 We're ready to get started whenever you are. Thank you so much. And good morning, everybody, and welcome to today's meeting of the Environment and Infrastructure Committee. I apologize, just a miscommunication. And so I'm on Zoom. But thank you to Mr. Rickerman and Mr. Brennan, Dr. Z, Mary Pat, and the rest of staff. I know it's her Robert's voice for being in person. I apologize, I will be there in a little bit. But anyway, if we could go ahead and get started with this month's meeting. And we're going to start with our quarterly presentation from the CPAC. So is that Dr. Z? Are you making that presentation? Yes, ma'am. All right. Well, you go ahead. I wasn't expecting to see to me, because things pop up on my screen like that. Tax them going to give you, but I wanted to give you a comprehensive update of the things that CPAC has been working on. And the best way to do it was to give you the text to report on things. So to that end, thank you very much for having us. This has been really productive to be able to have these conversations. So this update will basically have just a brief report on energy events, past and future, what we're doing with the Renewable Coal Court, which is new since I talked to you in April. Conversations with Dominion, working on an updated resolution for the Ready for 100, and communications within the government. And then some reflections that I've learned over this time period of being chair of CPAC. So to that end, I sort of have reported on things about what we've been working on in this sort of framework, where we have reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which could be reducing energy usage and changing how we're generating electricity. But then there's also the aspect in the orange boxes about how we adapt to climate change. We have not been able to work on all these things. And so one way to basically look at this in terms of what we're talking about right now, just in the blue, it's harder to tell on this front. But we've been working on outreach programs, mainly through the events, and then working with Dominion to source renewables and the Ready for 100 update. So to that end, the latest webinar was in September. And so it had students as part of it reporting on what they've been learning, and some at high school level, some in the university. And it kind of reported on basically things that students are learning. And in the future, so the next webinar will be mid-December, that will be basically pulling together the faith communities and talking about how climate change can be impactful for them and what they can do for things. In my April 21st, or so my April update to you, this slide, which is a summary of it, I just took the screen capture from it. I basically asked if the city could participate in this cohort that was a free training program year long, funded by WRI. We've been participating this, and I want to report on what we've been learning so far and the progress that's being made. So this is a cohort of organizations that are currently working together to build some solar energy in town. So this is the city of Columbia, University of South Carolina, Richland One, Columbia Housing. And thanks to a community member who made the connection, we now have Richland County at the table as well. And basically, the goal of this project is to build a large 100-megawatt solar facility in the Midland specifically, because we'd like it to have a stake. Basically, you can see it. It provides jobs, et cetera. This will likely only provide 5% to 25% of each organization's power requirements, because this has a risk associated with it. So it has to be not everything at once. And in this size and what we're looking at, we'd have to go much larger to basically cover everybody's energy's needs. Dr. Z, would it make sense to bring in a private partner in this so that we could take advantage of the tax credits and that way we could either reduce the cost to all the parties or create more opportunities? So the way that this would likely be structured is through a private deal with Dominion where there would be a third party who would be taking the benefit of those tax credits, to build the infrastructure that would be sold back to Dominion. And then we would basically get the credits that way. That's awesome. Have they mentioned Dr. Z, the acreage that is needed for 100? Yes, I'll interject. Dr. Z, just in general, around five acres per megawatt is what you're talking, so it's a good bit of land area. And Richland One has said that they believe they have land. The city also potentially may have land that they may be able to dedicate to this. When talking to a utility-scale developer, the suitability of the land and how the interconnection might work will be factors to play into whether or not Dominion will find it attractive, because that's going to be part of the balance. And so in guiding principles for all this, though, price neutrality and reliability with equity has been the guiding principle. So we're not trying to break the bank with this. Everybody involved wants it to be at the same price that they're currently getting their power. And so right now, we've talked to Dominion about this. And Dominion is open to this possibility. The other thing that this happens with having this as a cohort, because we're meeting monthly to sometimes twice a month as a cohort, it might make future procurement better with having multiple organizations coming together, even if it's not just for solar, for energy, efficiency, et cetera. And we have the potential to include other partners. We just haven't yet, because we've been slowly adding to the organizers' interests expressed. And so limitations to this right now is the whole concept of the cost neutrality. Will this really be cost neutral? And it depends a lot on Dominion. In talking to some large-scale solar developers, they suspect it should be cost neutral. But Dominion right now is saying that with Act 62 and cost avoidance, that it's really going to be potentially not necessarily cheaper. That's the best way to say it. And at present, this is the only option for the city to be able to get renewable, and it's only for the city as an organization. So if we think about the Ready for 100 goals and having all the citizens being able to get solar, currently there is no mechanism other than being able to get solar on your roof, which I know that some of you haven't been able to do. There is no way that other citizens can get solar at the moment. So that's just something to start thinking about if we need to think more creatively, how to get more renewable options to the citizens. So to that end, we've also been working on trying to revise the Ready for 100 resolution. So then in 2017, the mayor said 100% renewable for the whole community by 2036. And so we're trying to provide some greater scoping on that, to provide some step-wise goals, as well trying to understand how we can go achieve that. So to that end, there's a committee working on this revision, and there's going to be two separate resolutions that come out of this. First, there's going to be a city operations-focused resolution, so this will have energy savings, because we will ultimately use more energy as we convert fleets, et cetera, to electrical. So we're gonna have to think about how to save energy by being more efficient, but then also trying to get renewables. And there's a potential, perhaps, you can interject something for citizens within this part. The second will be mechanisms for how the city can partner with third parties to basically do energy efficiency, solar accessibility, to the broader community, et cetera. And so we're working on trying to find the step-wise goals, interim goals of how we may be able to go do this. And this should be presented to council in early 2022. So to that end, we had a visit at CPAC with Danny Cassis, who's the VP of customer relations and renewables. That was the first Tuesday of this month, I believe. Yeah, Tuesday, October 5th. And so basically he gave us an overview of what Dominion has been doing, that they're basically cautious to roll out solar too quickly because they're thinking about balancing the load, if they have enough transmission infrastructure, et cetera. They have no current large-scale plans for winds. And just for those who don't know, Dominion has their long-term plan through the IRP or the Integrated Resource Plan, which is approved by the PFC or Public Service Commission every couple of years. Most recently, the Public Service Commission pushed Dominion to be slightly more aggressive on this. They will retire or convert the remaining coal electricity generation over the next decade. Biogas may be important for balancing the load in the future. And ultimately, though, they're carbon neutral goals. So remember, this is not carbon zero, this is just carbon neutral. It's much slower than what the city's current goals are. So to that end, we're going to have to figure out some way to be more aggressive than what Dominion wants, which means we're gonna have to take initiatives that Dominion may not want us to take. So there's opportunities here, though. And so they said the first priority for the city should be focusing on energy efficiency, because this will ultimately lower the long-term electricity costs. There's been many modeling studies from many organizations that have found that if you lay out that money to basically do those energy sufficiencies, it can pay off in five years and make your operating costs lower. Well, I think your point from the plan that y'all had brought forth before really showed us about the housing stock and why that's so important for the individual renters, and especially the renting population of Columbia, which is the majority of the homes we have. Yes. So I think we ought to make sure that as we continue to talk about that, we make sure that we're trying to address those issues first and foremost. So this morning between 8.30 and 9.30, you see Pac-Man with the state energy office to have a scoping conversation about green banks, and they were interested in what's possible, et cetera, but having the funding alone isn't going to be enough if we don't also have incentive programs or legal other aspects to it, so we have to have some way to incentivize landlords to do better to have that existence available to renters. So there's going to have to be a partnership that happens in the future. This cohort aggregate model from Dominion's perspective, this large scale renewable that we're working on is something that Dominion is open to, but Dominion suggested to us that if we want to be able to provide solar for the community, that we might want to tag on some extra megawatts to develop a community solar program as part of that cohort. I know the city is not interested in being utility, but this would not be having to balance the load. This would just be a way that you may be able to provide solar to the citizens in terms of... Through credits just for the offsets. Yes. To simplify the process. Yes, well, that's how it would be. When I think SEG and E had a program previously with community solar, it was similar, where you could buy it, but you would still just get your power the normal way. The problem was the buy cost was, if I remember, it was like 17 cents or something really crazy per kilowatt, and we had to make it affordable. Briss, because of the scale of this, it might be more reasonable. And so we just wanted to basically lay it out there for the city as an option, that adding a community solar component to this renewable aggregate, so then making it larger than 100 megawatts might be an option. Yeah, I was going to add, I think the scale of something, utility scale, as you were saying, makes the cost avoidance model. It makes it more affordable. So I think you've seen maybe some other electric cooperatives have done something of this nature where they'll build a larger scale solar facility and allow their members to purchase a portion of it. Some of the EMCs have done it. Actually, Alabama Power did a project with Walmart and Sherwin-Williams and some other folks, which was very interesting, because at the end of the day, what they were doing was selling the power of avoided costs. It was the credits that they sold back, and that's how you balance out the cost. But at the end of the day, everybody got what they needed. You got more renewable on the system and folks were getting the offsets that they needed. And I think that's probably the model that there's ease talking about trying to, and it'd be great if we had a renewable portfolio here so we can value those credits more in South Carolina. Maybe we create our own here. I don't know, it's something maybe we ought to talk about at the city, so we create some value there so that we have something really to trade with and work with to build up the system. Well, Councilman Rickman, the more large scale users you add to the coalition, the more attractive that tax credit stack becomes, I would say, so I think your initiative, your initiative of reaching out to the school districts, the county, I mean, if a letter of interest can be drafted up inside the big energy users signed up, I think that would be wonderful for us to show to the private sector, private partners out there that we would do this. Not just, maybe not just Richland County, but throughout the Midlands. There's a contact that we could potentially make also at Fort Jackson. We just need to get a little bit further along before we could do that, but anything you could help. Yeah, State and Federal might be a little, partners might be a little bit. I think the good thing about Fort Jackson is, is that the civilian environmental services folks have been there for a while, and Garrison commanders leave every three years. Every time you get a project started over there, it disappears, but I think they have put some more autonomy into the civilian servants over there, so I think there's a great opportunity. I know that at Fort Benning, they have been very aggressive about doing stuff, and they've partnered with Georgia Power on a lot of these projects that they're rolling out and taking advantage of the excess land and things they have to really do it, so I agree, there's a great opportunity there. Yeah, great, that's exciting. So electrification of the fleet is something that, or the fleet and transit is something that Dominion would be interested in, not only because that would make you a bigger consumer, but also because that's where they foresee things as going and potentially as a storage mechanism in the future of doing grid to vehicle and back to the grid, and so they call this a beneficial electrification. So that also means thinking about infrastructure-wise for the city, et cetera, about electrifying the fleet, but also how to have transit as being part of the equation. And that also means we have to have more planning for EV infrastructure. I know that Mary Pat and some people with parking were basically part of a cohort recently thinking about how we need to go about that. Some of it is about costs, because it costs to go build that infrastructure, but if we don't build it, Dominion will build it for us and take all that revenue. So if you think about those conversations that you've had about the parking bond, this could be a potential resource, a generator in the future. Are there case studies for that, by the way? I can find it. Okay, thank you. And then there's also something, so going back to the Artusa report that Bob Petrule has presented to you in the summer, that one thing that came up is that we are ahead of the rest of the Dominion territory for having smart meters. We are not using those to an advantage right now. We will likely have time of day rates in the future. We don't know what that will mean for anybody economically. And so there needs to be some study on that. I don't know who, but there needs to be some study on what time of day rates would mean for both the city operations and residents. And an opportunity that really needs to be resolved that many of you are familiar with is the large interconnection queue. So this is basically how we get the solar connected and approved at the PSC level. This is why the one megawatt facility is still in the queue, essentially. And so to that end, we really encourage Columbia to engage with the PSC, especially on this interconnection reform issue. So limitations from this, though, and also require some lobbying, perhaps, is that when Dominion was visiting with us, they referred to the Energy Freedom Act, Act 62, as having a limitation about why they couldn't take the lead on community solar because they were talking about costs. That was not the intention of the law. And so this part of the law, the cost avoidance, is to be reviewed every two years. It's currently at the PSC under review right now. I have not investigated enough to know, and I'm not a lawyer, so I can't tell you all of what's going on about it. But this could be a potential for the city to get involved and talk about this, or just research to see if this is an option, if having a comment at the PSC, et cetera. So Dominion suggested we focus on transportation first, but that doesn't really consider how the energy is generated. You might electrify it, but if you still got dirty electricity, that doesn't matter. So you kind of have to push on all things at once. We want renewables faster than Dominion, is really what's happening. So we will require a lot of advocating on our part. I added a slide here. This is a new slide because it's basically an opportunity that has presented itself since I made the slides last week. Mary Pat, honey Catherine from Sierra Club, and I participated in a scoping call a few weeks ago with National Renewable Energy Lab, which is from the DOE. They have $100 million to help cities do better. They were interested in talking to us because the mayor had made the grand proclamation of ready for 100. So they were curious to see what progress we had made on those goals and whether or not we needed help doing better. We were invited back to a second call, and this will essentially have the possibility to have technical assistance in the city. At the moment, they don't think they can do capital costs, but if enough cities identified that that was an issue, then they would be potentially able to find another pot of money that would be able to help on that front. This could help with long-term technical assistance to short-term technical assistance, basically what could happen. So we're gonna find out more at the next workshop in terms of trying to understand what's possible. Yeah, and so- Dr. Z, when is that next workshop? So in terms of this next sort of call, and I put on the slide the questions they ask when you register, because I thought that was kind of important for y'all to see. So does your community have clean goals? Would you, how many staff do you have, and how far are you long in meeting those goals? How would you categorize your current needs? And I'm like, will you need all the help you can offer? Yeah. So essentially, there's lots of opportunity, and we were quite honest with them about the limitations about what was going on, and so it was a useful call, and I'm optimistic. So to that end, I told you about that, they have $100 million, and they're interested as, because of the specific political goals. So I'm putting that out there because those goals might seem hard, they might seem challenging, but they're very important because sometimes they open doors for us. Okay, so then there was also, oh, Claire Windsor presented to us about a survey that she had done across the Midlands. She talked to many of you, and it was communications across the Midlands on how people are doing with their climate change action. These were 30 to 90 minute interviews with city staff, CPAC, nonprofits, county, et cetera. Key themes emerged that major events spurred reactive measures, so it's like the flood, BC Sumner debacle, et cetera, but there's limited communication and collaboration. We're working on that now with the cohort, but the challenges that she identified were basically funding from state and national policies, and national policies, utility action, limited community involvement, limited staff, and reliant on volunteer work. And so she said that what she basically, when she synthesized everything that we need to diversify and expand who's at the decision-making table, increase the staff commitment with specific reports, plans, and check-ins, hold city staff and the officials accountable for the commitments and plans. I want you to be bold, basically she's saying, but we also need to be having some teeth to that boldness. And then we need to increase collaboration outside the city with local, statewide, energy, environmental, utility stakeholders, et cetera. So keep on communicating with Dominion, work alongside the energy office, and then review city plans and commitments regularly, potentially have annual plans, and then communicate that more broadly. And we also could be doing a lot more to partner with the university. One thing that I want to just note is that two of us at CPAC are part of the department that houses the Environmental Science Program, the Environmental Studies Program, but then also the MIRM program. So that was a master's program that used to serve as a bunch of interns. The Public Works is also the same department that we work in, so we can help scope things. I think the problem right now is we don't have scope for projects, nor funding for internships at the moment, so we have to work on that. So I told you at the beginning, this is where we're at. However, I want you to think about this as potentially being more broad. This could essentially start turning into having energy efficiency, community solar, getting an EB charging network with the comet, bike lanes, is there gonna be more flooding infrastructure? I want to point out here that I have trees plus heat, and there's a prof at the university, Kirsten Dow, who's doing basically a remote sensing tree survey at the moment to start looking at where the trees are being planted from an inequity standpoint, how that will help with heat, but one thing that we're trying to do is have the coordination between CPAC and the Tree Commission happen at the staff level, not the volunteer level, to start building in relationships so that there's more continuity because we will turn over on CPAC over time and we'd like there to be more infrastructure with the city across the org chart. So this is more than a committee effort, is basically what I want you to see from this, and so that we really need to have climate awareness across departments, and so we need to basically have more people talking. We have had more people attending CPAC meetings, and this has had a great morale boost, at least for me, in terms of having parking there and energy, et cetera. However, we have not fully been engaging with everybody, we need to do better on that front. So just to give it a summary, we started a communications subcommittee recently, we're continuing communication with the State Energy Office, which will start more conversations about potential funding, depending what happens in DC over the next few weeks, months, et cetera, this could be blossoming. The State Energy Office has predicted its almost tenfold increase about what they might have for funding. Green Bank scoping conversations will continue, et cetera. CPAC is going to report on what's possible for franchise agreements, based on what they have researched in other cities, and we're gonna continue with the cohort. We also have leadership election coming in January. And then just as an observation, we have ambitious and passionate volunteers, but one thing that I personally really need us to have is more guidance from the city. We can come at you all we want as volunteers with ideas, but we wanna be able to be the most effective and useful in have guidance. And we're starting to get that, and so I'm starting to ask for it more and we're starting to get it, but I just need a little bit more. And so this is simply because there's limited staff, especially on the technical aspect, and from a risk standpoint, most of the technical work is being done by one person who's already over-connected right now. And so perhaps if we could have more people working on it, that would be great. The current legal framework is really limiting our choices, especially for citizens and small businesses. So this is where lobbying will come into a big aspect for the politicians of the city. And we're not really doing a lot to advocate for citizens, and we need to do more on that. And so my recommendations are basically empower and charge more staff to work on this and have greater community efforts and how we can do things and not just rely on the volunteers. We're happy to help, but we also wanna provide the most constructive feedback we can. And that the Ready for 100 was intended to be community wide, but this is where we're gonna need the political courage from council, essentially, to help at the state level make that more possible. So that's all I've got for you. Thank you, Dr. Z. I do have a couple of questions, but let me start with my colleagues that are in the room with you. Will, do you have any questions or comments? Yes, Chairman, just a quick note, Dr. Z., with your real job at USC faculty there. The comment has taken on all of the transportation system for University of South Carolina. So working through your access and network at the University of South Carolina to really push the EV with comment, I think would be wonderful. They have a strong voice now with the comment system as we service the growing University campus. So, and with the federal funding opportunities for EV in the future, I think that would be a wise to really engage the university, their voice with the comment. Oh, we're coming. And then obviously, Dr. Z., we talked about earlier is getting the university really engaged. They, I think the city's ahead of them and we need to partner together as wherever we can to make a bigger impact. And I appreciate all the discussion you and I had earlier, but I do think we all ought to be working together. This is a collaborative effort. We're the biggest energy users combined together. They're almost twice what you are as a city. To that end, just so others know, in terms of currently there's not a lot of initiative at the university on this front where Larry Cook, who's the main sustainability person is within housing, if you think about org charts a lot. And we have never really had lots of leadership from the presidential level on this. And so something that is being starting to spur and that I'm pushing it along with Kiwi Carter at the Darla Bourne Business School that we're gonna start a deans council hopefully that will have people from all across campus to pull facilities, research, teaching, et cetera together so that we can basically start from the bottom up before we have any leadership. That sounds like a good question to add for the new search for the president of USC, their use of sustainability and innovation. The interim president signed the coalition with all the universities almost what, 10 years ago? And then stopped reporting on it, but I think that was maybe, I'm suspecting, could have been political why it stopped. Might have been, but the commitment's there. Now we just need to move it forward because it does have a big impact all the way across the spectrum. And to that end, there's gonna be opportunities to have partnerships going forward. Again, so there's an EV charging network that was talked about in the Northern States a few weeks ago. That type of thing is likely to happen within this state as a partnership between the State Energy Office and a university that is likely not to go to USC. So we have to be thinking in the future, what could USC position itself for to be part of the solution going forward? Do you think USC's, you mentioned that they are twice the energy user we are. Do you think that's from deferred maintenance and just deferred, just old energy plants? I don't know the breakdown of how things are, but I know that I have a lab that has fume hoods, that those fume hoods, some of them operate all the time. A single fume hood is 30 houses. And so there's that in terms of, there's also housing. And so there's lots of aspects, but there is also deferred maintenance. Yeah, yeah. I guess my last question, Chairman Devine. Clint, are you the point person in discussions with Dominion for our solar path forward and the kind of group we're trying to bring together? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I have been. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Rickman, do you have additional questions or comments? No, ma'am. Okay, that was the couple I was trying to interrupt. You said I wanted to write them all down. You mentioned that, I guess the next community outreach or webinar you're going to do is about faith outreach. How are you marketing that and kind of how is that being put together? So that my understanding is that Bob Petruc and Tamara Warren who've been working on that in the past that they're reaching out to, I believe to interfaith power and love. There's some organizations in town that they have reached out to who are already thinking about these aspects because it is for certain faith communities, it is already part of the equation. The Pope had climate change in the encyclical. Some churches also have creation care as part of their work. So there's work with some local organizations. If you have some suggestions of who you would like us to reach out to, please let us know. Okay, yeah, I may have some so I'll do that. Also, just the same line you talked about like the DOE, EPA is doing a whole lot and I gather they just did a local government advisory council our first meeting was Friday. I apologize, I got the notice late and so I sent it to Mary Pat and she was unable to sign on. And I wasn't able to be on the entire meeting because it was like four hours, but from what I understand from Secretary Rehan, a lot of his priorities align with a lot of things that we're gonna be doing. And if the American jobs plan passes, there will be some potential for energy development block grant money and things like that. So, and he did mention cooperating or working with other cabinet agencies to include DOE. So I think that we need to really, and I'll try and make sure that I stay on top of that. We need to continue to monitor that. And I don't know if that Clint would be you or Mary Pat if we could ask maybe Ralph to look out from our standpoint on the federal level. I think there's gonna be opportunities not just for technical assistance but funding opportunities for local governments that are ready with different projects. So I wanna make sure that we're watching and monitoring that. We'll do, yes ma'am. This is also, to the end though, this is also where CPAC is trying to figure out how to be most helpful to the city. Can we help with some of those scoping mechanisms if there's not that work being done easily right now within the city? Definitely, and when we report out this afternoon we'll say that to the rest of the council as well. I think we'll have, we need to, you're right, we need to do better at having some actual action items or deliverables that you guys can help us with because I know that Mary Pat is doing a lot. And I think I know she's helping in solid ways and some other things. So we need to be able to expand her capacity with the volunteer expertise that y'all bring to the table. I was just gonna let you know that we do have on our agenda, the appointments of the non-voting members. And so we will move that forward. But I do think that we need to have in addition to these quarterly updates, maybe there needs to be two way. So we'll make sure that council is giving you guys some specific directions and hopefully we can get to that action plan so that we can start reporting. And the last thing I just wanted to say, and Clint, this might be for you to talk with PR and other things, but I know that we'll have this meeting on YouTube, but I like the way Dr. Z presented like what they're working on and what are some of the deliverables. And I just think that if we had an opportunity for the public to see kind of where we are and what some of the things are being worked on, that will be useful information to have somewhere on the website, I'm not exactly sure where the best area, but I'd like to see that. Madam Chair. Yes, sir. I just wanted to add, I think we can't forget about the private sector money and leveraging it. We've talked a lot about federal funding, but taking federal funding and a lot of the private sector funding and opportunities of partnership like other communities have done have really leveraged that money and they're really able to make a big impact. So I think we need to go down both paths and make sure that we're recognizing what's out there and what could be available for us to use in jointly with the feds and even local and state money to really make an impact. There's a CPAC member who brought up just this morning about how we should be using the empowerment zone and other sort of business opportunities and we're not doing enough engagement on that front and how we could do better. So I just wanna say thank you very much for having volunteers as being part of the city. I know we've served the pot a lot and so I appreciate the pot stirring that we've done and the cooperation that has come out of this. And so just thank you so much for this opportunity. No, thank you. Thank you for all the hard work. And then there was Robert. Mr. Anderson. Councilwoman Avada, I also wanted to mention that we've got Rick Blackman from Code Enforcement that's gonna help with this discussion about grass and leaf debris and potential options that we have moving forward. So I wanted to recognize Rick as well. Thank you, Rick. Mr. Vine, I'm a little confused, but not much confused. I think we had a discussion, I think to begin with about maybe blowing material into the street and the contractors and the residents around town blowing material in the street. There actually is an ordinance right now that Rick could speak to, it's 8-237, that they do somewhat enforce. There is some limitations to that enforcement on what they do, but we believe that if we're going to truly start enforcing this in a greater length, that what we ought to do is a huge possibly education campaign and use all the means necessary that we have through whether it be city PR, stormwater, public works, wastewater, anybody if we can to get the word out that we're gonna start aggressively acting on our ordinances. Can we review that? Can you give me a quick rundown of what that ordinance says? All right, so basically it just says that you can't blow or sweep any debris into the street. So what we've done historically is we will, if we encounter it or if we get a report of it and we can catch them doing it, we'll go out and issue them a summons and we'll take them to court and do it that way. We don't, it's not a huge problem in most of the residential areas. We do, it seems to be more of a problem downtown for whatever reason I imagine because the way that it's laid out, there's its yard, sidewalk, more grass than street and typically they don't wanna pick it up over the curb and put it where it should be placed. They'll blow it, you know, they know the street sweeper's gonna come through essentially is what we've gotten from them. So- But would you say that commercial, commercial lawn service landscape providers, just I'm just trying to, you know, they used to blow it to blow it in the street and blow it into a pile. Is that who we're talking about as- Yeah, when we have caught the offenders- The offenders doing it, it's typically, it's companies and not maybe, I don't wanna throw anybody under the bus, it's not, it's typically somebody that's doing yard work for somebody else and it's just quicker and easier for them to do that. Now, we will, some of our inspectors have been confused when they'll see it because they will blow it out, like sit in a late year and find, they'll blow it out into the street so that they can then pile it back up. But again, to speak to the original complaint, I think that also is part of the problem because you're not supposed to put the leaves in the street to begin with, but they will because again of how it's set up, you're gonna see piles of landscape and re in the road because there's just not another good place to put it. They're not gonna pick it up over the curb and put it, you know, in front of their house, which is typically where it should, or where the ordinance says it should go. It should go in the right-of-way above the curb. Right, well, I mean, according to the ordinance, it should not be in the street at all. But again, I mean, I don't, that's speaking to the social media campaign because I don't know how many people know that it should be in the street. Well, that's a whole other issue though, because then you've got the clamshells tearing up all the right-of-way and I can pick it up. So that's why nobody, that's really why everybody puts it in the street because they don't want to have all that. Right, and so there's really not a good, there's really not a good- I was gonna say, there may be two-fold, maybe there needs to be some education about what the current rules are and in addition to that, a letter to the commercial landscaping businesses, maybe we could utilize business licenses to maybe find that out and just send a letter to those because I think it's a lot of times it is the companies. But I think there's two things happening. I think the complaint that I recently got, and I've seen it too, that like literally it's not just blowing it in the street, we have some that will blow it into our drains because they feel like that's getting it out of the way. And so, I mean, that one clearly can't be done, but people who feel like they're trying to do their yard, be nice and neat and then put it right there at the curb. And as Councilman Rickerman said, so that we're not messing up the curb, they're doing it on the street. But, and honestly, we know that we're behind. And so if it's taking us two or three weeks to pick up and then you've got rain or wind and other things, then you have additional leaves that are getting blown into our infrastructure. So I think that we probably need to consider is there something a fix for that, whether it is utilizing, if we talk about one time, Robert, and this is the research I wanted you to bring, I mean, we talked about one time, whether or not we would go to some kind of bend structure for where people could put leaves in. But I think the longer term, we need to think about that, but shorter term, making sure that people are aware of what the current rules are, and then how do we not only inform people, but then how are we enforcing that? Okay, we switched back over. So correct, Mr. Vine, I think there was a two-fold issue today. And one of them is, is that we talked about doing a social media campaign, and one of them was a letter to a lot of the commercial and we can get them from the business license to explain to them what to do. The other one that we've talked about a couple of times since my career here is actually having a bagging ordinance or using a container for the material. I've kind of detailed that out again. I mean, a bagging ordinance would definitely clean up the material in the street. It would definitely make the aesthetics of Columbia a little bit better. There's some negative parts of that just from a solid way standpoint. Currently we collect about 45,000 tons of debris. We would think about 50 or 60% of this is baggable. We've kind of put the numbers together where we're looking at possibly $800,000 or $900,000 in bag purchases from the residents of Columbia with what they could do. Not everything's ever gonna be bagged so we would have to start giving some thoughts to how do we handle our other material that we require and as Richland County does to be bundled and in four-foot length so it's easily contained. It doesn't get spread around but we also have our composting operation and our composting operation when you start putting bags in it, are you gonna use biodegradable bags? If you use biodegradable bags, you still have to have some sort of turner to start helping them decompose a little bit quicker. And sort out all the foreign materials. And sort out all the foreign materials and the lawnmower blades that people are gonna put in them that we've seen over the years. So there are some drawbacks to that that we would have to put some money into our composting operation. I believe you guys got a copy of what we put together today about what it would cost to convert our composting operation over to this. I will mention today and I've got Samantha who is digging into this. Atlas composting is actually making some bigger stands in the state. They're, I believe, taking over Lexington's operation, their composting operation that they're starting to introduce some food waste into it. We're gonna reach out to them and see if we can get them back into our operation. Of course, I think if we get food waste into our operation then we know they're gonna have some sort of mechanical turner that maybe we could find some agreement in some common ground to get into a bagging ordinance that would make it a little bit better for us but we would still have a cost to our citizens. Would you not, at that point, if you could do a deal with Atlas guys, Joseph, and them to, wouldn't it be smarter for us to go to a bin process because then you could have a one-armed bandit or something pick that up in conjunction with them and maybe that's part of what they provide. They would get that on a frequent basis where then you've got green waste but that allow us to put household grease in there, that allow us to put food waste, other stuff, which would really increase less material going to the landfill. And I, and it would. A containerized product project would be good. You know, I know that Rubbermaid used to make a container that had an airification deal in the bottom of it to allow that. I think what we have an issue with is what are you gonna do when you get outside of a true 105 gallon container of, you know, with somebody cleaning their yard in the fall or something. So we'd really have to think of a city that we're maybe limiting the amount of material a person could put out of the curb each week. I mean, our memo, even as we've written it today, says, hey, let's suspend this in November, December, so we can actually vacuum the leaves up. Which brings an interesting point to think about is we're talking about bagging it. One of the complaints that we always get is move in time, in and out. And how much stuff gets piled on. I know you hear it more than ever, but couldn't you do the same thing during long time where we could put, I mean, here's an opportunity where we know where the concentration of everything happens. Is there a way that you could say, you know, we drop off a dumpster of, you know, full open top that could be filled so when you know these excess things, they could fill it and you could pick it up so you're almost doing it like a community drop. Hey, we know you're gonna have these issues, fill it up, pull it out, you know, replace it during these critical time pieces which would help you and also help the community because not everything is out in the street. So Samantha, about 45, 60 days ago, actually brought something that was happening in Florida, I believe Samantha, that they're doing exactly the same thing during the pandemic and we've all been behind on trash collection with their labor problems and everything else. I reached out to West Columbia and talked to their public works director quite a bit who his dad used to be the street division superintendent public works director over here. So I know Jamie very well. They actually have a hook lift truck in West Columbia. He thought that Samantha's idea is exactly what the idea they're doing in Florida is actually putting these containers out for just that purpose. Councilman Brennan over here sent me an email about three months ago that said, hey, let's do this during move out. Maybe we can get some containers. We are getting some cost of putting that together of maybe the city buying a truck and buying some kind of a hook lift style truck that we could rapidly deploy containers not only for some of the larger areas of leaves or during certain times a year, especially right now during the pandemic or certainly during the college move outs that we can. That was a program that they're doing in Charleston that you're actively talking to them about pros and cons. Correct. It seems to be pretty nationwide everybody's starting to gravel just because of staffing issues and others but convenience factor and not having everything in the street. These containers would have a lot of use but we're just starting to get cost on that and putting those prices. Well, how big are they? Are they bigger than our roll carts currently? What are we talking about? So the truck containers we're talking about would probably be somewhere between 20 and 30 yards. It'd be a roll off truck. If you get into a 40 yard container you probably get into too big. So they would just be dropped in in a couple of points in the neighborhood you're saying? Correct. Yeah, drop it on a Friday, pick it up on a Sunday or Monday and give people time to, hey, if you're cleaning out or you're moving out, here it is. I noticed they do it in Athens when we were moving in this past thing they had dumpsters lined up everywhere. So it was that transition in July from everything. So then those kids would throw away old furniture, whatever mattresses, trash, and then they would pick it up and it would leave the pressure off to solid waste but it kept stuff out of the streets and people didn't have to look at it. But you're saying take it to another level for yard debris, pick up quarterly, monthly, yeah, like permanently. And what we're going through right now and what we talked to West Columbia about, Jamie said, you know, hey, we've got seven containers. We could drop them all over West Columbia and people that didn't want to wait for our yard trucks collection to come around, they could actually take them to these containers and swap the containers out very quickly and move on. So like I said, we were just starting to put those costs together and figure out, you know, do you really want to roll off truck or a hook lift truck? And I dealt with roll off years ago. I've never really done a hook lift truck but it seems like they have a little bit of capability getting into parking places and stuff. So we're just starting to look at that. That could definitely complement anything we're doing. Absolutely. So Robert, I think as we prepare for next budget season, we'll have numbers that we can present to council for their consideration, if we want to move in that direction for services as well. Correct. Perfect. Thank you. And then Robert, just on the other one, y'all will let us know when those letters go out to the commercial or the landscape businesses and share with us the social media so we can amplify it. Yes, ma'am, we'll put something together. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Shealy, I think that's it. Do you have anything else for us? No, ma'am. That was all on our agenda and soon we'll have a report out this afternoon but I think that's everything we had. Awesome. All right. Thank you all. And we will see you guys at two. Thank you.