or anybody does with wildlife in michigan is absolutely controlled by the wildlife division of the department of natural resources and they are on the whole uh i won't say controlled but led by the interests of hunters and hunters don't like anybody killing deer if it's not them for their purposes i don't think there's any chance that we're ever going to have open hunting in the city so how do we solve this problem of many parts
029of the city having an uncontrolled herd of deer well one way would be to allow the people who do this work to shoot them with darts and essentially knock them down with a sedative and then euthanize them that's anathema so far to the dnr and to hunters but how do you solve this problem of not wanting to use rifles but still needing to get deer out of here or at least down to numbers that are sustainable part of the problem about euthanizing the deer is that um well part the issue about darting them is you're using a drug and at least so far it is said that the drugs that are used are leave the meat unedible and that's not a good answer either so we really need to find a way that darts can
030be used and um and still have the meat be edible and still get agreement from hunters and that's a difficult political problem but i'm hoping the city of ann arbor as it did with sterilization in the first go-round can lead the way in the state all right thank you chris and any other comments please raise your hand rita i also support this um approach um again and i agree with the reluctance on on the actual killing aspect of it but when we think about the the many interconnections and i think that shannon's description of what she observed firsthand um is really a powerful one and as as one of many of us who support pollinators that's that's a huge huge observation in addition i know that the studies that were done focused a great deal
031on oak seedlings and their their potential regeneration or browsing by deer and since oaks are acknowledged to support a lot of insect life that is life for birds and squirrels and other things the opportunity for us to support the regeneration of of any forest is really an important thing and especially as we move forward in climate change we know we need to have our forest for carbon sequestration we need to protect the big trees but we also have to foster the trees that will follow them and so that's yet another reason i think to support this approach the initial tier management plan also included some monitoring by air identifying locations that have the most heavily um are most heavily populated by deer and i think that can help us uh move forward and maybe with
032the the other ideas that chris mentioned um their ways to to do this that's effective um and makes things uh approach what we want in terms of a balance and it is a balance that we want that's it thank thank you um are there any other questions or comments i don't see any so i'll have i have one chris and that is that um um both the county and the university owned property within the city limits um so how how is this coordinated um with the county and the university um very closely with the university they've been very helpful and very cooperative and and um have even done better enforcement against people trying to interfere than our own city police have done um the county has not been able to get to it yet um
033it would be very helpful if if something could be done in county farm park there's a big vegetable garden there there's a very wonderful development whose gardens around this new really interesting low-income housing project is going to be astonishingly quickly destroyed by deer in county farm park it would be very helpful if they would work with us there and in surrounding county properties they have many natural areas that are close to the city and i'm confident they're having at least the problem we are okay what about um i think what about concordia college uh there's a very large deer population in marshall park and along the river east town [Music] and it would be very helpful if they would allow activity on that property away from the buildings chris have you has there been any
034um connection with um barton hills barton village not a cooperative connection but barton did the first calling beginning in the 90s the dnr gave them a permit for about a hundred deer a year they did a study um prior to being granted that permit to see how many deer were coming and going through barton hills and it was um through the property it's about two square miles the forest preserves in chicago did a study of the carrying capacity of deer in order to have one foot tall trillium which is pretty healthy trillium 12 deer square mile um darren hill's got between 60 and 100 deer out of there every year for more than a decade trillium were beginning to come back to barton hills there were when i was young great wraths of it out
035there and they had all disappeared and now we're back in the same soup there was a whole new set of board members and a whole new set of owners out there that are much younger with kids and so a lot of concerns and [Music] and wild rest was getting old and so they stopped now it's back on again and they're slowly ramping up the number of deer they can take each year that was the first place i saw deer in or near the city in barton hills about 1975. well as i recall the the home range of female deer is something like two miles probably less than that um probably a neighborhood they don't go very far and their kids stay close it's the bucks that go two miles or three miles or all the
036way to long island where all the bucks are sterile because there are a lot of fertile girls up there sorry that's a joke i probably should explain new york spending new york is spending millions to sterilize the bucks on staten island which is an interesting approach yeah um so i only have one more thing to add and that is that um i mean i personally have a good friend who lives in new york and who whose face was paralyzed for six months because of lyme disease and i've worked with another young woman who um was paralyzed probably for life from the waist down from lyme disease and i and i i spent a lot of time in the woods and um and um this year this summer though walking through the yard i have found
037a deer ticks on me after going through their pathways on the uh in the art so um you know i think we ought to all be mindful of that as well so the baby the baby deer ticks are about the size of a pinhead they can jump from a plant onto your pant leg and they can carry the bacterium yeah i i recognize them the black legged ones exotics and they um but i what startled me is whenever i find one i always find a couple more yep you go through a patch of them yeah so um this is this is another public health concern i've been saying that's the biggest concern all along although i'm as you know very married to that protecting natural features in ann arbor and really re restoring them and
038and we've suffered terrific damage already and we've spent all this money and time clearing the invasive shrubs away and letting more light on the forest floor so our what was once a very rich wildflower flora on the fourth floor and come back and then the theories are eating it all right well um thank you is there are there any other comments people would like to make um so let's end the discussion and move to a vote uh do i have a monkey to vote anybody uh lisa how's it a second yeah okay rita um so all who all who uh all who approve of this resolution requesting a deer call uh be reinstated for the city uh please raise your hand or say hi hi hi hi um any new means cena i see it
039here none any abstentions i seen here none so the resolution to be amended as discussed earlier uh passed unanimously so thank you chris and bob thank you thank you all very much i continue to be available to answer questions from any commissioners that wonder about things um we started in on this six or seven years ago and and the understanding and knowledge is deep okay so let's move on to new business so the first item is the quarterly solid waste fund report um let's see who wants to take that on molly excuse me curtis i see a hand from kathy griswold oh kathy i'm sorry hi i was having audio problems previously i just wanted to say i'm calling in from lake tahoe holy mackerels okay got some skis out there no but i'm watching
040the sunset [Music] okay thank you so um let's see um okay so um molly do you want to present the solid waste just give us the bottom line i think maybe i'm a little confused on the agenda i apologize uh hi i'm i really want to be um for them to provide all of the updates um be acceptable to the commission oh i'm sorry you're breaking up quite a bit molly i couldn't understand you uh video your video's frozen and your voice is breaking up can you do you want to try one more time hear me yeah a little bit um no you're still breaking out if it's all right i and molly if you're hearing this um please step in if if your audio comes back through but i can i can step in
041because i believe i understand what molly where she was headed with this as we talked about the agenda previously the solid waste report the fund report that was provided is provided as a communication item you have that in your agenda materials and what we had hoped to go into is molly was going to cover an introduction for sarah mason for myself for those of you who have not met before um i think in the interest of keeping the meeting moving and i hope um you know if molly joins back in she can interject and correct redirect us if needed but i'll say you know for myself i'm kayla coleman i'm a community engagement specialist with the city of ann arbor and i have been helping out in the solid waste world over the last few
042months when we with the departure of the previous resource recovery manager i helped to fill that gap while we were working to find sarah mason and bring her on board as the new resource recovery manager and i'll have some continuing involvement in solid waste programs for the time being so i've been asked to to join your meeting tonight and help with covering some of the updates and um updates for solid waste it looks like molly's back end so let's see are you do you want to try again molly i can i don't know if anybody can hear me now we can't get better that's good i am not tahoe sadly um i'm just right at home and i have apparently poor service so i don't know um but kayla it sounds actually i heard everything
043um so um take it over i guess from here all right thanks molly so i i had just introduced myself and i was gonna turn it over to sarah perhaps if you want to introduce yourself as i said sarah is our new resource recovery manager we welcome her and are excited to have her so sarah please feel free to introduce yourself hey thank you kayla good evening everyone i've met a couple of you um excited to be here and meet everybody else as kayla mentioned i'm sarah mason i'm the new resource recovery manager with the city uh started a few weeks ago remotely from houston texas and then i moved up here the i guess just the weekend before thanksgiving so just in time for snow which is a nice welcome uh to the north
044i am coming to you i worked for the city of houston for 15 years doing local environmental programming had the opportunity to touch on a few different things urban forestry and air quality but spent the bulk of my career doing waste reduction and recycling programs i spent the last 12 years with the houston solid waste management department and my last role there was as the recycling manager managing our drop-off operations and doing a contract administration for our recycling and diversion program so i have a lot of knowledge about solid waste and recycling cycling generally uh but i am new to ann arbor and new to the programs here so it's been great um kayla's been a really excellent resource on getting me up to speed and you know it's been nice to meet the team
045and get started so just excited to be here welcome to ann arbor thank you sarah for providing that introduction and uh the next where we planned ahead from here was i'll cover some of the challenges uh talk a little bit about what the solid waste program area has been experiencing both recently over the last few months that i've been involved in this area and challenge longer term challenges as well as some updates on current initiatives that sarah and i will give you know speak briefly about together and then hand it over to jenny for a circular economy discussion and time for question and answers uh following that so if that sounds all right i'm gonna go ahead and jump in to some challenges so one that i wanted to highlight is of course staffing shortages
046this is not unique to ann arbor or to solid waste it's obviously a nationwide challenge and it certainly has affected us we've seen turnover both on the side of administration and programming as well as operations with the vacancy for the resource recovery manager being one of those those turnover positions but also we currently have an intern position that we're trying to hire for and uh trying to hire for a new contract compliance specialist um so with all of the shortages and and outages of staffing some that have been short-term some that are longer term um it certainly creates strain on the existing staff to keep up with all of the competing demands and then also just the transition process of bringing new people on board and up to speed i experienced that myself joining um
047the solid waste group back in at the end of august and i think sarah's you know gone through that herself in the last few weeks getting acclimated to a new a new area another challenge i just wanted to highlight are all the contract changes we've experienced the timelines for many of our major solid waste contracts have come up for renewal or have expired within a pretty short time frame uh contract scoping and negotiations can be a pretty lengthy process especially when you add on stakeholder engagement leading up to that to help scope out envision for a new contract so all of those are time consuming the the timing such that they happened in a in quick succession has certainly um been a strain again on resources and even once a contract is adopted there's usually
048an adjustment period where um both the staff and the contractor is getting adjusted to new things like changes to invoicing or reporting or other practices and we've certainly seen the um you know the pull on us for that service limitations and ongoing service issues with particular properties or pickups is a concern in the solid waste area that is very familiar and is near and dear to hearts of anyone who's worked in this area um collection timing and frequency can be challenging and some of that is governed by the contracts that we currently operate with them um and there's opportunity to make improvements with new contracts coming up such as with commercial franchise uh contract update we hope to to tackle some of those but we're also looking at mid-term or near-term solutions so in relation
049to service frequency and timing of service i wanted to note the work that staff did to negotiate sunday service for the downtown area with waste management uh it is now an option that is available but it does require a minimum buy-in from downtown customers in order for us to achieve that and we've not yet been able to get enough buy-in to implement uh implement that sunday service but we think that it could really help with some of the challenges we see i'll wrap it up i just got a couple more here on challenges i wanted to know enforcement this is an important piece of a multi-disciplinary approach to how we can tackle some of our solid waste operation issues but again they have their own staffing shortages and limitations and with the limited number of
050community standards officers that we have we also face competing demands for their time but we have been able to leverage them to help with enforcement for trash on the ground and bulky waste especially around student move-in at the beginning of the semester and in relation to football saturdays finally last last one on challenges is just to know it's comp it's a fall leaf collection and compost heavy season and that of course presents challenges with the the fall leaf pickup sometimes there are properties that may have upward of a hundred bags of leaves on the curb at one time and when service trucks come through and get entirely loaded down from a single parcel it really presents challenges uh for for us to continue to deliver continuous service across all parcels of the city so i'm
051trying to space out when bags get put on the curb can really help um and then something we can't really control for but just to know that it's a challenge is with our changing climate seeing things like the snow that we got earlier this week and having compost bags in the snow banks and then seeing weather like today with snow melt and ending up with heavy wet bags of leaves all of those create a lot of challenges for staff and that so this is just sort of to paint the picture of the reality that we're working with then but also um you know to move on to some of the updates and initiatives that we're working on i'm going to talk about one that i've been heavily involved with and then i'll turn it over
052to sarah here in a moment but in terms of updates um we're working heavily on our education contract so many of you know you may likely know that the city has in the past contracted with the ecology center for educational programming to k-12 students and with the expiration of that contract we've been looking more broadly at what our education needs are for community-wide to have a community-wide impact on education and looking beyond k-12 students but what else could we do with marketing um outreach engagement and other forms of education so that's been again a very resource intense process we we scheduled a series of stakeholder engagement sessions we had the pleasure of talking with council member dish and commissioner callawar as part of that process representatives from the zero waste working group so thank you
053both for participating in that process we also spoke with service providers some of our folks from waste waste management we care recycle ann arbor as well as representatives from ann arbor public schools so we could get a first-hand response from educators in the classrooms um other internal operations so thinking of customer service enforcement public works what are they seeing and hearing and trying to really think broadly about what our needs are for education what priority messages and priority audiences do we need to reach so we are now in discussions with the ecology center working to develop a scope for that and we do hope to have a contract in place possibly by this spring and if not that then for the start of the 2022 school year so i'm going to now hand it over
054to sarah to cover a couple of other updates so on to you sarah thank you um thank you kayla yes uh just a couple of other items to provide you an update on one is the commercial franchise contract in the downtown service area kayla mentioned this a bit and the challenges and some of the things that we're trying to address the solid waste resource management plan had recommended improvements to that service area especially in downtown and the city's current commercial franchise contract was extended but it does expire in june 2023 and so we're beginning now to engage stakeholders particularly the downtown district and others to work on developing an rfp to get a new contract in place prior to the expiration of the current contract and in that new rfp we're looking to emphasize like
055improved vendor communication service options service timing and reporting options and so due to this uh the complexity of this contract we want to go ahead and get started now so that we have time to do that stakeholder engagement and make sure we've got the feedback we need to compile a scope of work that's going to address some of the issues that we've had ongoing and this had intended i think to be started a little bit earlier this fall however because of some of the staff turnover and other challenges that we've talked about we had a little bit of a delayed start but we're looking to start that stakeholder engagement either later this month or in early in the new year and then the other update that i wanted to give was around year-round compost collection
056i know that this is a um something that's been of big interest that was also mentioned in the plan that was also mentioned in the previous comprehensive organics management plan so we're excited to share that we are going to be doing that as a soft launch this year we'll be doing a monthly collection for january february and march and we're taking this opportunity to kind of learn about doing that organics collection during the winter months it will be in the carts only so because of the issues with picking up leaves and bundles of branches in the winter weather we'll just be doing the cart collection and so that will start in january and we'll have a little bit more information to come the specific details on this schedule and um some recommended uh like things
057that you need to do to put your food in the cart to keep it from basically freezing to the side of the cart so the collection will still be efficient um and yes i think that is everything i had to share so up next in our presentation will be um jenny to share an update on the our presentation on the circular economy paper hi everyone i'm jenny patoski i'm the solid waste outreach and compliance specialist i'm going to share my screen kaelin you got to let me do it should be good all right so back in may 2020 uh the online journal sustainability pro approached uh dr stoltz about contributing to an a special issue around the circular economy and cities reached out to public works and management and staff decided that we did want
058to work on collaborating to write a paper together so we wrote this paper envisioning a circular economy the journey of one mid-sized midwestern city you can see all the contributors there um galen myself missy uh our former resource recovery manager eileen naples and then a lot of interns and a equity fellow as well so why did we want to write this paper we thought it would be a good way to generate interest around this really amorphous idea of what is the circular economy we thought it would also build and better cement the partnership between the office of sustainability and innovation and the department of public works and we got a lot of things out of this you know first of all we're published this is a published paper so that was really awesome we also
059started uh we were able to showcase the things that we've already done in the city of ann arbor because we've done a lot in this realm and we're also able to start generating a lot of momentum around what is circular economy and it also set us up for grant funding which i'll talk about it set us up to do recruitment i don't know if this is true but i hope it's part of what brought sarah here um so i i want to talk about what the circular economy is i can't see you all but if you'd raise your hand if you know what the circular economy is like your physical hand i would appreciate that okay i see a few of you you know what it is so bait thank you so basically the circular
060economy is the idea of moving back towards a culture that is regenerative this is if you knew anybody who was around during the great depression they saved everything because things had value our throwaway culture has really only been around since after world war ii so we want to move back towards that culture where things have value and you can see this pyramid here has um some ideas of how we use our resources and the best ways to use our resources and the least best ways to use our resources so removing the need for that resource is the best way to deal with that resource so if you think about like the strawless campaign did you do this foreign campaign if you did you remove the need for that resource and then um reducing this is
061like thinking of things like printing on double sided both sides of your paper so you reduce the need for paper resourcing it's um this is changing our source of things so this is moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy reuse you're using something in the same flow so this might be i'm getting rid of a cabinet in my house and i'm gonna put it in my garage for you so not reusing it and then down here we get to recycle so recycle is not the best use we have all these other uses of our resources that are better and a real key here is redesign we have to think about these things from the beginning thinking about our waste from the back end as waste is not beneficial we need to start thinking about how
062we design these things out so our paper we know that there's all these practices out there regarding circular economy there's some in the united states there's a lot more in europe we know that there's this theory that there's all these practices people writing about the circular economy and we really wanted to look at both of these and pull them in and see what the city of ann arbor could potentially do in this realm so for the purpose of this paper we use the ellen macarthur foundation definition they're very big organization in this realm so a circular economy aims to redefine growth focusing on positive society-wide benefits it entails decoupling economic activity from the consumption of finite resources and designing waste out of the system underpinned by a transition to renewable energy sources the circular model
063built economic natural and social capital so when we were thinking about the circular economy we we saw all these different things that we could do and we wanted to provide some kind of categorization so we used this classification system from dr stones's previous research and we said you need to have actions from all 12 of these categories in order to have a successful cultural shift from a consumptive economy to one that is circular and the next parts of this presentation are going to talk about most of these top most of these categories collaboration and partnerships so when we talk about the circular economy we're talking about a complete cultural shift we cannot do a cultural shift in a vacuum we need collaboration we need partnerships um one thing that we're working to become part of
064is the washington regional resource management authority it's seven communities in washington county they work together to align on messaging to leverage their combined energies we are also working with washington county we're part of their plan implementation advisory committee for their solid waste plan so they ask for our input on how to help implement their solid waste plan as um kayla mentioned we have contracts with recycle ann arbor for curbside residential recycling we work with be care denali for composting just south of the city um is our compost facility a lot of organ a lot of municipalities don't have a compost facility that close and working with the ecology center as kayla said in the future we'd really like to leverage the a20 partners network to in regards to the circular economy we'd also like to
065work with spark in washington community college to incubate circular economy businesses we want to work with new to incubate circular economy non-profits district 2030 if you don't know what they are they are an organization that aims to reduce emissions and water usage in buildings we could potentially work with them to work on waste within buildings we're working with environment great lakes and energy that's a michigan department at the state level they have a materials marketplace this is a place if you're an organization or a municipality or a business you can go here and you can buy and you can sell goods so it's like a reuse marketplace um when i talk about collaboration we're gonna need to work with industry groups even though we may traditionally see them as as the enemy or the opposition
066we feel we really need to work together so for instance the recycling partnership is a organization of a lot of very large plastics producers um but they're really working to improve recycling in the united states so they fund things like recycling carts for municipalities and tagging programs to improve the contamination rate in the recycling the product stewardship institute they're working on extended producer responsibility legislation this is the idea where the manufacturer is responsible for the good at the end of its life rather than the consumer or the municipality we're also working with italy which is local units of government for sustainability in fact we are part of their circle city scan tool pilot 2.0 so in this pilot we're looking at the goods and services coming into the city of ann arbor and those going
067out and helping to focus on what will have that most impact on the circular economy so there's only four organic four cities that they asked to participate in this it was denver colorado cupertino california maui city hawaii and the city of ann arbor and then we're also part of the urban sustainability directors network funding funding is always an issue what do we have right now we have the sustaining ann arbor together grants this is up to ten thousand dollars available to an organization um that's working on some kind of sustainability initiative in the city in the future we want to keep promoting those grants um we'd also like to do a holistic assessment of what kind of funding is out there for instance can we use city funding to leverage industry grants or foundational funds
068what does that framework really look like um what have we done we've recently applied for an eagle infrastructure grant so our drop-off station where we accept um recycling that is not accepted curbside it's located on a landfill and the landfill is sinking but it's not all syncing at the same rate so our our building is kind of doing something like this so we would like to move that building to a more stable location and to expand the services that are offered there and we're doing that in collaboration with recycle ann arbor and washtenaw county as i said the recycling partnership has this tagging program i think we've applied for a grant for to be part of that we're also working on this next cycle this is an initiative put out by the state of michigan
069it's based on a colorado model but ours is more innovative and has more challenge tracks and we have applied for quite a few grants so um raise your hand if you're familiar with the reusable takeout container pilot few of you so the city of ann arbor started this pilot where there's i think three participating restaurants that i have reusable takeout containers for their food and we are have done a first phase and now we're looking at phase two so we applied for a grant out of the micros track we've also applied for a grant for our metrics creation we want to our current metrics around resource management focus on end of life composting recycling versus trash and what we really want to start looking at is how do we elevate what's being done regarding reuse
070regarding repair regarding refurbishment what are our local businesses doing how can we measure that inventory and then promote it so we've applied for a grant for that we're also a stakeholder in the urban wood reuse um program so this was a flows track which has to do around organics management and it's really trying to find a way to create markets for urban wood and we've been asked to be a stakeholder there infrastructure i mentioned before we have the drop-off station the compost facility the materials recovery facility uh is being refurbished and i think is about ready to open i believe they're going to have their official launch on earth day 2022 we work with the county on the household hazardous waste and again there's a lot of reuse rental and repair facilities in the city
071and in the county at large and the county has a trash to treasures guide that lists all of these types of businesses you can see the the materials recovery facilities opening we want to do that expanded drop-off station i mentioned earlier for those of you who don't know our libraries rent more than just books they rent um games they rent musical equipment musical instruments so we want to really promote that and like to expand that so the idea that we don't need to buy something is that we can just go borrow it from the library there's also these things called repair cafes and fix-it clinics these are really things that can be done at the neighborhood level so let's say i have a shirt that's ripped and i wanted to get it fixed so i
072could come to a repair cafe and there would be a local volunteer there who would sell my shirt while i sit there and talk with them um a fix-it clinic i would bring the shirt and they would show me how to sew it rather than they would do it for me so this builds um resilience in the community it builds community itself and it helps to re to create more value in our goods and then i also want to talk about the swap days so sister lakes association has done these they've done two of them the idea is you take your goods that you no longer want but that are still in a good shape and you put them out at the road and people in the community can come and take them if they
073want and then at the end of the day you're responsible for bringing those things back into your own home that didn't get taken so this is again a way to build resilience and community plans the city of ann arbor has eight to zero for those of you don't know there's strategy five um which is change the way we use reuse and dispose of materials part of that includes moving towards a circular economy we have our latest solid waste resource management plan also known as the schwarm so that really built on our 2016 comprehensive organics management plan in the future it's going to be really important to integrate our plans the city has lots of different plans we're hoping h zero can kind of be a way to integrate all those plans so for instance when
074you talk about permitting you could bring in things like materials usage are people buying goods that for their permits that are made from recycled materials when you look at zoning you can talk about prioritizing a low carbon lifestyle capital improvements again one are those materials being used and also what are those materials that are deconstructed what's happening with those materials when you talk about land use and regional solutions we talk about supply chains local supply chains create less greenhouse gas emissions than very large global supply chains outreach and education kayla mentioned we are working with the ecology center we do fairs galen knows about this a20 ambassadors program galen started this it brings together and trains interested people around climate change around 820 with the idea that those members then go back out into the
075community and talk to the community about what they've learned in the future we want to continue to leverage that program we're also potentially looking at a green business challenge which would be recognizing businesses for doing things in alignment with a20 we could look at staff awareness stress training we could also look at integrating um circular economy and sustainability issues into school curriculums we could work a spark on um really incubating those circular economy businesses and in fact we are working to spark on that we could also work with professional chapters to help people understand what the circular economy is and vocational programs could be something do people know how to repair do they know how to refurbish policies and laws so in 2013 the city adopted the sustainability framework it's integrated into the city's master
076plan it includes an environmentally preferred purchasing policy this allows us to make decisions on when we purchase goods on other things than just the bottom the dollar amount and we have a commitment to power all municipal electricity by 2035 with renewables in the future we could talk about supporting state and federal laws such as extended producer responsibility in the schwerm we have um construction and demolition debris guidance it specifically wants to write an ordinance that would require providing information on how much demolition debris you have and then the next set of ordinances after we collect that data would be creating um landfill guidance of trying to remove that waste from the landfill we could expand our environmental preferable purchasing policy we could repeal the ban on bans currently we can't ban single-use items we can't
077ban plastic bags because the state has forbid that another thing we could do is require compost and city infrastructure projects and gardens when we talk about programs and practices so we're already doing this composting and in 2013 we started accepting food scraps that's all food scraps according to the schwarm a lot of people don't know that we in the city of ann arbor don't know that we collect food scraps when i say that i include meat bones eggs bread so that's something that can be shared widely and will be very beneficial we give out free wood chips and mulch so instead of putting those in the compost give them to people to use we also have an obsolete products policy whereby things don't get thrown away instead they get sold for reuse in the future
078i talked about that green business challenge we could talk about expanding our materials programs like composting um community solar energy efficiency programs and then working with things like spark to incentivize recruitment of sustainable manufacturing and businesses social equity and inclusion right now a20 is based on three tenants it's equity sustainability and transformation we also have some technology called cityworks this is a works management program it includes it increases transparency so anybody who requests a service from the city it goes into this work management program and then it also includes when we responded when we closed the issue so there's transparency around who gets what we can go back and look at that we have an engagement toolkit um kayla was talking about our engagement process earlier that has a list of probably over 100 organizations
079that we could potentially outreach to for any project we're doing so that really helps us to be expansive and thoughtful about who we're reaching then over the last three years we've had some equity trainings in the future we could ground our work in targeted universalism uh this would be to ensure that the greatest and first benefit of our circular economy would go to those who have been most negatively impacted we could also evaluate all our actions as to their equity and justice information studies assessments and monitoring this is important you know what gets measured gets attention so what have we currently been looking at as i said before we've been looking at end of life we've been looking at waste to landfill versus waste to recycling versus waste to composting this is called a diversion
080rate um we've also been looking at our uh our recycling stream with um audits regular audits of how contaminated they are and our contamination rate is around 10 which is very low for our for any community in the future we'd like to do like a materials flow assessment as i mentioned from that uh pilot that we're doing we'd like to look at all the goods and services coming into the city and those going out to help us determine where to focus we want to move towards those front end metrics as i mentioned how do we inventory and measure what repair and reuse etc are doing technology i said we have the city works technology the other benefit of city works technology is you can schedule preventive maintenance and predictive maintenance and when you do preventive
081maintenance your goods your your things last longer so when i get an oil change which is preventive maintenance on my car my core car lasts longer when you get a checkup on your hvac system regularly your hvac system lasts longer so city bricks makes that automated and extends the life of our goods which means we have to purchase less goods and we're using our resources more efficiently um we have these things called big bellies you might have seen these downtown these are uh you can touch this pedal down here and it opens it and it's a trash compacting and it's powered by solar power and when it's compacting the trash you're supposed to be able to realize efficiencies in your pickup schedule um it's also a platform for other 5g technology if that's desired in
082the future we'd like to have we'd like to take all those businesses that in the circular economy that we've inventoried and we'd like to put them in an app so that the average person can have access to them and they can see where they are we'd also like to put it on a dashboard so that policymakers and commissioners can have access to them and they can see them again what gets measured its attention potentially expanding big belly containers cameras in solid waste vehicles or containers to help us pinpoint contamination um and then business process innovation this is this is really important when we talk about the circular economy we're talking not just about like repair and refurbishment but what is the technology and the business processes that support that so for instance like thredup is
083a is an online retailer for used clothing there has to be a new business process to get those clothes back you know they go out and how do you get them back and what is the technology that allows you to support that so there's a lot of innovation and technology in that realm and that's what i have as far as the presentation if i would like to open it up to kind of talk about some of this if you all feel like it for instance what are you doing that's circular what about this interests you how can we build in equity and what can we do to support that work if that makes sense to talk about this and that that completes the staff presentations that we had planned so it's really open for questions
084and discussion on um anything that that i had shared sarah or jenny as well okay yeah thanks you all um thanks all of you uh are there any questions please raise your hand uh chris graham um i'm very impressed with this and and sort of stunned about how far and how deep you've gone into how to do it in my view plastics are the hardest thing right now to get a grip on um in my business i purchase nearly all plant material except bald trees in one sort or another plastic container with one sword or another of a plastic label um [Music] i'm sure i wasn't supposed to be putting them in the recycle bins a while ago i finally figured out i shouldn't so they're going in the trash bin um because none of
085the vendors from whom i buy plant materials will take them back [Music] the presentation we had at the last meeting i think or one before that from a plastics guy who was saying well now we have plastics that have different coatings on the inside of bottles so they can't be recycled and on and on he went how can we are you working with the people making plastics that we have close by one of the big ones is abso pure to see what policy changes might be made in order to bring the problem into manageable scale um we don't have to have so many different kinds of plastic most of the plant material can go in polyethylene containers just plain polyethylene containers and that those could be recycled eminently i've changed from pvc pipes for drain
086tiles to polyethylene pipes um even in circumstances where um i used schedule 40 the very hard wall pvc pipes i've changed again to double wall polyethylene pipes just as strong way more recyclable way more safe to make um forgive me for pushing on that lever but for me to join you in being better at a circular economy the plastics problem is acute let's see any other any response to that um okay any other questions yeah raise your hand bob meet him uh not a question just a quick comment i appreciate all the information from all of you and i just wanted to pick up on on one nugget amongst it but um i'm really happy that we're getting to the soft launch of the year-round composting i think that's huge and um appreciated you know
087congratulations and thanks to everyone who's making that happen that's so exciting just please be patient with us we are learning this year um john callaway just a little follow up on that you say soft launch is it going to be citywide or are you thinking it's going to be certain parts of the city to start just curious what type of scale you're going to start with sure can you hear me yes oh great okay um no it will be city-wide uh when i say soft launch it's just trial and error we know the challenge educate everybody to you know properly hold their you know put their food waste in containers that won't freeze and stick to the carts um and service could be just a little slow uh if we get a big snow thank
088you um chris you have your hand up on your muted you're muted if you talk about a circular economy that was awfully useful right and you know we put a lot of stuff out on our curb and it gets picked up and people take it off but