001let's get started do we have a four I'll tell you in just a sec you get your mic closer Oh can everybody hear me hello can everybody hear me okay I'll call the roll Commissioner Graham yeah Commissioner Hutton absent Commissioner Skinner Commissioner I need him here councilmember Smith Commissioner Slavik Commissioner up he'll Commissioner give Randall your council member Bannister here commissioner callewaert yeah chair Brown here commissioner over back and Commissioner Marcus mirskiy here you have a quorum all right thank you so so drive a motion to approve the agenda so second what's up Robert who for approval of the agenda right oh I any nays you know passed unanimously approval of minutes from the June 27th meeting okay do I have a second okay oh you say yeah I say aye aye any nays all
002right passes unanimously so so this is a time for public commentary please come up to the microphone and when you're recognized and public commentary is limited to I believe five three minutes okay so we'll keep a clock and you'll get a signal that your time's up so let's see who does anybody wish to approach the microphone public commentary over here one come on up you know so please state your name first tell what happened everybody hear me okay great it's gonna read a statement good evening my name is Talbott hack I've been a resident of the second Ward since 1992 my wife Jan and I have raised our three kids here and I work for Arbor networks net Scout systems here in town I can't really deeply about the environment in our community and I
003appreciate the work that all of you do on this commission on behalf of the city I've been a member of the recycling Arbor Board for thirteen years including two years as the chair and I'm speaking on behalf of our a a tonight re a has been providing curbside recycling collection and numerous other zero waste services in the city for 41 years the city's recent public opinion survey found that 93 percent of city residents are satisfied or very satisfied with reas curbside service and as the draft solid waste plan notes the city of Ann Arbor has been a leader in waste reduction and recycling programs for decades as the city's primary service provider and partner on these programs for all these years RA deserves no small amount of credit for Ann Arbor's reputation in this area
004which makes it actually all the more shocking that the draft plan that will be discussing I think tonight proposes removing Rea from the core of this partnership the curbside collection service specifically without seeking any competitive bids the city apparently believes they can provide a similar service at half the cost and we just don't agree with that at all we question the financial rigor behind this argument in our opinion the city report does not compare apples with apples and the proposed approach would actually increase the city's cost substantially the Commission should have received a letter today with Ras detailed analysis and conclusions frankly the only way to derive accurate cost for a future curbed curbside service is to seek competitive bids we welcome transparency in the bidding process that compares actual costs we think such a
005process would reveal reas operations are not only cost-effective are also mission effective as you I'm sure know Rea is a nonprofit organization all of our board members our volunteers dedicated to advancing the mission of the organization any operating surplus is reinvested into our mission and the programs that directly affect this community advancing our collective efforts to promote a circular economy the partnership between the city and our AAA has provided our community with consistent reliable recycling and zero waste services that do not exist in most communities in the United States and this includes the comprehensive drop-off station the reuse Center down on South Industrial the urban wood Center the recovery yard for construction materials in debris zero waste event management and much more these services are used by tens of thousands of Ann Arbor area residents
006and businesses every year we are Michigan's oldest largest and most diversified nonprofit recycling zero waste organization working with public private and other nonprofits to build a strong zero waste ethic in our community and with the infrastructure to make it real our service has been a critical part of what's English n arbors national recycling and zero waste leadership we urge you to please do not throw that all the way thank you alright thank you sir anybody else okay many mm-hmm my name is Tom McMurtry a group of us from the solid waste resource plan Advisory Committee sent out an email to the Commission yesterday I would like to summarize the key points of that email first of all the the plan does not adequately address one of two crises in this the city's solid waste system
007the recycling infrastructure the city's MuRF has been closed for three years forcing huge financial expense to the city diminished sorting capacity to the region and added carbon emissions on the planet the recycling drop-off station has been in need of replacement for 15 years we strongly believe that the city should prioritize the reopening of the shuttered MuRF the plan abandons any role in recycling collection and education for our a a recycle an arbor started curbside service and Ann Arbor 41 years ago virtually every aspect of recycling services in Ann Arbor has been provided by our a during that time the projected cost savings of eliminating our AAA are not credible currently the residential sector has high recovery rates an extremely high over ninety percent support residential support an alternate way of consolidating solid waste services by
008material stream instead of service sector was repeatedly suggested by committee members and was repeatedly ignored the current plan continues the confusion of having several entities collecting recycling collect recycling material we would prefer to see recycling collection consolidated under one collection provider the plan includes no zero waste proposals in spite of a lengthy set of suggestions offered early in the process by committee members the plan offers no vision or goals for the city's solid waste programs there were no stated environmental financial or performance goals in the plan despite the fact that all our previous plans had those critical objections from the advisory committee were ignored requests for tests votes on controversial recommendations were denied despite the fact that the organizers allow the group to vote on other matters we support year-round organics collection and the proposals
009to improve downtown services these two things were included in the plan we urge the environmental commission to recommend that the residential organics proposal and the downtown section of the plan be adopted by City Council and that the remainder of the plan be set aside and be used for informational purposes only thank you thank you now would anybody else like to come to the microphone sorry please state your name first yeah I'm Ian Robinson I've been a resident of Ann Arbor for 20 years I'm also the president of the Huron Valley area Labor Federation which is the afl-cio CIO at the county level for counties including Washtenaw representing about 50 local unions and about 20,000 workers I'd like to observe first of all that workers are important stakeholders in this process that we're talking about tonight
010both on the recycle and Arbor side and on the county side we have union workers and yet they weren't really incorporated into this planning process so I'd like to suggest that in the future when these kinds of matters are being discussed that unions and workers should be part of that discussion in a formal way turning to what seems to be coming out of the current process we here on Valley and the affiliates which include the city workers opposed the proposal to consolidate solid waste services by service sector meaning dividing them between residential and and commercial instead we support the counter proposal that would explore consolidating services by material stream so recycling on the one hand waste on another and compost as three streams that could be consolidated each one that approach is is one that's
011favored by a number of groups in addition to here on Valley that we've been talking with both on the labor side and I think you you heard a version of that by the previous speaker I think it's really important for public entities in the county the University of Michigan all of these kinds of bodies that you know have elected leadership and serve the public interest to recognize that an important part of what that public interest is is ensuring that the employees who do the work are Union represented and are paid living wages of the sort that union representation is generally able to secure and lack of it is generally not and so it's really important as part of the overall deliberations in addition to considering what makes a rational and efficient waste and recycling system
012to also think about how do we ensure that we use union workers as much as possible if we consolidate recycling under recycle Ann Arbor and we consolidate solid waste disposal under County workers then we have all of the work being done by union workers which is not the case now and would not be the case under the proposal that the person hired and paid a quarter of a million dollars to come up these recommendations has proposed so that concludes my remarks thank you thank you anybody else ok this concludes the public comment period there'll be another one later so you'll have oh no you can come up I guess all right my name is Alana deg and I am here representing a new group that's just Formica pesticide-free Ann Arbor we're partnering with be safe
013Ann Arbor as well we're partnering with be safe Ann Arbor as well as some of this some of the citizens who worked to stop the Washtenaw County roads commission from spraying the county roadways and so we're kind of starting this new group and with the mission to educate our fellow community members about the dangers of pesticides and lawn chemicals and we're hoping to while we're kind of focusing on private property and businesses and schools and institutions and U of M we're hoping to partner with City Council and the environmental Commission and kind of see where we could maybe form some kind of Alliance or get some kind of official support from you even if it's kind of in the form of a resolution so we are currently working with an Bannister on a resolution that
014would basically kind of say these are Ann Arbor City policies for the use of pesticides and herbicides we know we already have pretty progressive policies and so we would like to just kind of get that formalized in some way so that we can then present that to other institutions and the University of Michigan and kind of say this is where we officially stand so there will be a I think the resolution is on the agenda but we were gonna take some more time with it and kind of figure out more which direction we want to go and kind of how the city could help us with that so and we're hoping to maybe get on the official agenda later on where I think Steve you said that we could possibly get on in December and
015maybe have this have like a longer format to talk about pacifies - so that's thank you okay well thank you so so this is finally it for public commentary number one again we'll have a public commentary period at the end of the meeting so so unfinished business do we have any unfinished business I don't believe we do so let's move on to new business the first item on the agenda is a presentation to recycle and Arbor YMS Missy's thoughts will be presenting something so I think you all know that we run a grant program called sustaining Ann Arbor together which is a program that helps any citizen nonprofit Neighborhood Association that's doing something to enhance sustainability to get the resources they need to help kind of it move us all collectively forward and last year
016we were able to squeeze in recycle Ann Arbor with a program but we didn't have a really good chance to celebrate that so we thought we would do it tonight in the vein of talking about solid waste why not so I'm delighted to have Eric here she's gonna tell you a bit about the program but congratulations this is for you you already got your check though so you know where everybody the tokens aren't even handed off the grant award this is for a redo of a recycling guide kind of getting to a zero-waste guide for the community so congratulations thank you and tell us about it all right I put together I know you have a packed agenda today so I put together a pretty brief overview of what this project is and what's been
017done we began this work in alright so here we are so we began this work in May and so to date we have a good deal of it done so basically you may or may not be familiar with recycling Ann Arbor's A to Z recycling guide but what it is is it was launched in January of 2000 2016 and it is a searchable database of 280 pages of items that include instructions for each item on where you can recycle or reuse these items or where you can properly dispose of them in the case of home toxics these results are they pertain to the services offered by recycle Ann Arbor exclusively since its launch in 2016 this guide is the number one reason that people come to recycle an arbor org and it has thousands upon
018thousands of users per month it has virtually unlimited capacity to build out so what given that that that is it's a it's a smart tool that has this capacity I think it was here at this very commission where John mirskiy brought up this A to Z guide back and maybe November of the previous year this idea of expanding this guide to a zero waste guide and including services beyond what recycling Arbor exclusively offers and he brought that idea to recycle an arbor and we were thrilled by it I was thrilled by it so we began this project the project is a truly collaborative project with volunteers many of which are in this room tonight I need to recognize the hard work of John mirskiy Steve Brown Bridget Bower Lisa and Carlton mundus and Nancy stone
019my nerves got the best of their yes and so this group of passionate citizens plus a few recycling and arbors staff put put aside a lot of time to first analyze all of the pages of this guide and write up and do research on recycle right tips because as we all know contamination is a problem in the industry so tips per 280 pages of how to recycle these items right and zero waste tips on how to reduce the use of these items altogether and that piece has been executed it was divided amongst the team and Bridget Bower has updated all 280 of those pages yesterday was her last day before she returns to the MSU James Madison residential college and this project wouldn't been possible without her the second step was to add compost items
020this was more complicated and we had to do some web development that web development has been completed the compost items are in the guide I have a final step to just add some instructions about curbside compost and then we need to add the drop-off compost which is a smaller amount of items next we also added a feedback form on every single page of the guide where people can go to it and they don't see what they're looking for they still have a question they can immediately email that information and I get that in my inbox it was launched a couple weeks ago and many people are already using it some people are using it instead of calling to find out what they can recycle and then the last two parts of the project were to
021create an embeddable version of the A to Z guide that we could gift to the city and the county to go on their websites and a Google AdWords campaign to drive more traffic to the website to that in a second so what's been accomplished I already spoke too much of that so the 280 280 pages have been assessed and the information has been updated the compost content has been curated we worked with Jennifer Petoskey at the city and Don at wee wee care to come up with that list and the feedback form has been launched and is in use we have this here if you see on the screen this is what the embeddable guide will look like and it is ready to gift to the city and to the county and our web developers
022that we contract with are willing to support the embed of that with the to make sure it works properly with a different open-source software or software that the city and county may be using and then we had initial meetings I had initial meetings yesterday we work with iam use digital marketing professors to have student groups at EMU run Google and we have a Google Ads grant and so this this semester starting in the fall we will have a team of grad students in the integrated marketing communications team that will be developing the Google ad campaign for our A to Z guide and as well as social media toolkit to go with that too so that was just kind of developed yesterday that was pretty exciting another piece that we developed along the way that was
023an added benefit wasn't really in the plan is we developed a way to track and track and collect every single item that people type into that search field and so people are using it by the thousands in a week and I have all of those search terms so I can see trends of what people are looking for and where they're coming from which is pretty exciting so what's next is the social media toolkit the ad campaign and getting that guide embedded at the county and the city's website if they so choose so I thought that if you have any questions you could ask them but I just would again to not appreciate the the people that put in a lot of time to make this project be very successful in pretty short amount of time
024so and we hope to have a Phase two of this project at a later date could be something like developing iPhone apps or adding organizations like the University of Michigan and other areas around the community and their recycling rules Thanks yeah well thank you very much well done well done yep it's been a great resource to me over the last 22 years since I've moved here so the next item on the agenda is the solid waste resource management plan draft and the power plan see the PowerPoint presentation to the environmental conditioner yep so I Cristina or Crescent yep okay which is a view the one that says for you thank thank you chair chair Brown good evening Commission my name is Kristen Slaton with a city bein a republic services area the manager and lead
025for the solid waste resources management plan that's been underway for a bit over a year along with me tonight first just introductions along with me Craig QP my boss the Public Services administrator and all of our bosses Howard Lazarus has also been very involved as the project along with Missy Stoltz a part of our team [Music] Molly much Jeff's key isn't back charlie fleadome who is part of the consultant team has led the facilitation of the process and then Christina Siebert our project manager from apt on the lead consultant who's going to come up and take over for me in a little bit about how I'm going to do the introductory portion of the presentation turn it over to Christina and then come back and wrap up and actually one thing though to in advance
026the item that was read by mr. Mehra retreat that staff received a copy of that and so I'm prepared to touch on those bullet points after the end of the presentation so I'll come up kind of close that go through those items before we turn it over for open questions and discussions really of the presentation and items as a whole so with that I will move us through that our team last came to the Commission in April this spring I gave an update of the project and things were going on so what's been done since then we've completed the draft report was the initial draft prepared by the consultant team reviewed back forth with staff that was then shared with our project advisory committee and as part of the package here with the Commission and
027a fifth meeting of the Advisory Commission an added meeting was authorized in our food by City Council that had been requested by the committee at our fourth meeting to meet one more time around the plan itself so that meeting was held last week and that also completes our public engagement task for the project so through this effort what have we produced what have we got with us and moving forward so we have asked for as part of the scope key item and have received a financial model a lot of concerns from the Commission from the community from staff revolve around the finances and the health of the solid waste fund the program and the desire for added programs but also the matter of how do we fund those so we now have a financial model
028which has been developed which was established and used for the cost of service analysis and was based on actual fifth fiscal year 18 costs so that's based on real numbers and as a tool in developing the plan but also a tool left with the city as items get implemented forest moving forward and in addition the plan itself a total of 24 recommendations as described here on the slide 20 recommendations and five areas aspects of the program three related to funding for the solid waste programs and an item related to quite a large savings potential that came out of the cost of service analysis that was discovered there and of course we'll be talking about that so questions around this plan especially compared to other plans the city has done a lot of plans folks like
029yourself and other boards and groups and even departments in the city this plan was not as a slice as your traditional strategic plan with talking and setting goals and then working down on those the city has solid waste goals that are part of the city's sustainability framework that have been adapted by council that were cold and pulled from past plans and those goals are still valid what this plan is looking to do is set up those actions and things and programs to move us forward through those goals so while this plan did not develop goals our feeling is those goals are still valid and this is going to help us move and advance them and to actually explain the graphic here was really part of the reason and validation for even that scope of looking
030at those actions and programs that write with initial feedback through stakeholder interviews focus group with downtown business interests and actually our visioning session with you folks last August at the start of this meeting yes there were talks of yes that thousand foot high in the atmosphere items of zero waste goals getting in our back as leaders but at that same time there are a lot of items as we have here we got issues with trash and student move and move out we had a major item at the business focus group of a business owner furniture store in the downtown of flies on their inventory as a result of the programs and that the programs needed improvement in their service delivery and so that validated for us as the team that scope of looking at those
031programs and how to how do we move forward with those some other activities that have been going on that we've actually talked with you folks about and also been talking with others even outside of the city that are related but parallel to this process regional collaboration there's been work through the county and they're solid waste plan amendment which again led early all my three minutes are up Emily I'm done I guess I gotta keep going okay all right good but before our plan started the county was amending their solid waste plan the city participating of the Hat the staff represented as a municipal representative on that committee and one of the recommendations I that was regional collaborations there been a lot of efforts with that and in fact the county staff lead person on that
032deal Egremont was a part of our advisory committee so we kept folks up to speed on that the city of Murph and recyclables processing well know it's been talked about that's been an issue and focus both around this project and even a part of it which get to it later but also just to point out that actually was our situation with a Murph that was a foundational item for that talk with regionalization and that stated in the report that our RS the consultant for the county on looking at regionalization stated that's one of the key foundations to get us started in that so you want to look at that that silver lining if you will and the drop-off station replacement in options again because I was mentioned with mr. MacMurray's item and I want to
033get to the meat of this but I'll come back to kind of discuss how these things though outside the core of the project but they are related but those really have been handled and dealt with out in that regional aspect and again those views working with the county and their consultants and studies of those as a system and actually for those that oh it was on the slide what warmer was so I don't have to do that so some of the cost impacts are effects of those parallel items just provide that and I know there's questions in it and people wondering about that so in the regional collaboration that's an effort that's just getting off the ground it's this new Authority warm ax is being formed and so it's an initial member commitment of $5,000
034that those communities that have joined are contributing to that and that amount is being matched by the county so that would would have been the initial investment or cost for us on that but depending on the direction of where that body goes in the future those costs of course would be subject to change based on where where they go with the activities that they're taking and the city Murph's and recyclables again a lot of concerns a lot of discussion and again we'll get into some of that later but in terms of the costs involved with the transport of recyclables or by not processing in our circles here directly locally and yes that does have impacts but also an impact globally through recycling is also the impacts of commodity markets and again we have a whole
035session on that but we'll touch on that in a bit as well and then again they drop-off station replacement options that those costs and that item has been on there a tour that's been in our capital improvements plan for a number of years as it's called out in the plan we're looking for partners and it is actually serving as a regional facility only half of the customers that use a facility are from the city the other half are outside the city from the region and so that's long been seen as a regional facility and funded and approached that way and in fact that was a recommendation again back to another study from IRS for the county that that should be done and funded through the county or an authority such as wormer that's being formed
036so just to provide a little snapshot and insight and really visual of the recyclable markets the commodity markets and really what's happened over the last two years and so this is for us this is a data from our material revenues and the contracts that we have what's recycling number four processing but the key here too is the shaded area those are actual numbers were brought into the financial bottle that FY 18 and the cost of service analysis and the model so we're really representing what happens through that and as you can see things have started to taper a bit and slow but they are still dropping so it is something certainly that factors in to programs but I would anticipate it things are going to rebound but the big huge question is is when and
037so with that I'm going to turn things Oh nope this was doing sorry one slide to really so goals of the solid waste resources master plan or shrimp I'm still not happy with that acronym but I've come to call it the shrimp so our objective and Lily from our scope of work put in the RFP and built into the contract was we were looking for a strategic approach to provide effective solid waste area services and programs that the community needs and wants what is it that they desire but also cognizant of that it has to be done in a financially sustainable manner that's pulled right from our our documents of what we were looking for we feel we've we've got that here with the plan looking at those service areas and programs now and as
038I said earlier in the opening those goals from the sustainability framework are still there they're still valid we're not discounting them we're not ignoring them but this plan the recommendations out of it and those as they get implemented when they get implemented those can be the foundation for coming back and moving forward to where are those goals being advanced and building on that to perhaps lead a full vision zero plan or other desires of the commission and so with that now I will turn it over to Christina thank you good evening so crescents talked about the public engagement that went into this process we talked about it with you previously on both the times we've been with you public engagement is a really important piece of community level planning obviously developing a plan that doesn't
039take into consideration the users or the customers that are going to be affected by that plan really results in a document that typically will sit on a shelf so as a result the city saw a robust community engagement throughout this process and we have completed several tasks that provide that type of engagement so we've laid those all out here really through this we built from the interviews where there were one-on-one into focus group with the downtown businesses and then into the Advisory Committee an understanding of the needs and the interests of the stakeholders and the members of the community and then the vision overall of the community which has been well established through your sustainability framework and funneled all of that down into the set of 24 recommendations that are in the plan today there
040were a number of different meetings there were more than 60 participants in our advisory committee meetings we've gotten broad representation through all that process and we supplemented all of that with a resident survey that provided input from 400 members of the community at large people who typically probably aren't showing up to meetings like this they're not paying attention related to a lot of things going on at City Council but they're the real users of your programs and their input is valuable and so we asked them questions about their satisfaction and we asked some questions about their interest in other programs and it's all brought in in that development of recommendations we also had some unofficial and informal discussions with members of the community outside of the process that all have fed into this analysis that
041we have completed so with the presentation to the Advisory Committee last week we had very clear support for many of the recommendations that are in the plan there was verbalized support from those committee members there was written support on several of the recommendations there was opposition voice to one recommendation and that's on the consolidation of residential services all two in-house city crews and that was voiced by about six or ten participants within that process within that meeting so we want to take a little time right now to go through what the justifications are for the inclusion of that as a recommendation in the plan and the calculation of the cost savings because there have been questions around that so in broad terms the rationale is that there was an interest from the community and from
042stakeholders in streamlining services there's confusion around who provides services in a lot of different areas there are several different contractors and service providers that are collecting within the city so one way to streamline services is to consolidate within a certain sector within a customer base to who is providing that service and bring it down to one provider that also provides one point of contact for the resident or for the business whichever type of consolidation we're looking at that also provides a service efficiency and it's very important for the purposes of keeping the operation as efficient as possible for staffing for equipment when we're talking about residential services it's the same truck same type of truck the same type of container the same repair and maintenance needs the same route that is being run regardless of
043whether you're picking up trash or picking up compost or picking up recyclables by bringing all of that under one provider the city the city already has knowledge of those routes they have knowledge of the equipment they have knowledge of the customers and they're now being able to utilize their staff in cross roles when needed to cover vacations or sick time they're able to use the fleet in cross purposes if there is a piece of equipment that goes down if they have a truck that goes out of service unexpectedly they can draw from that existing fleet and be able to supplement all of their operations if they can effectively and through the structure of the current contract there's an incentive to have more carts on the street than may possibly be warranted multifamily properties oftentimes they
044are served by recycling carts while they have trash dumpsters and I've seen it myself being in town on collection days and driving past a multifamily apartment complex and seeing you know 20 or 30 carts that are set out curbside to be collected when really a couple of dumpsters would probably be best served but the city provides the dumpster collection now recycle Ann Arbor provides cart collection and they're paid for the collection on the number of carts that they are collecting another reason we looked at this is it's consistent with what other communities do we've heard comments that the alignment by stream is what's something is something that's done in many communities and that it provides a high value we did the research we don't see that happening in fact the high diversion communities that we've
045looked at those being Madison Wisconsin San Francisco Seattle they all have a single provider for all of their residential collection services zero waste coal communities like Austin and Boulder also have that service provided by a single provider whether it's trash recycling a compost to a single customer they see efficiencies in that and the reason that we really have strived to keep this in is there's a significant cost saving so we've identified through this seven hundred seventy five thousand dollars in the first year that can help to support the costs of other recommendations it can also allow the focus to be placed more appropriately on the education and outreach to make sure we're getting the high quality of materials into those carts and getting materials into the right place instead of focusing on providing service through
046the pickup of a cart and emptying it into a truck and driving to the next step so just to walk through the cost savings and we're going to focus first on the labor because this is really where the significant difference comes in in the costs under the city's current structure with their contract with recycling arbor recycling Arbor is paid on a cost per lift so for every cart that they pick up they receive a fee per month of at the time of the cost of service study was $4 per cart they also receive an incentive payment of eighteen dollars and 74 cents per ton of recyclables picked up when you look at the number of cards they're serving it's four dollars and 49 cents for each of those lifts that covers their labor but the
047cost of labor and obviously cut includes their supervision of those routes but the city provides the trucks the city maintains the trucks and the city provides the fuel so there's an added cost that goes on top of at four dollars and forty nine cents when we did the cost of service analysis we have information now on what the city's cost is to collect and the trash collection is serving the same customers it's using the same equipment it's providing the exact identical service at a cost of $2 and 44 cents per cart so we're saving $2 and five cents per cart on the trash collection compared to the recycling collection and that's a savings that would carry over if the city is performing that recycling collection in-house just real quick to show you how the recycling
048Arbor invoice looks when it comes to the city there are a number of different areas that they have included in their curbside contract but items 1 & 2 the number of carts and the price paid per cart and then that tonnage incentive and the cost paid per ton that's collected those are what go into the recycling collection cost the other items are all items that while they're within the contract from our AAA get assigned to other cost areas within the city's financial reporting so when we're talking about comparing these different numbers these services aren't part of that savings calculation those other services include business customer education and support when they have a new business customer that they sign up it includes special event services it includes a maintenance reimbursement so if recycling Ann Arbor performs
049maintenance on the trucks that are the city's trucks they then build that back to the city and the city logs that as a maintance expense for the fleet and then there's other adjustments for services like parks recycling collection multiple tips at parks and Inkheart purchases that factor into that cost as well so when we roll everything together this chart here shows the comparison of current costs versus the future costs with RA as the current provider in the city is the future provider and working from the bottom of the graph we've got the fleet cost and Orange we've got repair and maintenance in the dark gray we've got fuel and light gray and we had that labor component in red and again we see that most of those costs are very similar you know we're coming
050out a million dollars on the our a contract currently slightly lower than that and City provided service and that game comes from reduced repair and maintenance costs because if the city can internalize the repair and maintenance costs it's to be consistent with their trash maintenance of those vehicles they have efficiencies by performing that maintenance themselves and we've got the labor component so all that works out to about a million dollars in savings just on recycling collection where we have this recommendation coming down to a savings of seven hundred and seventy five thousand dollars is because we also acknowledged that as time has passed the city has changed its staffing for its compost collection services from a temporary staffing for many of their drivers to a regular full-time staffing for those drivers and that carries a
051higher cost so we did offset it with that higher cost as an acknowledgment that there are changes happening within this area so I want to step it back to the higher level and now of the plan itself and talk about what we've got within the 200 or so page document that was sent to you the whole document with all of the complete attachments is over 400 pages the two really big tools that came out of this that the city was looking for and that are going to really provide a lot of guidance I think going forward was the cost of service analysis that we talked about in April which talks about based on current cost actual costs what the cost is per function and how we get to the different costs for each of these
052different services so we can see where there's a higher labor cost or a higher fleet cost or where disposal and processing costs come in the second piece which we didn't have ready of that meeting and we can show you today is the financial model and as Preston talked about this financial model really is going to be a tool for the staff to use going forward not only as we have evaluated the options here and look at what the impacts are to the fund balance but it's a living Excel based tool that will be able to be updated and adjusted as actual costs can be reflected for the ongoing fiscal years and as we revise or refine some of the numbers associated with some of these options because we get more information and then we can
053compare all those costs back to our baseline or our current condition that allows us to see where do we need to add revenue in order to support programs where are we going to see a unexpected or better be able to anticipate to the fund balance over time so to quickly walk through what the financial model looks like each of the components of the model is shown on the next couple of slides and the first component is the tonnage component so the tonnage breaks out by different by the residential streams the waste the recycling the organics and same for commercial and we've held those numbers consistent and flat because the tonnage in the city has been fairly flat over the past five years but as we see changes in that if there are increases or decreases
054in the overall tonnage produced that can be changed and then it will roll through the remainder of the model to adjust cost calculations the next piece is the per tonne disposal or processing fees that's tied to the contracts that the city has for transfer and disposal for the recyclables processing and for compost again as those tonnage amounts above change or as the contract amounts that get paid changed its gonna change what the city has to pay for those components the third piece that are the revenues so revenues include the solid waste millage which is the primary component of revenue the commercial waste fees that are paid by commercial customers and then recycling processing credits that's the revenue so that was the line that crusts and showed you that has been sliding down and has decreased
055over time and with that particular component we actually did reflect the actuals for fiscal year nineteen because there was a significant decrease from fiscal eighteen to nineteen in those revenues so that the model going forward is based off of a lower base of revenue than whatever otherwise been implied we know that one was quite different and so we made that adjustment and then the other types of revenues includes royalties from the transfer station for third-party material the sale of compost at the compost facility things like that so the fourth component then are the expenses by each of those different functional areas broken out to the collection costs the transfer disposal or processing cost and in the administrative allocation that went to each of those areas the fiscal year 18 values there are based straight out
056of the cost of service analysis and the Excel model has the collection components rolled up for purposes of the presentation within the plan but you can unhide those rows and see each of the different components the labor the fleet the repair maintenance the fuel so again as those change we can keep this updated staff can update it with current fiscal year data and then the fifth component is at the end of all of it what's our net operating surplus or deficit in a given year so we'll look at the revenue versus the operating cost and calculate that after that operating surpluses looked at then we have the financial adjustments the financial adjustments are things like pension benefits retiree benefits that have to be factored in those are adjustments that happen from year to year we
057have changes in landfill liability changes in some asset value again these are all costs that hit the fund but they're not direct operating costs and then we have capital projects so these are planned projects that would be in the city step things like replacement of the compost pad you'll see in the full version in the model that we've got cost in there for the drop-off station replacement and the timing at which those are planned then after that we can calculate the fund balance so for each year we have a beginning and an ending fund balance so the fund balance calculation takes into account both at that operating surplus amount as well as all those financial adjustments and capital projects and then the final component is a cost analysis by program for residential and for commercial
058so within that cost Pro that program cost analysis we're looking at what are the revenues that are coming from just that portion of the community what are the expenses that are associated with serving that portion of the community and what is their operating surplus their operating deficit and then for residential customers what does that equate to on a household basis so that we can see are we generating enough revenue to cover our costs for that particular sector are we generating something surplus and therefore subsidizing some other either the other portion of city operations or we've got net deficit or however that comes out compares for the recommendation scenarios we have a couple of additional things that you can see you can see the program additions so we built in what the collection costs and transfer
059disposal costs would be or processing costs would be for each of those different options again calculate the fund balance impact of that option then and then we have a comparison of the direct cost versus the baseline are those current conditions and that's where we should see it number three that direct costs change versus the baseline and then for the residential customers it's that change in the deficit per household from the baseline so we can see are we increasing our costs are we decreasing our class what's our overall impact are we getting back to neutral or are we getting further from so I'm going to go through the recommendations in a very high level I think we've talked about them a lot in the previous meeting and you've probably had a chance hopefully had a chance
060to read through them but I wanted to just hit you know what were the key drivers for each of these different recommendations in the residential sector it was really building on the existing programs the existing services the existing infrastructure the city has a very comprehensive suite of programs for the residential sector it's a matter of getting people to use them and use them to their full benefit and optimizing that infrastructure that will really start to move the needle further on the diversion from the residents in the commercial sector we know that there are businesses that are not participating in the city program as they're supposed to be they may be served by a different trash hauler they may not be participating on recycling at all they're not in compliance with the city's ordinances so that
061was a major driver on the commercial side how do we get everyone participating and contributing to the system and then second how do we increase diversion whether that's just through getting them into those programs that exist now or do we need to add services and in the alleys downtown area was a significant specific focus for the plan how do we improve the conditions in the alleys how do we improve the appearance of the alleys related to solid waste management we've come up with recommendations on that as well and as we start to move towards implementation of the plan obviously we're going to have to balance priorities we know that we can't sacrifice the high quality of service that we have that's a must waste reduction is going to have to happen if we're going to
062make movement towards zero waste but it's an interest within the community to reduce our waste but we have to balance that against the funding that we have available and the willingness of customers to pay if there's going to be an increase in funding so with each of these I'm going to go through the the recommendations again just at a high level but want to point out that for each of the recommendations we identified the resource requirements to implement the recommendation that's how much staff do we need of what type what kind of equipment do we need what is the impact on the city's solid waste fund what is the impact on diversion and what are the greenhouse gas emissions impacts and then we also identified a schedule for implementation for each of these and that
063in that implementation schedule is built based on timing of contracts that currently exist that will be expiring and needing to replace those or have services in place to continue serving that sector the input of the advisory committee when we went through our ranking exercise with them and identifying what was of interest and support for high priority options there and have identified you know for each of these during the planning period how we can implement them every recommendation is marked on an implementation schedule for implementation during the planning period we don't have anything that we've identified that we said nope it should wait until sometime after 2023 again that's conditioned on being able to identify funding to cover some of these options that may carry an increase in cost so on the residential side we talked
064about the consolidated residential collection year round compost collection I think is something that we've heard for a long time going back to when we worked on the organics plan is of interest we've got it all you know tossed it out and I think that it's reasonable particularly with the savings that you'd be able to achieve the residential options could be all rec implemented and still have savings left over based on that savings option on the commercial side we have options for fog management fats oils and grease that's something that's been important within the downtown in particular commercial organics the student move-in and move-out support and we had some opposition to the student move-in and move-out support because it's a small focus within the community or a small portion of the community that's impacted and there
065was a last priority placed on this by the advisory committee we've set that up as a nearer term implementation because the city's doing it now they did it in response to the demand from Council to provide the service they did it in the spring and they are now in the process of doing it during the fall move-in period along the same structure as what's being recommended in the plan commercial participation enforcement that was a top priority that's making sure everybody gets into the system that carries a high price tag what we don't have built into that is the revenue that would be received from bringing in customers who aren't currently part of the system and we didn't do that because we don't know what level of service they have yet education outreach we've heard consistently
066is a need a great way to approach this and what we identified by looking at peer communities is to have a lead point of responsibility for education outreach that's on the city staff and that person should be somebody who has a community-based social marketing background that brings the ideas of how to speak to the community how to reach the community how to motivate them they don't need to be a Content area expert although it probably would be nice to have some municipal utility type background and understanding but they need to have the knowledge of how to work with the community and drive that behavior change for these options we didn't identify the diversion impact or the greenhouse gas emissions impact that's there's a lot more information that would have to be collected of actual performance
067of the implementation most communities and in fact we didn't identify any communities that are actively tracking the impacts of their education programs and the diversion rates what they are tracking is is the customer awareness so they can measure you know were you aware of this program before do you say that you were using this program but there are so many other changes that are often happening around any education and outreach effort that they can't segregate what is a change in program impact versus an education specific impact on the downtown it's no you know no secret to anybody downtown has been an issue you have very busy and thriving downtown along with that comes a lot of material that has to be managed in small spaces and one of the things that was immediately apparent was
068a higher level of service was needed there and when are those areas the busiest on the weekends when the trash and the recycling isn't collected right now so it's the first recommendation is to get a mandatory collection in place for the weekends for those restaurants and bars that are the busiest during that period of time that should remove a number of cards from those alleys because the carts are matched to the demand at the peak and the peak is I get my last pickup on Friday morning and I'm not getting another pickup until Monday I have to bridge Friday night Saturday Sunday so if we can at least cut that maybe in half you're gonna see a lot of carts that will no longer be needed and that will immediately have an impact on that
069appearance downtown the second piece that we're looking at there is let's consolidate containers where we can let's make sure that everybody's contributing equally we're not getting anybody that is you know freeloading off of their neighbor's container and let's consolidate to larger containers taking up a smaller amount of space and be more efficient in this service and then the final two areas that we have recommendations within is the diversion related facilities and the funding diversion related facilities this is related to the drop-off station replacement and the city MuRF operator procurement both of those are as cross and talked about kind of ancillary pieces to this plan they weren't directly looked at within the plan but would you speak to continuing to move those forward within the context of other activities that have been happening on the
070funding we identified options that would include increasing the millage and an identify in a plan how to achieve that increase in the millage as well as the resulting funding that could be generated if it was returned back to its full allowable level it would require a vote from the public probably is a significant effort to do the legwork to bring that about where we can get some cost savings and efficiencies and it advances that or implement other user fees that would be specific to services would be more preferable in terms of the the ease of implementation a second option would be a waste diversion surcharge this would need to be looked at to determine the city's legal authority to impose it but because the recycling component in particular carries a higher cost for many of
071the areas of operation and because it is not a service that is charged to feed out to commercial businesses there would be a logic to applying that waste diversion surcharge to customers whether it's just residents just businesses or possibly both and is being done in other communities Austin has it in place and they've been able to support the growth of their programs through that and then service fees those are a kind of an as-needed you know based on what are there out which other recommendations are implemented and those service fees could be you know $25 for a bulk item you know $100 for an extra pickup during the student move and move out and the information was is in the plan to be able to identify what those would be so finally favorite topic what's
072the fund balance what's fund balance impact how does our fund balance look are we going to have money the financial model does calculate the Sun the fund balance projections for each of the different recommendations and we did not build any added revenue into that model there it's very easy to add an additional line to the model that would reflect additional revenue but we didn't do that because we didn't want to lose sight of the cost impact there are some recommendations that would naturally result in increased revenue like the commercial participation enforcement that would offset a portion of those cost increases we think on that particular option it would pie offset about half of the cost increase there so what we've shown in the graph the orange line in the graph is your fund balance projection
073through fiscal year 2024 based on current conditions as of FY 18 and so you see you've got kind of a stabilization compared to where it's been the last few years you've had some bigger hits that were one-time adjustments that happened prior to fiscal 18 but things that have started to stabilize the blue line shows what would happen to that fund balance if we were to implementations that are identified for implementation through fiscal year 21 again not factoring it and any added revenue that would have come along with that and we see it's about a million dollars per year that's starting to break away so in order to implement everything within that time frame we're going to have to achieve some additional revenue or a greater amount of cost savings that have already been identified which
074could come through a new recyclables processing contract which is currently being sought that could have a lower cost so I guess that would be like my last point on this is that those fund balance productions are based on those current recycling processing costs and also the city murph related costs there's the potential because the city MuRF is not operating currently and the equipment that is sitting there is still on the city's books and has happened fully depreciated that there could be a adjustment required to the fund balance at some point in time at some point in time in the future that would write off the remaining value of that equipment maybe around two million dollars could be as much as six million if it was the entire facility including the building that is a determination
075that gets made by finance but it is something to definitely be mindful of as we're thinking about implementation items it's either factored in over the course of time through a smooth you know consistent year-to-year depreciation for that depreciation last for 40 years if it happens that a one-time hit it will be a one-time adjustment that would then you know have that that shift in the balance and that we can't you know we can't forecast when that would occur from our standpoint so with that thanks thank you Christina so the last item really moving from here how do we move from this plan what are the next steps involved in the overall process and into action so we're here with you folks tonight presenting the final draft plan and September 9th council work session a topic
076of the session is solid waste is the broad topic this plan the recommendations are definitely going to be a key aspect of it as well as an update and background more detailed background information for the council on the warm authority and how these things all all interact and interrelate and other solid waste updates in general and then as Christina's mentioned I've probably touched on some of the near term implementations that touch on with the recommendations but just really getting down to brass tacks we've got contracts that are in place listed here for the recyclables processing and operating the MuRF process our commercial franchise collections of trash and the current contract with recycling Eberron recycling collections curve collections are expiring so movement and action clearly needs to be done on those and as noted we've got
077a recommendation for change in that service so we're going to need some clear direction from ultimately City Council as the deciding factor but on those items as well an approval of contracts to replace these items so that wraps up the presentation as it is as we put together and as I mentioned that at the start though I would like to because I know this was chaired with the Commission and some points that have been raised that mr. mercury presented so just I think we touched on a number of them here but just to add some quick context to background for you folks the first item in terms of the crisis in the Sadoway system and our recycling infrastructure the MuRF and the drop-off station hopefully you've heard we agree that's those are items that need
078to be addressed and have been done on our plate to do and in fact in terms of the MuRF and the processing trying to see what to do with our facility at the start of quick reminder actually at the start of our project as a separate task with Optima was to help staff develop our apiece for the contracts we just mentioned those were set to expire this past June so we knew we needed to replace those when we began working on replacement RFPs including one for the processing of recyclables and actually at one point we were thinking do we combine that with the collections early on the process but at our first advisory committee meeting a subset of the committee said well why are you going out with RFPs if you haven't done this plan
079and figured out what the recommendations are you shouldn't go ahead and then in fact at the December 6 meeting of the Commission you folks passed resolutions and yeah that's right we should wait for the plan to go and so we backed off and we've waited for the plan to be completed so now as the plans being completed and I believe Christina did mention but I had a bit more detail staff has issued an RFP for the MuRF operations for sorting and taking our recyclables back to market and we're looking for options from the consult the proposers providing two specific options one do you want to continue the use of the facility as a transloading operation taking it to another MuRF facility but here we're gonna ask for specific information of where that process is where
080it's located so that we can do an apples-to-apples comparison I know I've heard it tired of our recyclables going to Cincinnati yep so we all are but now how can we compare if people can come in is there something closer and we'll be able to compare that or as a second option and the proposers are free to propose on both do you want to re-equip and restart not literally because the equipment is not usable but react will and begin processing at our facility and what would it take and what would those cost be so again we can have an apples to apples comparison and see what those costs are and to see what direction that is just but to note as Christina mentioned there is a point that if we do look to re-equip there
081is that financial component that we're going to take some level of hit to our fund balance and so those things would all have to be taken into account but also as to the drop-off station as as well as the MuRF just I touched on it in my opening comments but just to add the specifics that though it's they weren't heavy lift items if you will or heavily analyzed items in this plan that was actually on purpose because of the analysis and the work that has been done through work with the county along with the city that again I touched on it but just want to really clarify that it's been looked at the county had a project that the city actually participated in again with staff where they hired the consultant are asked to look
082at drop-off facilities countywide and look at it as a system and it has a specific recommendations recognizing that we have two full drop-off stations in the county hours as I said really acts as a regional facility and went out at Western Washington recycling authority out in Chelsea and just point out that this study was done over 30th of 2017 so well before our plan was done and they specifically say this should be replace but really the capital put in by the county or an authority a group that it it specifically said didn't say the city should be doing it that it's it's a collaborative and a regional facility so that decision was made made sense and aligns with our capital improvements plan so that's a reason why you don't see and why that just to
083clarify it wasn't ignored in this plan it's already been directions been set and similarly in terms of the MuRF as I said we've been looking to replace that processing and the contract but again stepping back a bit and even broader that the actually the true discussion of a new regional authority again a separate study but the county again commissioned from RS they even say that the discussions around authority and regional collaboration really where the foundation of that exploration began because of the county solid waste plan that recommended it but also the city's situation with its MuRF that it has a potential opportunity for a broader facility and so we've been a little judicious and not wanting to put all our eggs into that basket if there's a broader regional solution and actually in their document
084they even say they don't know that our MuRF will fit the right needs and so it may be better used as a transloading operation or actually a big drop-off station so those are the reasons why to mr. Murray's first point it wasn't ignored but has been studied outside and we feel appropriately the second bullet plant abandons any role recycling collection education for our AAA I guess to start I absolutely want to tout and and commend recycling over because the CLE very clear fact recycling is here and as Christine said because of what and to others we Raa they started recycling before anybody recycled probably anywhere I believe definitely in this area in the state and so we're we're standing on the shoulders of those folks that started it but what happened as really the analysis
085cost-of-service announced the process it was a discovery item this cost savings that were potential and I don't necessarily want to go back Cristina laid it out I think pretty well and I'm sure you probably have some questions but it wasn't that that was a driver going in that was something that was discovered and we we can't ignore that that seen this contract that's been a place for some time and also to be clear they were living up to their contract we're paying them what the contract says it's just one thing that it's a long-standing contract that it's probably seen its time and so something new is is really ready for that and that another aspect that has weighed in to this is that City Council at the start of the project weighed in and passed
086a resolution that the city is going to stay in the collection business so to speak and so that's that's been an item that has been factored into our process and thoughts because council said yep we're we're not getting out at all we're staying in and so so that's a factor with us as well and I guess the last piece on this too that Christina mentioned the prioritization or ranking by the Advisory Committee and just as clarification or just point of information that at our fourth advisory committee meeting when the draft recommendations were presented to the full Advisory Committee she mentioned a ranking process that was offered for the committee members and the committee members were told you know please rank all these options if you don't feel one should even be in the plan don't
087vote for it just don't even vote but then if you do rank which ones should be in and give it a ranking and in the residential area the service consolidation actually did receive votes by more than half of the committee that were there that day there were 26 there and 15 actually voted for so saying it should be in the plan so over half and they gave it the second highest rating behind the your own compost collection so it's it wasn't that the whole committee was against it but we do acknowledge that there are certainly committee members that are not for it and and have concerns about it a third item and I'll turn it way of consolidating services and and as mentioned and it gets just a quote note it in spite of many
088examples of high-performing communities that consolidate their services by value stream and as Christine said we haven't found those so there may be some that do but through the benchmarking exercise haven't found communities and particularly the high-performing communities that divide their services along material stream so I guess I just would take exception to the statement that many examples were given because we haven't found them or or heard of them the next was an item that Commissioner Brown and a member of the advisory committee had put forward an item of with several items discussed that felt weren't being included in the process and the plan and that there weren't zero waste proposals and a key point and we discussed this at the Commission or at the committee too that yes this we acknowledge this isn't a zero
089waste plan and so those things aren't in there but just wanted to point out that six of the twelve items said were in those items that felt should be considered or included are indeed included in and addressed in the plan that the plan offers no vision of goals I think we've hopefully addressed that in the presentation and my opening remarks that yes new goals maybe didn't come out of this process but we're holding by the goals that we have and this we see as a vehicle and a tool to move us forward on those goals and then I'll asked in terms of critical objections from the Advisory Committee were ignored requests for test votes were denied I guess well I just would take a section in terms of ignored I mean ignore means really cast
090aside that the staff the core team both feel truly listened and considered which is not ignoring but a key point and this was recurring in quite a discussion at a couple of meetings in terms of votes by the committee and it was quite a discussion and then if Charlie doesn't think I answer completely I'll come okay this really truly falls under his purview as as the paid and professional facilitator but a key with point of this committee this group was it was an advisory group that it was a group to weigh in to provide feedback to be part of the input in the process to consider with the recommendations but it was not a deciding group and Charlie gave a great example I won't do it half the justice but I was part of that
091group where first time he worked on a project here in the city was the sanitary sewer wet weather evaluation basically the footing drain task force and food and dream project and City Council said you will have a citizen committee that's going to make the decisions a very different process a very different way to go about it and as that facilitator that has a different process that does include voting but in a rigorous way and manner and so the wend votes and voting over whether to include or not include or kind of a this was almost said but thumbs-up thumbs-down if you would that wasn't the right place for this so I just wanted to provide our perspective on those things as well and so with that I'll turn it over to questions and discussions okay
092see whose best answer I was going to ask Missy if she would come up and facilitate the discussion during this part of the Commission meeting so in the meantime I have a question well I start off with some comment a comment and that is since I served on the advisory committee and I've serve on the Commission here as well I have I think a major comment is that there was not enough discussion among a time available among the Advisory Commission during the process it was facilitated very well I thought there's a lot of good information in this report again it's not quite to the actionable point yet could you could you I have the first question I have is it's not clear to me what the process is going forward in terms of establishing priorities
093with staff and City Council could you clarify that it's been a few minutes and I may look to perhaps order Craig to correct me or miss speak but key aspect with first stepping back a bit in plans and process there are certain plans with the city and I'm putting on kind of a dusty hat when I used to work in more of the planning and land development so I'm not sure there's a planning Planning Commission rep so Shannon please pardon me any mistakes but the city has a master plan which is a specific document which lays out guidance and direction over many things in the city but doesn't include absolutely everything in the city so we have a master plan and it has components there's a land-use component actually our transportation plan is a component
094oh but a solid waste plan this is a plan this is strategic setting direction giving recommendations but my reason for kind of stepping back of it is master plan items and elements have a very specific product in terms of process so that they have to be adopted which is a specific term by City Council there has to be public hearings and so there's a set process here it's this solid waste resource management plan is not an element of the master plan doesn't mean it's not valuable it's extremely valuable but it doesn't have that set process so what to answer your question of next steps and prioritization and implementation that really there's flexibility there which is kind of that double-edged sword by not having a set process I can't tell you Jer exactly what the next
095steps are from my opinion and just initial discussions I see the ultimate proof of any implementations and perhaps even prioritization is City Council as I touched on any contracts any code revisions any staffing hires adding of FTEs those all have to be approved at City Council whether it's by approving the budget approving an ordinance or approving a kind of course so so that's and some of these items and the recommendations are greatly gonna affect some of those things that need to be put into place to replace the kind of tractor experience so I have to work with Craig and Howard as the administration as to how does that get presented to the City Council to give that solid direction and tell us yes this is the direction we're going to go and into that priority
096so to cut a cut to the chase we will be sharing the plan with City Council and work session in September and then based upon the feedback we get in that work session we'd be turning around and bringing it back to City Council further acceptance mm-hm and then that would become the guidance for undertaking various tasks okay well thank you mister happy so permit me a couple of questions at the 30,000 foot level if I may and I'll put them together because I see them being bundled um I was wondering if you could summarize for me the achievements in the last solid waste plan who was responsible and accountable for those achievements and I would like to also understand there's been a statement that there are goals and the sustainability framework I'm not aware that
097there are any SMART goals in the framework their eyes some some broad goals but there are no SMART goals in the framework and so thinking about what happened in the last plan what I would like to understand is how is success defined in the new plan and where can it be found in the plan so that in 2023 that residents that city leadership that commissioned residents everybody can look back on this and say did we have a successful plan or did we not so to the first item of the past I would have to have the document for me to go back but I know there were some but one of the things as a staff and moving into this area after that plan got it adapted and looking at it and I had difficulty
098in answering that question of how do I go about doing it myself because it didn't have the detail of steps to meet the goals that were included in there and I'm going a bit by recollection because I don't have it in front of me Commissioner mirskiy that don't have a fresh from from memory but to answer the second part in terms of how we all know I would offer that we do have items here in terms of what's anticipated in terms of diversion in terms of the greenhouse gas emissions and that those would be items that for which are implemented that we would see are those targets those anticipated items being met if I can just come in on that my perspective is if this is a plan that's going to take us forward we
099should have smart goals that are outcome based and those were those were listed on the very first page of the PLAs Pass plan in terms of diversion rate improvements in terms of services that were to be implemented and as far as I know none of the major targets were met and so I would like to know how again will all of us know whether or not this is a successful plan based on what is written in the plan not based on you can go back to slide eight there are some statements about goals but none of those to my knowledge are really articulated in the plan itself there are a bunch of Rams listed there are some outcomes related to each one of those individually but there's nothing that says at 30,000 feet we all
100are working towards a diversion increase from X to Y by date Z for example yep and I'm not going to disagree that those aren't in there but I guess I would point actually to this slide and as I said the goal and the purpose of this plan was to look at those programs because of concerns ever had in them so commissioner I'm gonna be very direct sure we have a solid waste plan where by your own previous statements we have a declining balance in the solid waste fund we have a material recovery facility which has been not operating at its full capacity for three years because under previous operations we allowed it to get run down and it also is a fixed facility that hasn't kept up with changes in a recycling stream we have
101a desire to put in year-round organics to address food organic and grease waste in the downtown we have a desire to improve services provided in the downtown and we have a desire to live up to our challenge to provide high quality services in an efficient manner so I think those things will be measured those things are this plan gives us a roadmap to get there we will wind up with a plan that allows us to maintain a healthy balance and the solid waste fund it'll allow us to maintain high levels of customer service which is measured through various means including the National Citizen survey and other surveys that we take I think it's a case of walking before you run we have to do a lot of work from a business standpoint to get ourselves
102back to being an efficient well we're on organization in the solid waste area I think this plan was designed to help us to get there now that's not throwing stones at anyone it's not diminishing anybody's value but we know that the solid waste field has gone through rapid change particularly on the recycling side this plan will help us get as a strong foundation at the same time we still focus on being a leader in diversion and on processing and on commuting community calls you have a question so in other words the staff is prepared to present options to Council that include these elements or key they're not in this report so it's hard to tell what's going to end up those kind of options you're referring to year-round organics collection you mentioned that one but
103there are others like increased enforcement in the commercial area other items so there's a whole suite of things I guess yes those are recommendations saying those are rather than options those are recommendations that the plan is recommending those be implemented so those those will be part of the that presentation at the work session okay so yeah I just have my general comment about the cost of service and you know I recognize that there's a lot of emotion about this because recycle Ann Arbor has been a long-term part of the community and a valued valued part of the community for many residents and there's there may be some perception that the environmental Commission is really exciting with recycle Ann Arbor but we are duties to the city itself now the cost the just taking is one
104example during my participation in the advisory committee the whole discussion around consolidation of residents while collections was a bit confusing at first because it wasn't clear if we were talking about residential or commercial because there are more there are more contracted providers commercially in the downtown it wasn't exactly clear when you say commercial how much of that you mean downtown so there was some confusion at the beginning about that that influenced the discussion for several months now in particular the cost of service calculations that came up again for for consolidation of residential collections the original cost-saving was listed as $350,000 back in January and there was not much data backing that number up and so there was a question about why it wasn't really elaborated as much as some of the other things that were
105presented to the advisory committee at that time in January so that resulted in some comments in April it resulted in an extraordinary meeting that I tried to charge a staff facilitator discussion among the advisory committee members because there really wasn't enough time budgeted to have that it was a very good man well-managed presentation at that time for what it was but there just wasn't enough time left over for a group discussion and there were P there was a cross-section it wasn't the entire advisory committee but there was a cross-section of people from the different communities of different interest groups and so then like on August 13th we get a revised number that calculates a hundred thousand dollar savings by consolidating collection services and it's still not exactly clear where that number came from I think
106staff has really earnestly work to provide that with for several members of the Commission including me and mr. mirskiy but it's still not clear whether we're talking about the same thing because what's described as labor costs I don't want to get into too much detail here because I think this I just want to provide this as an example of some confusion that's led to dissension I believe among all the members of the Advisory Committee and them and people in the Commission here who have examined the process and the numbers I just have one more sentence I think and so it just I want to be absolutely clear that when we talk about capturing $800,000 in savings by consolidating collection services that we're talking about a real number because I realize that the contract costs that
107you're currently under sometimes they're classified as labor but I I don't know but I must have a suspicion that there's some other activities that are lumped into that and that can be for various conveniences but I think it's not clear that the same level of recycling services for example could be done I had $800,000 less if the kind of if you know by the city if the city just took up collections and I'm eager to see and I realized that we're all talking about the past year that there will be RFPs issued and I would I would personally feel more comfortable of these RFPs could could be could be structured in such a way that would provide you know a more clear example a more clear discussion of what what parts of what proposals would
108cost what that's all so maybe to take a little tension off right now one of my favorite quotations comes from Oscar Wilde and that is the cynic is someone who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing and we're really talking about value here not just in the quality of services provided but incorporation of community values and as you said there was a perception that many of the commissioners were strong advocates for recycle and Arbor I think we will all acknowledge that recycling Arbor has been a very valuable member of the community for a very long time but there is a separation of role as an advocate and a community partner versus that as a service provider and what we have done here is try to analyze the current contract in terms of
109the efficiency as a service provider you know having looked at many proposals and bids over a career that's probably longer than I'd like to admit it's really hard to align proposals as opposed to a straight bid and that means you have to get one you have to understand the overhead you have to understand an allocation of cost and everybody does it differently so you have to line them all up and I'll let Cristina get into the nuts and bolts of that but I think they did a good job in aligning what those was those costs of services are and if there's more detail needed I think we can certainly provide that and certainly sit down on an individual basis if necessary to walk through how that was provided it wasn't as Creston said a desired
110outcome but it is something that came up there are some features to it that I find attractive as an administrator particularly reducing the number of service providers and knowing who to call if someone's is missed to pick up and you only have one provider in that area it also helps with the administration those are very real factors that we have to consider in running a business on the downtown side I think we have not been successful because we've been contracting using a very rigid schedule of services and it doesn't have the flexibility in that that we might want and there's certainly no mechanism currently to incorporate a customer satisfaction score as we do with public parking what part of their profit is based upon the values that they get back I think those are things
111that we can look at that's the value of an RFP instead of an invitation for bid and I think those things you'll see in those areas where there are a lot of concerns that we would incorporate and it may not be the lowest price but it would be the best value so those are things that think as we come back and engage with the Commission before we go to Council have that discussion so there is a an understanding of what it is we're trying to achieve and we can certainly incorporate the kind of smart outcomes that John talks about in how we evaluate those those proposals so so there's a lot involved in here I know there's been confusion as the cost of service has evolved I'll certainly let Christine and talk about that but
112again as Creston said it wasn't the intent here was not to come up with a specific number it was to look at how we provide service and cost it out and going forward I think you will see things being competitively bid so that or at least competitively procured so that we can get the best value in the service that we provide all right well thank you so to go to your point Steve about the cost difference between the first presentation of cost savings on the consolidated residential collection and the final number that's in the plan when we started that calculation we were very conservative as we do with any planning process I think as anyone does in a financial process as you're laying out your assumptions your inputs you look to a cautious side of
113your calculation the numbers didn't change we had an element that we hadn't included previously so we had not previously included any revenue on the recycling we took and said we're going to use the city's approach of assuming zero dollars of revenue for recyclable commodities which is how the city typically will budget for solid waste area operations and we by doing that lost cost four hundred forty thousand dollars off of the calculation so when you take that $350,000 you add back the four hundred and forty thousand dollars that's achieved in recycled revenue we're left with that $775,000 savings so you had the $350,000 savings plus a revenue on top of that and it would have been I think optimistic to come to the Commission to the committee and say right off the bat we think it's
114gonna be $750,000 or $800,000 savings when we hadn't back checked in fact checked everything we were there to get guidance and advice and if you remember throughout the process we started with concept idea program discussions first and we only got into dollars as we better refined what those options look like so we gave you the information so that you had some guidance as a frame of reference for the costs frankly I'm surprised that we went from $350,000 of savings to more than double that amount of savings and faced increased opposition and dislike for an option that will help to support so many other programs for the city we were asked to come to this commission with the truth with the analysis and even if you don't want to hear it and if it's something that
115you're not gonna like hearing if there's something that you should be doing better or different to tell you what that is I think we've done that I am here as an objective provider of the facts and analysis what you choose to do with it is is up to you when we talk about the calculation of the cost savings it's a very straightforward calculation and I would be happy to sit down with anybody go through it but we've got it on the slide it's 4 dollars and 49 cents to the city now under the current contract for the recycling collection the city provides the identical service for trash collection picking up from the same customers on the same routes with the same fleet with drivers that are Union drivers and does that at almost half the
116cost I there's to me there's no need to look at those numbers more closely so I'm I I know what I'm going to say you know and city staff knows but I'll say it for the sake of fellow commissioners and those in attendance and those watching on closed-circuit TV Commissioner Brown and I spent over two hours worth IL s Friday reviewing these figures and then we spent another hour and 15 minutes with city staff and with you on Monday and what I frankly still cannot reconcile in my head is that the difference is so big and I will explain it as briefly as I can and that is based on those discussions I know that and this is in the public domain it's it's in the cost of service analysis and part of it is
117here that the city's base wage is higher than Ras I know that the benefits paid on a percent of base wage are hires so we're starting on the city side at a point where the labor cost is should be higher than ras then for some for some reason we're or ending up at a situation where in spite of that the cost is going to be or the cost of Ras is double what the city's cost is and and I frankly can't reconcile that in my head unless there are other services packed into if I know I'll finish pack into Ras analysis if there is in efficiencies in ari's costs that are not related to to the base labor if there are funds from from the city contract that are being used to fund other things
118with RA a one of the explanations that we were given was that there are more tips per household the cost of service analysis was really originally done an hour on a her per household basis and there were more tips that were that were given and that those tips are multifamily and there are some commercial tips and those are more difficult to get at they take more time drivers have to get out of the the the the the trucks but in order for that to lead to a doubling of cost those would have to be at five times the cost per unit in order to explain the doubling of the cost so for me I'm just totally perplexed and what I would would just end with saying it we taught we brought this up in the
119last meeting we asked if there was a chance that we could have both parties sitting at the table to review this and have a discussion in detail and that that was not possible so what we did instead is we met with the two parties and frankly still I cannot understand with what the difference is coming from so John the REA contract is what I would call is a fixed unit price contract it is a cost per service we don't look behind the curtain you see what happens to the money once it gets into our AA's hands correct you know both parties willingly signed a contract yes as competent parties we agree to that price that's what we pay when we look and that's you know it's just right it's the costume business when we look
120at what it would cost the city to do it we know what our labor rates we know what our overhead is in our supervision and the numbers are what the numbers are if we were to change this and to put this something may provide some context to it as well if we were to look at doing this competitively we could look at the the city cost versus a competitive bid but to go and talk to one particular vendor when we are looking at how to do the several long term would give them an unfair competitive advantage as we were to go forward again remember we need to separate our a a as a community partner and an advocate from their role as a service provider so even if we're off by certain percentage 25% there's
121still significant savings there in the context behind this is we live in in in in an environment where we were all concerned about the cost of owning a home living in Ann Arbor and we would be remiss in our responsibilities if we didn't bring to you an analysis that shows what the cost is on a comparative basis and I I've looked through the way the apples to apples comparison was done I'm comfortable with the way it was done these are the results that came out of that analysis again we don't peek behind the curtain on a fixed price type contract so it's not our place to see how our AAA spends money once they have it it is just we have to live up to the terms of our agreement I just want add one
122more thing um I'm the question about the number of carts you'll notice that the calculation that we show here is the cost per cart we didn't we didn't recalculate the city's trash number on a cost per cart basis applied it to the number of carts that are a is serving now so it is an apples-to-apples number thanks I appreciate the presentation I have a couple of questions maybe a couple of cripples maybe a couple of concerns looking at some of the financial recommendations is you know looking at the two big recommendations and I don't think this can come to Council with a recommendation to say hey you might be able to use this fee like I think it has to be we have to have know whether we can impose a diversion fee or not
123first of all otherwise it's a in my mind something that doesn't have any value to us and then also in the context of that larger financial picture you know saying go for a Headley override from the voters you know from where I sit as an elected official if I'm asking voters for a Hedley override it's not for the solid waste fund it's for the general fund you know I think I'm concerned about the strategy of both a Hedley override and fees on top of that I think when you talk to people when you knock on doors like I do you know what gets people more upset than a fee then you know just to cost this going up is the fact that it goes up in multiple different ways and it's death by a thousand
124paper cuts and and that to me is something that I know council will have a great deal of concern about because this is what we hear from our residents so I think I can provide some clarity to that that particular set of recommendations on funding in a certain view should be looking at as either/or type of options on the waste diversion surcharge the recommendation states to first confirm whether the city can't impose it that was something that what is going to require further effort beyond the duration of this completion of this plan it's kind of it's a precondition I think there are certain elements of these recommendations certainly that fall to staffs responsibility before maybe bringing it to council or seeking the input of council and their tolerance or interest and further exploring certain funding
125options so if the direction from Council is a Hedley override sounds like a task that we're not interested in seeing you undertake find another way and then the question becomes well let's bring you the option of a waste diversion surcharge if that's something that's needed in order to provide supplemental funding and doing the investigation and analysis research on the legal side to first answer whether that's a possibility and under what conditions that would be implemented in order to then also tie it to a specific set of services that are being provided and specifically what those dollars are for so there are pieces of this that it's a it's a dynamic type of a situation when we're talking about five different topic areas focus areas and a lot of different services that push and pull on
126each other but we wanted to make sure you had the information within the plan of this is what these different options do look like and how you could implement them I just to follow up that I agree you know the master plan for any plan is good when it is a dynamic document so certainly prompt hopefully a lively discussion at the work session and we'll get better direction as to how accounts would like to proceed so yeah as I said before maybe a little tongue-in-cheek you know it's not just about cost it's about value and I hope that that conversation leads to a discussion of community values then there is a a retooling after that there are some things we need to do right away as Preston said we have the RFP out for operations
127there's some degree of urgency in getting that done but it's time for us to tear things apart and look at how we provide services to the community in a way that is high quality and cost efficient and just to go and I think you know Creston Craig myself Molly as well as Charlie Ann Christina there yeah this is this is it's a business operation as well this is not anything that's taken personally it is a matter bringing things back to make sure we're serving the public the best possible way and please take the spirit of my questions in which they I do deliver that you know I think these are significant concerns that everybody needs to know about before the September work session I do have two other questions if my colleagues will allow you
128know as an elected official we hear an awful lot of complaints about the downtown alleyways you know my question I think Christina is there didn't seem to be a whole lot of discussion of an idea I know that it's been tossed around an awful lot by Ed Chephren and the DDA of a special assessment district for solid waste in the downtown area you know at least to me and certainly I'm not a practitioner in the field but it seems that this would be a more direct way to ensure participation in our programs and it would also provide the opportunity to cover the cost of enforcement it seems to me that if the downtown businesses are willing to do that that would be something we might want to break out separately in this discussion I think
129we agree with that I've went in my discussions with mr. Scheffer and I'm open to the discussion of a Downtown Solid Waste Management District I told Ms Polie that as well and part of that discussion is as we look at what rolls DDA will play in the future once their current authorization expires that's something that we may want to look at as well I firmly believe we ought to integrate a customer satisfaction component to how we compensate a service provider there Cristina did mention going to lar a smaller amount of larger containers and therefore you don't get the cheating because everybody buys in as well there are some other factors council approved an additional empty for a solid waste enforcement officer out of the solid waste fund in the police department and that position until
130it's hired we're going to use that to reassign some of the code with the community standards officers so I agree with that and we need to improve enforcement only in the downtown but in a meeting that I had with mr. Ackerman and Haslem we need to look at two near campus areas as well so those areas have not been models of how we want to provide service and we need to make the changes to them and that'll come out of this discussion as well I think what I'm looking for a little bit in this is a little bit stronger recommendation that if this is an avenue that the city should strongly discuss I mean I think some of my quibbles are you know while some recommendations are very strong others not so much and I
131I would like some of these things that you know just the the drop-off station is you know I know nobody really wants to talk about it because you know we should only have a little bit of the cost but I noticed in some of the financial modeling their cost built-in for that you know I think there needs to be a very clear statement that says this is a regional issue we think you know our recommendation is you you join the the warm you figure this out you have the the rest of the county buy into it and you know not seeing that as a strong recommendation in there leads me to the fact that you know maybe not this council maybe a future council can certainly say well that wasn't in the plan so I
132don't think we should do it and you know it's little things like that that seem like they're little and unimportant that I think when we discuss these you know before council it's really critical to have this information in there if you think it's a dumb idea for us to join the regional coalition you should say that too so councilmember Smith I would point out on the downtown option talking about the having a district similar to like AB is type set up to run the solid waste collection it is referenced when you talk when we presented the option with more detail you know the two or three pages I need to the different options so it's on page 73 that we talked about it possibly being abysmal the reason we didn't outright recommend that is there
133are questions about the ability to have a biz that is set up that overlaps in existing biz and so the there's a question of who would run it and can you have somebody that has overlap if you cannot have that overlap then you're gonna have end up with two different sets of service provision you'll have Main Street and you'll have everything else so we wanted to make sure there was flexibility available to the city on yet similar on the regional authority I think there are in a number of different recommendations not in the recommendations themselves but in the discussion of the options there is discussion of the regional value because that's a process that's been in front of council once and not acted on had been planted I think to be brought again it's been
134through this commission I think twice with recommendation to join there's a lot of discussion and focus on it that's why we pointed out the things that would benefit from a regional approach but for us to further weigh in on it you've already done that you've made those decisions for providing the the further backing for that I think I hope they cover everything that you asked no I'll cede the floor at this point yes so I have a I guess procedural question am I correct in assuming that the report will go to Council as written regardless of anything we do here tonight I think we can jointly answer this one I'm sorry Commissioner Needham's it's good you just restate it did not sure that it quite caught it what happens to the report is it going
135to council the way it exists the way it's written right now no matter what I say about it well no if there are things that the Commission makes there is a resolution provided in front of you that anticipating you'll have some discussion on and the end result of that would be factored into and taken back to see how does that affect how does that affect a plan and I would say at a very minimum yeah we did market draft intentionally at a very minimum I think the fact that we've discussed whether there are goals within this plan and we've talked about the sustainability framework providing that guidance I think it's easy enough and it's a very brief change and it would be direct straight out of the sustainability framework and the prior plan to incorporate
136that within the context of the plan as an introduction those types of edits aren't significant in any manner I don't think for the purposes of the you know the back-and-forth review and at the direction of the Commission would be readily incorporated and I would add even to a specific in terms of councilmember Smith's point about the recommendation being a little stronger on the the drop-off station that's something there that through some wording edits you know we're not going back into the analysis and those would cost heavy things I think that's something that certainly if that's that's guidance and from the Commission that that would be a valuing and the intent would be though to get this to the council in advance of the study session at the work session so the answer short answer is
137yes I think also though that we would be remiss if we didn't take the recommendations and concerns from this discussion and bring them to Council as well that may wind up with us coming back to the Commission again if council Starr directs there are some things that I think we will tell Council we need to get started on sooner rather than later just rent contractual standpoint but I would agree with those who say it's important to get it right not necessarily just to get it fast any other questions yes leadership from the regional authority its frame it a little bit differently I think if you I don't think you're compelled to take action this evening the work session at a council work session Council doesn't take any definitive action either they'll provide us with some
138recommendations as well it you know I think it'd be prudent on our part to take all that and then make adjustments to what was presented it may be that we come back and have another discussion before council adopts it the concern that I do have a business standpoint is that we do start on those critical items where we need to start procuring services that we can do that particularly in areas where there's not any disagreement in early there's a suggestion among council members to privatize collection services for this area is that I assume in the plan it's well off the table but is it clearly off the table on the council for anything no future yes sir you can so we were given very strong direction from Council that we're not to look at outsourcing
139of services currently provided by city staff that's a little bit more complicated because there's overlap of areas so one of the things we sought to sort out is aligning the services better but there is no intention to take residential collection and outsourced the city staff that does it as we proved and as we've seen here can do it efficiently when we had that discussion before council the absentee members were here and we're very proud of the relationships they have with our residents and the way they can be responsive to that service and I think I respect that comment as well one of the bullets on the slides was that by adding some staff it increases our flexibility because we don't have solid waste workers we have operators and they often can be reassigned to other
140things not only does that provide enhancement to service it also provides career advancement for them within their within their career progression programs as well so we're not looking at outsourcing residential collection our staff provides high value to the residences of this community and it's supportive of council in the communities supportive union labor one one of the bullets that was in the presentation tonight Oh highlight that says as we align around residential services we would be looking at adding four to seven employees to the city payroll for that additional picking up the additional work so if anything we're going the opposite direction of contracting out however commercial services would be private most of them are I won't say all of them they're not all private now but I believe the bulk of them are private Chris
141can talk to this percentage blitz I guess to directly answer the question commissioner gramma is there's two related recommendations and the net result of the two recommendation to consolidate the residential collections as we've been talking by city staff and consolidating the commercial collections of all the streams to a single provider that if that's done as a contractor the net result is through shifting of staffing assignments pulling those staff that do commercial right today we would still have a net add of four staff that's where the range of 4 to 7 come in questions thank you for the opportunity so the next item on the agenda would be the resolution from staff on the solid waste resource management plan resolution second for discussion you do we have a copy of it either on a screen or
142I don't like the one that we haven't yeah I know it sound legit star okay well no that's different I'll pull it I think do I need it so - you know in the drama of this there there's one resolved clause in this and it's resolved that the environmental Commission recommends the City Council approved the was that you called it mr. slaton shrimp the shrimp and implement the recommendations contained in the plan that's the extent of the so um do we have a discussion yeah I'd like to pick up on a point we just recently discussed and for me I have one absolutely fundamental element that I would like to see added to the plan and that is that there are specific outcomes SMART goals that are included in the plan so that if we
143recognize one year in two year in X years in that we are not meeting those targets that there's a clear responsibility of this commission working with staff working with contractors working with all of our stakeholders that we then get back on target and that was in the previous plan we already recognized that we didn't meet basically any of those and I do not want to have that repeated again and it will absolutely be repeated if there are no SMART goals I'm gonna have to agree 100% and also it's clear from our review of this report that not all the recommendations may have way equally so I think there's been some discussion but I think we should have a discussion about this that that for example the residential recommendation number one to implement year-round organics collection
144the conference collection that seems to be there was a large consensus that that's a good recommendation the others are the commercial recommendation number one but and to work with the city storm water and wastewater departments to develop and implement an ordinance requiring operating standards and reporting by restaurants and grease haulers to improve management of fats oils and greases generator bike generated by restaurants and the downtown area service recommendations the downtown has been a problem that's been recognized for many years and that these recommendations in the report look very positive to us I think there's a broad consensus that it's necessary for example to change down kind of collection route driver schedules to enable Saturday and Sunday collections on a half-day basis and the Mandate restaurants and bars have Saturday and Sunday collections in a minimum
145four day collection every week I think that's there seems to be a broad consensus in the community that this is a valuable thing that gets started and long past due the other one would be the recommendation to establish separate and discrete service arrangements within the DDA boundaries utilizing a single service provider given the multiplicity of of contractors within the downtown area it seems like a very useful thing to pursue in the near term so we've struggled with this quite a bit in terms of giving a blanket approval because there are no recommendations there is no prioritization here in so I think the first thing I would agree with Commissioner Murphy that the first thing to do is to recommend priorities and top-level outcome based performance targets you know with a regular review so given all
146these concerns among the Commission members I think it's we would like to see these these as part of the result as part of the as part of the resolution that we will be discussing now it's not clear to me how to structure this either we can agree to amend we can discuss about amending the resolution offered by city staff or we can or we could present an alternative so I'm not sure exactly what to do I would I would suggest that the council work session on this topic offering any kind of endorsement either partial or entires premature at this point in time I think if I could make a recommendation maybe the best thing is just to defer it we have a long we've captured the thoughts from this evening I think we bring those
147back to Council when we have the work session with some revisions get there and but that's your meeting that's right with the week before you were meeting I think if we come back the following week within addressing those with some revisions in the plan you can then have a cleaner set of recommendations on it and then council can adopted the first meeting in October us I mean we all get to that point I think it's a better process than having some degree of dissent in a recommendation for adoption I think to John's point we do have performance measures we've been using internally and we need to make those available externally that deal with diversion rates collections and some of the quality of service indicators there's some that you probably want to see us at they're
148a little different so I don't think that's a heavy lift to get there I think we can do that and I think we can get to a point where this adoption is more celebratory than concurrent contrary I also think it's super confusing certainly to council to get you know hey do these things but not at being silent on the rest of it I would prefer that we we just defer any any resolution on this until September mmm that would be I appreciate that you know I think it's just important that we have a broader consensus and it may be that there is a there are some remaining concerns about the residential collection but I think the other things we can address in the kind of specificity that you're looking for okay table if I can
149come in briefly I support that as well I think what's not evident in the discussion tonight and over the last several days is that there are actually a lot of I think good agreements and consensus that many of the recommendations are recommended as not good recommendations and consensus that the recommendations are generally good year round compost collection yes curbside textile collection basically yes bulky item collection yes if there's a clear way of making sure it just doesn't go to landfill which is not identified by the way in the report I mean I can go down a lot of these things there there there is general level of support for most of the things in here and to try to parse that out tonight in a resolution with a bunch of exceptions and this and that
150I think is totally confusing and I endorse councilmembers Mis proposal let's also recognize though that this is not a an ala carte dining list these things are related getting connected by for sure the revenue comes from and cause the service yeah okay so this Christopher sorry John Oh Chris yeah sorry move the table the resolution is it seconded I would I would try and clean that up a little by saying you know a move to postpone action until our September meeting on the resolution friendly motion to take a second is that seconded any discussion any further discussion well yeah all who say aye hi hi any nays no so that the motion to the recommendation is approved unanimously all right so so the next item on the agenda is involves regulating pesticide use so commissioner
151Rose councilmember banister yes I am happy to report that at the behest of some of our couple organizations in town the pesticide free Ann Arbor and the be safe Ann Arbor were building on the momentum that we've had the last couple months of convincing the Washington County Road Commission not to use the pesticides and herbicides in their work along the roads so we're building on that to expand education and outreach trying to reduce chemicals in the environment here in in the city and so we have a first draft of the resolution but we are going to be expanding on it and building it out and I'd like to call up Alana and Rita if they would like if we have time at the commissioners pleasure or are we at the end of our rope trying
152to wrap things up if they could be brief okay appreciated okay well we could call them up to elaborate if they would like you know on some of the things we've been emailing about such as looking at the volume and weight of all toxic Cole's being left in Ann Arbor and so we'd be happy to copy you all in and our various drafts and we will also be looking to maybe being a major feature on the agenda for the environmental Commission's December 3rd meeting and with that I'll turn it over to Elana and Rita thank you yeah so just briefly we're kind of trying to figure out you know does Ann Arbor have a kind of comprehensive policy about pesticide use and herbicide use we know that there's kind of a been very progressive kind
153of know no spray on lawns and parks so it may be like formalize that or kind of understand you know can we get that in writing and then there's other places that Ann Arbor doesn't have jurisdiction like we talked about railroads there's maybe some spraying along there that was brought up as a issue and then there's concern about some of these more dangerous pesticides that have been where the they've been banned and then now they're rolling back those the EPA is rolling back those restrictions so is there some kind of legal stand we can take as well by petitioning the Michigan Commission of Agriculture and Rural Development so we do have the City Council does have the ability to petition that Commission in order to make us exempt from the pre-emptive state laws so we
154could have stricter laws in the city of Ann Arbor so those are just some different things we're thinking about as far as a resolution that then we could submit to City Council to see you know if there's any momentum to take action on this issue well first of I want to say things councilmember banister for the draft that you provided and I think that'll be it that it's a really good start and we had some ideas subsequent to reviewing it that included some of the things similar to what were mentioned tonight using some benchmarks looking at how pesticides are used in town so we know something measurable from the city's use but also so that's just one part of it and we would love to have some support for community education so I in my
155work in the as one of the cofounders of be safe an arbor we've done some door-to-door kind of work but if we can do something that's broader that encourages the community to use less pesticides in general we think that that would be beneficial for the community as a whole and so that those are the kinds of things that we'd like to do is some education and some measurement Emily have a question on ledges start there's a link to a memo from the City Attorney's Office regarding pesticide and state law but I don't see any file there medium either yep I looked there's there's there is a memorandum I mean under the resolution but I don't think yes that's different I was in our email ladies as a person who works in the green industry I
156don't apply pesticides or herbicides or insecticides or fungicides I nonetheless I'm very well aware what goes on I would really appreciate it if you'd be much more specific about what you're talking about and why you're talking about those particular things and the things you're going to propose and do for example I applauded the action against the county about reciting on the roadways because of the material they were using which was we Agent Orange revisited I think Terrell votes are using it too and I parted that because that particular herbicide is durable in the soil other herbicides are not they work on the respiration of a leaf and are ephemeral so there are bad things out there a few of them much less than there used to be there are things that are not so bad
157that those of us in the industry would be unhappy to lose as tools so I ask you to be very specific and aim at the bad guys not the bad people in the industry but the bad products and how they're used one of the big problems is how homeowners use these things as opposed to the commercial guys so forgive me for suggesting more specificity well that's okay this was a discussion at a previous environmental Commission meeting about the county's use of pesticides well I think this requires some discussion about first of all what what we might recommend I mean personally I think that if we could just recommend that citizens and businesses use a level of responsible environmental management equal to what the city is doing because the city did file a statement with us
158a few months ago stating what their practices are in general and I think if we could maybe say that if we could encourage businesses and residents to apply those same standards that would be a step in the right direction however the legal authority is still in question that the city may have to pass regulations stricter than the states so in that sense it may become like more of a a proposal at the state level rather than the city level so that's my other any comments well yes we very much thank you you all for your input and I will I think we will definitely be running our drafts through this commission for for all of your inputs and we do want to get very specific and have measurable targets and so we will be calling
159on your expertise as we formulate our drafts I guess it's insecticides that bother me the most some of them that are commonly used right now do affect pollinators so they are Clark regulations at state and national level is not adequate we could have some influence that's true especially with chlorpyrifos that's banned in the air can Union okay is there any more discussion on this just very briefly um the way it's written right now it really just focuses about on the city where the capital C and city assets and I think it was expressed here but I'd like to see a resolution that expands on that even if it's just education outreach and things like that because we may be running up against issues with state law and things like that but I don't think in
160terms of education and outreach that were limited to to do things in in terms of encouragement of the right kinds of practices and right now that's not really reflected in the document that we have yet yes we ran it through the attorney's office first and so that was their first pass at it and then we yes we do recognize that this was leaves a lot more of our signatures on it I'd also recommend making the resolution that you proposed noncontradictory because an integrated pest management approach may actually involve using herbicides integrated pest management is the best approach that you can use it's comprehensive it it may very well involve herbicides and non herbicide methods to be able to solve your problem it looks at a problem as opposed to a pest so to say that
161you're proposing or supporting integrated pest management and then saying that something that you're moving toward an herbicide or a pesticide free community is inherently contradictory I might invite you all to send any recommendations already and you could copy our team so far whoever wants to be on the team but core members are a la la Alana me Rita and another woman named Julie and then anyone else wants to be on it but if you send it to me I'll get it to all of them and we can start receiving your valuable tidbits that we will integrate into the into it towards that end it would be great if you would prompt us and maybe set up a Google Doc where there is a draft of something maybe you add some additional comments of the things
162that you're contemplating on top of what is already in there and then we can can revise the text we can although that that may be problem with okay I never thought I'd be in a position where I'd be the FOIA police but you need to be careful about where you send things okay as well so yeah miss Bannister has a a - of email keeps things cleaner for all of us if you do that okay but some kind of prompt in some kind of structure we can do that would be great and one last point - in terms of you should not be writing a resolution together as a group outside numbness like a subcommittee can write it but you would be a violation of the open meeting Act you didn't doing business outside is
163a full body so that can't happen if I reckon a subcommittee of people who want to work on this we can take it offline but you can't collectively right it violates the council's policy yeah if I get six different emails and I cut and paste them at all and share them how does that work for that how does is that not allowed could we do this through natural features and do it through natural features in that working group and then you could invite other people to put input through the natural features working group that for example that the experts am not well qualified think I'm in other legal aspects of the open meetings they advise okay so okay now we're now we have reports from committees other comments on some council chair portion of the
164city because they are real leaders and a lot of this kind of management work especially at the toolbox I think they can they can provide some resources and experience in helping you parse out what makes sense to kind of go after or not and and they work within a certain context but I think they would be an excellent resource for you to that this part of the city already that has a real track record that could help you try to formulate where you're going with some of this and and just understanding what their experiences with the tools that they use because they definitely use are oversized I can tell you that much and we we need that work for our invasive management control in the city and so it's these apparently divergent things that are
165going on where we're also actively battling against invasive species too and that's one of the tools out there so there's these competing forces that were trying to balance and work with and I totally support your effort I just wanted to get much more fine-tuned about considering some of Commissioner Graham's comments about like there's a whole host of things out there and just calling it the pesticide it just you got you got to get way more specific or way more broad to be able to get much more targeted about what you're going to do in order for it to be effective I feel like so I totally applaud the effort but I also want to make sure that we continue to have the tools that we need for these other really important forces that are working
166out there at the same time so yeah so we have been working on a lot of ordinances and one that we just worked on this last session was integrating the current when Michigan voted to legalize recreational use of marijuana we had to update our ordinance in terms of our Marijuana Policy and it had all been geared towards medical and now we need to figure out how to integrate the recreational piece of it too and one of the things that we are considering is asking them to include solar energy as part of their site plans because they are huge energy users compared to other uses so a typical office is a tenth of the energy use you know if for a comparable size of a grower this is for growers only not for dispensaries so we
167had started with the twenty five percent target and then got more information about what's realistic and they're going right now for a ten percent target but I I'm hoping that with some coordination perhaps with Commissioner mercy and the Energy Commission that we can a little more fine-tuned about what some of our options are in terms of an ask because I think that they are they can really nullify a lot of our other work we're doing to try to be able to bring energy consumption down in fact I read some incredibly dire reporting that said that if the trend continues with the way that growers are growing that we can nullify the advancements we have made since the Paris Accord because there are so many people getting into the business and it's so lucrative and they
168just are energy hogs because they're growing 24/7 and the amount of light that they use and the air exchange that they use per hours like 30 air exchanges per hour the wattage is is similar to what's used in a medical operating room it's 500 times the like recommended reading level I mean it's just incredible the amount of energy that they're using and so different communities are managing this in different ways not a lot of them have taken it on at Massachusetts is actually limiting the wattage that they can use and handling it that way which is actually leading to some very interesting kind of honing and research on how to grow things in a more efficient way which is great because that really needs to happen within the industry and since it's a cash business
169there's not a lot of incentive to kind of look for the payback and you know that kind of thing which is always the argument with alternative energy so aside from you know reducing greenhouse gases and all that good stuff so we're looking for ways to be able to get them to take some responsibility for how much energy they do use because it's not just them paying their bills it's the impact on our we're working hard on our sustainability framework and boy it would really be sad if that all got reversed because we're one of the few communities that are actually regulating this many these are just opting out of the whole process and so that may mean that we become sort of a center for some of this in this part of the state because
170it takes planners and people writing code and all that kind of thing to do it and some of the townships are like forget it but why why why do we want to take this on so we're trying to be thoughtful about how we can start to interface our sustainability desires with what they can bring to the table - and in terms of their impact and I'm hoping to be able to have some meaningful conversations with Commissioner mirskiy about ways that we might be able to do that so that you know whether it's some seed money towards programs within the city that are focused on alternative energy that they can I don't know what it is yet but I'm hoping that we can try - it's like the one healthy part of retail right now is
171is is we folks retail is going down the tubes except for Amazon but that one is doing really well so I feel like there's opportunity there that we should that we can ask and I think we should so I think we could maybe get courageous about being bold here so that's coming from the Planning Commission I'd love to see some integration with some of the other Commission's to see what we can do and try to figure out how to deal with the trend and figure out what we can we can do as a community to be able to put some processes in place so that we can mitigate it and maybe try to handle this in terms of some modeling you know for other communities because it seems like the trend is moving in this
172direction and so it would be great for us to try to take that one on so it's a similar problem to Bitcoin mining isn't it right Bitcoin mine yes enormous amounts of energy in fact they locate these server farms near their hydrogen where there's cheap electric rates so I'm not sure how they've been regulated but it's a very similar problem just very very briefly Energy Commission we had a working session so I don't go and give him a lot of detail we had a presentation from the office of stainability and major work plan elements and where we can overlap on those the Commission broadly identified four areas that we'd like to work on without a whole lot of specificity but there's gonna be working groups set up for those four areas with the hope that
173they will narrow their focus just a couple of other things ordinances I've talked about ordinances before good progress on all of them sign ordinance where we had some input on is now through the Planning Commission and I think sent on to attorneys the attorney and counsel lighting ordinance is complete from our side and is now with Planning Commission to take up and two other ordinances that were working on evie readiness and a Home Energy Audit disclosure at time of marketing hopefully will be complete and be able to be passed on through Energy Commission also for council consideration in October November more likely may be November timeframe well maybe one other thing we're putting on power hours again one is on September 17th and one is on December 3rd focusing primarily on energy energy efficiency and
174what homeowners can do residents can do but then also with another plug for solar and solar prices keep on coming down in spite of what you might have heard with Chinese tariffs and everything else it's amazing it's they're just coming down and down and down so Solar is not out thanks so I guess committees Chris natural features it was concluded a couple of meetings to go really focus on better protections for trees in the city and they're really three areas of weakness the least of those is the current regulation and the site planning process protections for trees they're very good actually but it's been suggested that we need to do a bit more for older older trees special trees heritage trees is the word that's been used and the Planning Commission likes that probably is
175relatively easy we might make another natural feature called heritage trees in addition to landmark trees or it's a subset of landmark trees and we increase the leverage the city has on on what happens to those in a development project the second area of concern is is how to really regulate the loss and there is a lot of loss of trees on single-family properties there currently is zero regulation for that we're thinking of doing something on the model of the stormwater first flush rain garden requirement for any addition more than two hundred square feet would also trigger a tree identification and protection process for what goes on on those properties when that addition is being put on for example if you drive wheeled vehicles or the roots of a beech tree or an oak tree and
176it's an old heritage tree on somebody's property and these you say oh no we're not going to cut that contractor says oh no we're not going to cut that tree but you do that and three or four years later the tree dies and the homeowner goes what in the world happened here and of course almost none of them know anything about the reason that tree died there's no connection so if we have a process like our rain garden first flush process where homeowners have to be educated about how things might happen on their property with regard to their trees even if they intentionally wanted to take one it would be a net improvement the last area is grading plans again on single-family zoned properties there's absolutely no recognition that there are trees on that property
177and they can be completely cleared without a permit under ten thousand square feet and with one above and one above does trigger some worry about trees we're really it's really a big old and there's a project down in Packard where that could apply if push came to show so the other piece that's kind of a current focus is to do something to contribute to John Murphy's power hours that would take the the education part of that outside and to look at what one does in the landscape to be doing sustainable things as opposed to unsustainable ones or not enough thank you so I'll speak for solid waste committee outside discussions about the SW RMP proposal we've talked about our smart colas metrics for diversion and for greenhouse gases so we've made some progress on that
178but we hope to be finished in a few months and the drafting is zero waste just the skeleton of a zero waste goals for the city that's taking a back bench because of this extensive s.w.r.a.p process that's been going on for the past year but I hoped it can come up with something by the end of the year that's Susan so Susan's not here so does anybody want to we have okay okay so council parks so parks parks pools are open til September 15th and we also heard a report on legacy contamination around the nature house up at Leslie Science Center Nature house and the DTE Energy house which staff has been pretty responsive in terms of dealing with one benefit was the or one of the upsides of this the same consultants that were
179hired to do additional work on the Galman flume were also brought in to do the soil sampling around the DTE Energy house where the site of the contamination is likely located so yeah the city is getting its doing a good job of getting a handle on where the pollution is on the site and ideally we'll be hearing some opportunities for cleanup here by the time we meet next month and I understand that that was due to the Leslie family had had a gas station on the land that most the pollution was from that the mr. dr. Leslie was a chemist and experimenter of sorts so yeah he had and he had an orchard up there so they're remnants of agricultural chemicals there are remnants of all sorts of yeah various a lot of things that
180I won't try to quote now because I won't remember the names but arsenic is particularly common around the site and and they suspect that that was from the agricultural operations because arsenic was used extensively historically as a as the pesticide what's there any further discussion of having other project grow sites around the city similarly tested for contamination we didn't discuss that know one thing that we did discuss in the land acquisition committee meeting was that as as part of due diligence moving forward for any parcels that the city will acquire for Parks there will be an investigation into legacy contamination so that's there those are the upsides that we can get out of this at least okay I just had a recollection that assistant administrator John Fournier had thought that it would be a good
181idea to have testing at all project grow sites and I heard whether that had gotten off the ground or not counselor I think the best thing to do is is I'll catch up with him and Mister Delacourt and thank you give you an answer I know there was a discussion but at this late hour I don't know that I remember precisely what it was okay hey and many of those project grow sites are not parks property as well many of them are ok counsel I had some updates from counsel but I also had like maybe a question for Howard Lazarus that I thought this group might be interested in that heat island blanket testing that was going on on top of the City Hall roof it got rained out this week but we're gonna that
182was the curious if anyone there's a there's a entity that wanted to fly a drone around to measure heat island in the right-of-way but they I rained out and that's about all I know about it right now we did give them permission to do it if you'd like I can give you I can part some other information about what the intent of the study was I think yeah I already received some of the email on it so it was just an interesting study going on there's a gentleman flying a drone around on Tuesday morning I think and then it get rained out in the afternoon it's interesting and we can share whatever we know if it's of interest we love data thank you of interest to this body council has another closed session Monday night
183to talk about the ongoing legal discussions regarding Gelman we have a joint meeting with the county and Scio Township on September 12th to discuss so you know we'll bring something back obviously in September an update on on where we are with that sure I'll keep it brief we're putting solar on fire station number six and we're doing it through the volunteer program so if anybody's interested in getting up on a roof and helping hands doll solar a contact Josh McDonald we're also doing solar on 13 city buildings so that's moving forward rather quickly you'll be getting a greenhouse gas presentation next meeting from Josh this is a fun one there's been a solid waste challenge for staff and this was an idea that came from three of our interns about 45 people have been taking
184actions each week to reduce solid waste usage or to use reusable containers hundred people are receiving emails we've had some great participation from HR Knapp and fuller yeah over a thousand actions have taken place in two weeks so it's really exciting as well we've had some really good attendance at our lunch and learns which are an opportunity for staff to learn about all kinds of sustainability issues some of the topics we've recently had are the circular economy how to transform places workplaces into multi cultural institutions and city parks using fire and other tools to manage our park lands and a special shout-out to our summer equity intern Rebecca Villegas we'll be returning to grad school at University of Michigan soon she's been helping us develop a plan for expanding weatherization opportunities for low-income low-income homeowner
185in seventh in Ann Arbor that's what I have for now next agenda I had a couple other not agenda items but other updates of things that were current events just briefly the the ki potassium iodine group is meeting on Monday in Detroit with a Detroit councilmember a guy named Roy McAllister to try to get them to model after our potassium iodide resolution the environmental activists picnic last weekend at Island Park was a huge success and brought together all sorts of environmental groups from all over the city and out of that one of the things coming up on September 20 is gonna be a is it an energy boycott on Friday September 20 climate strike we'll be hearing more about that coming up on September 20 subgroups have also been meeting with the climate mobilization group
186and there's a group of young 20 people 20-somethings who are going for zero carbon emissions by 2025 there they'd like for an emergency action plan so we've got a whole spectrum of activists working around the city on October 24 we here at the environmental Commission we're going to have a follow-up on the food waste discussions that we've been having with food gatherers and also I see PJ has expressed interest so we'll be hearing more about composting on October 24 and then just a reminder to you guys just in case the Greenbelt advisory committee is receiving our comments about their strategic plan we had that millage for 15 years and we can attend a meeting on Thursday September 5 here in this chamber from 4:30 to 7:00 or on October 3rd in this chamber to hear
187public presentation and things about there's some possibility that there's six million dollars left in the millage money that could be used within the city so that if you have opinions or comments on that you can email them to greenbelt at a to gov dot org and then just lastly sonic lunch today had a couple thousand people out for the michael franti concert and he told us all had us all thinking about the fire and amazon in the amazon currently and i had us all singing about how we're all earthlings and so it was great it was really a high point in in the summer you have all those thousands of anti rates out singing about earthlings thanks council so i just want to mention that the next meeting is going to be on september 24th
188the third or the fourth Thursday of the month September 26th I mean and that I think we want to focus on the next month I was hoping we would focus on the city's sustainability efforts Josh MacDonald is gonna present and will talk about progress in that area and then known as constant as councilmember banister mentioned in October we'd like to talk about food waste with food gatherers presenting on some of their ideas and some of the other nonprofits in the community that trying to help with food diversion other others other issues related to that and then in December third we will talk about natural features and pesticides herbicides as a theme I would like to do that so we haven't had much discussion about it here but I think this is the first time I
189proposed this in the Commission meeting but um this is if there's any suggestions or comments I'd appreciate it and as we're forming the agenda for next month so this brings us to public commentary the second public commentary period is there anybody who wants to make a stand up to the microphone mic Akana one two three okay so as I move for adjournment perfect you