 Well, welcome. We're here at the Department of Public Works in Burlington, Chapin Spencer, and Lee Perry. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having us. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks. So we're going to talk a little trash. It's on the minds of some people, but I think in the next couple of months it'll be on the minds of a lot more Burlingtonians, right? Absolutely. How we pick up and collect our trash, recycling, and organics is something that is a fractured system currently, and I think there's a lot of interest in having a more seamless system for our residents. So, Lee, the city of Burlington does collect recycling, but not trash. Why does the city right now, why are they in charge of recycling? We took on recycling back in the early 90s. Initially, it was a bid process where we would bid against private contractors, and eventually we took the whole service over and have just continued doing it since. And then the question of having multiple commercial trash haulers has also been discussed at Public Works and the City Council for how long now, Chapin? There's been a number of studies about our current system, which is inefficient. We have four or so trash haulers, major trash haulers that are all circulating through the city. So a certain many residential street will have three or four different trash haulers on three or four different days. And what we want to do is look at how can we make it more efficient and have it so that customers in a particular neighborhood just know Mondays or the days that trash organics and recycling all get picked up and make it easy for the end user. So there's recently been a study conducted by the Department of Public Works or by a contractor. Tell us a little bit about that, how that started. Sure. And to more fully answer your last question is that there have been a number of studies about consolidated collection over the decades. In 2000, the City Council passed a resolution to have the city and the Department of Public Works look at consolidated collection. The study was done, but no action was taken by the city at that time. Then the Chittin Solid Waste District back in the late 2000s, around 2007 or 2008, restarted a region-wide conversation on consolidated collection. That ended in around 2015 and didn't go anywhere. We, thanks to a council resolution in 2018, have restarted this evaluation. We did it with South Burlington and the Chittin and Solid Waste District. And we are excited about the recommendations that came out of that study and are here to talk more about it. And were those recommendations just for Burlington or included Burlington and South Burlington and the region? It included Burlington and South Burlington, but the dynamics of each town had certain aspects of recommendations that would be specific to that town. But in general, it was a consolidated collection study for both towns. And you looked at a few options. The study includes just kind of recap the options and then we'll talk about what you thought was the best one. Leah, do you wanna do that? Sure. So the first option that we had done with our consultant was a franchised option where on a franchise system, the municipality would contract with multiple haulers to pick up all three waste streams. Then we did a study directed by our Transportation Energy and Utilities Committee to explore a municipal option where the city would collect all waste streams. There was another option, a third option, where the city would bid against private contractors similar to the way we used to do recycling. And then we came up with our hybrid option where the city would continue to do recycling and then contract trash and food scraps out to a private hauler. So that third recommendation is the one that this study basically puts forward? We are recommending the hybrid option, which is the one where we would continue to operate the recycling program and that we would franchise with haulers to do the trash in organics. And why didn't you recommend to go municipal? Create a municipal infrastructure and take all of that work up in house, so to speak. Right, I think if we step back and look at the good news is that there seems to be a fair bit of consensus around the benefits of consolidated collection generally. That regardless of which model, having four or five different trash trucks in compost collection trucks going up and down streets on multiple days creates more wear and tear on the streets, more traffic and more emissions. And so the good news is I think the community largely understands the benefits of consolidated collection. It certainly is the more common approach for how trash is collected around the country than our subscription based model in Burlington. So that's good. The question of how best to implement consolidated collection is what the community is grappling with now. The benefits of a hybrid system as we are proposing, we get the same benefits environmentally of the lower truck traffic and the convenience to the consumer same day pickup with a number of advantages. One, less capital costs for the city up front. We would not need to buy new trash trucks, a new building and set up the same large kind of company that would need to be built. It's going to be over $6 million. We've got a new high school and a number of other financial burdens that the city is trying to achieve. It's also going to be easier to set up. It's going to take less time to do a hybrid option, building off our existing recycling program, then to have to build a new business instead of what we project would be three to five years under a municipal setup. We can be launched, we believe in two to three years. So it's cheaper, it is quicker, and it also takes less of our innovation capacity, it has less risk to the city. If we go with a full municipal option, we have to go to the voters for a number of things. Voters may approve or disapprove, but that takes time and adds risk. If we want to set up an enterprise fund to manage this new business in the city, that will need not only go to voters, but to the Vermont state legislature, adding additional risk and time. We think the hybrid option is a great start. If the community over time wants to move to municipal, we can certainly do that. So the nice thing about the hybrid is it can work as a hybrid option, or it could be a stepping stone to municipal in the future. So I'm not sure, Lee, if you're the best person to answer this. But what are the haulers saying? What are you hearing from them? So we've had a fair amount of public outreach with haulers, and there is concern amongst the haulers as far as if we implement a franchise system, how do we limit a monopolization of the system? And we explain that can be broken down into districts and have only one hauler per district or maybe subcontract with other haulers to address that issue. And obviously the small haulers, there's a few of those in the area, especially the local compost haulers that we're going to be affecting their business by implementing the system. But I think it's fair to say that the haulers generally see more of a threat from the municipal operation because there would be no role for them at that point. The hybrid option that we're proposing continues our role as collector of recycling, but still has a role for the trash companies and the compost collectors in a more organized fashion. So why are members of the City Council Commission, there was a group of three and two of them recommended going municipal. What are the advantages of a municipal system? Why do you think that's being put forward? Sure. Going back to the initial piece of the good news is there's general consensus around consolidated collection. The DPW Commission did vote five to one in advancing the hybrid option. The City Council's Transportation Energy and Utilities Committee did vote two to one for the municipal option. Benefits that they saw was more city jobs that would be union positions and greater control that the City would have more ability to quickly change service levels or operations because we would be in direct control of that service. So I think the two major benefits that I'm hearing from the municipal proponents are that more union jobs and greater control. And less likely for the hauling franchise to be monopolized by one hauler also? Yes, I think that is something that they have articulated. You could also turn that around though and say that when you go municipal, you have monopolized the system through a public option. Yes, the public does run it, but once we set up a municipal system, it is going to be exceedingly hard to change that substantively because there's vested interest in keeping the union jobs, keeping the system going. So if the market were to change or the model to need to evolve, it can be more difficult once the city's institutions are in place to substantively change that. So what's the time frame for the City Council to make decision on this? So we are going back to the Council on the 9th of August for a recommendation. We have some questions that we have answers to to give them prior to that meeting, so maybe it'll help their decision. And we'll find out then on what decision and then go through our six months of community outreach to discuss service levels and really nail down what the public really wants out of an operation like this. So the City Council is going to decide on whether to go municipal or hybrid on the 9th? There is some discussion among the Council about delaying that. So I just heard yesterday from members of the Council, there may be some discussion of delaying the decision. Our hope is to bring the information and the answers to their questions on the 9th, but they may request more time and that is their prerogative. I mean it seems like, I mean you've been in the thick of it obviously every day and the study has been going on, but it's just really coming to the public attention now with the publishing of your study, right? Right, there have been public meetings and the study from our consultant GBB has been out for about a year and a half now. So there has been significant public engagement, but this when the rubber hits the road, when the decisions need to get made is certainly when people's attention gets heightened and we're at that point now. No, I imagine that might be a little challenging as a public worker trying to put forward initiatives because again, you're involved in it and the study is a year old, but now it's like, oh, hello, something's going to happen, something's going to change. Yeah, so to wrap up, the City of Burlington is considering new options for the collection of recycling trash and compost. And the City Council is going to take a look at the study and the work that DPW and the Transportation City Council Committee has been doing on the 9th of August and decisions are going to be made fairly soon. And if people want to weigh in at this point, what should they do? They can contact myself at my email address L Perry at BurlingtonVT.gov. They can go to the website where we have multiple items posted, the studies posted there, all the previous minutes of the meetings and all that information. And they need to attend, they need to voice their opinion and show up. You know, I thought the best part of the study were all the public comments at the end. I mean, it's fantastic to read because people do, they cover the waterfront of all the views. Absolutely. We have compiled all the public comments that received a date and put them in the public packets for the counselors in the wider public to review. Ultimately, this is a decision for the community. How best do we want to collect our trash, try to reduce the amount of trash and increase the diversion of recycling and organics? We want to be a sustainable community that's been a long held priority of this city. How we collect trash, recycling organics now is a fractured, inefficient system. Our hope is that through this process, we can do better. That's a beautiful ending, but I have one more question, which is the opt-in, I think one of the things about the public comments where people were concerned that they would be obliged, you know, for example, we pay 60 cents a week, we take our trash to the place. Are we going to have to pay $400 a year, whatever the equivalent cost is, to participate in this? And there's a recommendation in that study about that, right? The study says that we should evaluate the opt-out component of whatever model is selected. And one of the things we've been doing is reading the public input and hearing it. And we're hearing strong support from members of the public for an opt-out provision. A number of people such as yourself seem to have self-haul, and which is a cheaper way to do it if you have the time and ability. So it is very likely, unless we hear something dramatically different from the public, that we would be implementing an opt-out scenario. The downside of an opt-out scenario is the fewer people in the system, the more expensive the system becomes for the remaining folks. So there's a trade-off, but we're working through that with the members of the public and the council. Well, I want to thank you both for your work, for keeping Burlington beautiful. I think public works, it's almost invisible until things don't work. But actually, things are working pretty much most of the time in terms of water quality, street quality, trash hauling, I mean, all of it. So I just want to commend you because I know you've been working really hard to make that happen. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. All right. Well, it's been a pleasure, Lauren Glenn. Do want to encourage public, anybody who's interested in the issue of Consolidated Collection to look at our website, reach out, send us an email, come to the upcoming meetings. We want to hear from you. Thanks so much.