 there's a lot that is read when you know through body language so I think it's helpful for Sarah and thanks for those that do and additions or changes to the agenda members of the public that would like to comment I see a hand raise is Kelton from Kasella can you hear me yes yeah I just want to hop on and I wanted to say thank you to the district staff in Green Mountain Compost for hosting that webinar the other day for key stakeholders around the change over at Green Mountain Compost it was definitely very appreciated and I tried my best to get a lot of a lot of our key stakeholders that have been using compostable foodware onto that call just so they can be aware about those changes I mean one one of the things that was mentioned on the call and something that I feel like we can dive in together as a partnership between haulers and the district is is around maybe finding some sort of reusable foodware program like UVM has with their eco-ware program that we can push district-wide to people that still want to because it is a big change for all these people who've been willing to make the investment into compostable foodware to keep that out of the landfill to then all of a sudden go back to having to throw stuff back in the landfill and it goes back on a lot of the work we've done with them and you all have done with them over the past few years and I know I started a project last year before COVID around reusable coffee mugs in downtown but it got paused when everyone's back to just making sure their businesses and their schools could stay open so it's just something I want to put on the radar I think it would be awesome if we could look into doing something like that as a partnership to help support these these customers going into the new year. Thanks Kelton. Yeah, Sarah I think we have it later in the agenda to talk about so maybe we can address Kelton's suggestion at that point a little bit more in detail. Any further comments from the public? Brynne I do think the public hearing we need to just address to start with it's on the agenda. The public hearing for the FY 22 proposed preliminary budget to just see if there's any comments from the public on that and then we can close the meeting close the hearing. Okay, should we wait until after the other agenda items to get to that or just review it first and then we will start the regular board meeting immediately after closing the public hearing. Okay, all right I'm going to have you walk me through that then. Okay, so this is a requirement of our charter to hold a public hearing on the proposed next fiscal year budget so essentially you will should have received the notice of public hearing the budget has not changed from what was submitted to the board in December as the proposed preliminary budget it is the same. So we are opening the four or four comments from the public if they have anything that they would like to let the board know or comment on specifically on what was proposed and what appeared in the public notice. So I don't see any members of the public really wishing to speak to the budget. So at this point when you can ask for a motion to close the public hearing portion of the meeting and then we can open the public regular business portion. Can we close the public hearing on the 2022 budget? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstain? All right motion passes. Okay, now we can move on to the regular agenda. I've already addressed no further additions or changes to the agenda proposed. I received a comment from the public. I see John you've got a comment. Was that intentional? Kind of figure out how I got that up there. I didn't mean to do that. No worries. All right. Sorry. I think do we have any new folks joining us from the public on all right. Any items from the consent agenda that folks would like to remove for discussion? Okay, hearing none the consent agenda passes. At this point Sarah or Amy if you would read the language to move to executive session that would be appreciated. I move that the board of commissioners of the Chittenden Solid Waste District go into executive session for the purpose of confidential attorney client communications to provide legal services where premature general public knowledge would clearly place the district its member municipalities and other public bodies or persons involved at a substantial disadvantage and to permit staff and the solid waste district attorneys to be present for this session. Thank you for Richmond. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? All right. We will move to executive session. We do have one, Bryn. All right. Thanks so much. I'll entertain a motion to leave executive session. Any opposed? We won't count that Leslie. All right. We have left executive session. I believe the next item on the agenda is the personnel policies. Sarah if you want to take it that way. Actually I'm going to kick that over to Amy to lead that conversation. Yeah so the CSWD has a personnel rules and regulations policy and we bring that to the board occasionally when we know that we need to do some updates or changes or clarifications. The last fall review was done in 2017 shortly after Sarah arrived and then of course along the way as policies needed to be updated we've brought those. One that we looked at was the disciplinary procedures and grievance procedures piece and really felt like it could be clarified. So this is a policy that came, we've had the policy in place since early 1990s, came from the city of Burlington. It's worked well. I really do think that it really clarifies and sets out nicely the different level of offenses and the chart and explains and makes it clear to staff what to expect. So I think it's worked well. We just really did feel like there should be some clarification and as I outlined in the memo one of the things we did was better examples for the level one, level two and level three offenses. Clarification that if an employee suspended that's unpaid but if they're on administrative leave that would be paid and then the disciplinary grievance chart itself had manager information but it didn't have a non had non manager process but not the manager process. So we wanted to clarify that as well and section 5.16 for second level offenses we have now included the option that if somebody has a second level offense and if you look at the disciplinary chart if they have a second occurrence that would be termination because of the nature of the offense we've included that the executive director can determine whether that initial level one counts after a three-year period or it would stay in the policy but not count towards termination. So it basically gives folks another bite at the apple if they've gone a certain number of years without a specific offense. This was reviewed by our personnel attorney. It went out to staff for comment. It went to the executive board for discussion as well and then brought to the full board for approval. There is a resolution that's included at the bottom of the memo and we would like the board to approve the revised wording. Are there any any questions about the changes? Leslie? I have one typo and one substantive section 5.1.6. I think you want to have an if at the beginning of the sentence. If after a three-year period. Okay thank you. Then I just have a question. This goes to the third page the disciplinary process and the examples. You know there's some language in there which I think could be seen as a bit vague. So acting negligently spreading malicious rumors decides that a rumors malicious or you know I'm just saying that those are there's a word for it. Those are value laden words without any color and I'm concerned that it and again I'm not a lawyer in this area but it could be a risk factor if if there were a disciplinary process and one of those were invoked. You know it could be challenged as being kind of vague. That's one area of just a question to be to be looked at and the other was in the level three you have example of insubordination is refusal to do an assigned job. Well you know there's a lot of case history with employees refusing to do a job that they felt was a threat to their health or safety or that of a co-worker. And by not having that caveat in there you could have a situation where someone refused to follow a supervisor's order on legitimate grounds was written up for termination. I mean you know we have to We do have an example of if it's with the exception of a safety issue and I'm trying to find the section apologies so we do outline that safety would be an exception if the employee feels it's unsafe. Right well all I'm suggesting is if this is something that's going to be circulated to managers and employees that that section be referenced here. You know saying that you know you can say you know except for you know pursuant to paragraph whatever. I just feel that that you know you need to need to protect yourself a little bit from some of these anyway. Okay I'm happy to include that. I don't know what to do about the other acting negligently or malicious. I mean again with the negligence could be you know any action that could potentially endanger the health or safety of the employee or a co-worker just something to give it a little more color and you know what's a malicious rumor I don't know. Well you know that somebody dyed their hair. I mean that's not a malicious rumor. Well somebody who was you know someone who didn't want to be seen with gray hair might take offense. Who knows. Well I would like to answer our managers and our executive director have some a little bit more discretion. And these are examples that are listed of certainly not inclusive of everything but I think it gives. I know yeah okay. That's why you have a grievance process too. Paul I see your hand up. Yeah I just wanted to ask what has the employee response been to the proposed changes? I had one noted typo other than Leslie's and I had one comment that said this looks great thank you. So two folks out of the 60 had commented. Other questions from commissioners? So for next steps I'm wondering if we are able to make some changes during the session and come back to it and vote on it or if we need to make the changes and come back to the full board next month. So what we could do is we could we could make the changes and then we could put the revised document in the consent agenda for next month and because it's already been discussed and we've taken on the other concerns and we'll make the adjustments there may not be a need for debate. So I would say we put this in consent agenda as an item that would then be again unless it's pulled off of the agenda for the debate and discussion it would just be included there. All right and then if there and the expectation of course would be that the commissioners would read the consent agenda and request to remove it from the consent agenda for discussion if there was anything that we needed to go over and then vote on separately. So Leslie are you comfortable with that? No that's fine yeah okay other commissioners? We'll highlight the change as well so it's easy to spot. Perfect um other commissioners cool with that? All right let's head nodding. Thank you. Thank you Amy. Sarah if you want to move to the next topic. Yep so the FY20 update? Yes so fiscal 20 we have no here as well so those provided quite a bit of detail on fiscal 20 and we've also provided some narrative as well. I had also provided an update to staff just very high level for level no one's going to give me a lot more detail than I thought to myself. But the bottom line being that our revenues did come in lower than than budget which was again anticipated due to COVID particularly with you know our our high revenue months being kind of that first quarter and the fourth quarter and we had some good news as well you know our compost sales nearly doubled over budget so where you know the solid waste management fee revenue came in below just again that was expected due to the decrease in commercial activity particularly the decrease in commercial activity and we had some good news with the the compost and so this memo outlines you know kind of highlights again some of those those key factors that we wanted you to be aware of our expenses came in significantly below what had been budgeted so while our revenues came in slightly below and not too much below the the reduction in expenses more than made up for that so no matter if you want to kind of review some of the highlights that from your perspective as the finance director and then obviously when we open up to any any questions that the board may have on fiscal 20. Sure I mean most of the highlights are listed in this memo but just to reiterate what Sarah said that we really were very close to our overall budget and in general I think that the staff made some really great decisions on how to adjust our expenses so that we could reach those goals we also were able to put away the allocated dollars for designated capital we had some money that was leftover that was able to be put into the undesignated funds and I think that we overall were able to reach our goals for that fiscal year. Thanks Nola and Sarah Paul give a hand up nope all right. Any other comments or questions from commissioners? I just want to myself say how much I appreciate Sarah and Nola and the staff for really adjusting and adapting to the end of fiscal year 20 it took a wealth of dedicated time and a lot of thought and you know dealing with the infrastructure changes and adaptations at the same time so I really appreciate everything that has gone into reducing the expenses and to ensuring that we were able to meet everybody's composting needs for getting soil out out the door to folks that were looking to do their own vegetable gardens this summer so I think it made a big difference and was a significant impact and I really just want to say how much I appreciate that so thank you. Thank you. Any other comments from commissioners before we move on? All right hearing none. Sarah. So the I just want to also highlight that it included in that fiscal 22 memo packet was the notification just to the board that we have received some reimbursements for the COVID expenses that we had moved for as well. So I believe the next item is the capital conversation so we wanted to bring to the board some kind of preliminary information and some preliminary thinking around not just this upcoming year's capital projects but also looking forward three to five years and to try to get an overview of what we're thinking of where we want to be heading over the next three to five years and so we've put together again an initial draft. We've got a lot of numbers and Josh go over the numbers. I'd like to bring up a just a quick PowerPoint here. Oh I'm you know what I maybe I can't Josh can you you're a host are you a host? Amy are you able to give me sharing because it's a webinar I know? I haven't thought about it. Amy are you able to share your screen? I'll see if I can get you going then Josh. Oh thanks Josh. Right now Sarah I just changed it to all panelists can share so everybody don't get crazy. We're looking at just again this is a preliminary draft of what we're thinking of over the next few years so we want to kind of talk about you know how basically how we got here and what we're seeing and trying to connect them connecting the dots and I think that's been we've been asked for that for a while now it's like okay it's great that you want to do all these projects that's lovely how is it all fitting together and how are we looking at all of this as far as you know what does it mean for the overall network of services and facilities and you know kind of looking at things in a bit of a holistic view and this is this is a first initial step at kind of presenting that overview that you know work about holistic view. So first you know we want to kind of go through what are the main operations facilities that we provide services for and it's obviously our drop-off centers so we and currently have six full service drop-off centers. Burlington is still a good scrap only at this point drop-off center and you can see kind of where they're located throughout the county there are six there seven if when Burlington has back on line. Similarly recycling our Murph is again right in the middle in Williston and all of the drop-off centers do accept recyclables again with the exception of Burlington still being compost food scraps only. Organics diversion again right in the middle of the county and again you know being centered in Williston there's a reason for that and we're still convinced that that is where we want to be and need to be as far as efficiency and effectiveness and being able to provide consistent services. You see all of our facilities are taking accepting food scraps and then household hazardous waste. This is the one facility that is not located in in Williston but in nearby South Burlington and most of our facilities do accept some small amounts of household hazardous waste batteries compact fluorescent bulbs. So you know what we we had a series of retreats and you know the first one several years just a couple years before I got here in 2014 was the strategic plan and that is still the plan that is in effect today. I do think it needs updating so that will be something that I would recommend that the board consider undertaking with staff to look at a new strategic plan and I think that perhaps as an impetus at the end of this process we'll we'll see the need to be able to pull everything together on this strategic plan and a couple of the highlights from that retreat was a commitment by the board that there's an acknowledgement that reinvestment is required in our main facilities or large facilities and also acknowledgement that there was a need at that time for a more professional better office space that has just gotten more more dire as we can explain a little bit here. Next over 2018 we held a series of retreats on again our main facilities so the key things to take away from the compost retreat that we mount compost retreat was that there was a commitment by the board that CSWD should continue to own operate and provide support for our compost operation to process Trinidad County's organics and create a soil amendment. We were directed by that retreat and then for the confirmation from the board later the board that it was we needed to really determine the maximum and ideal inbound material to make a match to the leaf and yard material that we were managing and then we wanted to drive that those efforts towards reducing our subsidy that the district provides to that particular program and increasing efficiency on that location. We had a Drop-off Center retreat and again confirming that we wanted to maintain a network of facilities. There was some conversation about are those facilities in the right location. I think there's still some conversation to be had there regarding particularly Brownton and maybe Colchester and making sure that we're still servicing the population where the population is. We once also we were told to make sure that we were assessing different actions to be looking at the existing footprint and making sure that we were making the best use of the locations that we had available to us provided by the host communities and again to evaluate the cost of making the civilian improvements focusing on safety and efficiency. And then finally we had a Murph retreat. Again with the basic question do we still want to own a Murph and the board did confirm at that retreat that yes it was being really important that CSWD continued to have a foothold in the Murph arena in Vermont. And that was the next question being do you want to build a new Murph and it was a qualified yes. It was a yes but slash and we need to know how much it's going to cost and what that timeline would be. So we'll be talking a little bit about that tonight as well. And this is just a brief overview of some of the benchmarks back from when we first started 1987 and how we were really starting off being proactive and now we've kind of gone back into a reactive mode when it comes to capital projects and capital improvements. And we want to get us back to being proactive. So I think we've seen a lot of the shift in being proactive in response to the retreat that we have for the amount accomplished and the activities that we're seeing there and the improvements being made with that facility. So can you want to go forward with improvements being made at the drop-off centers for people looking to be proactive rather than simply being real? Making some connections. So we're very committed to our mission and I want to really connect the capital projects and improvements to the four E's that are part of our mission, being environmentally sound, efficient, effective, and operating in an economical manner. So this is a lot of information. We'll post this on our website and we'll send this around if folks want to have this too. We can put this into another memo form if that makes sense. But I wanted to try to say, if you bring it home as far as, well, what does a build-out of the organic diversion facility mean? What does a new MRF mean? What do these things mean? And we're really focusing in on the different items and key factors that will, you know, leading us to improving efficiency effectiveness, reducing subsidy, which leads to an environmental benefit, economic benefit, making sure that everything we're doing is being done environmentally sound, manner, you know, better energy efficiency, you know, where we can improve educational opportunities, which is effective, it's not part of our mission, maybe it shouldn't. And, you know, it's the same thing, refitting, retrofitting the drop-off centers, focusing on efficiency safety, you know, looking towards the experience with the new Heinsberg facility to say, you know, how has that redesigned, you know, talking, you know, looking at the materials that we accept, what has that done for cost effectiveness or material flow in and out of the facility for customer experience, et cetera. And, you know, bringing back the little smile from one of the retreats, if the smile looks a little scary, because when we get into the numbers, it is a little scary. However, we wanted to kind of try to show, and this is, you know, it used to be a thing fleshed out a little bit, but that everything is interconnected. So, you know, here we have, again, our community paying the ways that we are charged with managing, and what are we providing as far as facilities and management ways to do that? Green Mountain Compos, our drop-off centers, which then feed the MRF, the Tropical Centers feed Green Mountain Compos close to the landfill, you know, the DRC's also feed into the depot. The MRF then feeds into manufacturing. The depot feeds into manufacturing. Green Mountain Compos, you know, provides like in the soil amendment, which goes to the homes, which then create the food scraps that need to come back in, and trying to, you know, to make people kind of really understand kind of the circular nature of our business, and how are some of the things that the improvements that we're proposing and the changes we're proposing to our operations, how will they foster self-reliance, how will they foster the kind of closing that loop and keeping things as local as possible where we can to make sure that we're doing everything possible within that makes, again, a lot of sense for our community. So I'm going to stop my share there, Josh, and then if you want to go into some of the numbers, that would be helpful. Yep, so I'll hop on. I'll start with the timeline that you guys had in your packet, and I'll kind of walk everybody through that. It's an aggressive timeline, but kind of from the existing timeline that was in that PowerPoint, you know, we had a pretty heavy capital investment in the early 90s, and we haven't really, you know, we've maintained some facilities, we'd fixed things as needed. So this is kind of the thought of, you know, moving us towards the next 20 years. So these are our best estimates in the research that we've performed, and this, again, timeline is aggressive. It's in the next five fiscal years. So I'll share my screen so everybody can see it. Can you guys all see that? Yes. Okay. So the nature of timelines is they're long and they don't fit on screens very well. So I've got, and this shot here, the first three fiscal years that, you know, which is kind of corresponds with your packet. But I started out with the Murph. The estimated cost is $18 million. We can probably shave that down a little bit, but I just wanted to, you know, put the sticker shock out front. We would need to bond for this. We don't have that in our bank account. But the idea would be that we would spend the rest of the next six months reviewing, getting board approval, walking through the steps that everybody understands, what it is we're looking to do and how we're looking to do it, what the cost will be, how that will all fit into getting a bond package together, kind of pointing out the important dates, getting everybody comfortable with what it is we're going to do because this is a big move. Then, you know, FY 22, really, we've got a pretty comprehensive permit Gantt chart up for this, but really giving ourselves a year for permitting. And also knowing that we need to have our plans. If we're going to go to bond, we need to have plans to get to people to understand why does they want to spend this money, you know, what they're going to get for it. So this FY 22 kind of corresponds to, you know, more board review and approval, but permitting, plan development, a bond preparation, marketing and outreach to get out to our community to let them understand why we're making this move. And then kind of at the end of FY 22, our existing contract with Casello Waste Management, who operates our current MRF, that's up at the end of June FY 22. So based on this schedule, we'll have to negotiate most likely an extension, you know, an extension to keep them operating the facility because we don't plan on being there for that much longer. And then we're targeting November of 2022 to be up on the ballot for a bond. If that is the case, then, and it passes, then we'll start construction in March of FY 23. And that construction will go through pretty much FY 24. And then we'll have some equipment commissioning and then we'll decommission the existing MRF. I mean, there's some synergies we can find. We've got a MRF, which is great, so we can keep accepting material while we build our existing, you know, a new MRF. We can bring material over for equipment testing while still managing all the recycling in the community. But again, this is an aggressive timeline. But we just again, for capital purposes, just showing it to everybody tonight. The next kind of step down is God. Yeah. Yep. They're an election in November of 23. That's a good question. That's fiscal 23. So it would be November 2022. Yes, there is an election in November of 23. November 22, there would be, yeah. Midterm. Right. That's when we would reelect the governor. We would be reelecting all the senators and the governor and those folks. That's right. So the thought is to coordinate the ballot with a collection that's already planned. Okay. And speak up if there's any questions. I'm looking at a different screen. So just yell at me if anything comes up. So that's the MRF, stepping into the ODF, Organics Diversion Facility. We're pretty much done with the, what we're calling phase one. That was a seven acre build out. It went very well. We came in under budget. There's a couple rolling stock that we need to purchase, which you guys will see next month. And then it's a little, a bit of electrical to finish up, but that really was targeting our existing processes efficiencies and managing kind of finding the optimal cost range. So what we're calling phase two, that is the de-packaging phase. That is the kind of how we receive materials in. So we've identified that we need a new scale because our existing scales from our biosolids facility from 1993, we've identified that we need some scale software to just make it more efficient on how we collect data. We also need to improve our approach into our facility. So that's what kind of is encompassed on the things that we need to do regardless of de-packaging. If de-packaging walks away from us, we still need to do these things. So that's where this timeline is laid out. And the plan is to bring everything to the board for approval, but for capital purposes, this is what we're showing. And the idea would be that we would be kind of complete and through this process by the early part of FY23. The estimate is a million dollars in change. There are some synergies with our potential partner for de-packaging and will reduce that cost. But that's just if we had to take care of everything we need to take care of on that site. And finally, the ODF expansion phase three is what we're calling it. That is kind of plays more into the whole system and our network of facilities. And what we've identified is we've got the south field up in our compost facility, which would make a really nice wood waste depot, leaf and yard waste receiving area. And I'll show you kind of the thought process behind that after I get through this timeline, because we've got a map that was included, and I can walk you through that. But really that gives us the flexibility to use the chips that we receive. Utilize the wood that comes into our facility, generate chips, and then use those chips at our compost facility. Because our new process does require that we use about three times the amount of chips. And that was done on purpose because we know that we have that outlet that we can collect, aggregate, and use and kind of keeping that internal loop. That again, based on this plan, that's going to be open to the public August of FY23. Moving down the line to DOC's, Richmond, we kind of used Heinsberg as our pilot on what we want the DOC of kind of the face of CSWD look like. It's kind of our largest point of interaction with the public. We added a special waste building at Heinsberg. It's working very well. A lot of the processes we learned from Heinsberg, or at least thought out at Heinsberg, we actually employed already with what materials we take in some of our more remote sites. So the next step we're looking at is to put a special waste building at Richmond, and then just a general upgrade. The site hasn't been worked on since it was built for the most part as far as the asphalt goes. So we really need just a basic general upgrade to the site, which would be repaving, but also regrading so we don't have the puddles and the slipping hazards and the ice concerns. One of the things we did from COVID was we did change some acceptances of materials at our DOC's, and really we're kind of still investigating how that looks at our DOC's. One of the bigger concerns from that DOC retreat was traffic and safety. Because we've reduced or limited certain materials that we take in certain DOC's, we've actually seen that kind of dissipate. That isn't as much of an issue as it was say a year ago. So we're keeping an eye on that, and that actually is kind of channeled into how we do any major upgrades is to see, well, maybe it was just a material shift to kind of increase the efficiencies at our sites. Next we'll work on Milton. Milton is scheduled in FY23 to get a special waste building as well, and also do just an asphalt repave and regrade just to kind of get it up to snuff. But those are the big ones there. I've pushed South Burlington, Essex, and Williston out. I think once we have a, if all this comes to fruition, a wood depot will kind of educate us on our decisions for South Burlington, Essex, and Williston. So until we kind of get the data in and got to get a better understanding of how that works, that'll determine where we plan and what we plan to do with those other three. That's why those are moved out. And, you know, Williston and Essex aren't on this particular screen that you're seeing. It's on the farther out years direction. And I've got them in FY25 and 26 for the most part. So, you know, really kind of just think, all right, if we're making all these moves with our larger facilities that these DOCs feed into, let's see how everything responds before we make a major decision on our busiest sites and Williston being the very last one. I popped Burlington in the DOC and I popped that in in FY22. That really just mirrors our MOU that we have. That was being optimistic and positive that everything goes smoothly. And we have the potential to construct at Swinev. You know, the idea would be that would be a hybrid as well. It wouldn't be a full service facility. But, you know, I've got kind of the planning and construction phase, you know, starting, you know, next year, which is based on our MOU. I know there's been concerns that it will cost a million dollars. Our best guess is probably $550,000, $560,000. It will mirror what Hinesburg looked like, which costs $460,000. It won't have any more, it won't have any more elaborate features. It'll just have more asphalt because it'll be a bigger site, which isn't as expensive. That's why I'm making those estimates. We're not adding more concrete. We're not adding bigger buildings. It's just going to be a larger footprint to get more people in. So, with that, the thought is, is if we build a MRF, that frees up the existing footprint of the MRF that we have now, which is in Williston off of Industrial Ave. That's, you know, 30,000 square foot building. In our DOC retreat, and in that 2014 strategic plan retreat, we touched on the need for a potential bulky waste facility. It would be a retrofit of the old MRF, which would be gutted, so the costs would be, you know, wouldn't be the same as a full build out. But that thought process I have starting in FY23 of the planning phase, the permitting phase, we have to wait for the MRF's timeline to reach fruition before we actually get into any kind of build up at that site. And again, I've given us a full year starting at the midpoint of FY23 to discuss with the board, you know, what it is we want to do, research the needs, research the, you know, the best bang for our buck in there. Scrolling down, Depot optimized the Depot. Currently, we've split the HHW acceptance facility, and we've moved out the paint facility because it was so ungodly inefficient at the existing building that it's in that it made more sense to lease space. And that's because that building is our old biosolids facility. It was not built for anything but the biosolids facility. I'm currently working on an upgrade and seeing what the cost potential, it's not going to be 125,000. I've actually dug a little farther into it since I've created this. But the idea would be just to make the entire facility have one flat working surface at grade. That's the biggest problem right now is you have to go up seven different flights of stairs that are all different heights to get up and around and through. Katie probably has been in there a couple times and can commiserate with me on that one. So there's a thought process behind that is really get that, you know, efficient for a long term use. And you'll find you'll find efficiencies if you bring the paint group back, you have the employees who will be working next to the HHW employees. So when one slower, one's busy, you can kind of pull back and forth. Also, we have to drive our rover over to the paint facility. So that also will kind of cut out that transport of handling material in one spot and processing it in another. Moving down in this timeline, I've got our administrative building I put in $1.2 million. That's a hefty fee. That is the full, the full monty on that one. That is, you know, a board room that's big enough for us to fit into. That is, you know, breakout spaces for training. That's everybody gets an office that's kind of to meet the needs of us for the next 20 years. I've got it broken into two different things. The one is if we add it into the bond for the MRF, or if we don't and pay for it out of pocket. And that's what those two different timelines are on those plans. The upper one where my, if you can see my cursor, that's if, you know, if we decide, you know what, let's just put it into the MRF bond, then we'll plan, you know, spend the next six months discussing with the board what it would look like, then permitting and planning, come back with the cost estimates we come up with, and then down, you know, it would be after the construction of the MRF, we'd focus on the MRF first. And then once that was done as a part of the bond, it would be in the third year of that bond, we would then build an administrative building on Redmond Road. If not, then I kind of pushed it out a little farther and put it, you know, the process of board review and approval I started in the middle of FY 23. Right now we're looking at, you know, administrative building leases just so we can, you know, have a building that fits us. And it's, you know, I don't say if you, I don't want to step on toe, you know, like, let the cat out of the bag, but it's not going to be cheap, you know, and that's a decision that we'll bring to the board when we have more information in hand. But you know, the idea is, what does it look like? Do we lease and just pay the money to lease or do we find, you know, make do here? You know, it's, we got to work through that. But this is just kind of the capital timeline. Here's the back end of the timeline. So FY 24, this is the completion of the MRF. And then this is the, the, the kind of decommissioning of our existing MRF. Here's where I have, you know, this is the South Burlington Drop Off Center here finishing there. This is the Essex Drop Off Center finishing here. And here's the Willison Drop Off Center. I've got kind of a couple placeholders on where we could fit up the depot on when, when it is, we decide where we want to build it. I kind of just put a couple of spots in there. It's not critical, but it will increase efficiencies. And again, back here, here's the two construction timelines for the administrative building. It would be kind of towards when the MRF was done being completed, if it was part of the bond, or if we decided to pay out a pocket, it still kind of falls that construction timeline falls in about a seven month period kind of towards the end of FY 24 into FY 25. So that's the timeline. You guys ready to look at the, I might show you the map and the thought process first, and then we'll get into the numbers. Hope they don't make anybody's motion sick. So here's just a preliminary mock-up of Redmond Road. Can everybody can see that? Yes. Thanks. Okay. Yep. So over here is our build-out that we've pretty much completed of our compost facility. We have a gigantic windrowing pad now. What's that? Paul, did you have a comment? No, I'm just moving my screen. Okay. Sorry. Oh yeah, no worries. So we built out a windrowing area to optimize our processes. We've dedicated a sales area, and the concept behind that is all outgoing material used to be loaded in here while we were taking leaves, while we're receiving food scraps, and while food scraps are coming in. We've separated that out here to release congestion. The idea behind the wood depot is kind of the next step of relieving congestion in this small little footprint. So we've actually got an updated map on this, but this is a general concept map. So phase one was this for the ODF, and it's pretty much done. Phase two is this road here, and when I said we needed to change our approach, as larger trucks and cars come in, they make a turn, they make another turn, and they hop on our scale. But because of the scale's placement, if there's anybody here, it backs people up off our scale and just in, it's congested. So phase two would be this, putting in this approach, and it wouldn't include this part, because this is that wood depot I was talking about, but it would bring in, it actually looks more like this. It's not not as, but it would bring traffic in, we'd have a scale house and a scale here. So for de-packaging and all of our food waste inputs, they would then come off the road, I wanted a long queuing space, and then they would cross the scale, they would come either to where we think the de-package may go, and where we receive our food scraps. The phase three build out, which would be the wood waste depot, kind of gets us to our most optimal kind of operational point, because what we'd be doing is we'd be pushing residential and small commercial up here, and separating it out from commercial receiving here. So as far as the flow of materials go, we would receive commercial in this way, we would receive residential wood waste, leaf and yard, and food scraps up here, and then we would sell and send outbound materials from here, keeping everybody separated and safe, decreasing the congestion potentials on Redmond Road. And also, this is an important spot because we have an increased need for woodchips, so we can collect as many woodchips as we want, and we can keep it as close as we can to our facility. So we don't have to drive it from our facilities that pretty much Williston is our hub right now. It's not a long distance, but there's a whole lot of efficiency of not having to run three roll-off trucks up and down this road if we don't have to, if we can pull it from here. So that's the thought on the ODF full, kind of full build out. Right now, our mock-ups have the Murph going here. This is, you know, a large enough Murph that will handle the next 20 years of material inputs, and we're utilizing the topography to minimize noise, so we're sending trucks behind the Murph because there's an elevation, this is actually a retaining wall to cut down on noise, and then we have our receiving, our tipping floor here. And then, inbound materials would then come, you know, trucks would then come out and leave that way. We have all of our outbound, you know, this is our bail storage area, all outbound trucks would be here. That's the current concept. That leaves this space open, and this space open. We're also looking at design plans to put the Murph up here potentially, but if we do want to build an admin space, this is cleared land, and this is cleared land that we could potentially put an admin building. So that's the basics on kind of this conceptual design plan. Getting into the numbers. I'll go quick so we're not here all day talking about this, but this is all right. So here's our proposed FY21. Here's year to date. We haven't spent everything we said we were going to. We've also historically put things, you know, that were pretty minor in the capital world on this, since, and the board, you know, made this decision, moving past FY21, everything on our capital list will be $25,000 a greater. So moving through this capital list, this assumes we bond for the Murph. So I took out a lot of the upgrades we need to do for the Murph, just completely out of this, out of this capital plan. We can, we can develop a capital plan, you know, with the assumption that we hang on to the Murph, it just, it's going to be really expensive to hang on to what we've got. So moving through this, you know, there's some minimal rolling stocks or chip floor, but it gets down here is where it kind of gets pricey. We're estimating probably about $250,000 to prep for the bond in this, in this FY22. Stepping down through the Organics Diversion Facility, a lot of these things we've decided not to do because of the plans that I just presented to you. You know, we've got some basic rolling stock needs. We purchased this loader already. It's on its way, which is great. You know, some basic rolling stock needs there and another loader that's just kind of on our, on our basic replacement schedule. Phase one expansion. This is the cost of the, you know, $799 is what we cost, what it cost us. We had a grant from A&R so that we received, so it knocked off $348,000 of the total price. Phase two. Site work to prep to get that approach in. An admin building in a scale house. I think that's a little high, but I'm being conservative. A waterline and a scale, a waterline. We had a discussion. It makes sense if we're going to put the admin building in and a Murph in and we need water for our, our ODF. It makes sense just to pay the money and bring it down. Wells are an option. We would just have to put three in or we could figure out some form of hybrid. Wells also aren't a guarantee. They do come with some risk if we don't get the, the flow that we want. So that's where that million dollars came into play that I showed you. And then phase three, that's that wood waste depot, really the bulk of the work, the cost is in paving. That paving includes, you know, the sub base for that. Close landfill. We've got, we carry $220,000 in the event that PFAS or PFAS. We have to develop some sort of treatment system for that. The state has taken a very, I think wise approach and is assessing what the inputs of PFAS are from different sources. And I think that's a five year assessment right now. So we're sitting tight to see what they come up with out of that. Another thing we need to do is we're getting close to our 30 year sunset of our landfill. So we closed it in 1995, 96. So that's 2025 and 2026. So one of the things we want to do is we still have leachate coming out. So we want to do a little inspection on why we have so much leachate still developing because to close, to go into custodial care, you have to show that your leachate has reduced and that your monitoring, your long-term monitoring is also in a downward trajectory. Moving forward, this would be maintenance. Maintenance has some basic rolling stock needs. There's nothing real significant. There's no major capital buildouts. Drop off centers. As I indicated, I put in a place for Richmond. That's the paving right there, that 55,000. And then I put 45,000 in for special waste building. Conversely, I did the same for the fawn here for Milton. This 550,000, that's that big ticket item here that corresponds to the construction of the Burlington Flynn Ave DOC. And stop me or ask any questions if you want or tell me to hurry up if I'm taking too long. I have a question, Josh. It's way up above where you put in the grant that we got at 500,000. I don't know where is it? Yeah. Yep. So I'm looking at more than 500,000 there. That's what I'm not understanding in those numbers. Yep. This was proposed for FY21. And this is FY21 actual. So we proposed to spend 818,000. We actually spent 799,000. We proposed that we were going to be reimbursed this amount, which was the rest of the grant. The difference on that 500,000 was the money we got reimbursed towards. Okay. All right. That's cool. Okay. Okay. All right. So we're DOC's. We went through maintenance, hazardous waste. Again, we've got the rover in there. I've got the optimization that's that build up for 125,000 and replacing the roof, which we'll probably do in the spring, which is part of our approved budget. Nothing significant there. Here's the bulky waste facility. So this is currently in kind of the Murph capital, because if we stay there for a long term amount of time, we're going to have to do all this stuff. But if we shift it to a bulky waste facility, I chalked us up to fit up costs. And that's where that 200,000 for general, 215 for building and repair, and then some general rolling stock to get us to about $500,000 for a fit up for a bulky waste facility. So again, Josh, when you're looking at, when you're trying to figure out, you know, five years hence costs, five years hence, do you use some kind of standard inflation factor? I'm assuming about 1.75% inflation each year. It depends on rolling stock. I typically 1.75 on like building equipment. And I say like building and groundwork, I'm doing 2.25 because building materials are getting more expensive. That's kind of the rule of thumb I followed. And we've also kind of based it on some of the construction we're doing now to get like a per square foot cost. And then we apply that to, you know, construction costs and other sites. And then we add the inflator to it. Okay. Josh. Yeah. I think I sell a handling bulky waste right now. Yes, they do take our bulky waste. Yeah. So why wouldn't we keep that in operation and not worry about additional equipment, people in space? It's pretty, Sarah, you want to jump in. I was just going to say the, what would we be looking at for a, when we talk about a bulky waste or a special waste facility is being able to pull that material out of the individual drop off centers. If they tend to not be items that people have on a weekly crash basis, they tend to be, you know, once a year, a couple of times a year where you might have, you know, chair or both are mattress or something. And they take up a lot of space at our DOCs and they take up a lot of time for people to unload and if they need help unloading, they take up time with our employees. And there's also, we've been going back and forth a little bit with Kasella on their ability and desire to accept certain bulky wastes at their transfer station. So part of their reluctance to accept some of the materials has been because it's been mixed in with other, other bits of waste. If we can further segregate that material, we can either get a preferred rate or we can at least get guaranteed acceptance of the transfer station. There's also the possibility of being able to start either a new program where, you know, take mattresses, for example, and to have a standalone location to accept mattresses and maybe be able to break those mattresses down into components that are then actually recyclable instead of loading mattresses, you know, into a bulky waste container and then having them go up to the landfill. So it provides a potential for, again, realizing some efficiencies and cost effectiveness at each individual DOC while also maximizing the ability to create special loads either for recycling or for disposal. I know that when I've taken stuff from our condo development here and I got told from the drop-off center I had to go to Kasella's, you know, yeah, having to see there or whatever it is. And I went there and they got, they took it in and I paid for what it was and, you know, I just, you know, we pay our people good money and Kasella doesn't pay their people as much, I don't believe, but anyway. Okay. For conversation, for sure. You know, we're representing kind of our wish list, right? This is our dream of how we might think that a fully fleshed out, closely ballistic system might look like. None of this is a done deal. So this is our blue sky and how we might want our system to look and to behave and function. So again, this is all a look for conversation and for debate. Not to take away from the fact of all the work that the staff has done and all the time the board has put in over the last six to 10 years on strategy and retreats and all that. So there is some depth to this for sure about direction and it's not completely blue sky. There's strategy behind this as well. Well, I don't think we've ever talked about facility before, Bryn. It came up in our in our Murph retreat in 2018. We didn't address it in depth, but it did come up in as potential for what we could do with centralizing collection of those materials and finding efficiencies at the DLCs. So it was also brought up as an idea of one possible if we wanted to retain that building as an asset, what could we possibly use it for? So that was one one potential option and others obviously to sell the building to sell the land. So it was just one thing that was was floated. But yeah, so this is we're getting more numbers on this than we have in the past. So here's kind of the first look at what that could be. If if we were to go with the bulky ways that we that was proposed in 2018. Well, I was at the retreat in 2018 and I don't remember it being discussed in any detail, Bryn. Oh, Alan, I'm offended because my recollection is that I suggested it when we were trying to grapple with congestion at the drop off centers. So I don't know, maybe we're getting a cup of coffee or something. It was it was a little time ago. And honestly, regardless of whether or not you're amended, remember that there are commissioners here that weren't at that retreat. So it doesn't necessarily matter all that much either. So Josh, if you have other The other thing that I think, you know, we need to think about is with this COVID and doing all the work at home that everybody's been doing over the there is going to be all kinds of lease space available in Burlington, Chippin County area. Because I know that for the organization I work for there, they're building about 40% of the space that they normally would have built because everybody's working at home and they found that to be an effective program. So I think, you know, somewhere down the line, we need to look at leasing space. Absolutely, right. And that's actually coming to to the board, if the full board, certainly the finance committee and the executive board within the next month or so. So we're doing a lot of of research on the costs to lease. We Amy and Tim Shea and I went in and looked at three potential locations, two in Williston and one in South Burlington. And so Tim is finalizing those those numbers as far as what that might look like. So we're you'll be seeing that I want to be certainly at the six foot level in the finance committee within the next month. And we want to have a good conversation about what that looks like. Thank you. And in regard to bulky ways, I put a year in for kind of analysis discussion before even consider doing anything to it. So it all it all depends we have to build a new Murph to even consider that right. So there's some things, you know, some steps before that. So bring it bring it all home. Um, this capital cost is just the actual cost of everything added up. It's the sum of those totals. We have inputs from our facilities that don't that contribute to capital. So the Murph input, historically, the Murph has contributed to the capital for what it needed on a year to year basis. But if we decide to build a new one, theoretically, we won't have any capital costs. But if we assume that the capital, the capital bucket will call the capital reserve is for the entire district, then the the the programs that have the ability to generate revenue and that do have kind of an intensive capital need at some point should be required to put money towards that capital reserve. And so what you see here in FY 21 is just this is the cost of the loader we just bought or we're about to buy. But I've kind of put it that I've normalized it to 300,000 a year moving forward, you know, as we as we go down go into the future. ODF has historically it has had capital line items as far as inputs. But, you know, as we get through our new process, our new setup and our new build out will slowly, you know, slowly start getting them on the hook for capital inputs as well. So I started out slow. And then, you know, DOC is there in line to put $190,000 into capital this year. So I pushed it up to 200,000. So these will be revenue generating sources that can contribute to our capital needs. And kind of going away from it's the Murph capital, or it's the, you know, it's the DOC capital budget, it's all one capital budget, because if you haven't all identified at least for three years out, then as long as you've got what you need on there, you can just bank on it getting paid for, you know, and that has to do with rolling stock building, you know, building maintenance, things like that. So less the the input cost, this is what we have required from our capital reserve this line here. The next line is that we have an estimated $5 million in our capital reserve. I'm assuming we don't want that reserve to go below $2 million. That was just a Josh Tyler assumption. It seemed like a safe bet with all the capital investments we have in case the entire Murph breaks or we lose four loaders in one month. That's up for debate and not a hard line. It just was how I set this. So as our capital investments, you know, this year, we're anticipating $903,000 as a need from capital. I took that out of the capital reserve. The next year, I took $1.298 out, which gets us down to here. The following year, we're going to dip below that $2.5 million floor that I set. And so the requirement from capital is going to be $1.258 million, which means we need support beyond our revenue-generating programs in the neighborhood of almost $960,000. Now, where that support comes from, I just put the solid waste management fee, the general fund. But that's kind of the meat of the discussion to have is if we exceed that, where does it come from? What do we want to do and how does that look? This is just one version of a model that I thought of that working with Sarah and Nola. You know, it can have many looks, but this is just kind of how I broke it out. And after FY25, the assumption is that as we move the ODF inputs up and try to get that up to about $100,000 to $200,000, and we get through this initial big explosion of capital investment, then we're not going to have those. We're just going to have rolling stock replacement from there on. We've upgraded all of our facilities, so we shouldn't have roofs leaking, and we shouldn't have septic systems breaking, you know, because we've gone through and we've upgraded everything. So really, it's just, we're back into that kind of, I'm going to say, I want to say reactive, but it gets us into that position where we can kind of schedule out the next five years with pretty good accuracy on what needs to be invested in. Josh, I don't know what the assumptions are about the terms of the bond, but you also need your loan, your bond amortization in there. This is a very incomplete financial modeling, and you know, it's going to take a lot more work. I think before we have something that we can really take to the board, and I think this is work that the finance committee is going to have to be engaged in. And I can bring that to you. So I've assumed that on an $18 million bond, a 20-year payback with a 4% interest rate, which is about $1.3 million, and I've worked that into the operating budget of the MRF to cover itself. And so I can show you those, Sarah and Nolan and Jen and Holiday have also worked through that. So we've got that dialed in that we were going to bring to the finance committee to kind of show the thought process behind it to flesh it out before we brought it to the full board. That's why that's not in here, and you don't see it. Yeah, well, it's a lot more that has, I'm sorry, but we'll talk about it in the finance committee. Yeah, yeah, no, this is our first, this is our first pass for sure. That's it. Other comments or questions on just kind of the layout where we are now? Thoughts, timeline? Next steps. All right, hearing none. Thanks so much, Josh. The detail is really helpful. I know that it's great, too. There's a lot here and it's a lot to absorb. Those are big numbers. But I find it very helpful to have a check-in about once a quarter to see what progress we've made. Are we on time? How are the numbers changing? And just check in on committee conversations and whatnot. So thank you. We are definitely behind schedule. So, Sarah, if you want to move to the next topic. Thank you. The next topic is a presentation by Nancy Plunkett and John Dorowitz, the Diversion Disposal Data Analysis Project that they've been working on for a certain time. So I will hand it over to Nancy and John. Good evening, everyone. Hello. There we go. I want to share the PowerPoint that's in your packet. All righty. Everybody see that? Yes, thank you. Okay, so tonight we will first review the purpose of the Diversion and Disposal Analysis that was completed for the district and then review the model that was created and the results. A copy of the consultant's written report was included in your packet. If you're interested in more detail, then we provide this evening. For the last few years, we have found that the total amount of tons disposed has been less predictable. After seeing reductions during the recession that began in 2008, the district's tonnages have recently until COVID-19 arrived. Increased more rapidly than the increase in population would account for. It is accepted in the solid waste industry that the state of the economy has a tremendous impact on waste generation. But we wanted to identify, if possible, which economic and or demographic factors drive the MSW and CND tonnages in Chittenden County. And we wanted the ability to more accurately project future tonnages. Reliable estimates of the amount of solid waste generated, diverted, and disposed now and into the future are important for the district for estimating revenues, planning programs, predicting facility needs, and estimating the associated costs. CSWD contracted with Schumann's Economic Research Associates, which was established in 1990 by Lisa Schumanns, who received a PhD in economics from the Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Schumanns has more than 38 years of experience in solid waste policy and program design, evaluations, forecasting, and modeling in the U.S. and internationally. Her method supports what if scenario analyses based on changes in economic conditions and demographics. She has over 250 publications, received three lifetime achievement awards, and has been appointed or elected to numerous boards and panels. She also served as a town trustee in Colorado community for 10 years. Dr. Schumanns's firm was assisted by subcontractors resource recycling systems, a well-known and respected solid waste consulting firm established in 1986, and William Turley, Executive Director of the Construction and Demolition Recycling Association. The model is very complex and consists of several linked worksheets in one Excel file. The basic modules in the model include forecasts of future tonnages of the disposal and diversion waste streams based on the underlying economic and policy drivers, opposition of each stream, and projections of tonnages by specific material available for targeting by future CSWD programs. The basic modules go beyond what we expected, and we receive two additional modules at no extra cost. We can run what if scenarios, what happens to the composition of what is disposed and what is diverted if new programs are implemented, such as a new material ban, access to recycling a new material, changes in pricing incentives to divert materials, etc. Also calculated are estimates of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with diverted and available tons by material, as well as the estimated dollar value associated with the social cost of carbon. In addition, there is a module that forecasts what is referred to in the solid waste industry as the evolving ton. I think we've talked about this in the past, and that is the shift from glass to plastic in packaging, light weighting, meaning containers are thinner, and the reduction in the use of paper. These can be applied to our forecasts if we so choose. District staff can update the economic demographic, tonnage, and waste stream composition data in the model, as well as change the assumptions used, including the expected economic growth rate in each forecasted year. Any changes update forecasts automatically, and we can modify the base case to allow modeling of new bans, mandates, incentives, and new collection programs to estimate the associated impacts on tonnage disposed and diverted. Using 20 years of CSWD tonnage data on disposal and diversion and dates of changes in our solid waste system infrastructure and pricing, and major policy implementations, for example, bans on additional materials. The consultant examined the impact of various economic demographic and program factors on our waste streams. The analyses were used to identify potential explanatory factors for MSW generation, MSW recyclables diverted, MSW organics diverted, C&D generation, and C&D recyclables diverted. She found that multiple factors influence these streams. If you're interested, a list of the variables examined and detailed on the process used in the analysis may be found in the final report. MSW generation includes all the materials we discard, those that get recycled or composted, and those that get landfill. The consultant noted that during more affluent economic times, our MSW tons landfill tend to grow as more materials are purchased and disposed. There is a decline following the 2008 recession and the 2012 economic dip and a slow return following both. Increased packaging from purchases when the economy is thriving and regulations that banned materials reduce landfill tonnages and increased diversion amounts. The implementation of the requirement that businesses provide data on materials that were marketed directly to manufacturers of brokers also increased diversion tonnages recorded. The consultant's analysis identified the number of new housing units, construction employment, and precipitation as explanatory factors for change in MSW generation over time. Housing units reflect growing consumption or consumers and construction employment reflects general business activity and generation of business MSW. Because generation includes the diverted materials, it makes sense that precipitation would increase generation. It increases organics to be diverted. It also increases the weight of what is disposed. MSW recyclables diverted appears to be mainly a function of the number of new housing units reflecting program participant in tonnage growth and the addition of new materials to the mandated materials list. The organic stream remains fairly consistent over time but does show the effects of economic downturns. Tonnaged increase following the beginning of the phased in statewide food scraps ban in mid-2014 and the requirements for separation of clean wood that was enacted in mid-2015. The drivers for MSW organics appear to be the organics program bans, the amount of the MSW disposal tip fee, and the annual precipitation level as already noted. C&D tonnages tend to lag slightly behind changes in MSW streams but are very susceptible to economic conditions as we saw in a tonnage decline in 2009. Between 2009 and 2011 there was a larger increase in population, a surge in new housing units about 35% and construction employment resulting in a significant increase in the generation of C&D materials. This was followed by a decline again beginning in 2012. In 2014 and 15 two new C&D recycling facilities came online. In 2015 and 16 C&D material bans were implemented. There is a significant increase in the C&D recycling stream and a decrease in C&D landfill following these events. C&D generation appears to be a function of construction employment and number of new housing units. Growth in these variables increases construction generation, some of which is then available for recycling. C&D recycling is explained as a number as a function of the number of new housing units and as might one might expect the availability of additional C&D recycling facilities beginning in 2014. Dr. Schumatz used her analyses to estimate the tonnages of materials disposed and diverted for the period up to 2045. Of course the farther out we go the less reliable are those estimates. The charts on this and the next slide would show projections for MSW and then C&D may be found on page 16 of the report if you'd like a closer look. These slides include by year actual tons, those are the thicker lines, and fitted and projected tons of the major waste streams. Actual and projected population is represented by the black dotted line towards the top. The fitted tons illustrate how the model fits to actual tonnages reported from 2000 to 2019. Currently in the model the base case assumes low economic growth for the three years following 2019 due to COVID-19 and average growth after that. Those of course are things that we can change. Using the base case if there are no interventions such as new material bands or programs or new food to packaging systems and population increases as projected we should expect the following things. MSW generation which is at the top of the chart is the total of disposal and diversion shown below. We should expect generation to increase over time a bit more than the growth in population indicating continued and growing consumption of things by residents and businesses. The MSW disposal rate is expected to stay fairly constant if there are no changes to our solid waste system. The MSW recycling rate is also expected to remain fairly constant. And finally we should expect organic growth to track with population and very year to year with variations in rainfall. C&D generation is forecast to grow about even with population. We expect the C&D recycling rate to remain fairly constant and as with MSW we expect to put disposal rates to stay fairly constant if there are no changes to our solid waste system. We expect that new incentives mandates improvements and convenience and other changes in MSW and C&D management in our system will lead to increases in diversion rates going forward. Without intervention little is expected to change. We have tested some contrived scenarios in the bonus what if module but have not yet worked with other staff to examine a proposed policy or a new program. As part of the FY22 budget process John and I are updating data and reviewing the assumptions and settings in the model to produce the most accurate estimate of future tons disposed that we can. This impacts the estimate of revenues from the cell waste management fee for the coming year and beyond. Are there any questions? Comments? It's really exciting to see the results of this study and research. Lisa is definitely a force to be reckoned with so it's very cool to see the results of this. And I'm looking forward to seeing how the staff work out the potential interventions on the model with the against the capital projects. So I'll be interested to see kind of how we end up utilizing that to inform some of our decisions and recommendations for next steps there. Absolutely. Anybody else on the board? Don't take the lack of comments as lack of interest. It is late. So thank you Nancy. Very very cool. If you do have questions. I think Paul you have a question. I can only see part of the screen. So yeah go ahead. I was going to echo your comments that yes we're all kind of tired. It's really impressive to see this level of detail. And as I tried to wade through it I just wondered does anybody else in the state of Vermont any other solid waste district look at all at such a level of depth and down the road for what our waste streams are going to be looking like? It's just so impressive. Yeah I'd have to venture a guess but no. And I know that they do central Vermont and Addison in particular and Northeast Kingdom does a lot of look back and they try to anticipate but they really do rely on you know some of the trends that we're seeing. And so we're excited to share this potential model with other districts to even help them get a bit more detailed and have a closer estimate so that they can have a better idea of really of how things are shaking out in their own districts. So and that's the beauty of the model is that you can really customize it to your local local parameters. That's how to be excited. You need a professional to do that. There would be a huge value in dimensioning the issue you know statewide and by solid waste districts across the state I think that would be very interesting to look at. And also adding some value perhaps in using more sophisticated developed demographic projections would also be helpful since that does play a large role net migration being one of the big issues in an aging population being another. Tim, I have a question. Is it fair to say that a summary of the studies that are per capita generation is going to stay flat? Well her model is showing that it should be fairly flat that there will be some growth. I mean because if that's the case that's really discouraging. Well Vermont is one of the few states that have had a decreasing population within the last couple years. No I'm talking per capita though. What I'm saying is that I mean in theory we should be cutting our per capita generation by 50% ideally. We look at the bold goals for reduction in greenhouse gases etc and I don't think it's okay for us to accept projections that says we're going to be generating the same amount of per capita basis in 2050 that we are today. If there are no no more interventions in the system. Yeah that's right. Right exactly. Yeah the GHG emissions summary is something that's going to be I think helpful and quantifying the magnitude of that problem. I think one of the other things we're going to see. Excuse me Grant. Sorry Leslie go ahead. Well one of the things that struck me was the the degree of volatility in the historical data which sort of says to us from a planning point of view do we have to be prepared for those you know extreme changes. Again apps you know not knowing what other interventions some of them were driven by interventions like the organics and the C&D you know new ordinances so maybe knowing what if anything might be on the horizon you know for new new restrictions in terms of disposal that suggests to me that's something we have to be very mindful about when we're we're trying to plan our our capacity. And that's what we can use the what if scenarios what if scenarios for you know if we're going to ban mattresses what's that going to look like how's that going to impact what goes in the landfill and and how much gets recycled. Oh sorry go ahead. I think the other thing Tim we're going to see is that with you know after the COVID thing goes away and we don't see that daily population growth coming from all around the state to Chittenden County that that's not going to you know that's going to reduce our base level a little bit. The other is and Sarah knows better than anybody but there aren't any other C&D recycling sites in the state other than in Chittenden County isn't that right? That's right. So some of the documentation I don't think would work you know around the state as well as it would here in Chittenden County. We should also note that the model doesn't yet have 2020 data in it since it just ended and so the impact of COVID on our numbers you know we'll be seeing something a little different probably next year. And as I said we can adjust the economic growth rates that we expect for each year we we project for so we might want to tweak that but there's a lot of flexibility in the model. And ideally we'll be looking at a baseline a worst case and the best case scenario. Yeah I was just you know looking at the chart and you just touched on it a little bit Nancy as far as COVID effects and you know I was wondering what you know what you have seen at the MRF as far as you know countywide increases in recycling or as it stayed level you know in Burlington I mean it's we're averaging like 40 ton more a month in recycling and I kind of contribute it to you know people are working from home you know anything that they would have printed at work they're maybe printing at home now and putting in the recycling people are ordering more online I mean cardboard we're having to go dump trucks in the middle of the day what we never used to have to do and I was just wondering if it's seen commercially as well or is it just something you know specific to residential you know it's just mind boggling. We can hypothesize about where the increases are where the decreases might be landfill tonnage will be down the MRF I see that Josh popped on he I don't have MRF numbers yet I haven't pulled those out for the diversion report so I expect he could do you have anything on that Josh about. Yeah we're on pace to hit almost 50,000 tons which is up from 46,000 tons last year so we've seen we've seen an increase in recycling and it's it's exactly what you're saying you're seeing Lee it's the cardboard everybody's at home they're buying stuff so we got a lot of cardboard coming in a lot of our commercials down but our residential is way up just just because businesses aren't really cranking out as much as they use you know typically do but we are looking at a pretty decent year for our tons in it's it'll probably be one of the highest we've seen to date. Yeah I mean I usually budget for around 2,880 ton a year and I'm gonna have to budget for you know 3,200 plus ton this year. Thank you. Any other comments questions thoughts? All right um thanks so much Nancy. Matt thank you. Nice to see you. You too. It's been a while. Happy birthday. Oh thank you. Oh happy birthday. Don't worry it's not today. All right I was hoping. Sarah I think we can move to the final item. Thank you. Yeah the last item that we have tonight for conversation is a being the board up to speed on an operational change that we've been contemplating for quite some time and that is providing compostable products acceptance at the Organized Diversion Facility and when we're talking about um compostable products we're really looking they're talking about kind of the single use items that you might you know use at an event or maybe you might see them now if you've been at the Medical Center some schools have taken them on they can be anything from trays so you know the fiber trays they can be compostable plastics whether they're cups or kind of to go to containers they can be other service ware certainly plates um probably things like that and over the years um it's they've been a a growing concern um and as Act 148 has has kind of continued to to come into its full implementation and as more organizations were kind of coming on board with diverting food scraps from the from disposal we were seeing increasing amounts of these products in the food uh food scraps screen and um our ability to kind of keep up with pulling those materials out um was was being really pride and and and tested um we had been you know one of the rare facilities in the country that was accepting these material and the reason being is that um they routinely do not break down completely 100 percent in um in many of the composting operations they test well in a lab um but in operation they tend to not perform as well and that's due to a variety of reasons um if you know the windrows can can kind of sit and mature and cure for a year 18 months sure the stuff will break down um but commercial facilities tend to have a much shorter maturing time process and curing time and it just isn't enough time for a lot of these materials to break down another issue and really the main issue these are that there are while there are a good amount of certified materials out there certified compostable there's even more lookalikes that are just plastic um you know are not considered compostable um plates that may have a very thin thin layer of plastic on them to help them resist um breaking down which is what one favorite plate to do you don't want it to to fully break down with your food on it at an event um and it's very confusing for the consumer so we've been like I said been having a lot of conversations very um in depth and and heated conversations with staff um talking about how to manage these materials and I do want to make sure that I but for um but Dan and Josh to jump in here um because everyone Dan to be able to explain a little bit more of what he's seeing and and how that has just grown so we recognize too that over the years we have spent our outreach team has spent a lot of time talking with different you know stakeholders who you know we've quite frankly reached out to you to try to use these materials as a tool to help them with their fruits crop diversion goals um specifically things you know like the expo the Sheffield Valley expo UVM the medical center um Sheffield college other schools um uh helping living a whole host of of stakeholders and uh who adopted this at additional expense uh to their budget these these products are not inexpensive um and additional time to train their employees and to train their customers um so you know we recognize that system you have had a role in this and we had a meeting with the stakeholders a lot bunch of the stakeholders on Monday to talk through some of our again our rationale for really needing to move this material out of our stream um the issue at hand you know the really bottom line is that because it doesn't always 100 break down and we can't 100 remove the material that is not broken down it affects the end product it affects our compost products and our customer complaints have been increasing um you know we don't want to have anything in our end product that is not compost or um you know item that we specifically wanted there to create a top soil to create a garden so we've really been struggling and um I recognize that that this is a big shift in operations and uh I do regret that we did not bring this to you the board sooner um and ahead of kind of letting our stakeholders know we should have let you know ahead of our stakeholders and I apologize for that the timing um of the notice to the board was not ideal and was not what I I would have liked to have seen what I think should have happened so I take responsibility for um we're not bringing this to you um again you know with more opportunity for input and conversation and uh understanding um so Dan I would like you to kind fill in some of my very big blanks um as far as what you've been seeing over the past couple years because this is not a new issue for us at compost for sure sure yeah no it is not a new issue in fact so I've been now composting in Chittenden County for almost two decades or 16 17 years something like that 18 years um and we ever since I started we had some form of compostable plastics in the beginning it was just the liner bags bio bags whereas the original brand name that we saw a lot of and then over time we've seen an evolution where the manufacturers of these products have exploded into every piece of the plastics market really and they're you know there's been a huge push towards compostable or yeah usually compostable versions of these products and so um we've had kind of a checkered history with uh how they functioned with it within our facility we banned the cutlery for some amount of time early on uh because we there was a lot of there was compostable labeled compostable cutlery that actually had plastic as a component and just wouldn't break down and we were manually separating hundreds of thousands of those um and then you know by and large our process has allowed the degradation um of most of these products over time both at the intervail and then as we shifted to our new process uh when we moved to Willis in a decade ago and now again as we're changing that process up a little bit however as Sarah mentioned they don't all break down all the time certainly and um I think the biggest challenge for us is the just the volume of material that this represents as a proportion of material coming in over the scales um when it started you know when I started a couple decades ago there was it was a relatively small um proportion of material uh that was actually this compostable plastics um and over time it has grown and grown and grown to where the ratio of compostable plastics to actual food is quite high um you know particularly on a volume basis on a weight basis most of these materials don't amount to much they're you know very lightweight but on a volume basis and that's the basis by which we see them uh there's it's a significant quantity uh to the point where we have been approached by um some haulers who have asked if they could just bring us straight compostables because they have an outlet for their food waste this is actually something in central Vermont had a grocery store something of a big account where they had tons and tons of food waste being pulled out but the other recipient of that food waste didn't want anything to do with compostable plastics I got a phone call saying hey can we bring a roll-off container of compostable plastics to every however often and um that was a pretty easy no but but unfortunately it is coming in in that form where we're getting sometimes it's completely segregated where you'll get not a full roll off but maybe a quarter of a roll of full of trays and cups and bowls and um our compost facility was never designed as a compostable plastics um diversion facility it's always been a food waste composting operation and we've enabled this other material stream to come in for a long time and we're reaching the point now due to the volume of it that we're we're suffering and we're really struggling trying to maintain our product quality uh due to the concentrations of it and just one one more piece on that note is the compostable products ideally they break down some of them don't but they also allow they disallow us from seeing and being able to keep out the actual plastics that are also they look the same be it the cups the knives the forks the plates because these things are coming in sometimes six seven eight ten fifteen tons at a time uh where we don't have a pre screening process where you know in in California you'll sometimes see on the bigger operations they have sort tables where they they bring every bag of material they tear it open and they've got 15 people picking out all of the stuff that they don't want in there we don't have that we don't you know it's unimaginable really in our climate to do so and the cost to do so would be uh extreme so anyway we're seeing a huge amount of this but we can't differentiate visually from you know certainly from the seat of a loader where we're doing the majority of this material acceptance but even along the way we we do not have the capability to go through and look at every individual item and try to make that determination is this compostable plastic or is this plastic plastic and uh with both of those now what I consider contaminant pieces going up in volume it's it's really we're suffering on the tail end so um we've always had some product complaints over the years you know we sell thousands and thousands of cubic yards of material every year so inevitably we get some feedback that you know somebody was unhappy or didn't have their expectations met but as Sarah was alluding to we've the number of those complaints has gone up significantly in the last year year plus I would say and we're seeing it um you know you always question uh in fact I usually go out to the garden sites when when a customer has a complaint or to look at their pile and um if I'm available and before you get out there you're always questioning well is it really how bad is it and um but it is bad and we are seeing it throughout the process we're seeing an increase in concentration of stuff that is just not food and not manure and not yard waste it is these other things and it looks awful in the process um and it really looks awful when compared to what we used to sell as our premium compost and have sold for decades right that what people have come to know and expect as green mountain compost previously interrail compost is now a little more flecked with other materials than it used to be and it's you know we've been struggling in terms of trying to process more of it out but it it's just gotten to the point where that's getting very difficult and so um I've certainly been a driver on this uh you know arguing for this for quite a while and it's just we're being pushed in this direction and it's you know it's not an easy decision that we've come to but it's one that I think is going to be critical for us to enable enable us to continue to sell a product in a state where quality compost really uh is the norm we live in a state where compost quality is really high and in order for us to keep moving material we need to continue to make quality compost and you know feel great about being able to do that I'm just worried about our capability to do that without making changing from the status quo and this change uh as unpopular as it will be through some of our generators um I think once they hear the reasons behind it and we saw this on Monday after our presentation when we met with them that a lot of them were seeing that level of contamination for this first first time we showed them pictures and video of just what it's looking like in our facility and I think they get it and you know we've already gotten some feedback about the fact that yeah we don't really like participating in this you know single-use plastics disposal thing anyway it's it's it's what we're doing we've you know we've invested in it because we thought it's the right thing but we really appreciate hearing how difficult it is on your end and now that we understand that yeah we support where you're headed so we're on a journey certainly over this next year it doesn't this nuts proposed to be fully implemented for another year um trying to appreciate the need of our generators in our community to work through existing inventory to reeducate to budgets and hopefully save money but uh work with our outreach and education staff to come up with good solutions that you know in the best scenario they're all going to go back to durable goods and and use wash washing machines in all the cafeterias a little bit harder granted during covid where there's been a larger shift towards the disposable single-use market but those staff on outreach and communication I think they're they're they've been very much involved all along and they've pointed out they've made sure that we give them enough time to you know lead time on this announcement so that they can work through those issues before we close the door on those materials thanks stan um questions from commissioners go ahead Tim we talked to any of our partners in the community to get input yeah we're doing that now we we started with our biggest generators um that we knew we'd be the most affected and the plan is to keep dropping down on the level and and in the month of February reaching out to all the businesses that potentially would be affected at all um but I think we you know we determined that from a standpoint of trying to make it work selling compost that status quo wasn't going to work and so uh trying to get their input on that piece uh ahead of time we were pretty certain what their what their uh their input was going to be on that piece of it um and we held it in my show the meeting on Monday and we had I'll just say there were close to 40 people on the call granted that was a few had you know multiple members so it's several folks from the expo for example several folks from the medical center several haulers so you know but that that was you know an initial really good conversation to some of again our really heavy users of this product we sent letters out to all of the contacts all the the folks that we've been working with our outreach and communications team has done that um and as Dan said we're continuing to do our reach with you know direct direct one-on-one whether it's the email or our phone have we gotten had any contact with your monitor or clean environment or in deeper not yet I think we should how about schools it's a huge everyday event vendor type thing yeah ronda is ronda mace is uh our school average coordinator so she's taking a lead on um making sure that she's in contact with the schools um shell morris is on the line michelle if you can maybe speak to some of the activities of your team sure um ronda has contacted over a hundred school contacts for k through 12 and we've been in discussion with all of our university contacts um k through 12 schools are the one of the heaviest users of these products right now under covid because they're not using cafeterias they're all eating in their lunch in their classrooms we do not expect a shift to durables because it's just really not practical so we don't know what what the options are going to be um for things like events in schools but we are definitely ready and willing and and it's our job to work with them to make sure we do explore all the opportunities and as dan said uh some of those larger generators like evm have really expressed an eagerness to get away from single use products in general and recognize that you know it's a little bit of a crutch that that they'd like to stop using all right um i mentioned it the other night at the exact word but i you know truly believe like tim mentioned that you know we need to get a pr campaign out there in the press with something to ensure that people understand that we aren't doing it anymore and that the reasons why we aren't so that we don't get blindsided six months from now from people that think that we're recycling glass bottles into glass bottles or something you know i really really think that that's important we agree absolutely um we intend to we know from the act 148 roll out that um different sectors pay attention at different times and that's why we reached out to our our key stakeholders um it's by no means everybody who uses these products and we you can't expect to to reach all of them um with direct contact but we will be rolling out broader communications um targeted in different ways to reach different sectors at different times understanding that they they take in information at different rates and and it impacts them in different ways so the general public won't even be thinking about this until much closer to the the cutoff date but we will definitely be uh we're looking at strategies in different ways to most effectively communicate this and and do exactly what you said alan is avoid a pr situation that we don't don't need to encounter if if people are really aware as dan has just so well articulated um the challenges and realities of of what these products mean i would just add there's we're not alone in this um as they're alluded to you know we're the we're the we were in the minority in terms of compost facilities across the country that we're accepting these and certainly within vermont you know by by volume perhaps not but uh there's only now one other compost facility in the state that accepts compostable plastics i'm aware of in brattle bro um and there are other municipalities including some big ones um and such as portland area composters who are municipalities who have done the same thing where they were accepting them for a long time and due to problems with the comp being able to market the compost they've gone backwards and made that just that same decision and so we've been in communication with them and and found out what you know how they how they made that shift and how they made that communication how they were affected reaching people within their community so there are we're not we're not striking out on this path uh as pioneers by any means right abby you're i'm muted still sorry is the pattern um in those places that uh there's a real bump up in in single use plastics and foodware that they see you know a bump up in the in the msw um i i think uh i don't know i think there's some missing data uh because that question is always asked within that when i'm involved in the national conversations uh by the where the manufacturers are present and there's comp posters and there's um some industry folks they that always comes up comparing different like san francisco they still accept them and it's also another progressive city where you know similar to burlington and portland or again uh they've chosen this other path and so they always ask the questions of the portland folks well what's the data how much more msw you are getting you know certainly there's going to be some in certain sectors there's also sometimes guesses that oh well you um you're going to see your food waste numbers go down as well because there's certain applications where uh you know the compostable plastics perhaps uh facilitated at a higher diversion rate that's an assumption a general assumption that's not always the case but um i don't know about specific data i haven't heard i've heard the question asked a lot and i haven't heard anybody say oh well this is the actual numbers um this is what we're seeing go ahead paul um uh perhaps i'm being naive but just as we're being trained not to or we're being trained to bring our own disposable our own reusable bags to the grocery store perhaps someday we'd all be trained to bring along our own cutlery when we go out to a public event um at the fair or wherever else and perhaps even schools and then you bring it home and wash it and reuse it the next time so you might have to wait till after covid to start practicing it wide-scale but if there are a bunch of national initiatives that are encouraging that you know plastic obviously plastics is a massive problem across the world and there's a shift within a certain sector of the industry to try to green it up with this idea that it can just be you can instead of throwing it all into that hole you throw it into this hole and we'll pretend that it all is made into compost unfortunately much of that is not made into compost it still goes into the landfill um so i think the bigger the bigger issue is like you said there's you know this this mentality that if if we don't have to use it you know this disposable disposal mentality is is perhaps the bigger overarching problem that globally we're going to need to deal with really soon and we're seeing the repercussions all over the place and this is just one of them um and one thing i was wondering about um that may be able to play into some of the messaging and campaign is and you can correct me if i'm wrong um i think i recall something that if the composting facility accepts bpi certified then the compost cannot be marketed as organic that's true that's accurate and that was uh that is a so up until 2010 all of our compost and related projects were approved for use on organic farms and gardens and then there's a ruling that changed that because we included these compostable plastics so theoretically by taking them out we once again will be all of our products will be eligible for that designation um one challenge there and one notable exception to this new acceptance policy is that we're planning to continue except liner bags the compost certified compostable liner bags recognizing that they're critically important having a liner bag of some sort is critically important for so many points of generation to you know overcome that yuck factor so we would need a means by which to uh basically pull those out and compost them separately and then have a you know a separate stream and we we've looked into that i would love to do some pilots on how to do that because yeah i would you know once again if we could once again um have all of our products available as uh approved for use on organic farms and gardens that'd be fantastic and we're we're getting really close to being able to do that again so yeah i'm hoping to pursue that yeah i remember that being a pretty limiting factor to larger markets um that we might otherwise take advantage of so the absolute there like all the farms we used to supply compost all the farms down at the intervail every year year after year after year and then when they made that determination suddenly they weren't allowed to use it even though it was the same exact formulation that they'd been using for years so just one example there's a lot of you know all the organic agriculture can't use green mountain compost currently and we would love to change that and now maybe can well certainly would play better in the messaging if that was to be the case so yep definitely good point um it is after nine o'clock and i am sure everybody is ready to call the day um done so if there's i don't want to cut anybody off there any other comments questions raise your hand okay all right um thank you sarah thank you staff um it's definitely been a night full of information and maybe not a lot of things to vote on but all things that are extremely important and things that we need to consider and keep in mind um in the months ahead so thank you for all the effort and time put into that um i will entertain a motion to adjourn all right see you all right alan and second from paul all in favor bye have a good evening