 My name is Paul Russo, I am the chair of the board of commissioners of the Chittenden Solid Waste District. There is a quorum present and I am calling to order this regularly scheduled meeting of the board of the Chittenden Solid Waste District. The first item on the agenda is the agenda itself. I have one item to add to other business which is the that will deal with the seating of the finance committee members which I held off on doing at last month's meeting. Are there any other items or changes, requests concerning the agenda? All this one we may have a calendar reminder. Do you want to add as well? We'll put that on there at other business as well. I'm hearing none of no others but just as an introductory comment or explanatory comment we often or occasionally do not hold a July meeting but we determined, Sarah and I determined that the importance of the MRF project really required it and that's really the sole topic tonight and that's why you do not see the regular consent agenda with the regular slate of reports and updates. A lot of staff has been on vacation. We'll get those updates again next week but just by way of explanation that that's why you're not seeing them. It was not an omission, it was intentional. We'll move on then to item number two on the agenda which is a public comment period. Are there any members of the public who would like to address the board of commissioners either via Zoom or on the phone? I am not seeing any and I'm not hearing any. I don't want to rush things and preclude any comments but again I'm don't hearing any so we will move on then to item number three which is the materials recovery facility a couple of very important items to to explore tonight. I will turn it over to Sarah and staff for presentation. Thank you very much Paul and so as you mentioned we have several items all to do with the MRF this evening. The first one is a requirement of going out to seek bonding for the project so anytime the district has to or elects to enter into long-term indebtedness and we do need to receive the approval of our voters, the eligible voters in Chippin County or within the district in this case Chippin County. We also need to pass what's known as a resolution of needs so the the public needs to have an assurance that there is a true public need public interest in the project and that it will serve the public good so it is incumbent upon the board of commissioners to pass their resolution stating the various reasons why we believe that the the district voters need to approve the long-term indebtedness demonstrating the need for this project. So that is the first item that you have and this has to be done according to a very strict schedule so this is why it is before you today. It could we could have waited until August but there's really no need to do so and I think getting this resolution of need passed ahead of you know all the early voting that will be coming up very shortly is really important and it will also support our ongoing public education efforts and outreach efforts and we can then as we start to talk with our select boards one-on-one about the project this will again be to have we'll have been demonstrated by the board that there is indeed a need for a new MRF and and from Montana and Chippin County specifically so Thomas I know if there's anything more specific that you want the board to know before we take questions or comments on the resolution. Yes the resolution does as as executive director has indicated indicate you know show that there's a the board has determined that there is a need for these capital improvements and that the expense of financing this this new MRF cannot be paid out of current revenues that that you've got to borrow and incur in deadedness for it and so the resolution does does approve the form of the of the ballot question that would be presented to the voters does approve that the location of the polling places which it will be in each member community as and is scheduled for the bond vote for November 8th of 2022 which a general election will will be held for state officials as well as a couple of open positions at the federal level Senate and House of Representatives the amount of the bonds being requested for authorization is is 22 million dollars and I will point out there there is one Scrivener's error that was in here it's in the exhibit A of the warning and it says the board at a special meeting held November 8th 2022 that November 8th 2022 and that section should be July 27 2022 if if the board so acts and and adopts that that resolution and also as part of that warning there there is a footnote referencing the the polling places that that footnote would just be would be removed so I'm sorry Thomas for clarification the footnote regarding polling places you said that would be removed because there was a point made that it should refer to the I believe the city of Essex now not the town of Essex so that that should be changed yes yeah I just with technicality is not tripping us up if we approve yeah tonight that's that's the so the so the warning in the polling place that that would be corrected yes that would need to be corrected to refer to the city and I believe also it was it the location for st. George is missing as well so we would need to add the polling place for st. George Ron your hand is up I think that change regarding Essex also applies to section two ballot question which currently indicates village of Essex Junction and Essex town Leslie you're muted Leslie thanks I'm sorry this this isn't directly pertinent but it's something I think we need to talk about or have an answer to after the vote on the proposed there will be the motion that I'm sure will be proposed and that is that there are going to be voters who have already voted early or will have voted early by mail absentee ballot before November 8th and I wonder how we're going to reach those people with this you know special request to go to their polling place I just want to put that out there as a marker to understand what's going to be done about that yes that is a critical component of our public outreach efforts and campaign and it has been slightly complicated this year this year due to the change in law that where the Secretary of State is now automatically mailing general election ballots to eligible voters throughout the state we are not eligible for that service so regardless our voters are going to have to request our our ballot and our ballot is considered a special election ballot so it's a local election special election so so regardless they were going to have to ask for for our ballot anyway if they do go vote in person then they will be given all of the ballots that they they need to to use but we are going to have to execute a much more intensive get out the vote effort with very specific instructions as to how to access the ballot so yes we are unfortunately very painfully aware that we are not eligible and we've had multiple conversations with the Secretary of State's office I've had conversations with Jim and they are do not see any leeway in the law how it is written currently to allow them to mail it out for us so it's an additional couple of steps but we are on top of it and aware and are moving forward to make sure that everyone who wants a ballot receives one one one point if I may just it's the the city of sx junction the town of sx remains the same the village references to the village of sx junction would be changed to the city of sx junction thank you other commissioner comments or questions I have one additional procedural question which I posed Sarah's since we're meeting virtually how will you obtain how are we to obtain the signatures of the commissioners should this resolution be approved yeah Thomas that was a question I hopefully I forwarded to you from Paul Joe do we need to have the physical signatures of each commissioner present tonight or does the affirmative vote on the resolution satisfy the requirement the affirmative affirmative vote will will satisfies if it's by a majority vote and the secretary of the of the board of commissioners can then just certify that it was it was adopted and approved at a at a public meeting so it's not a requirement that it be signed thank you Rick your hand is up Rick you muted you're absolutely right sorry about that I noted the need to change the date but in addition it's a regular meeting rather than a special meeting so that also needs to be changed correct we so yes this would be a special special meeting it would be a special meeting the oh tonight's meeting is not a special meeting tonight's meeting is a regular business meeting so is that that the language your it referred to a special meeting taking place in november if we're changing the date to be today it should be a regular meeting correct yes where what rick is referring to is the top of exhibit a on page five of the board packet yes this the same the same line that the november 8th date should be changed july 2722 it should be at a regular meeting of the held july 27th 2022 but it reads the legal voters of the chitinous always district are hereby notified and warned to meet in a special meeting on november 8th at times in polling places here at your name that that's that stays the same yeah because that that is a special meeting of the voters it's number one that's correct it's it's under uh item number one description of the project the board at a regular meeting held july 2722 okay gotcha thank you uh this is important because again we we need to act on this tonight and i think all the commissioners need to have confidence on the specific language that they're voting on and we also don't want to come back and have to redo this if we missed something and the technical correction is required it's a long um it is a long resolution uh prefer that we not read the entire resolution if that's agreeable to the board um as long as we're clear on the corrections that are being made to it that would be my my direction as chair to the to the body right so to be clear um sarah can you if you have screen sharing let's put it up yeah there's there are there are two resolutions um so let me there you go and increase this a little bit so the first resolution is here for the result and that includes the wording of the ballot initiative and then the second resolution or continuation of the resolution is the warning that is um exhibit a so I think we want to exhibit a as uh corrected thomas or as not quite amended but as as corrected correct would would be that resolution before I ask for a motion uh is there other discussion on this resolution uh jan your hand is up and then lee jan you're muted thank you um the the exhibit that the actual question um that the board is to approve tonight the approval of general general obligation bonds for chitin and sallow ways district we had an internal conversation that included thomas that it would be um better for the voters if we referred in that uh title of that resolution to reference the materials recovery facility which matches our efforts with the outreach and education about this initiative so if it could read approval of general obligation bonds for chitin and solid ways district dash materials recovery facility that would be helpful for the voters to understand what this is about without having to read all the way down um so that it they understand through our education and outreach what this is about thank you jan lee thank you paul um yeah i was just reading the the bottom of that paragraph i know in discussions earlier talked about um you know not burning um you know voters of member municipalities with the cost of this project but i see it does say to the extent necessary assessments to member municipalities in accordance with the district's charter um can you elaborate a little bit on that is has something changed to where we think we're going to have to go to the voters and ask for some assistance yeah no it's um we are still not at all anticipating needing any assistance and repaying the the debt service and we'll talk more about why we we're confident in that this is basically you know it's it's covering um covering the district from a legal standpoint and thomas you can elaborate more if you like but it's it's to basically not promise that we'll never have a need to charge an assessment and really the the only way that i think we would need to charge an assessment is if for some reason the district um were dissolved um and and then our our our debts needed to be satisfied um and they weren't able to be satisfied through other means such as selling assets that are um but there's there's nothing that we see in our projections or our forecast that would indicate a need uh to assess our member towns but we do need to say that because in our charter we we we say this is why we're we're seeking their approval is is because there's a risk associated with any long-term indebtedness um uh of the district and because you're you're all members jointly of of the district you assume those those joint risks so we do need to state it so that the voters understand that um there is a joint risk associated with entering into the long-term debt but but no we are we are confident that we are not going to have to um send any bill to our member towns for this project okay thank you for clarifying that for me other questions on the on this resolution before we have a motion to approve yes sarah if you could just scroll up to the very top i think that um so yeah so there's a lot of warehouses um so here's but now therefore be resolved with the legal means uh be a further resolved and then a further further resolved it doesn't seem like much and if you like Paul I can read it into the record no uh actually I just wanted to just to the top to ask if a commissioner was ready to move the resolution I can read the resolution of the board of commissioners the chitin and solid waste district uh as corrected um ready for that I think we're ready for that to be moved and seconded so moves out Burlington thank you do we have a second on the to move the resolution second sherlock thank you ken thank you it's been moved and seconded to approve the resolution as corrected for the discussion tonight or any questions or discussion on the motion I think we're ready then for the for the question all those in favor of approving the resolution please uh physically raise your hey visually raise your hand so the secretary can get account and Amy if you can tell us when you're okay are you casting a vote or are you abstaining oh no I'm casting a vote thank you I'm all set thank you all those opposed please physically or visually raise your hand I think Amy you're probably recorded that we're not seeing any raised hands are there any abstentions the motion is approved we're one step further in this process the next item on the agenda is item three e b which begins on page 10 of the agenda the single stream equipment procurement I'll turn that over I'm guessing to josh but also perhaps to sarah mm-hmm yep josh can take this one away after one brief comment that this is a culmination of a a very long process I want to thank josh and jen for the many many hours that went into learning about the systems visiting facilities really diving extremely deeply into all of the possibilities and iterations of the different systems that that there could be and the district is really lucky to have you know this team who is so very knowledgeable now about all the different ways that we can sort materials better for the benefit of CSWD so I just want to thank publicly thank josh and jen for all the hours and all the hard work that you've put into this so josh take away with details please right can everybody hear me yes sir all right let's see if I can share this thing okay can everybody see what I'm going to see that yes are you seeing the the actual presentation slide part of it we are we're seeing the the blue bin in the pop up perfect okay great well um this is going through our equipment procurement for our mirf there's two steps to this process of building a mirf one is to identify the equipment and the service provider that we want the next step will be to actually develop the site and come up cost estimates to build the building so step one here we go um our procurement objective um we've talked a lot about our existing mirf and one of the things that jumps off the page at our existing mirf is our requirement for new technology um the technology that we're requiring is industry standard to this point um but it also kind of filters through a lot of the objectives that we we had pointed out in our rfp to to select equipment provider so we were requesting flexibility and material sorting automation of material sorting and that was to stop relying so heavily on a human workforce um and then optimization of material sorting and that is really to use the automation to um increase our recovery rates and our purity of our materials um one of the largest objective we also had is uh futurizing which according to my spell check is a word um and really that is developing uh room for robotics there is significant advances in robotics right now and artificial intelligence and artificial neural networks um we are at the point where we're interested but not ready to purchase yet so we want to make sure we had room um we see a lot of value uh in the future for robotics but at this point we do still see that the qaqc portion of our of our recycling center will be probably human sorting um and then potential increase for higher future throughputs uh room to build room to grow room to increase our throughput um and then finally service parts maintenance and training um we are building a new technological facility which is different than what we've been doing for the last 23 years so we really hit all the people who responded to our rfp hard with what kind of service they can provide how many parts are available to us at uh an acceptable range of distance to get it to us um how many maintenance technicians were available to us and you know if they had the potential for training at one of their own facilities or on site because we will be uh requesting to install optical sorters which are new to us um the qualifications we know we want a 25 ton per hour processing throughput we want to keep the processing footprint to 40 000 square feet we want optical sorters ballistic separators any current magnet separator to baler systems which i'll repeat multiple times for this presentation because it's extremely important uh large commodity bunkers which helps us with our flexibility in baling and really optimizes our operations and qaqc on the residual line so that means if something gets identified as not a material we want to go to its bunker but it happened to be in the wrong place we have a second chance to pull it and put it in the right place or if things through optical sorting get um targeted that you know accidentally we're stuck to something else this gives us the chance to identify and get it back into the system and recover it which again goes along with our recovery rate and our periodies that we're we're looking for um we did want to use our existing baler that we purchased uh in 2018 it is a two ram baler we send all of our materials through it currently um and we wanted to integrate our glass cleanup system a portion of our secondary system is in great shape and will last for quite a long time so we want to make sure we're going to use that and optimize the equipment we have available to us now um full baler redundancy that's the two baler system currently we only have one so when the baler stopped working we are done until it starts working again baler redundancy means that we have the ability to send any material to either of the balers at any time so it's just not fixing a certain material type to one type of baler so that's really important for full functionality at our facility and that's what we requested in our proposals our target targeted commodity uh purities I guess purity is in recovery we wanted a 95 percent minimum recovery that means that the equipment will pull 95 percent of whatever material we're identifying and that the purity of that material that when it goes to market is 97 percent pure the purity portion because we're going to use uh humans to qaqc that will be part of you know the operating contract that we have so there's a there's a role for you know cswd staffing in there or operator staffing but um with the technology that's at hand this is not hard to get to and we actually anticipate uh exceeding these percentages but we're targeting paper which you know there's multiple grades of paper that we'd like to target cardboard aluminum number one drink bottles are pet hdpe natural and colored pp which is probably properly and that's the number five residents which we're seeing a lot more of these days and we'd like our technology to identify it more efficiently ferris metals and rigid plastics we currently don't send a lot of rigid plastics out because we don't have the room to store so that's another material that we will add into our mix that we'd like to market moving forward um responses so we sent our rfp out far and wide we received four responses from pretty much global providers of mirf equipment machine x technologies out of kebeck and also out of north carolina um they are current equipment provider uh vandike recycling out of noroch connecticut um bulk handling systems bhs out of eugene organ and cp group out of san diego california were the four bids that we received um the procurement results so what we wound up doing is when we received the bids we gave everybody an initial interview and we sat down for two hours with each provider and walked you know point by point through each bid to make sure we got what we wanted we made some statements asked some questions um from that we identified a short list um we brought the short list back in for another two hour interview and then at that point we had an eye on what we liked and we actually went out to los vegas sarah myself and um brian metall and we actually met each provider in person that we were interested in to go through the equipment that they had proposed and out in vegas at waste expo there was a large um exhibition hall so we were actually able to see some of the stuff that they were proposing in person and in action it was demonstrative action in that time we also were able to get out to a couple of like mirfs that were proposed to us to make sure we really understood you know that optical sorter is firing there where is it wind up where does it go how does it get there so we really kind of proved to ourselves the systems that we were interested in were the ones that we wanted and we're going to get the job done for us um we also have a price point we had a budget uh amount um so as we went through the evaluation process we came down to that bottom table that you see there vdrs is van dyke recycling systems vhs is bulk handling systems machine x and cp group we scored them um van dyke recycling uh van dyke recycling systems scored the highest if you know they're they are not the cheapest um and i'll explain that later but that was the process we walked through it took about five months to get through to make sure that we selected the the group that we think fits uh our needs the best and so we're we're recommending van dyke that's ddrs not hs sorry um they were not the lowest bid proposal bulk handling system was so when we compared those two systems side by side van dyke was a little more robust um vhs has some exceptional technology but van dyke was belt and suspenders proven technology um they built a uh flexibility specifically to fiber which is important to us because 80 percent of the commodities that we generate are fiber so we have four bunkers and we can actually generate a mixed grade now if we want to to match the requirements of the market which is really exciting for someone like me um they also proposed seven optical sorters uh where vhs proposed four and that's really that technology upgrade we were looking for it allows all those initial points of flexibility that we really wanted to see they're also located four hours away from us so that was really important you know they can jump in a car and get to us within four hours they've got eight service technicians in new england actually out at their kinetic site they have a project manager in vermont and they have approximately 20 million uh parts and pieces uh in inventory on site in kinetic it um they also have a regional training center which was very ideal for us because we are stepping into the world of optical sorters they can train us at their normal facility for optical sorters and their balers their balers do lead the industry as far as longevity and um they're they're bulletproof it is it is the one of the better quality balers we can get so that's really exciting as the balers you know the heartbeat of the facility so that's really why we kind of came and settled on this recommendation all recommended all all bids were amazing but this is this is where staff is recommending that's um sums up your presentation at the moment yep that's where we're at thank you very much um paul stabler you have your hand up i think it's a quick question uh josh i think you said we'll be uh wanting to use the baler the the new baler that we have currently in the new facility so do they have any problem i'm assuming it's not a van dyke baler so do they have any problem in uh installing and you know no that integration is pretty straightforward it wasn't a machine x baler robot either we put it into a machine x facility and a two-round baler is really good on um containers and the the van dyke baler they're proposing can run the entire system by itself and it's really good for baling fibers so that's exciting as well that we can mix our commodities to baler type all right thank you uh ken your hand is up and then ron i see your hand is up you'll you'll come ron after after ken and you're you're muted ken now i'm back josh um i understand number one and number two is more valuable than number five clear plastic is that right or not so number two natural is the most valuable so number two can be broken into natural and colored the most valuable container besides aluminum is the plastic is a number two natural number one fluctuates and number five fluctuates but we're starting to see an increase because number five is more environmentally friendly to generate so a lot of industry packages are shifting towards number fives and the difficulty right now is that you know like a clamshell like the thing you can buy to put your salad in it the whole foods um that can be a one two or a five and so when you've got people staring at it it's hard to pull that immediately but when you've got an optical sorter identifying its resin code um that we can pull a lot more of the actual material which is why our pureties are going to be up around that 97 percent um and we're seeing you know it's also in bulk right so if you only have a couple tons of number five at a certain price but a whole bunch more at a higher price it's i'm getting into the weeds what i'm trying to say is we're anticipating number fives increasing and the system will allow us to pull those that was really my question because i've been seeing one two and five like mcdonald's clear plastic glasses and one two and five clamshell type things on the street and i was thinking obviously sorters couldn't handle it i mean people couldn't handle that so the optical sorters can actually tell the different products that's fantastic and that ryan will get into that next when he gives his presentation a little bit but yeah that was why we wanted to increase our technologies because the container shapes kind of stay the same or shift a little bit but the the types change and it's and really difficult to train somebody on the fly to pick 60 containers a minute you know it's it's really difficult so yeah we're really excited about the system okay ron and then rick yeah josh i have a question about the future rising specifically automation and robotics uh and i'm assuming that computers are involved so my question really is uh have you begun discussions about how to protect the district against packing of automation and robotics uh because if a hacker gets into the system he could do a lot of damage financially to the district i'm going to default to ryan on that one i mean we have our existing baler on uh a remote feed to florida so they monitor our feed for a baler we have firewalls we have multiple firewalls in place but ryan i will i will let you answer that one if you you're good with that yeah no problem so the optical sorters themselves and our control panels if not connected to the internet there's really no way to get in the hack those but the moment that you connect to an unsecure server let's say just a random server that's at the building at cswd and i think that could happen um however our our support team has the ability to go in and take a look at those optical sorters take a look at those balers while you're operating to try to avoid a trip and there's sometimes you know we can save time save you money by being able to solve the problem uh via the computer we have our own servers so it's included in the quote where we put our own server box that only vdrs can access like only vdrs being vandek recycling and it's not connected to anywhere else it's our own box it's provided it's dropped in there at your facility and that um that keeps it secure enough to keep outside people from coming in and taking a look at it uh it's super important because if you have somebody going in and making changes on a baler while somebody's operate trying to operate the baler that could cause major major problems so there's a lot of strict rules um due to that safety rules really thank you ryan thank you josh rick okay i didn't see anything in the point system that addressed whether technology was cutting edge or whether it was bleeding edge and perhaps not fully mature yet uh so can you speak to the balance of trying to get really modern equipment without getting so modern that it really isn't tested and sir you want to jump in or do you want me to go yeah that's our thank you it's a good question and we that's one of the reasons that we're we're taking the wave and sea approach to the robotics there's been a an incredible um you know increase in that technology just in the past five years never mind the past 10 years but we don't want to be that test case um and more and more of those units are are being put into systems around the country but um we wanted to still take a bit of a more conservative conservative approach to that newest technology all of the technology that um you know vandek has put into their proposal it is tried and true and it has been in place for over 15 years around the country so it is definitely not um bleeding edge it is current modern rift technology so we want to give a little bit of time and space for some of that more adventurous uh more adventurous items so what we did was um we focused in when we're looking at the differences in the technology being um proposed was in more of the kind of um the ability of the the machines to learn right so the ai and any kind of visioning systems and where over time the computers would would be able to better quickly identify different types of packaging of different shapes and colors and things so that um was again as josh had mentioned was really where bhs shown the most so they got the most points um under quality proposal um we have put um that's where we kind of tagged the technology um so it was um they scored the highest because they are the furthest ahead of any of the respondents on um that kind of high tech um basically a visioning system where the computers are learning but you know machine x is not not far behind vandek is not far behind so um everyone scored pretty well but that was where we made that adjustment for the really super ultra modern um components of attack thank you ham you're up and then nylan josh i think you said that i think staffing was one of the criteria that was evaluated what were the range of the alternatives and how did they compare with our internal assessment so the range of the alternatives was roughly nine to 23 and 23 was because the system that was proposed we had asked you know we can't afford a 19 million dollar system what can you do when they took technology out but they added people in the system that we went with with van dyke is approximately 10 to 12 the recommendation is 11 to start but you could probably get away with less once the system's up and running because you know when you look at national standard uh a lot of the qaqc has to do with residue and our residue lights are pretty low so we want to get this system up and running to see where we need to put people um and right now we're estimating 11 is kind of our our landing point to make the system as optimal as we needed and ryan correct jump in if i'm wrong but that's that's how i read your guys's proposal and through our discussions oh you're right and um the amount of disorders affects the cost greatly but you can have an optical sorter at every single location where there's a sorter you could have a robot you know the same kind of thing but as you continue adding technology first of all you've got more maintenance you got to deal with but secondly your cost starts to go through the roof um so back in the day a plant you know a 25 ton per hour plan vermont probably would have had 25 to 30 sorters the fact that we're down to 10 to 12 is like a nice happy medium um i just saw a plant last week in texas running 40 tons an hour with seven sorters which was which is great you know that's a good direction we're moving in but then again that's a 30 million dollar plan so it's it's kind of give and take and it just depends on budgeting and and you're going to make great quality you know with that 11 number that josh has mentioned so we had to balance that and that's what we'd ask for in our proposal because we knew what our budget was in our mind and you want to ask any follow-up questions or is that that addresses if we're good thanks alan um josh you have quite a high level of purity listed in your presentation and i guess my question is where does that number come from and the second part of that question is does that also deal with the incoming product being um you know cleaner and and more uh uh more better as we might say um contamination yeah i just curious where that number comes from so those numbers came from the is respects on commodities uh acceptance for factories and um right now the you know the market bears what the market will take um but is really the they're the group that rates what a commodity's uh sellable value should be so um what i did is i marked up what their true specs were for their sellable commodities which was that 97 percent purity and you know a 97 95 recovery um uh the market doesn't require that right now and i think ryan will speak to this but the market's changing so as of 2018 when china closed their doors and we had that you know recycling crisis the international market had a lot more flexibility and purity and and residual content now that we're domestic it's great because um if we don't put anything on a boat um there's a lot more robustness in the system but the system was also requiring a cleaner bail of material so that's why we targeted that 97 percent parity so that we could be market relevant for the next 20 years is that does that help alan i guess it isn't so that's not guaranteed by the by the vendors it's a number that you pick based on the sale of the product and that's what we asked our our vendor the so that's what we asked our proposers to provide us with a system that can get us there and so that the the 95 percent recovery is you know we we can do that with our optical sorters and the purity level is the accuracy of those optical sorters and then if the optical sorters pop anything off that isn't what's supposed to be there that's where a qc line comes into play and that's where we kept humans on the qc line because that's an easier job you know you're just you're sifting through picks that are identifying contamination or the wrong you know out throws the wrong material and we've got spots to recover those so that's that's why we said 97 to your purity and that's why i said in the beginning of the conversation it's still on us too you know we're going to have to staff that qc line to get to that 97 percent it's a combination alan of both the efficiency and effectiveness of the optical sorting and having some humans to basically quality control that that equipment so we're aiming for this very high level to really meet the the top level of the scrap recycling industry's specifications so it's it's it's that combination of you know the optics and again ryan can can speak to the sorters their sorry technology and so it's it's the number of sort of optical sorters you have the quality of the optical sorting and again van dyke brings a you know industry leading optical sorting partnership as well and having the right people in the right spots and when we're building in flexibility for the future you know future sizing and i think joshie coined that word i don't know that's real but that's fine we'll take it um there are uh in every by every optical sorting station there are additional slots for additional people if we want to you know really even further maximize we can do that so at each location um there's room for either robotics or another person to really maximize that efficiency alan so they wrote a really good rfp and those were the targets that they wanted us to reach which give us give gave us a challenge so we're our design is based upon trying to meet those goals as as good as possible now for instance if i'm shooting pet with my optical and i'm getting 95 percent of it and it's coming through but there's some contamination and that's then it becomes a responsibility that's sorted to take that little bit of contamination out if that sort of falls asleep or is looking at their phone or go for a cigarette smoke or whatever um we can't stop that so it's like constant fluctuation of up and down now let's say we achieve 95 recovery and the purity is only 93 percent the market's not turning you away you know like they're they're just setting really high standards for for the best quality product possible to get the best price for them so the system set up for that and over years and years and you know we've dealt with the national sort thing that josh talked about in 2018 we've had to change how we how we build our systems use tools in different ways to achieve those goals and you know sarah and josh and gen they went out and saw plants and saw that happening so that's all the basic decisions on that thank you and and this system five you know we 80 percent of our materials five are cardboard or paper this system fires multiple times on our paper to keep it clean which is the bulk of what we sell so that's really kind of the belt spenders i was talking about that we're really excited about right i'm just going to recognize myself very quickly a comment i believe i heard you say josh that um we have the ability to accept and process rigid plastic and just a note to to the marketing staff that i think that would be an important fact to to mention to the public and part of the campaign i think that would be well received the fact that we could handle rigid plastics rin thanks a couple questions related to qa qc so quality assurance quality control um is there as part of the the contract would there be any residual or bail sorts um as part of the startup for like within the first six months or first year of the um acquiring the equipment so we'll we'll do we'll do testing you know when the system is put in place we'll spend right what two weeks of system testing with you van dyke employees and cswd or you know operators to really validate and verify we'll bring back to the board or maybe i don't know that's we bring that back to the board got it i hope i can add to myself really kind of what what our recovery rates are and what our what our periods are so and ryan you can speak to that a little more um yeah that's yeah basically every mirf so i mean there's a ramp up period so we flip the switch to the plant you know there's going to be tries and tribulations and we have to calibrate the optical sorters to do the job they're supposed to do make the paper as clean as possible make everything as as pure as possible and get our recovery rates all the way up so that takes a few weeks of optimization you know with our team on site and training your people you know what to see what to change what to do once we feel that the system's operating 100 best we can do um then we'll work as a team work with sarah work with josh and their operators and maybe segregate 100 tons of material run you know run four hours make sure the material can run 25 tons per hour and then do some select bail audits um and make sure that we are achieving the the recovery rates for paper do a residue audit all over that four hour period so that's something that we're going to come together and and build a protocol and a testing procedure for so that's that's typically that's always how we do things especially when it comes to municipal bids and there's taxpayer dollars involved and you know people are looking at this plant and wanting to make sure it operates the way it was said it was supposed to operate so there's typically and sarah will deal with this later but some kind of hold back or something that you know once everyone's happy once we've achieved our goals then we complete the project okay thanks a couple additional questions related to qcf that's okay with paul is it so there's a remote component to the optical management of the optical sorters did i understand that correctly did that again bring so you don't have to be on site oh do you have to be on site to do qa qc with the optical sorters so look if there's a if there's an issue with the optical of not firing or they're not getting there yeah so ryan could you speak to the ability to uh for being like to remote in sure yeah so as i was talking about like we'll have a tech on site he'll set up the optical sorters set up the recipes calibrate them so they know what your material type is like and throughputs like and then we leave and then your operators basically turn the system on and the optical sorters run and they operate and they do what they're supposed to do one day all of a sudden you see that half the pete is being missing and you can't figure out why at that point you'll call into our our team in norwalk they'll be able to dial in and see you know just basically the screen and the control maybe last for some videos or something like that and say okay half your valve block is broken then you're up you guys say we can't fix that valve block then my guy gets in a truck and he goes up and he comes and does a repair and brings the spare parts so the only time we're really like linked in online is when you call our techs in and they're able to just remote in and all they can really see is the hmi the screen and look at the warnings and there's diagnostic tools and things like that built into the optical okay um so will there um as far as the like audits um will there be uh so you know once you pull back will there be the ability to either request or have our teams do like accuracy data analytics on a you know monthly or quarterly basis yeah so there's we train your team to be able to read that in the machine so if you look at the machine you can see um you've got x amount of material coming over and pet is 70% of that material and you can see it there if you go to the next machine the next machine is number two pe and all of a sudden you're still seeing a lot of pet on that machine by you know just by what it says on the screen you're able to tell well maybe there's something wrong so you've got it it's different like we're trying to get people away from picking through trash honestly like in sorting through trash and getting more technical so the people that are walking through the plant need to understand this type of data and be able to watch and be able to see and be able to know that there's a lot of pet getting in the line looking the residue line but yeah the optical themselves can give you a lot of information and that's stuff that you can print out and download to excel and take a look at at your charts and what's happening okay so it's capable of doing reports yes it is yeah and then even on the baler side like if if you're making let's say five bales a day of pet and all of a sudden you're only making two the baler report's going to tell you you've only made two bales of pet but why is that that's weird nothing you know it should stay pretty normal um so all that stuff's important things i mean burlington you get a lot of people come in in the summer by lake shamblain your pet levels might spike because people are drinking bottled water you know your glass might go up because they're drinking wine or whatever you'll be able to chart those um those changes and inconsistencies as the seasons change uh last question um with our so in addition to the optical disorders identifying the material type are they also able to identify contamination of the material so food residual within the container not really um it's got to have a signature that bounces back because it's near infrared so what it'll do is it won't see it it'll just drop and just go in the negatives um and we didn't we didn't ask about that level of of sorting or scanning so um it's not a knock on van dyke it just wasn't wasn't asked okay but we do have a uh a residual line you know we have the final line that goes to our MSW containers and there's the ability for us to at least observe what's on that so you know we can't put a qc station we do have an optical on that to pull the materials we want to get back into the system but we do have with this system the ability to put a person on that to identify anything that we may or may not want to be going to the garbage and we you know or we just stand there for an hour a day and and identify it as well but that you know at least we have a position to do that so it's the opposite yeah that wasn't that wasn't the question I think the question was can it identify something that um should normally be sorted you know so say like a half you know peanut butter jar that's gone you know still a good slug of peanut butter and we'd identify that as a contaminant and the and the answer is no okay okay thank you for clarifying right thank you well good questions other other questions and comments yeah rick yes um i'm thinking ahead do what i might say to a skeptical voter that challenged me on this how do we know that the 92 to 95 purity range is a good place to be and that is not past the point of diminishing returns that is um i guess it's mill acceptance you know at that point marketing really yeah right and brian i mean that's correct me if i'm wrong but yeah that's as long as we're getting into the mills um and as the quality around us increases i feel that you know we'll we'll know real quick if if we're not meeting the quality standards yeah i think richard what a lot of voters don't understand is that the mirf you know sarah and josh's mirf and jones mirf is a macro sort so you're making a bail of pet it's not a hundred percent pet but it's 95 percent pet and there's a let's say there's five percent that's not that gets bought by another mirf basically that then cleans up that five percent and grinds everything down and makes almost a perfect product to return it to pellets so the job of of this mirf and and um well listen i think is uh isn't really to do that you know and then some people try to push it too far and then all of a sudden you're sending perfect bails but yet you've got more residue and that pet mill is still cleaning up your bail and they're not giving you any more money for it so it gets it gets interesting and i don't think most of the voters realize that that there's more steps to cleaning that up you've got a pet bottle with a pe cap on it all over the place you know all the pollen spring bottles what happens with that pet cap they grind it all down and then there's a special machine that shoots the pe out clean it up you know so it can't be perfect but we try to get those closest we can put it down rick are you are you concerned that some of your constituents might think that we could have gone should should have spent less is that is that the concern that we're trying to get too high of a quality and we're we're just not it's not worth it or that's what i'd like to that's exactly what i'd like to be able to address um because if you take that ryan's argument further you could say well let's just do 85% purity since the next level it's going to take out that those contaminants anyway so i think the response to that is that the the equipment all of the equipment all of the sorters you know have that between that level of 90 to 96 or 97 accuracy so it doesn't do anyone any good to shoot for less than what the machines are designed to do so we want to continue to make sure that we're maximizing the technology available to us which is again not super you know high futuristic technology this is modern in place right now this is what the industry is is expecting and requiring so we are we need to get to a point where we are able to consistently meet the needs of the markets that we have access to and we want to continue to be able to access even more markets than we're currently involved in to give ourselves as much flexibility to move these materials for as long as possible into the future so it really doesn't doesn't benefit us at all to to sort to anything less than what is currently accepted and then shoot for even better than what was it safe to say then that the 92 to 95 percent purity range or even 97 percent is essentially industry standard and that's what the mills are expecting to see and there's going to be consequences in the market if you don't hit that level absolutely i think that's that is 100 accurate and you know the concerns are that for facilities that are not able to meet that bare minimum requirement you get quickly shut out of those markets and once you're out of the primary market and into the secondary market range it is a bear to claw your way back into the primary we don't want to slip out of that we want to solidify and secure our place in the primary market great that's very useful information thank you you're welcome thank you ryan does have a powerpoint that he is has prepared to kind of showcase some of the equipment so do we want to have ryan kind of walk through the system yeah i think that's important we're we're potentially spending you know up towards the 16 million dollars if i recall the numbers here so um i think it helps us to see what we would be getting yeah so i would recommend ryan if you could kind of go through your through your presentation and then paul let's read the resolution after you know there may be additional questions on particular parts of the flow or whatever it might be okay great you need a screen sharing ryan i think i can do it let's see here you guys see my screen okay yep okay everyone can see my screen yes thank you all right great so so yeah i talked to already quite a bit about the selection process and the rfp that came out from uh from josh and seras team um and they wrote a really good rfp and what's happening these days is there's a lot of antiquated merch that were built let's say late like like 2008 and through 2012 the technologies changed a lot since then so the requirements of the um of the end markets which we were discussing a little bit earlier so we've been in this market space since 1984 started with balers and brought balers over from uh from holland um super uh high-level balers we brought it to new york city that were bailing like 50 tons an hour of of cardboard new york city and expanded from there so went from cardboard and and primarily high-grade new high-grade papers and newspapers and then went out into uh into plastics as well so we're based in norwalk connecticut um we've got over 1700 projects with about 275 single stream mercs and uh a lot of new mercs actually being built uh currently over 600 balers installed 700 optical sorters installed so as as um sarah was saying you know optical sorting has come a long way since you know the first ones that we installed back in around 2005 so we're expanding the utility of those machines so not just in plastics but in fiber as well we've got 14 megamers of 50 plus tons per hour so these large scale mercs are almost double of what uh we proposed for chitinden so in new york city we're processing about a thousand tons per day of containers there we built the state around single stream system that's currently running in johnston washed in dc um big facility there as well kind of spread out all across america and then one in connecticut berlin connecticut that anyone's welcome to come visit that's starting up uh in just a couple weeks now so it's 50 times per hour system that this has taken the material from mira and different parts connecticut and kind of all culminating um there in central connecticut so they talked a little bit about um service and support so in norwalk we've got a very large distribution center for our spare parts about 19 million dollars in inventory that can either be you know shipped overnight to you shipped just regular ups we have couriers that can bring it up to you or somebody gets in their van and drives down to connecticut they're able to pick it up there we have a lot of customers in the area that that do that now we have 32 us base technicians um eight to ten of those residing here in new england and 98 of our problems are resolved actually over the phone or via the internet as we were discussing earlier we've got phone support available 24 7365 uh one of the big benefits that we have as well as van dyke direct so van dyke direct is basically the amazon style ordering system so when you buy a system your whole system and parts inventory goes into a website we have pictures of every single part we've got over i think it's 13 000 parts so almost 40 000 pictures of each individual um each individual item so your technician can put in a serial number and see that it's the right part and then get it shipped um and then also keep track of your inventory what's missing what you need more if you use you know a conveyor belt shot you can pre-order one to replace it that type of thing another thing that's included in the system is van dyke vision it's an augmented reality system so it's this little hard hat you see over to the right and you've got a technician looking into the panel so what that is basically is our technician can see the little can see what your technician is seeing and he can actually there's a little screen that you can see on that hard hat here where our guy can circle or just mark up different things to say hey that relay's got a problem can you change that wire can you do that so it's almost like having feet on the ground but your technician is kind of driving the show and our guy's telling him what to do so that's that's a new technology that's included with this as well um we've got to use equipment rebuild shop rebuild balers and then there in norawak we've got van dyke universities so that's training schools for our optical sorters and for our balers there's the map of our service locations um they're pretty pretty heavily concentrated there in the northeast and then we've got our west coast team as well here's a couple pictures of the of the warehouse in norwalk again anyone's welcome to come visit so i've done a couple presentations lately about you know what's happening in the industry and and myself and my competitors right now we've never been more busy in our lives and a lot of its stems from uh the 2018 the national sword that we're trying to stop taking paper materials we had you know severe issues getting material marketed or sent internationally uh the plastics people are striking back that the quality standards were bad and that's that's why uh like today like i said any mirth that was built for 2013 or so for 2014 even is getting completely either a full rebuild or major retrofits and that's been honestly very difficult for us to keep up so the standards of quality are increasing um there's a lot more domestic markets that aren't going to take the contamination rates that we had in with previous sorting technologies recyclability has become a big issue as well um where producers are starting to realize i think josh mentioned it earlier that polystyrene number six is not there's no market for it's not really recyclable but number five is so people are starting to be more cognizant about that realizing black plastics are difficult to recover and recycle they're moving away from those things so the market itself has worked on that um a lot of states are pushing different diversion rates so really you know high levels higher expectations of the future you know 20 year plans to make sure you're diverting 70 percent of your material from landfill etc etc and then there's a lot of improvements in reporting and data you know the waste industry generally has been pretty far behind in that you know if you look at wastewater and water treatment they've always been ahead um we're trying to to catch up with that and making some using data to make decisions you know or before we didn't really have the data it was just kind of by eye and then the lastly is improving working conditions so you know since COVID this is like COVID is another big factor for all this this business is being generated is that they're having a hard time finding people we're recognizing that working in a trash you know a lot of these picking through trash at negative 10 degrees you know in the middle of February isn't a pleasant job and it's not where we want to put our work for so we're trying to find ways to help those people and improve those work conditions and changes changed um changes the positions that those orders have today so some of the advancements you know in single stream screening technologies have changed you know I believe you have a screen currently that wraps after the six hours of running it hardly works as a screen anymore it works as a conveyor contamination rates are through the roof after a shift then you have to send somebody in with a knife to try to cut cut all the wrapping and all that stuff out it's just not safe and it doesn't work well so now we've got non wrapping screens um obstacle sorting has gone from just plastics to cleaning up fiber automatically and positive sorting so we're targeting paper directly and that's integrated into this mirf um I mentioned earlier there's a lot of antiquated mirfs out there that are just being completely rebuilt and rethought and um there's a lot of major investments going on so Connecticut Murphy Road building Mirfs Chicago Houston Denver you know all new with all this new automation and new technology so getting to CSWD this is the the footprint that we were given to work with and this is your site and uh you know part of our task was to put a mirf onto this site try to avoid some wetlands and we're tasked to to work on some traffic flow patterns and bring your material in so you can see down to the bottom you've got that little purple square that's where trucks would come in to to drop for tipping and then on the other end of the mirf is where the material all ends up where your bail storage is so that's the way we try to design everything is basically on one side you've got material that comes in it gets processed and goes to the other end of the mirf where you have your shipping so it's two different parts and it helps with traffic flows you see a little bit better on this on this picture so they've asked for a very adequately sized tipping floor is 12,500 square feet material gets loaded there drop to a drum into a drum feeder with a pre-sort where they would pick mixed rigid plastics and then a number of different um opticals and screen combinations to to produce the fiber quality that they were looking for we've also got glass that comes out at the beginning of the system to avoid wear and problems downstream contaminating other material so in this area we've got a large glass cleanup system that's going to meet the the directives that they gave us for josh it was the it was for the dot I believe yep that's correct yeah and hard to be trans but yeah that's that's the requirements for pga okay um and then down here we've got our our container sorting lines we've got optical sorters for for number ones number twos number five and then a recovery optical to recover anything that might have been missed optical sorters typically recovery percentages are anywhere from like 90 to 92 so this last optical gives a chance to recirculate those missed commodities so we maximize recovery and meet that 95 that josh had talked about before on the fiber side there's we're making four different types of fiber actually so we're making an OCC which is your large cardboard so there's an entire bunker dedicated to that we're making one bunker dedicated to o and p so it's going to be straight paper an optical sorter shoots cardboard out of it and the plastics out of it then we've got another bunker that's going to be called a hard pack hard mix which is new to the market so it's basically a 50 50 mix of cardboard and paper that is demanded by places like pratt and certain mills and then we'll have another bunker with small paper kind of lower quality we'll call it a mix that hopefully will be clean enough to blend with the o and p or potentially with the hard pack markets since 2018 have fluctuated and changed and that's why we're redesigning or rethinking how you know we're dealing with fiber it used to be two bunkers you had o and cc and you just had an o and p bunker and that was no problem you're able to move the papers out of the china or wherever you have to go with it now the market demands are much more stringent so by having these four different bunkers you've got the ability to blend and mix depending on what the mills tell us they want so that versatility is is huge and that was something that we built into this and we're building into all of our mercs now so you can see on the left hand side there's bail storage you've got the single ram baler that's got the turn table there that's bringing bales out and then the red baler down to the south that's the two ram so for van dyke there was a question earlier about us integrating a two ram that's not ours basically every merc that we build we put a two ram in that the customer either buys or has or we buy and integrate it into our system because the two ram is really really solid on containers and we don't make a two ram so that's that's the other reason so we partner with with kind of partner with our competitors i guess but yeah that's that's very standard for us and typical another key point josh mentioned a few times i'm going to mention down below is that every commodity in the plant can be bailed by either baler so if the two ram is broken the single ram can take all the material of you via reversing belts that you can kind of see here in the middle there's a couple belts there that can go either way if the single ram's down then the belts can reverse and the two ram can bail all the paper and plastics so there'll never be a time unless unless some miracle apps are both balers go down but for most cases that shouldn't happen and uh you should be able to operate at least at some at some capacity maybe not 25 tons per hour but you know whatever just to keep material running through the facility so some of the highlights um into a little bit more detail there's seven optical sorters that we proposed three of them are dedicated to making clean fiber three are for clean container separation so p e t p e and p p and then the final recover optical to ensure you know recovery and and that we meet those goals that were we're asked of us the single ram balers included and that's uh hbc 120 that could potentially bail everything in the in the plant but it's we always want full baler redundancy because like josh said earlier it's the heart of the it's the heart of the system without a bail or you can't really do anything so it's important the glass cleanup system um this state of the art and we're integrating some of your components because you're already making material for the do t we actually added some of our own components so that your components work better so we built kind of a hybrid system together that uh that i think it's going to work out wonderfully and then your tipping floor and bail storage are more than adequate um and no one's ever said their tipping floor was was too big but this is this should be really good and be able to handle the material that you guys have so system automation uh on the o and t or on our we've got a newspaper screen there is automated quality control to remove browns and containers via large optical sorter which would was pretty much going to alleviate the need for any manual sorters on the paper you've got a mixed paper that's sorted positively by an optical sorter for all remaining fiber um and when we target something positive it makes the purity super high as opposed to negatively trying to sort and that's something that we've learned through um building of different mirrors we talked about the automated bailing talked about the recovery optical um there's a tool we haven't spoken about it's called an elliptical orbitalistic separator which is a 2d 3d separator and the function of that machine is before the container line there's a lot of plastic film textiles paper that we may have missed that contaminate your container opticals so it makes it harder for the um the plastics opticals to do their job and to meet that 97 recovery we needed a polishing tool up ahead to make sure that those opticals can meet meet those pureties that that were required but we also recognized that this 2d 3d separator in the 2d fraction there's going to be paper so we added an optical sorter on that 2d fraction for maximum recovery of paper and making its own grid of paper so i know it's kind of confusing maybe a little too technical but you know these tools are built in it's all pre we've thought about this trying to achieve the goals that uh that josh mentioned earlier so versatility um all the optical sorters that are going into this plant can sort by material and color so we talked a little bit before about NAR there's also the ability to sort by color just for future possibilities you never know that there could be a time where you don't want to shoot natural hdpe or you want to focus on a certain color of material you can do that with that the balers are capable of all materials again a big one is that third line all sorters have access to material return for trash or for other products so there's conveyor belts that run through the entire system so that sorters don't have to be dragging around buckets i'm sure you've seen it before where there's a sorter he's got a bucket and it's overloaded with recyclables or it's overloaded with trash there's going to be none of that in this plant they're going to have a chute they're going to drop the trash on the chute and the trash is going to the trash directly to the compactor or if there's a container that's in the wrong place you've got a pe bottle that was shot out with pet they're able to take that pe bottle and drop it down to chute for recovery it's going to bring it back to being in the system so it goes to the right place um one other portion you're probably going to receive some commercial material from different commercial accounts or different places you've got the ability to direct bail cardboard for instance so there's a space where you can drop material push that cardboard in and it goes directly to a baler with some of the key benefits extremely low store account you know like i said we used to have a one-to-one rule where if you're running 25 times per hour and you have 25 sorters you were doing well you know that was a goal we tried to achieve but not any longer for all those reasons i discussed before um we're trying to keep the sort of accounts that are around 10 to 12 in any plant and less is better and we're able to do that with with the addition of automation and more tools um plants are selling for a lot more these days but the long-term value of of cutting sorters back by 15 sorters if you look at it it's there and you know the machines show up every day you know we're having issues with with sorters showing up every day and trying to keep that quality going so we've got the less wrapping screens i discussed um get the best obstacle sorting machines on the market and then the skater and data analysis tools are they're still kind of in production and and being built so we've got like on the right hand side you can see a little like baler count bail count per hour these tools are all built in they're all set and they're ready to go but we're expanding and and you're tied into that continual expansion like we want to be able to say it's kind of the things we were talking about before there's something wrong with that p e t optical why have it tell you get a warning you know that type of thing um that's all being built now and probably by the time that this plant gets installed um those capabilities will be you know much further along than they are today so here you go so it's a little bit fast i mean there's a lot of information a lot of details and i could go through the whole plant but you know you guys are on a certain timeline uh thank you ryan for the presentation i think it was just the right amount of time in the detail for for this board um at this point unless commissioners have a question i think we're ready for to move the um of motion dot tim you have a question a quick question ryan you talked about direct bailing you mentioned it referenced uh in reference to cardboard how many will all commodities be able to be direct bailed yeah so basically if a truck comes in there's a space on the floor inside the building where they can drop that material and then you've got access to the bailer feed line so a bobcat will push that material in so cardboard is an example but it could be anything it could be clean containers uh could be high grade office paper that you don't want to run through the system it can just bail because it's already sorted and good enough for bailing thank you okay i at this point um i think we're ready to um release move the resolution which appears on page 11 of the board packet um if that could be read into the record that moved in second and then we have yet another opportunity for any discussion or questions excuse me it resolves that the board of commissioners authorizes the executive director to enter into contractual agreement with van dyke recycling solutions norwalk connecticut for the purchase of a materials recovery facility single stream recycling system as described in their initial and subsequent response to rp number two zero two two zero one zero four for an amount not to exceed sixteen million one hundred and sixty thousand dollars purchase of which is contingent upon a successful bond vote in november 2022 thank you do we have a motion do we care to move that the move shall i thank you thank you south burlington it's been moved and seconded to uh authorize the executive director to enter an agreement with van dyke recycling solutions for any discussion on the motion we've certainly had an opportunity to go through this in detail but uh don't want to shut off the opportunity to ask further questions or make any observations call you're raising your hand post abler yeah real quick question i'm sorry i might should know this but we're approving this now but of course we won't know if we have the money until november so there's a contingency for that a clause for that yeah so that is the final um sentence in that resolution is contingent upon a successful bond vote november 2022 thank you any other questions i'm seeing none i'm hearing none i think then we're ready for the question and again this is an important vote um so i'd ask you to raise your hands when um at the appropriate time and so that amy can then tell us that she's recorded all the votes correctly and accurately all those in favor of the motion to approve this purchase of the recycling equipment contingent upon the successful bond vote in november please raise your hand and keep it high until amy says it's she's got the count also thank you if you are opposed please raise your hand i am seeing none are there any abstentions the motion is approved thank you very much for all the hard work thank you ryan for all the work in making your presentation and obviously this is successful there'll be a lot more work to come but we do look forward to working with you thank you thank you everyone thank you everybody we are now ready for uh the next item on the agenda which is a discuss it's item three e c the discussion on financing um it's not um it's not ready for there is no action required but information that's uh it's finally important to share with the board and i will turn this over again to sarah to begin this presentation thank you and yes we wanted to make sure to bring back to the board um in understanding of the different assumptions that went into um how we looked at the cash flow and um just an update on the financing options and there are uh two discussions one is for public session and one is for executive sessions so i'll go through some of the public session items um and made for some conversation to the executive session as it pertains to contract negotiations that are ongoing uh so some of the basic really the basic um place where we started was to do an analysis of what would be the worst case scenario or a worst case scenario and right now we're processing um this year we processed about 45,000 46,000 times through the the MRF um during stay at home COVID time we processed upwards of 49,000 tons so that is um you know kind of a high-weather mark without doing any really additional um you know sourcing of more material so a worst case scenario would be um if we were not able to access the current contractually obligated out of district tons from cicella and per the uh the current contract they are required to bring into the wilston where 13,000 tons of recyclables from out of district sources so out of chitin county um if for some reason we are unable to come to um conclude you know a mutually agreed point conclusion where they would continue to provide those tons we needed to to look at the numbers from what we uh believe is a uh a a strong source of material from within chitin county so between 32 35,000 times we feel comfortable that's what is generated within cswd within the district so that's where we started the um or base that that analysis on and we prepared a 10 year um a 10 year analysis but it's really a 13 year look um because we start with what we're calling a negative year three negative two negative one and that are the three years of construction so we started there because the financing would kick in obviously with the construction the purchase of the equipment so we wanted to include those first three years in the look and then go out 10 years from that so it's 10 years from when we flip the switch and and commission the the new mark but it really is a 13 year look so I say that because it's really crystal ball when you get out that far um but you know again we're looking at some of the basic assumptions and many of them you think are are will feel will hold true down the line so when we're looking at again that 35,000 times worst case based on on in the um in district material we're also again just for the sake of consistency maintaining a same tip fee all the way through with one except with some exceptions which I'll get to in a moment um and the acr all the way through is the same there's there's just not um sorry that's not that's not accurate to feel the way through is accurate we've done a very moderate increase on the acr going through because as the new equipment is is in place and is running the quality will improve so we are looking towards improved quality as we go down starting really in the year one probably in year two going out farther it does slow over time so it's not going to be in kind of that consistent every single year through year 30 we're going to have increase in quality and pricing for the quality but the quality jump will be very significant from in that negative year one or zero year and then going into the first five years for sure we are anticipating I want to you know put that out there and then let the board know that we're anticipating an increase in our residue rate and that is because the system will more accurately sort the proper materials into the proper bails right now we we do get some migration of material that is again making its way into the wrong bale that will not be the case when we go forward into the new system so there will be some most likely additional material such as when I mentioned films styrofoam things of that nature that might be escaping into the bails now that will not be escaping into the bails they will be caught in our residue system so we're planning for some increase in that residue and I'm prepping prepping you all for that that is to be expected and it will not be a surprise um for us but we do expect excuse me to Ellen's point earlier that we will not have the kind of the standard single stream very high residue rate because the you know our recyclers here in Vermont do a really good job so we're already starting from an excellent place and then as we get closer to commissioning again we're ramping up that education hey we've got a new facility a new system here's what it can do here's what we don't want it to do we want to make sure that we're not um inadvertently harming the system please keep these things out please don't put your bowling balls in your recycling bin please keep out those things that wrap um so that will be also part of the ramp up to the new facility is that additional education about what can go in and how to prepare it to again reduce the contamination of the materials um so another item that we're um we looked at was the costs for process glass aggregate to decrease over time and this is important because this is a a really significant cost center for us right now the main reason being that the majority or at least half of our facility um the process the portion of processes the class is outdoors so this new system brings all of the glass processing indoors will be able to consistently make that pga quality or even up to the sandbar equality which is the goal year-round so as we're able to do that then the cost to transport to clean etc will steadily go down and that will be an immediate effect um really kicking in quite heavily in year two and then again going down years you know in the out years three to ten so you'll see that um in the spreadsheet I provided for executive session but that is a a that's a big big win for us and that is immediate as soon as it's under cover that switches over to a much higher quality more consistent quality all year-round so we also have kind of projected out um we've asked about we've worked with the bond bank over the past year so to provide us with different schedules based on different um scenarios that we have presented to them and the the initial especially that you have in your packet was as I mentioned in the document for $16 million through the bond bank with an additional zero interest loan from close loop partners to make up that other $6 million for the total not to exceed to long-term borrow 22 so in meeting with Paul and Leslie this week Leslie had a good suggestion of of you know running another scenario with the bond bank to say well can we do kind of interest free interest uh holiday tax holiday of five years just paying the interest and not the principal um and then you know to kind of preserve some cash um uh in the first initial five years and then you know um back load the rest of it and I did ask for that new schedule from the bond bank I did not receive it in time for I just haven't received it at all yet so he's probably working on it um so I don't have those specific answers but I we did run a similar scenario based on previous schedule that were sent to us by the bond bank so essentially the question was can we preserve some cash on hand um instead of you know basically paying the principal uh for the close loop fund because it's only principal and then interest from the bond bank at the same time can we really save some of that cash and what would that look like and the initial the initial look is that it does cost us more over the course of the 25 years repayment to do the interest only five for five years with the bond bank and 22 million so you know we it it does benefit us to take advantage of the close loops or just loan and then to have that principal from the bond bank be lower over time um but we can talk a little bit more about that detail and I will I will formally run that uh once we get that information from Michael at the bond bank which I I expect he'll get back to us this week it just didn't arrive today um and again so we are also anticipating needing to establish a sinking fund so the sinking fund would be basically um uh a go to the bank an internal bank where we would see that with some excess capital or not excess capital excess revenue that we realized from the Murph this past year to make sure that um we do not run in the red on those those operating in debt payments so it is anticipated that due to the most likely what the contract will be for the existing Murph with Cassella as you know again we're continuing to negotiate that but we have a sense for what those costs will be those costs combined with the debt service payment will put us in the red for the first few years so we would tap into dry down on that sinking fund for the first several years um three to four um no more than four years and then at that point the idea of the sinking fund would be to match the the sinking fund to the next year's principal and debt payment so each year the sinking fund goes down a little bit but it will match that next year's obligation so we're always covering the next year's obligation that kind of gets at um Commissioner Perry's question about you know is is there any sense or an intention of um you know having to send a bill to our member communities and that's how we would guard against that would be to always be forecasting and budgeting and having in that sinking fund the amount that we would need for next year and as we pay the next year the obligation goes down a little bit more and it will shrink over time um as we pay down the obligation so the goal of the sinking fund is is to shrink if there's additional money in that sinking fund that is not needed to pay that next subsequent year's payment that excess can move into capital so there's always be that flow of of excess into capital for future needs down the road so those are um those are kind of the high points that I would want to review for how we're looking at the cash flow in public session again we can get into a few more additional detail pertinent to contract negotiations in uh executive session are the questions about the assumptions before I touch on a little bit more on the finance and I've already kind of talked a little bit about it so okay I will go on to um actually share this part of the screen because it's less messy or less involved I should say so this bit is um where we are still at for the um the financing and you know again we're we're looking to a combination of of sources of the funds um bond bank closed loop fund um uh obviously our you know that we would need to be prepared to have a certain amount of contribution recycling partnership grant and here's an asterisk next to CSWD contribution because um there is an opportunity to seek funding from the EPA through the federal infrastructure grant um and that is available for some solid waste and recycling infrastructure they have not released their um their RFP process their grant application process yet so we do not know uh what those parameters will look like that should come out in September so it just wasn't in time for this discussion we will certainly apply for grant to those funds to that infrastructure fund this first year is different than the next four years following so the grant is a five years five year opportunity the first year um they are required to dedicate 40 percent of the funds available to um environmental justice um projects related to recycling and to underserved communities um particularly in urban areas so it does reduce the potential amount that would be would be available for programs outside of that that um condition however that is at this point only in year one so there would be more funds available in year two so if we are not successful in year one we would apply again in year two but in the near term we do want to make sure that in the capital reserve we do have about three and a half million dollars available should we need to access cash on hands then we'll stop sharing here and ask if there are questions about that and not seeing any hands up I'm not seeing any questions either at this point Sarah does that mean we're ready to move on to the executive session portion of this presentation just to point out why we're doing this in two ways we certainly have an obligation to inform the public of um what we're trying to do but as Sarah has pointed out there's still some sensitive aspects of this that um do need to be discussed in an executive session but that's really the reason for this two-part presentation I think then we're ready I'm always a cognizant of the clock at seven forty I think we're ready then to move into executive session is there a language that can be read sure I move that the board of commissioners of the Chittenden solid waste district go into executive session to discuss contract negotiations with respect to the materials recovery facility where premature general public knowledge could would clearly place the district its member municipalities and other public bodies or persons involved at a substantial disadvantage and to permit authorized staff in the solid waste district attorneys to be present for this session so moved Jericho thank you and a second charlotte thank you Ken thank you Leslie all those in favor of entering executive session please say aye hi hi are any opposed say nay I don't believe any abstentions we'll move into executive session via the link that sarah sent out I believe several days ago I believe our quorum still exists uh we're ready to have entertain a motion to leave executive session don't move yes it's thank you thank you paul all those in favor of exiting executive session please say aye opposed say no abstentions we're now back in public session we're now ready to move on to the final item in final items on our agenda which is five other business there are two items that were identified the first I just wanted to to make known to the board and to the public that I will be appointing or am appointing paul stabler south burlington and rick mccraw heinsberg to the finance committee appreciate both both of those commissioners to step up and and participate in this very important and critical aspect of board governance and I think we have a very strong team going forward with that with leslie continuous chair and his treasurer so thank you again to all three of you for to agreeing to serve uh and then sarah um you want to just update us on calendar for for august I believe yeah I just want to um make note and it was included on the annual organizational calendar um the meeting condo when we publish it back in june but that the executive board will meet on the eight um of august so we'll not be meeting on um the 15th just making sure that everyone is aware of that that change in the calendar at the same time just different day and the regular excuse me the regular board meeting I don't know is before I believe but whatever those the yes and as always all meetings exact board regular board and finance committee meetings are all open to all board members and encouraged to participate I think we have run out of business to talk about tonight so um entertain a motion to adjourn thank you thank you I think we got burlington in this time all those in favor of adjourning please say aye aye opposed say no we are adjourned thank you all very much thank you sarah