 Hearing none, the agenda is set. Let's see, we have a couple of numbers of the public. Now's the public comment period. If you have anything that you would like to address that's not already on the agenda, please raise your hand or add it in the comment box. Seeing or hearing none, moving to the consent agenda. Abby, if you would like to call out which items you'd like to remove for discussion. Yes, I wanted to remove conversation about the organic diversion facility and the growing amount of plastic contamination and kind of connect that with the fact that at the VORS online conference, the Vermont Organics Recycling Summit, the ODF is giving a virtual tour but I think it's sort of a lead up to talking about changing the materials acceptable, acceptable materials policies starting in January of 2021. And yeah, I just, I was, it's not that I want to engage in deep conversation tonight. I just want to call this out to maybe make the suggestion since I think these are very significant items for the public to understand that it be included in near future board meeting agendas. So that was one thing, the organic diversion facility contaminates, plastic contamination and the outreach and plan for educating businesses and the public about no more compostable food wear. Can I ask a clarifying question? Yeah. Is that part of the program updates? Yeah, these are all in program updates. Sorry. Okay, all right. Just wanting to make sure. Yes, that's good. These are all items in program updates. So that was one. Another is just to talk about the VORS, Vermont Organics Recycling Summit online conference, grow, eat, compost, repeat and just I was wanting to encourage board members to really register for that because that would give them a lot of flexibility to have access to recorded presentations and CSWD staff is always quite involved with that. And this year there's a lot of emphasis on soil health, water quality along with really significant updates about almost every aspects of organics management in Vermont, including a virtual tour of Vanguard Renewable. And then the last item under program updates that I thought maybe not tonight but at a future date, not too far off, we could address legislative activity and all of the activity regarding the bottle bill which didn't make it through crossover, but it generated a lot of conversation and confusion, I think among the public. And also the E-Waste bill, I just at some point wanted to hear more about what actually that bill entails and what, you know, the changes it's suggesting what are the ramifications thereof. Okay, are there any other items that commissioners wanna pull out from the consent agenda? Okay, hearing none, we'll make a note for the future meeting. I think May might be most appropriate to address the additional comments, but we can take a moment after we move on from the consent agenda to discuss boards. So any opposition to the consent agenda as it stands outside of what Abby's requested? Okay, hearing none, the consent agenda passes. Sarah, if you or a staff wanna highlight the Vermont Organic Recycling Summit and give any details for the commissioners tonight because I believe that's coming up, that will happen before our next board meeting. Yeah, Dan is on the line. Dan is usually our key person there and I was right, we did produce a, and Michelle actually is on two. We did produce a virtual tour. It's about 15 minutes or so of the compost facility and I had suggested to Michelle that we also roll that out for commissioners and for the public because we haven't been able to do our tours and I watched the tour the other day and it's really well done. I was all done in-house by Rhonda and Ethan, narrated by Dan and it shows the window turner in action. It talks about the contamination issues that we're facing with plastic bags in particular but there are other things too that we wanna encourage food scrap generators to keep out of their food scraps. So Dan, I know Dan was questionable for coming in tonight. Let me see here. Dan's not here. He's actually not feeling well. Okay, yeah, I knew he was gonna be questionable. But yeah, so I was right. Michelle's hand up. Can we have the hand up? Michelle had had raised. Sorry, I don't have access. Can't see the hand raised function here. Sarah, I'm happy to address Wars if you'd like. Sure. Yeah, so Abby, the tours that you mentioned, it's every day of the conference, there's a tour of a different facility. And so we were asked to provide a virtual tour along with the other facilities that are being offered. And it isn't about contamination, it's about what's happening at the facility. Though we do wanna use it as a jumping off place to create a video that will help us message to the public about the changes at the facility and the increased contamination. So we do anticipate using it for that. And our staff, our outreach staff is participating in a couple of different sessions, as is Dan talking about compostable products as well as we have a local group. Our outreach coordinator wasn't able to participate in one of the sessions we wanted to, but in her stead, a community member is presenting on composting at multi-residential communities at a condo complex. So we definitely are participating on a variety of levels as is, you know, and Dan is leading the charge. Yep, so the two, it's all listed on the Compost Association of Vermont webpage where you can register and you can see all of the, it's four days from May 3rd to 7th. And you can see, it's not a jam-packed conference because it's online, but it's always really good. And it always extends beyond compost into, again, this year the theme, a lot of the theme I think is about the role of compost and soil health and in water quality. And with just some really excellent presentation. So I hope people register. I did put the link to get to the Compost Association of Vermont's website relating to the summit in the chat box. So if folks want to join, they can do that. It looks like just from a quick check of registration that it's virtual, not surprising this year and that the registration appears to be no cost. Right. And as far as the contamination, we are planning to bring to the board a contamination policy for your review, discussion and adoption in the coming months. So ahead of our proposed ban on postal products and food scraps in January 1st, we wanna bring the policy to you for your conversation and discussion and adoption. So that will be coming to a future board meeting in the next three to four months so that we can have that ruled out and educating towards ahead of the ban. So that will be upcoming. As far as a legislative update, yes, you're exactly right. There's obviously still activity happening now and we normally will give kind of a legislative wrap up in June, but we can certainly bring something in May. I will encourage Jen to have either a standalone memo on that or certainly more extensive information in her program updates. And she's been obviously our point person on all of this. So there's still some conversations happening on a variety of issues and it's uncertain how much is going to pass in this half of the biennium, but Jen will wrap all of that up in the next month or certainly by June. Great. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for bringing those topics up, Abby. I think at this point we can move to the budget presentation, Sarah. Excellent. And I do want to encourage commissioners if you have the file open yourself that may be a little bit easier to view. And I don't know, Michelle, if you want to drop the link for the packet into the chat box for any of the attendees to follow along, that might be helpful as well. So go ahead, Sarah. No, no worries. Thank you. I was going to share her screen of my PowerPoint so that I can chat and read my notes and not be... Perfect. As well. Yeah. And then we'll also be able to bring up any individual documents as necessary. So we are talking about obviously the fiscal 22 budget proposal and it's truly remarkable what a difference a year makes. So last year at this time, no one knew what this best year was going to look like. So we prepared truly for the worst and I'm very happy to say that the worst did not come to pass. So this budget is really best reviewed in comparison to fiscal 20. So fiscal 21's planning was so unusual due to COVID that it doesn't make the best points of comparison. So I start that off first. Amy, next slide, please. So I'm holding this back to the future budget because we're trying to kind of get back to the momentum where we were about a year ago, a year plus ago. And so as we're climbing out of COVID we are seeing both the revenues and the expenses are kind of more in line with what we were expecting in fiscal 20. So we are seeing very strong sales, expecting strong sales for the MRF and for the ODF. The solid waste management fees have rebounded back to COVID levels just about. So we're seeing very strong revenues. And as I think we've been talking to the board about over the past several months, the next few years will be very extremely capital intensive. So we'll wanna dive into that as we go forward. But these are just a few of the items that we're looking at. So starting off with kind of the top line, I end this with it as well but to give you a sense for where we're starting our revenues are starting at just shy of 13 million. So 12,955, our expenses are at just 12,323. So we're to the good. And so we're looking at having our income after our capital allocations of about 862,000 and that is then going to be distributed amongst a variety of reserves. And we are adding a new reserve this year. So I wanna touch on that a little bit further down the line as well. Exciting me please. So starting again with the solid waste management fee. And this was what I meant by comparing to fiscal 21 is not nearly as informative as comparing to it, particularly in this case, calendar year actuals for 2020. So if you're looking at the calendar year actuals, again we are projecting that we will be spot on even flat to calendar 20. So no need to increase the solid waste management fee will remain at $27 a ton. This remains unchanged over the past eight years now and no need to tap those reserves. We're projecting a modest, very, very modest increase in projected tons over fiscal 21. I'm sorry, a decent 24% over fiscal 21, maybe 1% over calendar year term. Next please. So I want to start off with the ODF. And this is a little bit busy, but it's also reflective of the information that's in your packet. So the against diversion facility is, again, as folks who've been around for a while with the board know, we have really struggled to bring the ODF, the Mountain Compost, into a strong economic position. And we tried a lot of things, a lot of things, dedicated a lot of resources to it. And it wasn't until we changed the business model a couple of years ago with the blessing, obviously, and the approval of the board. And once we switched from the retail model to the wholesale model, that was when we really found our footing. And so that coupled with the decision to keep everything local, to really rein things in, we were trying to sell too far afield. We were looking at the North Shore of Boston, we were looking at New York City, and it just didn't make sense. So we brought everything close to home, we remain in Vermont, we sell to Vermonters, and that's where we think that our sweet spot is. So that decision coupled with that change in the business model going down from 13 products down to three, and really focusing on the customers who've been with us from the beginning has reaped tremendous benefits. So for the past couple of years, you'll see that our subsidy has been dramatically reduced. And this year, if we do not tap our contingency, ODF will be in the black. And I think that is a remarkable testament to the hard work of Dan and his crew. It's a testament to this board for believing in us and agreeing to that change, that really big sea change, and it is showing that the direction was the right direction to going. So I just thought it was such a great story, and I'm so proud of the work that's been done here. So again, we are looking for a strong sale season this year, currently in this current quarter of fiscal 21 and also projected into fiscal 22. We are still seeing the benefits, silver lining of the COVID shutdown. A lot of people started gardening or really invested in their gardens. So we immediately sold out of our material. We were in an excellent position in fiscal 20 and that we had quite a lot of inventory. So we were able to really make hay of that situation. We had less inventory going into this year. So that's where the sales differences will be. It's slightly lower. And then we're projecting also having similar inventory levels in this fiscal 22 as we did in fiscal 21. So that's why the sales won't be as high as they were actual in fiscal 20. However, we will be selling out. So I always count that as a win. So looking for another good strong year for the ODI. Next slide, please. So the MRF. And again, this is another somewhat COVID related, but also not completely COVID related. So if you'll recall a couple of years ago, I was telling the board about how when China's national sword happened and when China started to shut down the markets, access to their markets, that there was investment coming in this country and in Canada. So domestic investment in mills and that continued through COVID. So that did not stop. So we are now being able to take advantage of that increased access to fiber markets in particular. So fiber cardboard papers are sorted office paper. And that is hugely responsible for the growth in our average commodity revenue. So you'll see that we are budgeting in this budget for an average commodity revenue ACR of $65 a ton. And what that means is that when you take all the values of all of the different products that we sell through the MRF and clearly average them together, that rate is what we call the ACR and that's a monthly revenue rate. So a year ago, we were looking at if we were lucky $30 a ton. So just that huge difference, particularly the fiber markets is where the growth has been seen was again, spurred on by the needs of COVID. A lot of people shopping from home, needing more cardboard. A lot of recycled paper goes into paper towels, goes into toilet paper, goes into wipes. So there was a huge need for fiber, which is good because fiber represents 80% of the material stream that we process through the MRF. So kind of as the fiber markets go, so go our revenues and the MRF. That is not to say that the other streams are not strong. So we are also seeing quite a bit of growth and strength in the HDPE natural, which are milk ducks. And we're also seeing some growing strength in HDPE color-deterting bottles. What is not growing as much and is actually at the lowest point has been in several years is PET. That pricing is still quite depressed. Aluminum is growing. So all in all, all totaled, we're looking at a very, very strong year for the MRF sales. We do anticipate that we will exceed the $65 a ton ACR, but we want it to be conservative. We don't want to necessarily count on that commodity revenue as far as basing our economic structure on that. We want to have that base be the TIPPY. Although because we are forecasting a very strong ACR, we are not looking to increase the TIPPY. So the TIPPY will remain at $8 a ton at the MRF. And I neglected to mention ODF, we are raising the TIPPY to $65 a ton. So there's no increase at the MRF, small increase at the ODF, material sales and pricing both strong in both programs. One note, I do want to make sure the board is aware we are entering the final year of our eight year contract with our MRF operator. So Jen and Josh and I will be working with Kisela to negotiate either an extension to that or some new terms we'll have to, we'll be needing to come back to the board, obviously with that factor into some decisions that we have to make going forward with any number should the board decide to go in that direction. Next slide please. So Drop-off Centers, we want to have a much longer conversation about drop-off centers. So the drop-off center revenues are fairly flat. We're holding bad prices the same as in fiscal 21. And again, fiscal 21 was an odd year because we started the year still in COVID with some flat fees. We retain the flat fees into September. So the full year is not exactly indicative of what kind of a normal quote, normal year would be at the DOC's. So this will be then the next full year of kind of back to regular bad pricing. I want the board to focus on the subsidies. So this is concerning and we do need to pay some very strong attention to what's happening at the Drop-off Centers and like I said, have a renewed deeper conversation about what we want to do in the direction that we want to take. It's not new, but I think you're seeing it this way maybe for the first time. So again, we'll want to continue to have these conversations. Next slide. And again, here's just some kind of explanation of kind of what we're seeing. So the DOC's for years, you had kind of made up of two budgets. They're two separate budgets. There was Drop-off Center budget and a special waste budget. And the special waste budget was heavily subsidized and that was things like paint, e-waste, CFLs, textiles, all kinds of just items that may or may not have had a revenue source and quite a lot of the significant portion of the Wilson Drop-off Center costs were also shared with that budget. So in essence, it kind of decreased the overall, would appear to be the overall budget burden of the Drop-off Centers because it had that special waste budget. That didn't seem logical to me. So several years ago, we had been in that and we brought everything into the DOC's because truly it was the DOC's managing all of these wastes. And that's when the shift started to happen. That's when it became clear how much we really were subsidizing that particular system. Another factor is the way that we do allocations. And we've gone back and forth over the past few years on how we do allocations of overhead and services, internal services. What we did this year was the maintenance and roll-up department basically has their costs completely allocated out to the programs that use those services heavily. And by and large, overwhelmingly, 85% of the work that is done by the maintenance and roll-up department is on behalf of the DOC's. So they bear that lion's share of the burden of that budget. In addition, CSWD either is unable to charge or we choose not to charge for certain materials. And that's, I'll show that on the next slide so we can advance, please. So this is also another point of conversation that I think the board should start to be thinking about and maybe start to have. There are many materials that we manage where the revenue does not cover the cost and these are just some examples. There are materials that are managed without a source of revenue. And again, that is a choice that we've made over the years. And then there are materials that are managed with a source of revenue that we don't control. So we don't control the fees for paint, for E-ways, for CFLs, basically through the extended producer responsibility programs. We don't have control over that. So there are certain materials that we manage through the DOC's that we just are, again, some we've made decisions to subsidize, others we partially subsidized due to maybe not covering all the costs and then others we're not quite sure. This year, we are going to be putting a heavy push on identifying very precisely those materials in that first column where the revenue doesn't cover the cost. And looking for opportunities there, trying to understand maybe what the factors are and then bringing that information to you to say we have some choices here. We can try to charge for these or we can continue to subsidize and just be very, very transparent about those choices. So that's part of some analysis that we're going to be doing this year on the drop off centers. Next please. So this again is just kind of showing the subsidy amounts in this current budget by program. So, really not too many surprises, I think, I hope. And again, getting at that choice of subsidy, it's long been the will of the board to subsidize, heavily subsidize the environmental depot. It makes tremendous amount of sense to make it as easy as possible for the public to be able to bring us their household hazardous waste. So that's an example of an area where it's been policy, philosophy, practice to heavily subsidize those activities. So you can see where is there a negative that means that there's a subsidy required where there's a positive that means money is coming in from that program to the general fund to subsidize. So you'll see really two contributors that are not taking, there's no subsidy associated with the solid waste management fee that is just to do the fee that is charged per ton at Coventry level for material that is disposed of from treatment county and then the MRF will be contributing. Question, someone popped up maybe with a question. And Brady did also help me identify if you see people's hands popping up with questions. That would be great. So traditionally the administrative programs have been either portions allocated out, all allocated out or not allocated out. So that's another conversation that I think the finance committee and the board willing to engage in is how we want to manage that. Next slide please. So getting to have again that quick snapshot of the bottom line and I apologize there was a typo in my memo. So on the line where it says transfer to the solid waste management fee reserve that this is correct on the slide in the memo it said transfer from, there's not a transfer from the solid waste management fee reserve, it is a transfer in to the solid waste management fee reserve. So you can see that we are looking to add quite a bit to those reserves. We're also looking to add a new reserve, an operating reserve. And we can talk more about that a little bit down the road as well. Next slide please. So as we're looking at, then compared to fiscal 20 and again, we need to kind of make an asterisk on fiscal 21, the revenue is increasing slightly. These are the other slight increases, very large obviously increases for the marked material sales and then modest increases on the depot fees and the solid waste management fee again with pretty much flat in DOC fee. It should be sales revenue increases so it's revenue from fees of the DOC charges. Next slide please. Expenses again against fiscal 20. So there was a very large increase in the cost of goods sold for the Dan and his program, but that was because again, the demand was huge in calendar year 20. So that was a very real large increase there but it's not anticipating that again this year. We are looking at some closing I feel like expenses being increased because we wanna do some testing particularly on the liner and making sure that the cap is still, doesn't have any holes or leaks. And so we wanna make sure that we're taking a look at that and in preparation for going to custodial care after fiscal 25. And then our expenses are a slight decrease against fiscal 20 but pretty much still in line. Next slide please. So there's been some staffing recommendations and staffing changes that we're looking to implement in the next fiscal year. And those are all outlined in your memo as well. And one and kind of nearly two reductions. The one that I wanted to acknowledge is Nancy Plunkett, our longtime employee, our director of special projects is planning to retire in May of next year, not this year. We still have her for another year. And Nancy has been just such a huge asset to the district. I don't think anyone here can stress how important having Nancy work for CSWD has been. She's been a wonderful mentor to me. She's so knowledgeable and just such a wonderful colleague that her retirement will definitely be felt for a long, long time. So we're lucky that we have her for another year because there are some changes here as far as kind of dividing out her duties between John, Dorward and Michelle and others in her team. But rest assured no one will be able to fill issues of Nancy Plunkett. So we will make this, be sure to have her come by before she retires next year. And we wanna make sure that the public is fully aware. Just tell them what she has meant to us over the years and she's really best. Next please. So allocations is another area where I would like the finance committee to really help us finally come to grips with how we do allocations and overhead. So in fiscal 22 budget, the only program that is being truly allocated is the main internal law budget and it's going across mainly operations programs. So the support programs in this budget, like they were in fiscal 21 budget, the current budget we're in, are being funded by salarious management, the revenue. So the support programs again, are admin, compliance, engineering, finance, outreach and communications and special projects. So there's a lot of ways to think about this. Probably 10, 20, 30 different ways you can slice and dice allocations. One of the areas that's always been a struggle has been getting those support program allocations to be truly accurate to their costs. And kind of without doing in the moment, costing and expensing, requiring time, time requiring kind of similar to a doctor or a lawyer or something would do, which we could do. We're not really going to have an accurate having of exactly what needs to go to each operation program. And then there's always going to be that amount of time that just is not specific to the more specific to the DOCs. So we'll want to try to figure out a process for going forward that we can put in that is predictable, that we can plug into the budgeting that we can plug into as a formula or come up with a practice that there's something different. But this is an area that I feel strongly needs a lot of brain power put on to. So I'd like to dedicate some time with the finance committee and the executive board and then bring to the full board how we address this. Next slide please. So capital plan and again, a reminder that the plan is not the authorization to spend. It is the direction and it's the intention, but it is not the authorization to spend. The big capital projects will always come back to the board for review and approval. We are looking at three very heavy investment years back to back. This will draw down on the reserves. We are programs that are able to contribute. We'll be contributing to the capital reserve and mainly that's the MRF right now. We're hopeful in about two years that ODF will be able to contribute some as well to the capital reserve, but there will be a significant drawdown. So we're looking at in this current fiscal year, 2022 with the major investments being in organics and at two of the DOC's at Milton and Enrichment. Next please. So with the fund equity, our funds are in very good shape. The only one that is variable again is capital and that's pretty standard. So there's still some money in the DOC weight stabilization fund that reserve. And I'm not sure why we didn't draw that down last year. It wasn't tended to be drawn down. So that may have been a paper issue where we just didn't have a count for that yet. The followers mentoring fee, the stabilization fund is very healthy. And there may be some conversation. I think there is conversation to be had regarding that reserve fund. The Lava Post-closure Fund also is adequately funded pending status quo activities. So if there's no major repairs or emergencies, then we do have enough money in that closure fund to get us to the end of the 30 years. But again, however, I wanna make sure that there's no surprises there that we wanna need to address that could cause an issue with the remaining money in that fund. Next please. So I talked about work, talked a lot about work for this board. And here are three of the areas where I would like the board to be dedicating some time and some energy to over the next fiscal year. So as we mentioned that we are in the midst of a salary and wages and compensation, benefits compensation review being done by Gallagher Fund. So one of the pieces that we'll be bringing to you in the next month or so probably by June will be their recommendations as far as where CSWD sits regarding the marketplace. And then so the task would be to obviously discuss that and adopt revisions as necessary. And so that could fall into this current fiscal year but certainly the beginning of next fiscal year. And then as we talked about overhead, salaries, mantra fee uses, again, take a look at the overhead allocation strategies and then the reserve fund policy. So the reserve fund policy is a one page very basic policy, I think it needs to be beefed up. And I would like our board to take a good amount of look and do some work on beefing that up. So those are my tasks for you. Should you choose to accept those challenges? Next. And when this is the resolution that we can bring back up at the end of the conversation, should the board decide that they do want to move forward and adopt approval of the budget for being submitted to our member talents? So Amy, that is the extent of my presentation. All right, thanks. Amy, if you can just leave the slide deck up for now. Open a questions for the commissioners. Obviously this is quite an intense amount of work in all of this. And a lot of committee work on it, but there's a lot of changes from what we were discussing last year for the folks that participated in that budget adjustment to account for COVID. So it's gonna be difficult to make comparisons to previous fiscal year, even looking at FY 2019. So Sarah pointed out the calendar year may be a better comparison for that. Tim has his hand up. So if you wanna go ahead and ask your question. Yeah, Sarah and Nola, we just directionally, how much cash do we have on hand right now? We are helping. No idea at the top of your head. It's about 10 million, but let me just double check. I'm gonna pull that up so that I have a better answer. So we can't get the number by tallying the reserve accounts. I'm just... Not in the way that's been presented here. Like, yeah, normally you could. Sorry. And I know that, I mean, the number is, it's eye-poppingly large. And I guess one other item I would propose for the finance committee and the board to tackle is looking at cash management and how effective we are. I guess the other comment is, I am a little bit disappointed that we've completely veered away from the strategy we had for overhead allocation. I think perfection, we're sometimes perfection becomes the enemy of good. There is no perfect overhead allocation strategy. We had a pretty robust methodology that gave us a good indication of what our true operating costs were for each one of our programs and we seem to have trashed it. And I just don't understand why we did that. It is what it is. And I'm assuming it's just related to the fact that we've had so much turnover. Well, there's certainly been a lot of, like I say, there's no one perfect approach. And it is true that with each new minus director, you get a different set of eyeballs and a different approach. So I don't know that we trashed it. I think we're looking for an approach that seems to work best for us. So... Well, if we're not breaking out program costs and we're breaking out and we're saying, here's what our administrative programs cost and here's what our operating programs cost, we have trashed it, right? We're not giving either the board or our constituents this ability to what our programs truly cost if we're not allocating our overheads. For the flip side to that is without having the overhead overlaid, you see exactly what the base level operational costs are. So again, it's what I mean. There are several different approaches and I think we need to just focus on it and make it a priority. Yeah, I agree with you 100%. We need to take a pure direct view, but at the same time, from looking at it from pure P&L perspective, we do need to have an idea of what the programs cost us, right? Are we subsidizing drop off centers or are the drop off centers subsidizing us? How much does our environmental program hazardous waste program cost us? Why are we subsidizing it so much, right? So I mean, we wouldn't have gotten our hands around the renown compost issues. We haven't really peeled the onion on it, but we can't ignore overheads as we look at them. That's a good point, Tim. And I think that Nola got hired during a pandemic. So we're very grateful for her coming on board in short notice and in difficult times and trying to put us in the right place as far as we can get a reasonable budget looking at all the available information. I mean, and that's another thing that's a challenge is we have a time delay as far as closing out the books. And that makes it very challenging for the finances to give a timely assessment of what our actuals are to the forecast. And that is, I think, a barrier to being as fiscally diligent as we'd like to be. So to the extent that we want to have better insight into overhead and how it's allocated, I totally hear that at the point. I know that I'm appreciative of the Finance Committee and the work that is put into that and all those discussions. So hopefully that is something that they just brings forward to this next fiscal year and certainly look forward to you participating in my committee again, Tim. Are there any other questions from the commissioners? Bren, if I could comment, I don't think Leslie is on the call. And this was my rookie year on the Finance Committee. It was a learning experience for me, but I just wanted to share with the pool board. My experience was that the Finance Committee through each department with a fairly detailed comb questioning Sarah and the managers on both budget increases and decreases. And as Sarah indicated, I think that might take away really the key question. And she pointed this out that going forward, we really need to focus on justification for staffing levels and also take a strong look at compensation. I know there's process, there were there study in process here, but just to alert the full board that that was a strong area of concern and question. But at the end of the day, Sarah and the managers adequately addressed our concerns for this budget. And I think the Finance Committee concluded that the budget assumptions for every department and every aspect of the budget were realistic, if not conservative. So our feeling was that this is a solid and responsible budget and Finance Committee supports it. Thank you very much. Paul Stailer, do you have a question? I don't have a question. I just want to express my gratitude for all the hard work that the staff and the Budget Committee put into this. I think an excellent presentation, great summary. And I know how much work it is. So I thank you all. Thank you Paul. Other commissioners? If I can jump in. I want to also say that Sarah's cover member, it wasn't Memo was not presented here tonight, but her extensive cover Memo in the budget package, I thought was excellent in identifying how the district, where the district revenues come from and how each department is, what their functions are. And I think that should be a component of every year's budget presentation to remind continuing board members, but especially new board members. It was an excellent introduction into all the complexities of the district. Another thing we can thank. Thank COVID for. I think there've been a lot of really great improvements that have come out of these challenges. And to the extent that it's finessed some of our presentations and communication materials, it definitely has shown much value and show much impact. So many thanks to you and all the staff for the hard work because it is hard work. Thank you. I thought I saw another hand. Allen? Allen. Yeah. I would like to second Paul's comments with respect to staff and the finance committee as somebody that sat on the finance committee for the last 10 or 12 years previous to this year. It is a time consuming and interesting challenge. To get to the presentation and the numbers that can be presented logically to the board and then to the community. So I appreciate all the hard work with respect to that and it didn't involve me. Thank you, Allen. And then there was a comments from Liz just agreeing with the comments from Paul and all the crews and hard work to get us here. I also wanna say in terms of the upcoming needs, Sarah pointed to a couple of big ones for CSWD's staff. And I think they're even mixed in with that is circling back to what Tim mentioned about cash on hand and investments. And that was highlighted at one of our last finance comedings actually was looking at a better investment of reserve funds. So I believe that will be one of the added charges for the finance committee to review and bring to the board in FY22 as well. Excellent thoughts and a lot of great comments there. All right, I'm open to hearing a motion to adopt the budget as presented. I'll move that the CSWD board of commissioners approve the proposed FY2022 budget and that it be submitted to the member legislative bodies for approval as presented. Second. I need discussion. Hearing none, all those in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstained? Budget passes. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone. Sarah, we are onto the waste composition study. And that would be Ms. Nancy. Good evening, everyone. Good evening. Let me, it's weird, it's not letting me, sorry, letting me back up. Oh, weird, kids worked fine earlier. It's saying you're sharing. It is saying you're sharing. Oh, there we go. It is. Yay. Okay. So in, why is it moving through here? All right, stay there. So in 2020, CSWD contracted with MSW consultants to conduct a residential waste composition study in Purchitt and County. And tonight we'll share the results of this study. The district completed similar studies in 2006, 2010 and 2015. Waste sorts were completed in August and November, 2020 at the Cassella Transfer Station in Williston. The study could not have been completed without the tremendous assistance of Cassella staff. And I wanna publicly thank them for their support. I also wanna thank the haulers who provided information about the collection routes and loads. And last, but certainly not least, I wanna acknowledge the help provided by district maintenance department staff who altered their schedules to deliver roll-off boxes from the drop-off centers to accommodate the study's timetable. While the total amount of residential and commercial waste that was landfill decreased in 2020 by almost 12%, there's no agreement that the residential portion increased since most people were confined to their homes and a lot of work activities shifted there due to COVID-19. Purchasing and consumption of certain types of products in the home also increased. As Sarah mentioned, we should keep this in mind as we review the results of the study. The other side of this coin is what happened with the diversion of materials in 2020 under COVID. We know there was an impact. For example, the city of Burlington saw a significant increase in the amount of residential recycles it collected during the year. We'll take a look at this when I come back to you with the 2020 diversion report in a few months. The purpose of the study is to measure the types and quantities of materials residents are disposing in the landfill and to use this information to help guide future facility marketing, education, and policy decisions. This was sorted into 28 categories, twice as many as we did in 2015, including various paper categories, plastic categories, metal and glass categories, and organics and special waste categories. This table highlights the results of the study. We'll compare them to the results of the previous studies in a little bit. In the upper section of this table, this materials for which diversion programs currently exist. The lower section of this table lists a few of the materials for which no diversion programs currently exist, the ones for which we have monitored recycling markets over the years in hopes of having a program. A breakdown by all 28 material categories may be found in MSW Consultants final report which was included in your packet. The 2020 column shows what portion of the sorted waste the material made up. The tons column shows an estimate of how many total tons this may represent in the landfill. The divertible materials total an estimated 62% of what residents currently dispose which are presenting perhaps as much as 34,000 tons in 2020. The categories that are divertible, food scraps, and soil paper makes up the larger component followed by composable paper, wells, and clean wood. Mandatory blue bin recyclables total 9% when combined. The potentially recycled materials listed in the lower section of the table represent fairly small quantities. In this chart, materials sort categories that aren't currently divertible from disposal are all included in the remainder category, the black slice of the pie. It is of course discouraging that it appears that 62% of what residents dispose could have been diverted through existing programs. When we compare these results to previous studies though, there is some good news. In 2006 and 2010 studies, there were only four sorting categories used. So that's all we can compare here. We'll compare the 2020 study to just 2015 which had many more categories in a minute. The good news I promised is that mandatory recyclables make up a much smaller portion of what is landfill compared to previous CSWD and state studies. But you can see that non-woody organics which include food scraps, composable paper, and yard trimmings make up a larger portion of what is landfill than previously. Given that we've been moving toward the July 1, 2020 food scrap disposal ban for some time, we would have expected a reduction in the quantities compared to the results of previous studies. Particularly with the significant jump we've seen in residential food scraps delivered to the drop-off centers and the compost facility. Of course, possible explanations for the increased rest with the impacts of COVID-19 in 2020. When almost everything shut down in March and most people were isolated in their homes, food preparation and consumption of takeout meals at home increased significantly. There was also a surge in home gardening. These activities may have resulted in more food waste being placed in the trash. We might also hypothesize that the use of paper towels went up dramatically from increased hand washing and surface cleaning. While we don't accept paper towels that have been used for disinfecting for composting, they would have been included in the composable paper category with towels used for hand-drying and food spills since they are indistinguishable in the trash. By itself, composable paper made up almost 8% of what was sorted. Here's a different representation comparing the results of the previous study studies. You can see the gradual decline in mandatory recyclables over time, the blue and red bars, and the bump this year in non-woody organics, the green bars. Those observations are evident in this table, which compares just the 2015 and 2020 results. But we have more good news. We see that there is a reduction this time around in all other categories of divertable materials with the exception of hardcover books, which is flat, and textiles, which are up significantly. We don't know if the end of the textile collection program at the district drop-off centers in mid-March last year had an impact. There are a number of other local options for used clothing in good condition for resale, but used clothing shops can't handle the quantity that is generated in Chittenden County, let alone textiles that can't be resold but could be used in other products such as wiping rags or pillow stuffing. For years, the Salvation Army and Goodwill have managed the reusable and recyclable clothing and other textiles that they have collected and that the district has collected and shipped loads to textile sorting facilities for shipment to recycling markets and international reuse markets. However, the markets have struggled for years now and were further impacted by COVID-19 in 2020. It is unclear whether or when these markets might recover. The reduction in recyclable films may have been aided by the state ban on the use of retail plastic bags that went into effect on July 1, 2020 before the two sorts were conducted. To recap, mandatory recyclables make up a smaller portion of the residential waste stream as compared to previous studies. The same is true for yard trimmings, clean wood, scrap metal, and recyclable plastic films compared to the results of the 2015 study. Food scraps and compostable paper make up a larger portion of the residential waste stream. While Chittenden County residents are diverting tremendous amounts of reusable, recyclable, and compostable materials, an estimated 62% or potentially 34,000 tons of what households are disposing could be diverted through existing programs. Education on options for currently diverted, divertable material should continue. Monitoring of markets for reusable and recyclable textiles should continue. And we should keep convenience one of the pillars of increased diversion in mind when evaluating collection programs. For example, the addition of a wood waste depot on Redmond Road, which is planned, should help improve clean wood diversion. I'd like to end with this slide. That's a quote from John Culbertson, he's a principal at MSW Consultants who completed the study. He noted, I was impressed with the lack of recyclables in the disposed waste stream compared to some of the regions where we work. Vermonters, at least in your corner of the state, do seem to have a better focus on recycling. Are there any questions? Questions from commissioners? I'm curious about recommendations. You know, as you point out, having convenience as a pillar to diversion and looking at capital projects and just the strategic goals and the overlap there, is there, you know, are we aligned with our capital projects and the convenience component? Are there aspects that we can improve in the short term? Let's, I know it's been a big discussion with the drop-off centers as we brought them back online, looking at, you know, what materials to accept where? What does it do to convenience participation? How often does the household generate certain materials? You know, is it once a year? Therefore, does it need to be at all of the drop-off centers? So yes, convenience definitely was a part of those discussions. And I know with the wood waste depot, I don't know, maybe Josh or Sarah has other comments on that with other capital projects. Josh, can we have it? Here we go. One of the things we're looking at for convenience through our drop-off centers is in this fiscal year coming up in FY22, adding special waste structures to help just the experience for people coming through and to also increase throughput. We're gonna introduce two, one at Milton and one at Richmond. That'll help us collect material more efficiently and it also, it just is more room. So that's one thing we're looking at. Another thing we'd like to look at is once we, you know, develop the wood waste depot that will open about almost a half an acre at Williston and down at the drop-off center. So there is a potential area to increase either the experience of the customer or it just provides some real estate for us to really kind of look at what we accept, how we accept it and to make it more efficient and convenient. So that's another thing we're looking at that wood waste depot will open up for us. Are there areas where it makes sense to subsidize the cost of convenience? I know that we certainly are looking at efficiencies and mitigating subsidies for programs but through centralizing collection and especially of bulky goods, you know, are there aspects of that that should be evaluated further? Absolutely, that's one of the things that kind of Sarah brought up and, you know, her presentation is that we need, let's dive back into what we accept, how we manage materials through our DLCs and find, you know, there's, what we decide to subsidize for convenience such as, you know, waste oil. We'd rather see people take that in for free and provide them an easy and convenient way to get rid of it than to have to manage it on their own and potentially throw it away. So there's certain things that are kind of no-brainers but there's other things that we should look at and see how we manage it. And that's, I think the big charge that we're gonna work on as staff this year to bring back to the board and speak with the executive committee as well. But that's high on the list right now. And so Nancy, it seems like the last study was in 2015 that you compared this to, is that right? Yes. And is it part of our charter to have our ordinance to have a lease comp every five years? No. We started in 2005 and 2006, we did three sorts. And then we just started doing it every five years to see how we were doing. So, you know, see if our programs are having an impact. Look at what we're still seeing a lot of in the landfill that we should perhaps be targeting. There's no requirement, this is strictly up to part of the budget process. Can you help with muting? Thank you. It's part of the budget process, you know. Is there, sorry, go ahead. No, no, I'm done. Okay, I was, I'm gonna defer. I've asked a lot of questions. I'll go to Alan next. Alan, you're on mute. Our drop off center, containers and stuff evaluated in your study. What do you mean? Well, are they included? Are they in the study? In the study, yeah. Yes. Yes. We get a representative sample by holler, by drop off, by community. You know, a whole balance of trying to get a representative sample. So that included seven roll offs from the drop off, all the different drop off centers between the two sorts in August and November. And as samples were, you know, a sample was taken from each of those. And is that a representative sample of our waste stream? Of the drop off? I'm just thinking that the management of the waste stream at the drop off centers is probably a heck of a lot better than it is at somebody's garage, you know, in their house. And I'm just curious if we're getting the percentage of materials that are getting dropped off at drop off centers as the equal amount in the study. I did, I did look at that the difference between the curbside loads and the drop offs. You really, I mean, as a whole, they are what the protocol is that gives you a representative sample, all of them combined. So just pulling out one or the other, you know, curbside or drop off, it's really, really don't want to generalize from that. But of course, you know, being curious, as we all are, I did look at that. And the big differences were in food scraps and soiled paper, a lot less in the drop off center samples, which makes sense, because it's very convenient, you know, the people can bring their food scraps right there. And we have found in previous surveys that we did household surveys, you may might remember that there's people who use drop off centers or a higher percentage of them are also backyard composters. So they would have, you know, perhaps less food scraps to begin with coming to the drop off. The other one was the drop off people. There was a seemingly bigger difference with bulky materials, you know, in the regular trash box, which also makes sense because that's not something people can normally put out curbside for the hauler to pick up fit in their can. So there was, you know, more bulky waste that we pulled from there. But again, you know, we really shouldn't generalize from that. But so is that as a whole, them all combined, it's meant to give us a representative sample of all the households in Shetland County. And Nancy, this is looking targeted to look at the residential sector. Only the residential section, yes. Does that include, is this excluding multi-family? Since then? No, it does not include, it does include multi-family. Okay, because I know often haulers categorize that as commercial accounts because they're using dumpsters. We got information about their loads and there was one good route which was like all multi-unit and there were others that had a mix. So we definitely looked at that. We wanted those represented as well. I think I saw Katie's hand up. Abby, go ahead. Yeah, I was wondering moving forward, how will the issue of the food scraps increasing? How will that be monitored? I mean, it won't, we wouldn't wait for another five years to be seeing if that was continuing in that direction, right? Well, again, we think that it's, 2020 was an anomaly with what was happening with COVID-19. So once, I mean, and certainly an effect into 2021, but I think we'll go, be back on track to where we were. How do we measure that monitoring, how much food scraps are coming into the drop-off centers and into the compost facility from residents and the tonnage, the total tonnage of trash going into the landfill. Otherwise, unless someone has some good ideas, I'm not sure unless we were to do sorts every year, which gets pretty expensive. Yeah. Yeah, I'm also just curious about this. I'm sorry. You go ahead and finish and I'll ask. I was gonna say, most communities that do this, states or municipalities, it's every five years or every 10. And normally what you do is you get that information and then you affect some change to your system unless you're happy with the results. And that takes time to implement and then to have an impact. Changing behavior, as you know, continues to be quite a challenge and we're doing really well. I mean, we're above average nationally, perhaps even higher and we should feel really good in that. We're getting into where it's harder and as we know too, food scraps are the hardest of all. People are really turned off a lot of people by having to manage that separately. So we just persevere at the fruit that's higher in the tree. I know you weren't measuring institutions for waste composition in the waste composition study, but it would be interesting to know what happened in 2020 with particularly like all of the school systems and the educational institutions, colleges because I have a feeling just anecdotally that food scrap diversion plummeted during COVID. Well, actually from residential sources, we saw a huge increase in food scraps brought both to our DOCs and to GMC and there were double digit increases in the amount that very, very small haulers, ones who only managed food scraps, started bringing in their customer base. Each of them grew by leaps and bounds. So they are now bringing in, Josh, I'm not sure if you can remember this accurately, but they've more than doubled the amount that year over year. So we did see a huge jump in the no waste and kind of a smaller per-site collectors. So that's been a huge boom. But I was talking about institutions, schools that you weren't doing the waste composition study, but I think that schools were so on high alert about food as vectors of COVID that they just really lost ground with their food sorting and diversion. Yes, and with the pretty quick move to remote learning, a lot of the food scraps that were generated were then being generated at home. So we're still getting some, but we anticipate that that institutional material will certainly rebound. It already has rebounded to a degree. So what we lost and we'll not see for another, maybe another full year would be events. That material obviously was lost all of last year and it took a lot longer for the colleges to come back. The hospital system came back pretty quickly, not full, but fairly quickly. And restaurants will grow. And obviously the restaurants correct as they start to come back. That has been slower, more slow. But yes, so I think within another year we will have regained this last year. I do know that the city is planning on their July 4th event. So we're waiting on permits, but we're still meeting and going ahead like it's gonna happen. So, and I gotta imagine that's gonna be, that's gonna draw from a lot of communities, probably the biggest one, probably to the scene in a while as far as attendance. Yeah, no, that's a good point. I think events in the fall may, we may see a bigger bump from there. But yeah, by this time next year, I think we'll be probably back up. I know our recycling tonnages aren't going down any. We're right at 40 ton again over last year's total for this month, this past month, March. Yeah, the recycling tonnage, stupid Murph, we were pushing 50,000 tons, which is about three to four more than we had budgeted. So, and that absolutely was a COVID related bump, which is why we brought the projection back down to our normal of 40, 7,500. So, will you felt Lee? Yep. Well, I know, man. It's usually we budget 2880 tons a year and we're gonna be at 3,400 tons this year. Yeah. My budget's already, my budget for recycling is, with this last payment is done just because we've increased in tonnages from what I budgeted for. It's crazy. We'll take it. Nancy, can you speak to the differences in the, basically the strategy of how this, how the CSWD's waste composition studies completed in relation to the states? Well, the state one doesn't give us our representative sample in Chittenden County. They do one, I mean, the protocol for a waste composition study is that you do it in at least two seasons. There's a minimum number of samples across those to 30 samples that weigh about 200 pounds. And which is the state does that too, but they're doing on a much larger scale. And so they do a sort at all cycle, but just one, one season. So it doesn't, and they do residential and they do commercial. And I do look at that data and it's usually in between when we've done ours because we want to continue to estimate what's still getting disposed, but it's not a completely representative sample. So the commercial we haven't done, it's much more challenging. Residential is fairly heterogeneous whereas, I mean, homogeneous, whereas commercial is incredible variety between manufacturing and restaurants and banks and trying to get a representative sample is hard and sorting is harder, it's pretty costly. So I really do look at the state data for the sorts that they do in the county. But this gives us a picture where, we've really looked at getting a representative sample of the loads based on a market share of the haulers and population and drop-offs versus curbside and all of that. So I think it's some better data. Good question. Yes, thank you. And then I'm curious if there's any ability or plans to utilize the waste composition study data to inform the schoolments tool that worked that we just had completed this past winter. That tool was mainly devised for estimating the amount of tons that go in the landfill. We do put diversion information in there like from the diversion report and it would, how it would fit with this is where we just say, we want to increase our diversion of clean wood. So we're gonna add this facility here, we're gonna increase our somewhere, whatever the program is. You can do some estimates on, okay, what's left in the landfill. So composition is a piece, there is a whole module in there which has our data from our sorts as well as A&R's data and from other states too that are similar or who have done sorting of recyclables that are set up. So it does go in there, but that then feeds to us to know, okay, well, how much is still in the landfill, going in the landfill, how many tons are available of that material? And then if we make a change, we can put in what recovery rate we think we might get based on what we set up. And then that lets us figure out how much more we might be able to divert whether it makes sense to go forward with the program. So yes, I will be adding this new residential data to the module on the waste composition. Awesome, and John will be trained up and ready to use that after we lose him. We were already meeting. Sure. Working process. Sure. Well, wonderful, thank you. I don't see or hear any other questions from commissioners. So believe at this time, Sarah, we can move to the executive session if you or Amy want to read that language. Yeah, I can read that. I move that the board of commissioners of the Chittenden-Sowler Waste District go into executive session for the purpose to discuss contract negotiations with respect to the organics diversion facility and confidential attorney client communications to provide legal services where premature general public knowledge would clearly place the district, its member municipalities, and other public bodies or persons involved at a substantial disadvantage and to permit staff and the Salloway District attorneys to be present for this session. So moved, South Burlington. Second, Burlington. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Okay, we'll see you in executive session. I don't have a link. Sarah, let me know when we have a quorum. When we have a quorum. All right, I'll entertain a motion to leave executive session. So moved, South Burlington. Second, Westford. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Did I hear an aye for an oppose? Yes, I did. Okay, just checking. All right, at this point are there any other items of business, Sarah? No. I do want to not let the board forget that Saturday is Greenup Day. And we look forward to your participation and enthusiasm abiding by the State Department of Health and CDC guidelines. No reason not to get out there and beautify our awesome district. So certainly post your photos to Instagram, tag CSWD, tag Greenup Day. And enjoy, enjoy just being outside. Perfect. Thank you for your reminder. Yep. I will entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved, South Burlington. Second, Westford. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? All right, have a great evening. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Goodnight. Thank you.