 Good evening, everybody. Today is Wednesday, October 25th, 2023, and I'd like to call to order this regularly scheduled meeting of the Board of Commissioners of the Chittenden Center that's solely via Zoom today because of accessibility issues in our central office. Appreciate everybody's change, those who are planning to attend in person, change their plans and attend remotely. First item on the agenda is the agenda itself. Are there any requests for additions or changes to the agenda? Hearing none, nobody's raised their hands, so the agenda will be accepted and followed as presented in the Board packet. Item number two on the agenda is a public comment period. Are there any members of the public present via Zoom or via telephone who wish to address the Board of Commissioners? There are not. Seeing as there are no members of the public who have stepped forward to address the Board of Commissioners, we will close the public comment period. We'll move on to item number three, the consent agenda, which consists of the minutes of the last board meeting on September 27th, program updates, executive director update, finance report, FY23 financials and the FY22 audit, which was reviewed by the finance committee previously, previous to this prior to this meeting. Any requests by a commissioner to remove an item from the consent agenda? Bryn. Yeah, I wasn't, Wendyski wasn't represented last meeting, so I don't want to have to abstain from all of the consent items. Very good. Marty, do you have something? Yeah, I just had a couple of questions about the, I think it's the program updates, kind of by way of background to fill me in on, just a couple of things. One was the compliance issues and this webinar series that's coming up. I'm just looking for a little more information on compliance. I'm curious about- We'll pull that off of the agenda and take that up- Okay. Great. So far we're going to pull item 3.2 program updates. Rick. I have a couple of comments about the draft minutes. Okay. So we have a request to pull the minutes and the program updates, items 3.1 and 3.2. Any other requests? We will then accept items 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6 without further discussion or action. They're accepted. Margie, you raised your hand first. So we'll go with you for your questions on program updates. Yeah. I noted something about compliance and in particular, a banned material fee. I'm just curious about how compliance works and how we make sure that people aren't putting in the landfill things that should be going elsewhere. So I already want to answer that or somebody from staff? Josh FD is on the line. Josh, if you're available to hop on. Sure. It's kind of a, we kind of have different, a few different approaches to compliance. There is one of the primary ways that we're doing it currently is through load checks. So we will go out to the facilities that we permit and we will watch as loads get dumped into the different facilities and we take a quick snapshot at the loads that are being dumped and basically determine if there's any banned materials in those loads. If there are hazardous waste or white goods, as we call them appliances, basically, those are sort of, if we find one, we issue a ban material fee. And then for other ban materials like recyclables or food scraps, that kind of thing, our ordinance says that 10% of the load must be contaminated before we issue a ban material fee. So the ban material fee is issued to the hauler with the intention that the hauler will actually pass that fee on to their customer. So that's sort of the load check side of things. The other way we determine compliance is with spot checks from our compliance team either because we get a complaint or one of our outreach coordinators highlights an issue with a entity within Chittenden County. We will actually visit on their request after they've done what they believe they can take care of from the outreach side of things. And so there's a potential that a violation comes out of those visits as well. And then there are also ways that we do some construction site visits that we can issue a violation from that side of things as well. So it's kind of like a multi-tiered approach. And I just saw Kelton in the chat. The ordinance is written so that the permitted transfer station operators actually can also issue ban material fees. So there are another set of eyes and ears out there for compliance as well. So they have the ability, when they report at the end of the month any ban material fees that they've issued and we do get a fair amount of those that come through on a monthly basis. So it gets a little more detailed than that, but that's kind of an overview of how we do compliance here at CCWD. Thanks, that's helpful. And so my other question was about this webinar series that's starting. It can, can I get a little more information on that? Yeah. Sorry. This is Jen. That's in my department. The outreach team kind of stops doing the tours that we do in the nicer weather months. And we turn to doing webinars for the federal public on various topics. So I think the first one in November is on food scrap or fighting food waste. And then the next one after that is about non-traditional blue bin recycling. So we find topics that might be of interest. We promote it and they hold those webinars. It's something that we started doing when COVID started up and we couldn't do any outreach in person and started doing this webinar. So, and the public seems to like them. So we're continuing. Thanks. Are they, are they, are they recorded and available for anybody, you know, or are they at specific time? Yeah, that we have done that. I'm not sure what the plan is for the share. I will do whatever seems to be what the public is interested in. If we recorded them in the past and posted them on the website. And if we've seen a lot of activity, then we will continue to do that. But I don't know the answer to that question. Would you like me to get back to you on that? Yeah, I just, I think in my own experience when we made something educational available for people 24 seven, it was much appreciated in general by the, by our public. So just wondered. Thanks. I think that's it for you, Margie. You didn't have any other questions. They're good. Okay, Rick, your questions on the minutes of September 27th. Yes. On page two, section four on the environmental depot presentation, the first bullet last sentence. It says that all materials is recorded should be our, but that's not my point. On a manifest, which must be returned to CSWD within 45 days. I think the word which is better in there than the word and, because it looks like the materials have to come back to CSWD as it's written. Amy, you'll make note of that. Yes, I'll change that. Thank you. And the second bullet, the last line. It's not clear to me what a non-viewable facility is. Does that mean that these are all monitored remotely? I don't recall that particular detail, but I don't know what non-viewable means. Where is that again? Sorry, I'm just trying to pull that. Under point four. So right under the paragraph that I just commented on, the second bullet, the very last line alludes to systems at a non-viewable facility. I'm not clear what that means. I think Josh was talking, we were talking about safety. He was saying that it's not viewable from the road. It's sort of tucked away down in the, around the corner there. So that was what he was referring to. It's not easily seen in other words for the public. Systems that are somehow non-viewable. It's that the facility itself can't easily be seen. Yeah, I can clarify. Anything else, Rick? Nope, that's it. Okay, so we've gotten some clarification and corrections on the minutes of September 27th, then also answered Margie's questions on program updates. Neither of these are action items. We'll access them as presented with the corrections that have been noted here at this meeting. I think then we're ready to go on to item number four. I just observed tonight, we're not really taking a lot of action, but boy, we're gonna dive into some great information, I think that's gonna be helpful both to commissioners and the public. And this is an excellent time for a bit of deep dive. Bring your hand is up. I'm not sure if a point of order, we have to vote on the two items that were removed from the consent agenda. I'm at a loss. I know in past meetings, my practice has been to just accept them with the discussion and noted changes, but I could be wrong that perhaps. Explicit action would be required. So on city council, I'll tell you what we do in Newsy on city council, if we remove items from consent agenda for discussion, we vote on those separately. I would assume it's the same, but I also am not sure if that is something that's in Robert's rules or is just dependent on whatever the structure or CSWD follows, which might be different. Thomas's hand is up. I think he'll lead us out of this. I think if they've been removed from the consent agenda, there was no objection, I think on the consent agenda, but since they've been removed from that, they should be voted upon. Or in the alternative, the chair can also say, unless, if I hear no objections, they will be approved. And if anybody wants to object, then it goes to the full vote. So the choice is up to the chair under Robert's rules. They can either be voted on separately or you can, the chair can make them effectively their own determination. Say without objection, they'll be approved. Thank you for that clarification. I'm going to opt for item or option number two here and say that it's my sense that we can, unless there's objections by a commissioner, that items 3.1 and 3.2 of the consent agenda will be accepted as amended and discussed. We'll then, I think that's, I have not heard any objections, so we'll accept them as presented and discussed. Thanks, Bryn, for that clarification. I'll make note going forward to be very clear on that. So again, back to item number four and item number five. Hopefully we're going to get a deep dive on good information here tonight, which I think will have an impact down the road as we prepare certainly our plans and budgets for the coming year. With that, I'll turn it over probably to John or Sarah has anybody else she'd like to take a dive on. I've put it for John Dorwart. Take it away, John. All right. Thank you, John. Here I'm going to screen. Okay, everybody can see my screen finds. All right, push the button. There we go. Is that showing up for everybody? Yup. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you, Paul. This is my time tonight. It's really just to provide you with an overview of the metrics we use to aid in the evaluation of our programs and also just then do a quick review of the data for this year and how it compares the last and the last decade. I wanted to thank Ethan Housen and Janine McCrown and Ducky Johnson who have provided a hand in data collection throughout the year and done it for holiday and gave me some help and some helpful copy editing as well. Okay, so the purpose of the diversion report is to provide us with a summary of data we collect throughout the years, track and evaluate how well our members are utilizing CSWE's programs and programs in the private sector and how well they are also just taking advantage of the opportunities to reduce and divert their waste from the landfill. The support also helps us in part in our reporting requirements for the state of Vermont and it provides some general information we can use to communicate the district's waste management system to the general public, media and other communities and organizations. This report only includes information about materials generated within Chittenden County and produced well, the current data being produced this last calendar year and then the historic overview as well. So the principal metric that we use in the diversion report are the diversion rate, the global rate, recovery rate and how many GHG admissions we have saved over the course of the year. The diversion rate is a metric that we incorporated into our reporting in 1993. So that's 29 years on going now. Next year will be 30 years so we are thinking of some way to celebrate or otherwise recognize that achievement in 30 years of thoughtful reporting of our activities. Thereafter we included the disposal rate which is essentially a normalized calculation of how much is exposed per person per a day in the district. This is in following with the Vermont Agency of National Resources who uses this measure for an evaluation statewide project towards waste reduction goals. The recovery rate is a little more nuanced. This is the percentage, it's essentially a category of targeted materials that we know we have facilities to divert over what's actually been generated. So it's basically how successful are we in keeping materials like organics or blue bin recyclable out of the land in the course of the year. And then of course the contribution to recycling or composting of materials and be evaluated in terms of the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that are saved. So highlights for 2022. Total solid waste generation is down the tenth of a percent. That's not exactly a headline grabber I realized but what it does tell us is that things are normalizing post pandemic although spoiler I got COVID three weeks ago so it doesn't feel like it's normalized quite yet. In terms of the MSW, there's municipal solid waste that's been disposed over the course of the year. Total will decrease and total tons, they vary the increase by about the same about two and a half percent. C and D tons increase the construction demolition material to the highest that's been in 10 years partly in response to I think a lot of construction kicking in the high year recently. And the times I've heard it was slightly lower than normal but still 2.1% higher than in 2021. Our diversion rate remains very high at 55%. So that is something I'll return to in a moment but that's the second year I think since 2020 that we've remained over 50% for MSW diversion which is fabulous. The recovery rate for mandatory recyclables has decreased very slightly but still slightly more like a steady state. So not too concerned. Digging into the details of specific waste stream I'll just kind of tell you the story of what I kind of summarized a moment ago but we're down about 2000 tons from last year in tons disposed and of course that impacts our per capita pounds per a day slightly. The amount of MSW diverted from the landfill is up 2.6% again with the concurrent increase in our per capita diversion rates. And so in looking at those numbers what we did see when we drilled down into data there was a significant increase in food residuals and to last clean wood being diverted from our waste stream last year. There was a rebound in the scrap metal being diverted and a decrease in diverted text files and paper. As for clean wood, just as a note McNeil generating station took about 74% of the clean wood generated in Shipman County. Notably our organic diversion facility now takes about 26% of this total from all of our facilities but what is gathered at our facility and uses that as feedstock for our composting activities and products. We did see an increase in food residuals and I think really it's very likely due to the mandatory organic separation that's been put into law by Act 148. We also saw a bump in the amount of organic material being composted by brewers. So I'm not sure if that's in part better reporting over time or just gross in the industry or both but I think it's probably a combination of the two. The decrease. Yes. Just a comment in the chat from Ken helped me with the difference between diversion and recovery rates which was 55%. Yes, so the diversion rate is simply the amount of material. So think of everything that we've diverted or disposed of landfill and that is in total what we've generated and the diversion rate is the amount of material that we diverted over that generate. So that's our diversion rate. The recyclable recovery rate. That was your second question Ken. Yeah, the recovery rate is the percent of the targeted divertable materials that we have recovered. So in other words, it's a capatory of everything we know we have facilities or programs to accommodate the capture of. So organics, blue bin recyclable and so on. How much of that material did we actually capture and how much of that ended up in the landfill? Okay, so it's a little fellow distinction as he comes clear as I go. Right. And what is the rate for recovery? I haven't gone there yet. Okay. Thank you, thank you, thank you. All right. Okay, so we, let's see. This last time about the diversion rate for MSW, that's up and again, as I mentioned, we're at a high, and it's notable that the state of Vermont's goal for diversion is 50%. So we're actually over that now. And to give you some further context, the United States EVA estimated in 2018, unfortunately I couldn't find anything more recent that the diversion rate nationally was 32%. That is coincidentally where we were in 1993. So the changes we see in this report, year to year aren't very dramatic, right? Like down to 10 to 4%, it's up 2% maybe, but it's really the long game that's important here and the watch will move down over the course of the decade. So our diversion rate is far above 34% now. And we're in league with City of Lake Seattle, San Francisco, and Portland Metro area, they're all hovering around 50%. And certainly there are nuances in how people calculate their diversion rates. So it's a little hard to say it's a complete apples to apples comparison, but I think we're in league with some of the better performing communities in the country. Okay, now here's another one that's a little tricky. We also calculate a maximum diversion rate. And this is sort of an aspirational metric. What we're doing here is we're taking information from various waste sort studies. So this is when people are breaking open plastic bags at the transfer stations and they're actually weighing the different types of materials that people are throwing out in those trash bags and ultimately going to be ending up at the landfill. So this is an estimate of how much material was definitely true MSW and how much material could have been recovered under our current program. Given that estimate, now the most reason I have is from 2018 from the state, 2020 for CSWD where the state itself is actually undergoing a new study this year. So we're gonna have new numbers, which will be exciting to see and how that impacts our diversion report and this particular metric and also from our own studies upcoming in the next fiscal year. So what does this is? It's the total tons diverted plus the total tons disposed that are currently divertible, right? So it's looking into that garbage bag and saying, okay, what's everything here that could have been diverted and it was disposed and dividing that by the total generation and that gives you a rate of about 81.1%. So in a perfect world with our programs we could generate as much or we could divert as much as 81.1% material from the landfill. Currently we're at 55, so there's room for growth. In terms of greenhouse gas emissions reduction. So this is what's the benefit of what we're doing now? The benefit is about 100 and this is according to the EPA's dorm model that's what we use here to estimate this. What we calculated is about 175,000 metric tons the CO2 is reduced, that's the equivalent of taking practically 37,000 cars off the road. So that's really a tangible impact. I just want to tip focus quickly to our construction and demolition materials disposed and diverted. You can see, and I noted before that I've grown quite a bit in the last year impacting our per capita rate and the amount diverted is also grown but not quite as much. So the next slide I'll show you our diversion rate actually has decreased a little bit here and that's just the problem with numerators and denominators. We did increase our amount of C and D diverted but because we also had so much more material generated and some of that unfortunately ended up in Lancel our diversion rate drops a hair. I also want to note that a large portion of what we consider to be recycled C and D is asphalt and concrete. So fairly massive materials and that does drive this metric something that we're exploring more now and then in the future. John, there is a question in the chat. Alison. Yeah, please. Alison asked apologies if I missed this in the report but how often are trash bags opened up to check their contents? It's really just on a study by study basis and there's a very formal process and how the waste competition studies are conducted. I think even Alan, you can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe there's an ASTM standard that's followed and how you conduct these studies. So it's supposed to be statistically significant and generalizable to the state of the whole depending on how they frame the study but it's a fairly precise process. How often do you do it, John? Well, the last one for the state of the whole was in 2018 and for CSWD it was in 2020 where the state is undergoing waste competition study now this year and we're hoping to embark on ours in the next fiscal year. So we're gonna have some new numbers that are gonna inform our diversion report quite a bit. We'll see if it's gonna be interesting to see what that turns out to be after the pandemic if there's any effect or things are just close to business as usual. Okay, so did that answer your question, okay? Yes, thank you. Great, thank you. Okay, so the diversion rate for C&D is affected around 71% and we calculated a maximum diversion rate given our existing programs to be close to 80%. For those of you, I know we have a few new board members so I'll go through an explanation of what alternative daily cover is. This is material that's used, there isn't material that's used on the active space in the landfill at the end of each day to control vectors, fires, and odors and that sort of thing. So it's basically a cover that's used in the normal operation construction of a landfill. All this material is actually approved by, for use by the Vermont A&R but it's consistently, it consists primarily of contaminated though, not hazardous soil and this is of course all approved by the state. ADC was up 34.8% and it's really like year to year this number varies widely. It really is dependent on the number and size of the project that are active throughout the day. The bike path being rebuilt and grown and generated quite a bit of contaminated soil when they replace the sub base for that trail. And so it's kind of a wild card for us really. It's been jumped up and down wildly year to year. And so it's up 34.8% this year. Now, looking back 10 years from today, we, it's a little hard to read on this graph but the blue line is MSW materials diverted. And so that's showing a steady trend upward. In fact, we're actually disposing 5,400 tons less MSW now than we did in 2012. And that's in light of 11,000 new residents over 3,000 new business establishments and employees. So it points to some real progress in terms of keeping our diversion numbers climbing. And of course you're gonna see the impact of the pandemic and that in 2020. Don, there's a question. Does the ADC increase relate to the waivers, the CSWD board authorized? I don't think meaningfully. Now, again, context is everything. Given that the materials moving this year, it'll be interesting to see so much materials moving out of the Verlal High School project at this point. It'll probably be minuscule, frankly. But yeah, you know, maybe in a normal year, you'd see a little bit of a hub of wood but it's not the vast majority of lighting. So in terms of MSW diversion, in 2016, you do see a little bump up. It's a pretty steady rate of entry. But that in part could be due because we had implemented some business reporting requirements that required a business to, if they move more than two tons of material in a year, they're outside of the state to a broker or other facility that we weren't tracking. We asked them to please report to us how much material and of what kind there will be now to the county. So we can include that in this study. And then of course, that's exactly the timeframe when the Act 148 was implemented. So we saw a steady increase of organics coming into the service at that point as well. The green line shows C&D diverted and the purple disposed. Again, that's a little bit more variable over time in part because we had opened in the county, there were two C&D recycling facilities that had been opened. One of them ended up closing, I think a year or two after they were started. And then of course, the pandemic had a major impact on construction, road projects and such. So there was a real dip. But the numbers are, activity is increasing. So the rates of diversion or the amount of diverted material is increasing as well as the amount of disposed material. This is actually the same numbers, the same data just expressed in a different way. So I just wanted to show here total generation of material. And then where it was being essentially dispensed to. So MSW diverted, you can see disposed is declining a little bit from where it had been. C&D being more variable. But this just gives you same information but it's aggregate terms of how it all stacks up over time. The generation of materials discarded is increasing. What's disposed from the landfill is decreasing. And I think it also just points to the notion that change over time for the solid waste industry is slow but steady. You have to have kind of the long game in view. So that's something I wanna keep coming back to in this report, it's not a sprint. As far as our disposal rates go, that's on a per capita basis. MSW has been declining over the last decade from steadily and C&D is sort of wobbled around the mean. Diversion rates, also the diversion rate for C&D is increasing steadily and that sort of lumpy-wavy fastened, but it is. Over the course of 10 years, at least increases lately. And MSW shows a much more pronounced increase in the diversion. Okay, so to recovery rates, our blue bin recyclables have increased a little bit for the last year so this is what we've been able to recover or capture from what we could capture. In the waste stream and sent to the MRF and have had it recycled. And likewise, if you were to combine recyclables and organic, those rates would be a little bit lower, but still showing an increase of promoters and businesses in Vermont begin to implement Act 148 and take on the culture of good organic management for organic management. So finally, I just wanted to show you at this part that is a picture snapshot basically in 2022 of what presidents and businesses sent to the landfill. And as you can see, out of 120,000 tons sent to the landfill, half of it was truly MSW according to our various studies of composition and a good half of it could have been recovered. But I also wanna kind of add a bit of optimism to this in that 189,000 tons of material was actually diverted from disposal overall. So when you add up that, it's actually more than it was sent to the landfill. So we are doing a good job, I think in the context of our country and in our region. At the same time, we know that some 60,000 tons of material is going to the landfill. And so without any major changes to how we manage solid waste, including additional policies, education, enforcement, the development of new markets for recycling, we can expect that short of a major recession, solid waste generation is going to increase. And along with that, we're going to have a sizable increment at least as of now that is going to divertable waste that will be disposed. So there are also things to aspire to. And that's all I've got for you. Any questions? Thanks for your presentation, John. Yeah, if we can return back to the main screen and then open it up for some questions and observations. Ken, your hand is up, but you're muted. Yeah, I'm wondering what the, so does that last graph show that 10,000 tons of blue bin materials are not going into the blue bin? Is that right? Yeah, they're good. That's what, if we were to extrapolate from our waste composition studies, what ended up in those black bags, there would 10% of the material would have been blue bin material. Okay, so my question is, where do you see the low hanging fruit? Like, where's the easiest penetration into that? Half of the graph that's going the wrong place. Well, I mean, education is definitely one of the low hanging fruit. Correct outreach to businesses. Den Holiday is probably better informed on this matter than I am. Sort of the number of front-end guy, but I have to be lying. But I mean, which category of not being diverted should we be attacking? Is it the blue bin, or is it the construction debris, or is it actually cycling or? It's a great question. There's trade-offs on all sides of these equations. So it's actually kind of a tough enough to crack. Jen Holiday and Amy were just discussing before the meeting, and for every single piece of material discarded, it's almost always several questions or issues to weigh. What's the better way to handle it? I think there's some things that are really obvious, like metal should be recycled, right? Like, if there's metal ending up in the trash, it's almost always 100% recycled, which it should be. Organics is another one. And I'm into methane gas. It's something you really ought to be attacking in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Yeah, I would say that organics is the big, big opportunity, because that was fully 30% of the material that was still being thrown away as trash. So right there, we could make a huge difference in not only our disposal diversion, all of that, but as John said, in not adding to the methane generation at the landfill, and all the greenhouse gases that it takes to get the material to the landfill, right? So, and we desperately need to keep turning that material back into soil amendment. So from where I'm sitting, the big nut to crack is how to make organics recycling easier, more convenient, more of the norm, just like blue bin recycling is, right? We've been doing blue bin recycling for a long time. We've really only been doing focused organics recycling for really since Act 148 kind of kicked it. So that to me is where we have huge, huge opportunities. Just an interesting story. My nephew started a black gold composting operation in Massachusetts in Gloucester and started out with just a truck collecting scraps from restaurants and whatnot and ended up with 35 trucks. Somebody just offered him $17 million for his business. So, and all he's doing is collecting compost and he's making compost. Everybody collects it and he makes it. He's doing the whole thing. So is anyone doing that? That seems like the way to go. And that has where we've seen growth in the hauling segment as well. In Dutton County, there had been a steady decline as some of the haulers started retiring and getting out of the business, but there's been growth in that particular segment of food scraps collection. So it is a growing business. Alan and then Leslie. Yeah, I noticed that we have a new vendor for clothing and shoes and whatever at the drop-off centers. I think, you know, before that, a lot of that material was going into bulky trash. And so I think we will see a gain because every time I'm at the drop-off center, there's somebody putting something into one of those big white boxes. Yes, exactly. And that's a great point. And that is directly related to the availability of vendors to be able to move that material. And that was where, you know, things had kind of fallen off over the past few years because the vendor we had been using went stopped operating in the state and we had to wait for someone to come in and again, take up that opportunity. And as soon as those bins went back in at the drop-off centers, they were immediately embraced and started to be using again. So it was a real need. And it was, we were being stymied by not having enough vendors to be able to provide the service. So we're thrilled that we have this partnership now. And I think you're right. I think we will see that that textiles and clothing are regularly one of the larger items in waste composition studies that we see both, what we've done, but also at the state. So it will be interesting to see, you probably won't see it in this study, but in the one coming up in the next four or five years by the state, I wouldn't just say, we see another decline in that. Leslie? Going back to the issue of organics that are being landfilled. Will the new study or does the previous study tell us, can it tell us whether there are certain segments generating it that are more likely to put it in the trash than others? In other words, is it residents? Is it multi-unit housing? Is it businesses? Where is the bulk of that failure to divert coming from? Does it, because those different kind of generators will need different approaches. And I just didn't know whether we had that information or not. That's a great question, Leslie. Dan, I know you had a conversation with the folks at A&R who were doing the study. Do you recall if they mentioned it was going to be segmented by sector? No, it's not going to be segmented by sector. They are doing, so typically the waste composition study has been strictly looking at the waste stream. They have added on a few other items to this project this year or going on this year. And I believe they were looking at available organic diversion facilities and numbers of organic haulers available too. So they are looking at it, but it's not going to be broken down by specific types of generators and who's not diverting. It's mostly just looking at what's already, what's been put into the trash and picked up and is sorted by the contractor that's doing the study. And they can just, they just have a category of food scraps, not types of food scraps. Something to think about though, we can have our study sampling frame designed in such a way to segment by sector. Although there's a lot of practical considerations of how the material arrives at the transportation itself and where it's tipped and how it's moved about. Yeah, it would be great to see that. Exactly, the way we collect trash in Vermont does make that very tricky. We don't have, as we all know, here many just consolidated collections, franchise collections, single source as far as only residential or only institutional or only commercial. Everything is commingled. So it does make it difficult to track things down in a particular way. Certainly you can't track it down to the household level, which is why our education efforts tend to be broad. And we focus a lot on kind of that bigger bang for the buck and that's where the state started. When we were talking about food scraps, diversion, we started with the largest generators because it was the smallest universe. So we were able to kind of work with those very large generators and then it went down in tiers. And we were able to kind of, as the larger ones fell into place, we were able to kind of use lessons learned from working with the large generators and then to try to spread that out. But, but Leslie, you're right. That would be ideal if we could say, okay, what we're seeing from the studies in general, this particular slice of this sector could use some additional support. But we just unfortunately don't have that, that level of granularity in the data. Thank you. I wish, I wish we did. Other questions and comments? I have two, one's kind of an observation of a question. I would expect that when the new Merp comes online that our recovery rate would hopefully improve to some degree. I don't know if we could put a number on that yet, but I think that was a primary motivation of getting a new Merp is that we could actually collect more of the material that our constituents are so faithfully and assiduously diverting. I don't have any other comments on that, Sarah. Yeah, so the new Merp is being designed to be flexible also to adjust for different kinds of material going forward. So we want to be able to change as packaging changes and as technology changes and as consumer habits change. So ideally that's how we're structuring this facility to be able to adapt. And one of the things that is going to be exciting is that we will be able to better capture into basically the right bail different kinds of materials that right now, because we're hand starting everything do get lost into the residue or get sorted into an incorrect bail. So part of the, and I think John may have mentioned this or maybe Jen did, but part of what the state was doing this year with their waste composition study was also they did a study of the Merp residue. So we're going to have a very clear picture of what was getting missed and lost into the residue that we will be capturing in the new Merp thanks to the technology. So the residue in the new Merp should be, will be a very, very different composition. And then that will be interesting to help inform us as to where people may be making some assumptions, maybe wish cycling, where some of the errors may be creeping in, which will then also inform our education efforts about how to really recycle, to maximize the ability of that facility. So, so yeah, we're going to be getting a little more detail now. And that the detail that we get now what was happening now will also help to inform the success rate going forward, which will be important to our grant. They're going to want to know how, the technology has improved and we'll need to have that before, during and after number. And we will get that from the new Merp. There, there's another. Okay. Brent has a comment about the SCUMAT study, recent work in the chat. So, okay. So there was a special project 2019, 2020. I wasn't sure if the work that she did would, is useful for helping to inform some priorities, targeting material types, anticipating market changes, et cetera. So you're talking about the work that, or the model that we had developed. Yeah. So that, that isn't really a market targeting. That was more to help. Well, John, you worked with Lisa and Nancy on that, even better. No, it did address some of the targeted materials based on rates of recovery at other facilities. So there was an ability to extrapolate to an extent, what kind of materials you might expect to increase or decrease over time, given different economic factors. It's probably, in fact, I really, to be honest, with the interruption of the pandemic, we haven't had a chance to really evaluate how effective it is. And that's just one of those unfortunate consequences where you get an external event that really just disrupts an entire industry. So going forward, I think we will want to continue working with them and update that report. It should be a fairly quick project. And then maybe we can get a better baseline of reliability of that information. And the usefulness of it in terms of marking or brokering our own material. And then put a comment in the chat as well that the Waste Composition Study is doing the same study for the residue at the Murph in Rutland. And they have recently installed, I think it's two robots. So it'll be really interesting to see the effectiveness of the robots and what that means to their residue versus ours to lift human hands on that. So it'll be another point of comparison. And your hands up. Yeah, I wanted to just mention that, you know, I'm wondering about the diversion for the blue bin recycling. And I keep thinking about bottle bill issues. And I think that part of the problem we have a blue bin recycling is the confusion that consumers have about what goes in and what doesn't go in. There's a lot of things you can't put in, wine bottles, for example. But Sarah, it is my understanding that the bottle bill that is currently passed with being vetoed by the governor does include glass, including wine bottles, according to the people who are talking to me about it from V-PURG. And I just wonder if we could get behind a bottle bill that did take some materials away from us, but also took glass away from us. I know that was kind of the issue, but I'm wondering how far we would get into that 10% of materials that were currently missing. I don't know how else you'd get that 10% or 10,000 tons back. Yeah, and John, point two, we're also looking at an aspirational number. We're never going to get 100% of anything. I wanna be very fake. People are human and we're never gonna get 100% of all things. And there could also be some very good reasons why some of materials is not coming into the mirf and maybe, and also not going into the bottle bill system because remember that 10% could be material that might go to one end or the other. For example, there could be material that is collected at Greenup Day, for example, on the side of the road that has been degraded or has been contaminated and neither the bottle bill system would want that nor would we want that. So there are some reasons that some material should be thrown away. Mostly one or the other system could manage it. And probably the, we haven't done this study in a while either but from looking at our glass, a good majority of it is wine bottles, right? So we drink a lot of wine every month and as you said, that's not part of the bottle bill system currently. I believe it was negotiated back into the version that will be coming back with this legislature but I don't think it comes in right away. Jen, you could correct that one if wine bottles are eventually in the new version, but not immediately. I think they get phased in, is that, am I remembering correctly? V-Purk says they're in. I don't know if they're giving me the straight scoop but they told me they're in. Jen, when do they, when does wine come in? Is it right away? There were so many virgins flying around, I just can't. Jen, you're muted. I can hear you. Wine is definitely in but they had given them a little bit of a lead time because there's a different distribution system and process for labeling imported wine. They were gonna have to put stickers on them so the retailers want a little bit of time implementing it. So I think it was delayed a year after the expansion of the other materials. I do wanna point out, and I can put the waste composition study that's actually called the waste characterization study that the state did in 2018. It's a fabulous study. I refer to this table so many times to folks who really wanna get into the nitty gritty of what could we be doing better for diversion? Like what should we be targeting? And I will tell you, just look at table 11, they have, I think it's 79 categories of what they're separating in the waste stream and counting. And within those categories, there's bottle bill in material information. So for example, they have PET bottles that are subject to the bottle bill and then PET that's not subject to the bottle bill. And when you start really analyzing that, you're gonna see that there's very, very, very little beverage containers at all going to the landfill, whether it's subject or not subject to the bottle bill. So that is not low-hanging fruit for us to go after in either system, whether it's expansion of the bottle bill or more education, which is always a good thing, but it's not gonna move the needle on landfill diversion. It's not really showing up in the landfill at all. Is glass any better? Yeah, glass is a little bit. Or you said beverage containers, maybe you included glass, I don't know. Yeah, so glass beverage containers is 1% of what's going to the landfill, what they're finding in the landfill. So. That's not a lot. That's not much. Thanks. Yeah, and then you'll quickly see the organics is the highest paper is the second, you know, it's like you can look and say, okay, that's what we should be focused on. And that's what we should be driving policy makers to focus on too, is these things that are getting a landfill that could be recycled. Thanks, Allison, your hands up. Yeah, I just wanted to make a quick comment. I have done personal trash audits with my own trash. And I find that a lot of what I'm sending to the landfill is packaging material, packaging from cheese or a lot of it's from food packaging. So I am certainly no education expert in this area, but I imagine, you know, if we really want to change people's habits, a lot of it has to come from that, from changing habits, you know, encouraging people to reduce first and then reuse and then recycle. Absolutely. And one of the things, you know, again, talking about policy tools that Jen has been very reactive in working on is extended producer responsibility for packaging, just in general. And there is movement in some states, I think only about four at this point, but there is movement and there's some interest in the Vermont legislature, but not to the extent that the bottle bill had. So we still have work to do there, but with other states that are kind of, have stepped into the arena first, we'll be able to learn some good policy lessons and legislative lessons from them and to continue to try to push forward on this general type of thing, because you're right. It is not just around food, if you think of anything, anything that is, you know, kind of put on a shelf has some kind of packaging to it. So it's not just the bottle bill, that is much, much, much greater than that. And that was really what we were hoping to attack and get some attention onto. And you can wrap a bottle bill into EPR for packaging. They don't have to stand separate. They can work together. And there's where there's a lot of opportunity to do something really big. And so we have our eyes kind of looking at that and doing, again, more watching of the other states, more research on how to best approach that particular avenue because Allison, you're right. That's where there's a lot of opportunity as well. I just wanted to offer one final observation. I think we're ready to, covering a lot of ground here, but my observation is that whenever I see this stuff, I'm just awestruck by how much data is collected, not only by CSWD staff, but everybody who's involved in waste stream seems to have to track this stuff, submit this information. And it clearly comes at a cost, but in my mind, it's money well spent. The old rule of you can't manage what you don't measure. And I think there's a lot of measurement here and it's great information. And I think it's very helpful. Appreciate what staff has to do with this. Appreciate that we're required to do it, but thank you very much for diving into this and sharing it with full board. Rick, you have a question or comments? Yes, just a very quick follow up to what you just said. It struck me in reading through John's report that these reports are never final, that you're going back and revising reports from years past as the data improves, that must be satisfying in one way and very frustrating in another, that it's never finished. I had a dean and when I was in planning school getting my master's degree and when we graduated, he said, you have to be patient that planning, and this is very close to urban planning, is the frustrated profession. And you have to be willing to wait decades to see the fruits of your labor. So that was his final advice and I think it's very sound. Thank you. Some of the graphs are extremely informative. Okay, we've given this a good amount of time. I would like to have us move on then to item number five on our agenda tonight, which is an educational topic to bring us all up to speed and a little bit deeper dive than we normally do on board education this time, solid waste management fee. I'll turn it over to you, Sarah. Thank you very much. And we'll try to get this screen going soon. Hopefully we're all set. So yeah, Paul and I think Rick had asked me to review solid waste management fee, which I think is great timing as we're heading into the budget season. So we as staff have finished our preliminary budget work and we will be bringing that to the board next month per our charter requirements to bring to the board for proposed budget for the next fiscal year. And then we will go out to public comment, public hearing no later than January 31 on that proposed budget. And then the finance committee will pick up in earnest in February. And then we will most likely bring the fiscal 25 budget to you in March. So a big component of that is the solid waste management. So I thought I would just briefly go over that today. And here are some of the questions. I'm hoping that I'll be able to answer for you and have some conversations. And starting with basic, what is it? And then what is it used for? And how is it that we are able to create this thing and how do we determine it and how do we change it when we want to? Another question that came up was, are we the only ones that have this fee? And then who is charged the fee and fee fee? So essentially our solid waste management fee is revenue and it is a major component of our revenue. How large of a component changes from year to year? Some years in the early days when we were first started charging this fee, it was probably up to 75% of our revenues. Now it tends to be in the one-third, one-third, one-third realm for a while. And now we are actually edging down into where I think we need to be. And I'll explain why, to where we're less reliant on the solid waste management fee and more reliant on what we call user fees or fees that we charge our customers at drop-off centers, at the MRF, at Depot. So the solid waste management fee is this is our fee. This is CSWD's fee. There is a state solid waste fee that goes franchise fee that is mainly turned back around to the district and the alliances in the form of grants. But the end, I think some of it also does help support some activities at A&R, but not much. That fee, the state fee has not changed in 20-ish years, 30 years maybe, but that is separate from our local fee. And our local management fee is charged per ton on Chittenden County generated MSW that is sent for disposal. Our fee is currently $27 a ton and it was last increased, I believe it was 2012. Then we went at $5, it was $22 a ton up to 27 currently. And again, as I mentioned, the percentage of the total of our revenue, it does vary. So we're now at around 21%, it may be 30% in recent years, but we want to kind of see that reliance on that fee and decrease over time. How is it that we are able to charge the fee? So we have, first we start with the charter and the charter is our enabling document. It is essentially a state law. It was passed by the state legislature back in the mid 1980s. And it is a section of Vermont law. So our charter is basically a law. And we have two sections that specifically speak to our ability to charge fees. So the first is in section five, which is the powers section, it outlines the powers of the Chittenden Soloway District, with the first one being to say, no, yes, we do have the authority to establish fees for services and facilities within our area of operation. And it says that those fees must be equitable and just. And then in section 12, it speaks specifically to management fees. And the bolded language is, language that I bolded is not what's bolded in our charter. And I wanted to call them out because the first bolded phrase that I have is just kind of reinforcing that the reason that we charge fees and we don't do this or free, I don't know how we could do it for free, but that it's long been a tenant of the district that generators of waste should pay the disposal cost. And that those fees should reflect kind of the real cost to society of managing the waste and disposing the waste. So it's always been part of kind of who we are that say, if you create the waste, you need to pay for its disposal. And that further down in the paragraph about management fees, saying that the fee that the board again shall from time to time establish and adjust the fee structure, they're associating in the old language is saying that management fee is a tipping fee. We actually use those differently now. We specifically refer to a tipping fee at places like the Murph, where literally a truck will come in and it will tip out the material onto the floor. So that fee to be allowed to come in and tip out the material called a tipping fee. But we call tipping fees any similar fee, whether it is at the drop-off center, at the Murph, at the organic recycling facility. So again, the board is charged with adjusting the management fee structure from time to time. And then, so they can generate revenues from sources other than member municipalities and member towns, city and town assessments. We haven't done assessments in a very, very long time. And so the goal is to generate revenue from other sources. So the fee should be again, we want to have it so that it is, again, particularly concerning the operation and maintenance of any districts all the way as management or resource recovery facilities. So that was what the charter specifically said that the fee could be used for. Any, the operation and maintenance of any district follow-up management or resource recovery facility. And then the last sentence of that paragraph in the charter says once the district has a disposal facility, it will rely primarily on tipping fees for revenues are. So again, even within the same paragraph, it's a little bit unclear, but there's primarily on tipping fees for revenues and shall work with members to implement those fees. So this is where I think we established our kind of our guiding principle to say, okay, when we have an operation or facility that we should make sure that we are parting fees that will help that facility pay for itself. And so essentially operate more as an enterprise fund whereby each area of the business generates enough revenue to pay for the expenses incurred by that area of business, business little b. So that was where I think that again, that principle that we've been working with for many, many, many years has come from. Another area of authorization is in our ordinance. Again, our local law. So the charter was the state law referring to us and the ordinance is our local law that we pass. And the charter gives us the ability to enact a local ordinance for the purpose of enforcing rules and regulations that the state does what we have to do by identity of our existence. So there are two articles in the ordinance that speak directly to salary management fee and payment of fees to the district. So it's article eight and article nine. And these articles are much longer and much more verbiage than the charter language, which I think is appropriate. So the charter language is broad and tends to be a bit more general. And then the ordinance is where you want to get into the detail. So these two articles, they established the fee, they established the justification for the fee. They describe exemptions and they talk about materials that will be eligible for the reduction such as materials used for alternate day recover as we were talking about earlier. The article allows for the board to waive the fees. And we did that a little over a year ago for the case of Schengel, for Myers. It describes how materials need to be weighed and how we weigh waste and how that can be performed. It's very specific. And then it describes how fees are going to be paid to the district. And so because the fee and the fee itself is an item in the ordinance. It is specifically names called out. It says the fee is $27. Because the fee is specifically called out in the ordinance, changes to the fees are subject to our ordinance change process. This is different from many other districts in that most of them incorporate fee setting as part of their annual budget process. And I think that is something that we may want to take a look at. And Paul Stabler and Alan, you most likely remember some of the rationale for having just WD put the fee in the ordinance versus how other districts, such as Addison, who have the process be part of their annual budget. So I would welcome that different insight and conversation because this was set up a long, long time ago. All of the districts, except for Wyndham, it's always district charge a management fee at this level. Some districts also charge a per capita fee. So the service management fee range from zero in the case of Wyndham, although they do have a per capita fee up to $35 a ton. And so when you're kind of in the lower to the middle, most of those districts also have a per capita fee in addition to a solid waste management fee. We do not have- Could you explain what a per capita fee is? Yeah, because we do not charge a per capita fee. So what that is is essentially a fee per person in the district. So it could be a dollar, it could be 50 cents, it's whatever the district decides. And that fee is charged to each member city or town within the district so they get a bill. Depending on population of that particular member's town or city. And then so some districts do it this way as a way to kind of balance out the cost and not putting all of the costs on the hauler side, considering for the hauler we'll play that and I'll talk about that on the next slide. So they kind of fear that burden. And again, I was not here for when we made the decision to not charge a per capita fee. I don't know if we ever have. I would look to Amy, Paul, Stabler and Ellen to help me out with that. But most of the districts do start a per person fee and a separate management fee that is directly hauled. And the per capita fee is likely to show up in a property tax bill. Most likely it would. I don't, again, I can certainly find out how. No, it's just for illustration purposes. So just to get a general grasp of what that means. Thanks. Yeah, and Burlington has a fellow waste fee that is part of the, and legally I believe it is part of the local tax. And so if they need to, because Burlington collects recycling in the city. So they need to raise revenue, additional revenue for that program. Then they do have to go through an ordinance change process and increase that solid waste tax, that recycling tax in the city of Burlington. Yeah, we, that's a solid waste generation tax. That's a pass through tax. So we charge the haulers a monthly fee that they pay to us, which funds our recycling program. We had it written in ordinance a couple of years because it fluctuated. We didn't know when, CSWD could raise the MRF tipping fees mid-fiscal year. So we got the flexibility to be able to adjust that tax on the fly if we needed to. And then other expenses come up too. New recycling trucks. So yeah, that's how our tax works. It's not necessarily seen in the tax bill for the person. Some don't even know that they're paying that tax unless they specifically see it on their trash bill. But. Got it. Okay, thank you. One of the questions was also about, well, what is the purpose of solid waste management? What did it do? In a nutshell, it funds district activities. So you'll per the ordinance, the ordinance, the management fee is used to, and this is directly from the ordinance, to fund district activities necessary to ensure efficient, economical, and environmentally sound management and regulation of solid waste, I should say within the district. And so the fee fully funds several programs and partially funds other programs and it does not use for a handful of others. So the ones that it fully funds are administration, which includes the finance department, compliance department, outreach and communication, information systems, IT and maintenance and roll-off. And generally, these are programs that don't generate revenues, even though financing compliance do generate some small amounts of revenue from license fees and things like that. But generally these programs do not have a source of outside generating revenue. The fee partially funds, and when we say these programs are being subsidized, that's what we're saying that they are being partially funded by solid waste management fees. So those are the drop-off centers, environmental depot, and the Organic Recycling Facility. The MRF has not had a need for solid waste management fee revenue for 15 plus years, 20 years. But prior to that, it also had been supplemented by a solid waste management fee revenue. The other programs, biosolids does not access solid waste management fees that the past through the program. Closed landfills similarly does not utilize solid waste management fee. So most of the fee does go to fund those programs that do not have any outside sources of revenue. And then you go back to who pays. Basically, all of us do. So the fee, this is where it does get a little, possibly a little complicated, but the fee, as Lee said, most people will not see it because it is generally not included as a online item on your bills. Like you subscribe to Hauling Services. I know I don't see that on my bills. I'm pretty sure no one else does. It's incorporated into the monthly fee that you pay to the hauler. And so they tend to spread those costs across all of their customers. So for example, when they get charged once, when they would get to either the transfer station and they tip there, the fee is charged to the hauler at the time of tipping. Or if they go up to Coventry, they'll say they're from Jitman County and then folks at the Coventry might as well know that they've got to assess that fee if they haven't, you know, again, it's not a transfer station low coming from Kisela where it's already been parked. So those fees are again, spread out over the cost of, well, of everybody's bills. Haulers are charged at the point of disposal, whether it's in transportation or at the land sale. We also do pay that fee when we haven't yet collected at our drop-off centers and it similarly is incorporated into, it's part of our contract, our hauling contract that we have with Kisela. So it's, we're charged just the same as everybody else. And then at the MRF, part of the contract with Kisela to operate the MRF is they pay the, for the disposal of the residue. So they are essentially paying that fellow's management fee on the residue, but that fee gets incorporated back into the fee that we pay Kisela for processing. So we're really paying that fee as well. So it can get a little, little sticky, but it's online, we all pay it somehow. So as mentioned, fees are then remitted back to CSWD each month. So we're, we're getting that regular stream of revenue again, it's based on tons that are disposed of at the landfill and we get an invoice with the number of times each month and that's how we are, we know how much we are due. And then we can audit those, we can, you know, request backup paperwork. They always send it to us, but we can always do some more investigating if we need to. Those are the basics. I didn't wanna get too overwhelming. I want to leave some room for questions as well. Thank you, Sarah, for the presentation. Alan, your hands up. Yeah, just a couple of things to update what Sarah said. In 2012, we held a bunch of public hearings because we were talking about raising, you know, the solid waste management fee and the haulers didn't want us to be raising it a little bit and then a little bit the next year and a little bit the next year. And so that's when we raised it $5 in one lump sum and then we were gonna put some of that money away to assist in the out years beyond that. And that was accepted by the haulers. They appreciated it. And I know both John Cassella and Myers came to our hearings there and they were very appreciative that we weren't gonna make them raise their rates to their customers every year for the next two years. The other item is the municipality charge by capita. I just got in on the back end of that, but having to go to the towns every year and tell them that, you know, we're gonna bill them. It certainly made the budget process approval much easier if you told them that there wasn't going to be a charge. And that's usually the last comment that we make when we do the budget presentations to the select boards and Alderman, but the management fee is really, as far as I'm concerned, has really, you know, worked out, you know, fairly well as it's set up today other than the complications, you know, you have having to pay Cassella when we're, you know, moving stuff around. But that's what I know, and I'm sticking to it. Thank you. Paul Sabler. And just one thing I'll add is that in keeping with both our charter in terms of its statement of whoever generates the trash and pay for the trash and we've stated in many times in the past that we wanna be very careful not to unfairly compete with haulers at our drop-off centers by using the solid waste management fee to pay or subsidize our cost of collecting trash and or recyclables. So that's one thing we've always been wary of in the past at least is to try to ensure that we're not unfairly, you know, subsidizing that at the expense of haulers, you know, unfairly competing, I should say. So that has been a philosophy. I know one thing I've always been pushing for and I think Sarah, we're working towards it is better accounting processes that allow us to break down our cost at the drop-off centers to a little better understand how much cost we have for all each of the different materials that go through there. So for instance, the solid waste management fee would certainly be perfectly acceptable for the cost of things like batteries and, you know, and mercury-containing devices and things like that. So I don't know if you wanna add to that but that is one thing the board has been cognizant of in the past and tried to emphasize. Thanks, Paul. Penn, you're muted, I can't hear you, Penn. Still can't hear you, Penn. You can write your question maybe in the chat box. Other commissioners wanna make any observations or ask any questions. Rick. Just wanna thank Sarah for putting this together. I may have precipitated some of this by expressing my ignorance of the solid waste management fee at some point, because they're just feel like it felt like there were a lot of moving parts and I just didn't see how the whole fit together. So this has been very beneficial to me. Thank you. There's certainly a lot of moving parts and it's, you know, Paul, I appreciate your comments about, and Alan, your comments about filling in some of the blanks because, you know, we haven't had this for a while and we do have responsibility to our communities and, you know, to our Holland community but also to our residential and institutional community to make sure we're being fair, right? I think that was a big component in the conversation kind of 15, 20 years ago and it makes a lot of sense. You know, municipalities can often afford to maybe charge a little bit less for services, at least that I've been the case in the past and there was some real concern that some of them are smaller haulers and you mentioned some of the larger ones but also the smaller ones this wouldn't be able to compete on that level. And I think over at least the start of the past five to six years, some of that has started to level out and especially over the past three years, through the pandemic, but even a little before that our costs has been going up just as everyone else's costs have gone up you know, I know our hauling costs that we pay to move materials, they go every year, they go up by at least the CPI. So, and then there's a fuel surcharge and then there's environmental charge and there's a whole host of other charges. So, you know, I think we've been in a good place where we haven't had to kind of tackle this up until now, but we are now at a place. And you'll see the recommendation coming in the next budget where we do need to make a move on this always management fee and it'll just be how much? Cause we have not been able to keep pace like we had prior, right? The last three to four years, really last three years have been tricky as we all know. So, there's probably been a good run. And we've managed the finance as well, we've managed the expense as well and the, you know, the CPI is cut up with us. So, little preview for next month's conversation and certainly Paul stable will be leaving the conversations in the finance committee when that kicks off in February, but we do, I think, you know, it's always good to take a look at processes too when you've had something in place for a long time to say, you know, are the parameters by which we are still doing things, do they still make sense or are they the same as they were 10, 20, 30 years ago? And even if they're a little different, do they still work to your point, Alan? And it's a good opportunity, a good time to take a look at this item. So thank you, Rick, for the suggestion and Paul for saying, let's have a conversation about this, we haven't done this, we've included some time, so it was, I appreciate the opportunity to be able to really talk about it a little bit. Ken has written his question. So he says, it seems the fee pays for many things without revenue fees, correct? If these things increase in cost annually, I don't see why the fee would not increase. I did what I'm getting at. If in fact the services are necessary for us doing what we do, thank you. And I did not highlight that by your right. So we are required by the state, by the materials management plan to perform certain services. We're required to do education, for example. We're required to do outreach. We're required to do certain types of communication. We're required to have a website. Our charter, just again, because we are existing, requires us to do certain administrative and management functions. We are required if we have an ordinance to regulate that ordinance. So we're required to do compliance issues. So these items are all, again, statutory requirements or regulatory requirements. So they do need to have a source of funding to be able to get that job done. Brett, enough comment. You're muted. Yes, just realized that. So to add on to the list, you just gave the things that we're required to do. I think one of the things that we're required to do is increase our diversion rate, correct? There is. So we're required to manage the waste generated in the county. That is our charge. The state has diversion goals. We have diversion goals. But the state recognizes that we are not able to force anyone to do anything. We can only educate to what is required by the law. For example, what's required by Act 148, what the state requires us to do. And what we, as students of the county, have decided that we also want our generators within the county to do. But we're not required to meet a specific rate. We're required to go to X number of businesses per year. We're required to do X number of school presentations per year. There are certain of those metrics we must meet in order to be compliant with our cell waste implementation plan. But the overall diversion goals are goals. And we exceed many of not most of the state's requirements or goals, aspirations. But as far as a, you must hit X number or L. It's really only for those few, those two areas. You know, hosts, we're required to have an HHW event each year, things of that nature. Those are what we are the requirements. But I just jump in and say, based on our conversation we had the item just before this, I think it's probably my sense of the board is we would like to increase our diversion rates. We would like to improve. And I think if we put that up to a vote, you know, you'd have the board solidly behind that. So it's, we recognize this room for improvement and we would like to make that happen somehow. Oh yeah, agree. Well, I would, my final comment is again, this is really an important philosophical topic. It's an important policy topic and it's gonna come into play. The Sara's intimated and I would ask all commissioners, keep this presentation in mind as we go forward. And as you exercise your duties and responsibilities and voting ultimately on our path forward, I think it's been very helpful and instructive and will be beneficial in the long run. Paul, just a quick suggestion. Maybe in the next meeting, we could just put up a slide that shows our mission statement. I think it's been a while since that's been shown. It's very short and sweet and straightforward, but certainly part of that is a desire to manage our waste in the best environmental practices. So anyway, I don't know how to do the exact wording. But it's just one slide and it'd be good to have it. Good suggestion. I remember years ago, that was supposed to be part of every meeting where you actually had to chart up at every meeting for a while, just for ourselves. And bring it up so we can share the slides. And yes, we will certainly include them with the packet materials on the website, but I can also include them as a document in a minute. We could do that as well. Okay, I think we're ready to wrap up this. The next item on the agenda is an executive session for the discussion of the Plain Avenue property and negotiations with the city of Burlington. We do not have any members of the public other than Kevin from CCTV. So if he jumps off and we stop recording, you won't have to leave and go to another Zoom meetings. That would be very helpful, I think for all of us and keep us on a better time pace here. Can you read into the record the motion to enter into executive session, please? Yes. I just have one question, is it just discussion? It's just discussion. So I can, I don't have to recuse myself. Okay, perfect, thank you. Motion that the board of commissioners of the Chittenden Solid Waste District go into executive session to discuss contract negotiations with the city of Burlington regarding the Flin Avenue property 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 authorized staff, other invited interested parties and the Solid Waste District Attorney to be present for this session. So moved, Walsden. Second, South Burlington. Been moved and seconded that we enter into executive session. I don't believe there'd be any discussion on this. All those in favor of entering executive session, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Any abstentions? If we can turn off the recording.