 Hi everyone, welcome to our consolidated collection meeting where we look forward to sharing more about our proposal in the background and consolidated collection. My name is Rob Golding, the public information manager at Public Works, and I'm joined by my colleagues, Chapin Spencer and Lee Perry. Good evening to everyone. Good evening. Director of Public Works and Lee Perry is our division director for maintenance. A couple of folks might be joining us in the next few minutes, but I think we'll get started and I'll turn it over to Director Chapin Spencer. Great, thank you so much, Rob. It's a pleasure to have a few folks on this call. We also have CCTV here as well. So this really is mostly a conversation with you all in Q&A, an opportunity to interact on the concept of consolidated collection. We have a very short presentation for you tonight, about 15 minutes, and then the bulk of the time is for us to talk. So with that, Rob's going to go over a few of the details on the meeting and the structure of it, and then we'll get started. Thanks, Chapin. So to start with, as Chapin said, we'll have a short meeting. There'll be a short overview of consolidated collection and some of the proposals that you may be familiar or not familiar with. Then we certainly want to hear from you for the majority of the meeting. Just to start, we do want to make sure everybody's going to have a chance to talk. Certainly want you to have a chance to speak and ask questions. Not a lot of people on the call right now, but just in case we wind up with a lot, we do ask folks to limit their first round of remarks and questions when we get there to about three minutes, just to ensure everyone has an opportunity. Certainly if everyone has spoken and there's time, we want to keep going back around. Please wait until the presentation is over and then use the raise your hand feature on Zoom. For folks who aren't familiar with this version of Zoom, you will have to click on the reactions button on the bottom toolbar of your Zoom screen. Click on that and then there'll be a raise your hand icon and words that say raise your hand. So easy enough, hopefully. If you have any trouble with that, not a lot of us on here, I think you can feel free to speak up and let us know when the time is right that you want to speak. But again, just to reiterate, if you do want to talk, use the raise your hand feature when the short presentation is over. If you have any questions during the presentation, certainly let us know or sorry, if you have any technical issues speaking or anything else kind of arises during the presentation, I'd welcome you to contact me at R. My name is Robert Golding. It's R-G-O-U-L-D-I-N-G at BurlingtonVT.gov, R-G-O-U-L-D-I-N-G at BurlingtonVT.gov. I'd be happy to help you troubleshoot in real time. And if we happen to run out of time or if you happen to think of things after the meeting, we also would welcome you to contact us. That'll be up on the screen again later and we'd be happy to get you an answer as soon as tomorrow, hopefully. So don't hesitate to let us know if you have questions now or after. And for folks who may know of other folks in the community who have any linguistic barriers to learning more about this proposal, taking the survey that we've publicized, we do have interpretation services available and would encourage you to let folks know about that and you simply have to call the main DPW number during business hours and mostly in real time we'll be able to connect with a translator for most languages. Sometimes there may be a little delay, but we would welcome you sharing that if you have any neighbors, coworkers or otherwise who might have some language barriers. Thank you very much. I'll turn it back over to our team, Lee and Chapin. Great. Division Director Lee Perry is going to share his screen and start the presentation. What are you guys seeing? It's pretty closely down the bottom right corner. You should click on the presentation mode button and I think you'll be good to go. I'll set. Perfect. So as Mr. Goulding explained, welcome to our presentation, the agenda that he went over and give you a little background of, you know, consolidated collection and what it is. There's many ways that communities coordinate consolidated collection. In Brentlington, it's a subscription basis where you either contract with a private hauler or self-haul to one of the Chittins Hall Waste District drop-off centers. There was a survey done where they surveyed 461 communities and they found that this subscription basis occurs approximately 11 percent of communities. Where on the other hand, community or consolidated collection occurs 83 percent of the time in communities. So Lee, we're still seeing your home screen instead of the presentation. We're seeing the first slide, the welcome slide. Okay. Sorry about that. Try that again. Thanks everybody for your patience. Lee, we're seeing your presentation mode in full with all the details. So Rob, is there a suggestion on the part? I'm going to do this right. Try that again. We probably can go up to your display settings right at the top of your screen. Once you share that, you know, if you want me to share this my screen. I can't get it on my screen for some reason. I don't know why. Okay. Great. Sorry. So here we go. And I'll move on to the slide you were on. All right. Okay. So back at it. Background. Consolidated collection has been explored in our region for decades. As you can see here, three times in the last 20 years, it's been explored in one way or another, either through Chitton's Hall Waste District or most recently by collaborating with Chitton's Hall Waste District in the city of South Burlington. Next slide. The benefits of consolidated collection, you know, through various studies, it's been indicated there's a wide range of benefits. Those include reduced cost, environmental impacts, increased safety, and diversion. And diversion is, you know, consolidated collection as a most cost effective way to capture all waste streams, including food scraps. And as you can see on this slide, has been our, you know, process of public outreach, which started with the initial study in 2019 by our consultant GBB, who reached out to 261 residents through a phone survey, all the way up to, you know, the current public meeting that we're at right now. And a lot of the information from these meetings can be found at our website that is listed at the end of the presentation. And the four operating models that DPW explored was the franchise model, which was done with our study from our consultants. A franchise model is where municipality contracts with one or more private haulers to collect districts throughout the city. The franchise model with city bid is similar to franchise, except the city would retain the right to bid against private contractors for districts. The municipal model, which is where the city would itself pick up all three way streams and including oversight, billing, customer service, and scheduling. And then our fourth option is a hybrid municipal franchise model. So under this scenario, the city would continue collecting, recycling as it does now, and then would contract out trash and food scraps to one or more private haulers. Next slide. And this slide shows kind of what we touched on in the beginning with that 83%. So this pie chart breaks it down, the 58% would be private contractors that are contracted through a municipality. The 40% would be the municipality itself, and the 2% would be some sort of hybrid model. Next slide. And this slide shows a projected cost for all three way streams. So we have it broken down to the municipal model and the franchise model. And as you can see, we have different opt out levels, which means the higher the opt out, the less participants in the program. So the less participants, as you can see, the cost goes up annually. All right. Well, thank you. Looks like I ended up with the same presentation mode that you had, Lee. But I think the presentation is still visible. So we'll proceed here. Rob, any quick suggestions about how to adjust the presentation? You know, it looks like you are now in presentation mode and out of the slide layout mode. So I think you're good. All right. Let me, sorry about that team. Similar to Lee, I think I pressed a button that I shouldn't have here. So here we go. And we'll get us right back. Sorry about that, everybody. Got mine up if you folks need me to bring this one up. All right. Why don't you do that as my computer now is here we go. Yep, creating a little bit of a problem. Okay. Thanks all for standing by. So I know I've got mine up. There we go. Can you see that? Yes. Yes, we're seeing the welcome screen. So perfect. So we were, yes, next slide. Two more. Great. So as Lee was discussing, as you're seeing here, the different cost comparisons of our projections under a municipal operation model and a franchise model. And the key message here is that they are similar in cost, depending on what's included in the model, somewhere in the range of $34 to $41 a month for all three streams, trash, recycling and compost. Next. Then we took a look at 13 different areas and evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of each concept. We laid out here three options that have been most discussed, a fully franchised model, a fully municipally operated model, and then a hybrid model, the option four that Lee was previously describing where the city continues to provide compost collection, excuse me, a recycling collection and franchises out with private haulers for trash and compost. A number of these models are very similar in the top in how they benefit the community. The two models that have been most discussed recently are options three and option four. And so we've highlighted in blue some of the key distinctions in areas that are stronger between one model and the other. And then the municipal model, the city control of service is the greatest. So if the city is providing the service, should residents want a different level by weekly versus weekly collection or opting out of service or not opting out or back door collection, that that would be most nimbly able to be adjusted if the city was managing the operation. With the union labor and pay under a municipal option, there would be approximately 12 to 14 additional employees who would be needed to provide a fully municipal run service, many of those being union employees. Whereas under the hybrid option, we are projecting three to four additional union employees who oversee the franchised service and to more robustly staff our recycling collection. There are many other benefits under the hybrid option that are highlighted in blue here. The effort to launch in comparison to a fully municipal system is much less. We would have the expertise of having already run our recycling program and would contract for the other services, as opposed to having to set up those other services. That includes we do not have space at 645 Pine Street to have all of the municipal operation located there, so we would need to construct another building and maintain that additional building. Under nine upfront capital costs, because under a fully municipal option, we would need to build a building, acquire the trucks and all the parts for a municipal operation, we estimate to be over $6 million, those costs would not need to be incurred by the city under a hybrid option where the private sector would provide the assets as part of their service. Legislative approval number 10, one of the recommendations from the city attorney and the clerk treasurer's office that given the size of municipal operation over $5 million a year that we would be strongly recommended to set up an enterprise fund. This is similar to what Burlington Electric has and to the water resources division at DPW are separate funds that are more independent given the size and scale and business focus of these activities. So under a hybrid option, given that we would continue just to operate our existing recycling program, we'd have a much easier path and would not need any legislative approval from the state legislature for a charter change to set up an enterprise fund. Risk to city government, the hybrid option in our mind is less risky given that we already run recycling and would just contract for the remaining services. We're standing up a new business fully with trash and organics, not only setting up the enterprise fund, getting voter approval for the borrowing for the capital budget as well as approval at the state legislature for the enterprise fund. Time to launch. We are estimating two to three years for a hybrid option or three to five for municipal. So the hybrid option would be quicker. And then lastly, future flexibility. One of the questions people have is, well, if what we implement works or doesn't work, what's our opportunities to check? And our analysis from other communities around the country is that once we set up a municipal operation with union employees and the assets to do that work, it would be very difficult to make a substantial change. But in the hybrid solution, given that we continue recycling and contract for the other services that over time, other communities have made the choice to move to a fully municipal operation in the future, should we so want. Next. So DPW's recommendation is for this hybrid option. And we have laid out a number of the reasons why in the past slides. And I won't read through those here. But in some, the hybrid option is an easier, less costly, quicker ability to implement. And given the number of other priorities that the council and mayor have for our department, we feel we are better able to deliver a lower hurdle approach to consolidate collection than a full municipal model. Next. A few last points here in terms of rolling out the conceptual timeline. As you'll see here, this shows us on a two and a half year implementation process. If the council were to select the hybrid model at their 13th, September 13th meeting, but then we could be in a position to put out the bid next year. The districts, as Rob discussed, and then have the vendors prepared to staff up and to secure the equipment to operate service starting in 2024. Next. It's important to note that there are a number of options and that there's a broad perspective. Frankly, there are city counselors who have a variety of different perspectives. A counselor has suggested that the current system of subscription service is working. Other counselors have advocated the full municipal option. And as you'll see here, the DPW commission in June voted five to one to support the hybrid consolidated collection model. And the transportation, energy and utilities committee, which is a subcommittee of the city council voted two to one to support a municipal, fully municipal operation. The city council is expected to take this up at their September 13th meeting. And that's a key reason why we're having these public meetings here to get public input before the council needs to make their decision. Next. So one of the opportunities that Rob discussed in the beginning of the meeting is a survey that we have online as we are trying to understand if the community and the city council decides to advance with consolidated collection as to what level of service does the community want? And options include whether it's weekly or bi-weekly collection of each waste stream, whether or not there's an option to opt out. Many people have reached out to us and expressed a desire to continue to use the drop-off centers and not be required to have a municipal leak collected service. What residential properties should participate? Our consultant recommended one to four unit properties. That said, other communities collect larger residential buildings and given next to downtown and UVM, we have many five, six, seven, eight unit buildings, do we want to consider serving those buildings with consolidated collection? And lastly, other service options for container sizes backdoor service and seasonal service, etc. Next. The link to the survey is down at the bottom there. So thank you for the opportunity to do a very quick overview. There's an opportunity here with the email to send us comments after the meeting tonight. Lee's contact information is also listed here as well as the link to take the survey. And with that, oh, and then finally the translation services as Rob had noted in the beginning of the meeting are available and we are happy to assist with those as well for taking the survey or providing background on this proposal. And with that, I'll turn it back to you, Rob, for questions and answers. Thank you, Lee and Jay. Again, thanks for all the folks who have joined us today. I know one or two of you may have joined a little late. So I just wanted to let everyone know now is the opportunity to hear from you specifically questions or concerns you want to share with us. Any feedback or reactions, positive, neutral or negative or indifferent, we definitely want to hear them and share them here. If you do want to speak, there's not a lot of us, but just to keep it a little orderly, if you want to use the raise your hand feature, which is on the reaction toolbar or it's on the toolbar labeled reaction on your Zoom screen, try that. If you have any trouble with that, there's only a few of us. I think it's all right if you speak up and we'll just try to manage the conversation accordingly. But we definitely are eager to hear any thoughts you have. Thank you. We believe there's got to be a question or any feedback on the presentation. While we may have had some presentation glitches, we must have covered a broad ground here. We are happy to answer any questions or take your feedback. If you think this is a good idea, you think it's a bad idea, whether we should keep the current subscription system or otherwise. As Chepin said, we do have opportunities after this, just to remind folks who are on the call. There'll be another meeting. Much like this one, there'll be a city council presentation. We have a website that I think has most of the information you might need, as well as a survey that we'd love for you to take. And to reiterate, there are interpretation and translation services. You may need that. Great. Well, Rob, maybe at this point, just to air on the side, making sure that everybody has an opportunity. We can unmute everybody and if you have any questions to speak now. Otherwise, we can wrap up early and I'll enjoy a nice evening. I think you got everything. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much. Well, Rob, hearing no further comments, I would say at this point that we're available for calls, emails, and the like. Moving forward and look forward to getting your opinions on the survey. And having you participate if you wanted, the council meeting on the 13th. Thank you. Great. Thank you all. Have a good evening.