 Today is Wednesday, April 27th, 2022. We have a quorum present and I would like to call to order this regularly scheduled meeting of the Chittenden Solid Waste District Board of Commissioners. The first item on the agenda is the agenda itself. Are there any requests to add or change anything on the agenda Leslie, your hand is up. I had a small thing on the minutes. We'll get to them. We'll get to that when we get to the consent agenda. Oh, sorry, sorry, I thought that's where we were. No problem. Okay. Just on the agenda itself. Any requests for additions or changes. Seeing none. The agenda stands approved as presented. The next item on the agenda is the public comment period. Are there any members of the public present by a zoom or on the phone who wish to address. The board of commissioners. I am hearing nor seeing. I'm hearing none, not seeing anyone. I'm hearing none. I don't want to be moved on to the consent agenda, which consists of the minutes of the March 23, 2022 regular board meeting, program updates and a cost revision of our previously approved roll off truck purchase. Leslie, you have a, is this a comment or request to change the consent agenda? Pull something from it. The minutes. Is it, is it a minor correction? Or is it something a little bit more major that'll require it to be? They don't know. Honestly, I'd like the, I'd like the advice of the chair and or anyone else on the board with, I'd like to. I also have one minor. I identify my issue and then get whatever guidance if people feel the minutes are fine as they stand. I'll accept that. But I did want to flag something. Okay, so what is that item? So under, let's see, it's on page three. And under discussion, the third paragraph has some text that is in bold. Let's pull this off. Pardon me? I think, let's pull it off. It's not just a minor technical correction. So let's, what I'm understanding. So we'll pull out the minutes and address that separately, Leslie. Sorry to cut you off, but I just think that'll be a little bit better way to proceed. I also have a minor change, which I'll do at that point. So right now the minutes of the March 23rd, 2022 meeting will be removed from the consent agenda. Any requests to pull the program updates or the roll-off truck revision? I'm hearing none. So those two items 3.2 and 3.3 are approved under the consent agenda. Now we'll move to item 3.1, the minutes of the March 23rd meeting. So Leslie, if you could resume. Thanks, Paul. So what I wanted to call the board's attention to is this paragraph that's in bold under discussion, where the last sentence is, quote, there is information in the, sorry, in every last two sentences, quote, there is information in the packet about the question of what point we would be able to pay the 1.2 million debt service and not have to subsidize. In every instance, but one CSWD will generate enough revenue from the MIRV to consistently make that payment. My recollection is that in the discussion, I questioned that statement. I felt that there was not sufficient information or analysis to support that statement. And I don't see my concern reflected in the minutes. Okay, thanks. I think I have to refer that over to Amy to get that incorporated. Sure, I can review the recording and make an adjustment and send that out at the next meeting. So I know. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. And then also Paul, I did just want to say on page five, the roll call voting that's listed, we have vacant for some positions and it really should say absent because vacant implies that there's not a board member. So for Huntington, Richmond and St. George, it will say absent rather than vacant. So I'll make those two corrections and bring this back for the May meeting. Okay, thank you. So at this point, we will not be taking any action on the March 23rd minutes pending the corrections, which will be taken up next month at next month's board meeting. The next item on the agenda, item number four is the FY23 budget adoption. I just want to make a few introductory comments on that before we're proceeding. Just by way of background, the preliminary budget was presented on November 17th, 2021 meeting. The board approved that as solely a preliminary budget, January 26th, 2022, there was a public hearing regarding the budget subsequent to that public hearing. Staff worked on revising the budget and worked with the finance committee. And tonight, the results of that work will be presented to the full board for its action. It is really required at this point timing wise that the board approve a budget because once it's approved, then Sarah needs to go out to all of the member, the governing bodies in each town within the next 45 days to get their approval of this budget. And the majority of the town's governing bodies must approve it for this budget to be fully adopted and put into effect as of July 1st, 2022. So that's just by way of background, also by way of procedure. What I'd like to do is ask Sarah to make a budget presentation and limit any questions from board members until the conclusion of her presentation have the proposed budget moved and seconded and then we would open it up for discussion and debate. That field with a very long agenda tonight, that's a better way to manage our time and keep us focused on the key questions. With that, I'll turn it over to Sarah and staff for the presentation. Thank you very much, Paul. I will also apologize for some froggyness in my voice. I'm starting to feel the effects of the season. So I'm going to bring up the PowerPoint here. Sharp screen, are we seeing the PowerPoint? Are we seeing the memo? Our point. Thank you very much. So the fiscal 23 budget proposal, I do want to also apologize for our typo on the memo. It should say April 21, 2022. And this is indeed the fiscal 22 budget. And not the 22 budget, 23 budget, not the 22 budget. So I'm going to go through the slides and as Paul said, then we'll have a motion and then open up for the discussion. Sarah, the screen right now is showing the next slide as well instead of just the presentation. Slide show at the top, I think, in the middle there. Yep. If you go into the slide show itself, start from the beginning and when that screen comes up, you'll see in your task bar on the top it says display settings. Click that and then swap. There you go. Awesome. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Okay, thank you. So as we're preparing fiscal 23's budget, we were adjusting several new realities and how long these realities will be in place is anyone's guess. But as everyone is experiencing, some price index is very high, cost of living is high, expenses are increasing for everyone in every industry. Unemployment is very low. There are lots and lots of pressures on every sector it seems in 2022. In large part due to continuing recovery from the pandemic, we're still in the midst of many of the effects and then just generalized changes that are happening around the world. We can't ignore some of the global effects. They certainly do have their reaches into certain parts of our operations and we'll see that as we go forward. But some of the things that I wanna draw attention to and that's why I mentioned that our expenses are outpacing our revenue projections. And that is mainly because we are still being very conservative in our revenue projections, particularly when it comes to the MRF, Materials Recovery Facility and the sale of sorted recyclables. We have always used the practice of budgeting very conservatively on the average commodity revenue price, so that price we get per ton for the sort of material because we do not control the marketing of the material. So we tend to hedge our bets that does serve us very well. I have needed a practice to try to become a bit more realistic. However, in this instance, with the volatility in the marketplace, we do like to hedge our bets conservatively. Having said that, and I highlight that because this year's proposed budget is very, very tight with revenues and our expenses. There is room to move on that MRF line so that I would welcome conversation about that in particular as we get further down into the budget. Additionally being highlighted is that we are continuing in a very capital intensive period. In, you may have noticed in the capital discussion, the four to five year plan, we do still have quite a bit of expenses listed in fiscal 24 for the MRF. That is in the event that the voters of Chittenden County do not approve bond that we'll be asking them for in November to authorize us to spend the money to build a new MRF if they do not vote for that. We do need to make some significant investment in the current facility to continue to be able to use it as a MRF. So the dollars that you see in the line item, the column for fiscal 24 for the MRF may not be necessary. And that is again, one of the things that is not exactly within our control. We'll know more about that in November. The solidest management fee, that is that fee that we charge to haulers when they bring material for disposal to the landfill and peppery. It has been $27 per ton for the past eight or nine years. We are not recommending or posing an increase. We do feel that the solidest management fee revenue is sufficient for the needs and for the purposes that it serves for the district. And essentially we are projecting that the and the tons subject to the fee will be flat for this upcoming year. There is an uptick in construction in Chittenden County. There is again continued resumption of normal activities, but it is not yet at the levels that we were seeing in fiscal 19. So in part that's a good thing, right? We don't want to be generating excess waste and landfill amount. So what we're seeing I think is perhaps some leveling off and some normalization. So that is where, again, you see our actuals in calendar year 20, very close to the budget for last year, very close to the budget for this year. So essentially that line item, that revenue stream is expected to be flat. For the materials recovery facility, the MRF, again, we are holding our fee at $80 a ton for this upcoming year. And again, that is the fee charged to haulers when they deliver collected recyclables to the materials recovery facility. We're also still budgeting the same amount of tons this year, upcoming year that we have for this current year, 47,500, subject to the tip fee. And again, this is where I want to focus in on that average commodity revenue that basically the blended price per ton, the value per ton of the materials that we sort. We market approximately 38,000 tons of material. So that is the amount that is subject to that $80 ACR. And there is some room for movement. The ACR and the average commodity revenue for the past, so three to four or five months has been well over $100, it's been routinely over $130. We know that that adds and flows in and goes up and down. We have been as low as a negative 45, negative 42. So for the price of paper and fiber products, for example. And that's really where the risk lies for CSWD. The amount of material that we process between 75 and 80% of that material are fiber products, cardboard, paper, junk mail, et cetera. So because that stream does have some higher ebbs and flows, that is the main reason we want to continue to be conservative. However, with the average commodity revenue for the first six months of this calendar year being right around 130, 135, we do recognize there is room for upward movement if the board decides if that's a direction they want us to go. For the Organics Divergent Facility, we are anticipating proposing raising the tip fee to $65 per ton. This year is also of an interesting year. We did see last year a decrease in the inbound material, the food scraps. The leaf and yard remains very stable that has not changed in many, many, many years. But the food scraps does fluctuate. The main driver behind the sudden reduction that we saw this past year and we're moderating for this upcoming year was the introduction of the de-packaging facility in Wilston that Cassella built last year. They were the largest supplier or hauler that bringing us material to the ODF. And when they brought their de-packaging facility online, they redirected all of their organics to that facility. We have since recovered some of those source upgrade organics back to the compost facility to ODF. And we are anticipating additional material coming back. So this is where we are again being conservative in budgeting approximately 4,400 tons of inbound food scraps. This is also not necessarily a bad thing. We were headed to a very untenable position just a couple of years ago before the de-packaging facility came online to where we were in excess of nearly 7,000 tons. And we were really concerned that that was gonna be unmanageable, particularly as iPhone 48 really kicked into its final high gear with the landfill ban on food scraps. Our sweet spot is between 5,000 inbound and 6,000 inbound tons. So we are approaching that operational efficiency that production sweet spot. So we're cautiously optimistic that we will be getting back into that area that we feel very confident. We'll again produce the amount of material that we know we can sell out of every year. And that is the goal to continue to sell food product and to be able to manage efficiently and effectively on site. So we have increased again the tons a little bit, but again, are still being conservative. And not unanticipated is that compost sales will be leveling back to pre-COVID levels maybe a little bit higher. And again, that is anticipated when everyone was home at the beginning of the pandemic and even this past year, building gardens and growing food at home. Everyone who bought, who was supplying compost and producing compost and top player and garden mix was selling out completely. We were no different. So sales are incredibly robust for two years, which is fantastic. And now they're leveling off. But again, coming back to a really good sales level. So we still feel like we're in a good place. And we have great contact with our main customers, our main suppliers selling food, so outlets has been a major component for increasing our efficiency. And we're continuing to, again, to reap the benefits of that change. Our drop off centers were anticipating revenue inbound to these to be flat. There again, are components that we either are unable to charge for the accept or that we choose to not charge a fee for. We're anticipating that this fiscal year keeping the bad pricing at the same level as fiscal 22. So fiscal 23, the same as today. And we want to continue to analyze the DOC fee structure going into fiscal 23. We started on that process this year, had benefits and start admittedly. So we want to continue that process for the rest of this calendar year and then bring back some more conversations and have those conversations with the board about changes that we may want to consider making. Expenses are up and due in large part to hauling fee increases and disposal fee increases. And we're also seeing that at the Murph. This is the fifth year in a row that the DOCs are requiring a subsidy. And again, I think what we're seeing now more transparently now in prior years before I got here in the first year that I was here, the special waste budget and the DOC budgets were essentially one. Oh, actually they were split. So a lot of expenses that were tagged to the special waste budget, which was fully subsidized by the district essentially were also kind of used by the DOC. So it skewed the relative need for a subsidy for the DOCs. We no longer do that. So this is, and you can see that it has been very consistent over the past three years in the amount that is meeting subsidy at the DOCs. And again, this is something that the board will need to continue to have conversations about what is the level of the DOC is that needing subsidy, taking a look at that fee structure, taking a look at the materials that we charge for taking a look at the services that we're providing. In addition, one of the things that does directly affect very highly is that the DOCs are the heaviest users of the maintenance and roll-off services. And we do fully allocate those services out to, according to use. And with the DOCs using 85% of those services, the bulk of the cost of that program does fall to the DOC off-centers as an expense. So that's where you're seeing those numbers now is in that expense total, that includes the maintenance and roll-off charges, essentially charges. Going to highlight again, talking about subsidy amounts by program and kind of putting that in perspective. And again, the board has long looked at subsets as particularly for something like the environmental depot as necessary. We wanna make sure that these programs are adequately funded and supported, in part by either the Solace Management fee revenue or in part by excess revenue from other programs like the MERF. And you'll see that this year, we're projecting the following operating program subsidies. And yet still we're able to contribute a little bit into the new operating reserve. And again, looking at the administrative programs which are fully funded by the Solace Management fee, we're looking at the draw on that revenue line, just under $3 million and the revenue from the Solace Management fee is in excess of the need from the administrative program. And as always, we want to get to zero and that's what we do as a municipality. So when looking at a very high level, you can see that that gross profit or the income after cost of goods are subtracted from the revenue and the expenses. We are very, very close, very tight. I will note that the packet misplaced the capital contribution from the MERF into the transfer to the capital reserve. It should be above the line as you see it here. So you'll note that the capital contribution continues to only be at this point from the MERF. ODF was able to put some very small amount in this current year's capital reserve but is not projecting to do that for the upcoming year. And then you see that maintenance allocation and then once that's added back in, you can see that the income after capital allocation is about more than $300,000, that transfer of the bottom line to capital reserve that's a little bit from property management. And then again, the rest are just the standard transfers over to Solace Management fee, biosolids operating reserve. And that is new for us this year. We've implemented a change to our reserve programs as we've discussed several times at the board and that transfer to operating reserve is new in this budget. So doing some quick comparisons from this 23 budget to the current fiscal 22 budget, excuse me, and we don't have the actuals yet, I would think because we're still in, excuse me, now in the fourth quarter of fiscal 22. And instead of the, you know, again, the expenses are increasing by a significant amount. I wanna highlight the materials management increase which is the overwhelming bulk of that expense increase. And that is again, hauling services increases at the transfer station and a projected increase in the processing fee for the MRF. We have a third party operator who runs our MRF Cassella operation for us and the contract that we have with them expires in June. And we are anticipating a significant increase in the processing fees that we pay to Cassella for that service. So that is the bulk of the increase in our expenses are directly related to those two things. Another item to highlight because it is new and different and there's a large percentage increase even though it's not a large dollar amount increase is the creation of a new mine item called community support. And that's where we're placing the community cleanup fund so that we can better highlight the use of those funds to the public. So that when they're looking at our budgets in future years, they'll be able to see exactly how much of that mine item that CCUF was utilized each year to year. So and it was also a recommendation of our auditors that we fully fund a liability each year not just the contribution that we intend to make but the full liability of that fund. And because currently the practice is to allow communities to basically roll over or bank the annual allotment, we essentially have five years worth of allotments that we have to budget for as a liability. And that's what that is representing. I can't really adjust. Nope, this is actually an old slide, I apologize. This should have been deleted. So staffing changes and I do want to make note that the personal costs, the total compensation costs that are in the budget do reflect a continuation of the fiscal 22, the current year pay grade and step schedule with the addition of a 2% COLA. And this is per the recommendation of the finance committee. When we did the Gallagher Fund study had that done last year and brought that to the board, it was a recommendation that an ad hoc committee be created to do a deeper dive into that study take a look at it, consider the recommendations. The ad hoc committee met about five times over the course of the winter and early over the spring and had some recommendations to implement a different system. The finance committee thought that there was more information that they needed before they were comfortable recommending that back and forward. So that is why in this budget, again, the personal costs are reflecting the continuation of what we normally currently do. So we do have in the packet and provide some additional information for the request of some commissioners who are attending the meeting, the last finance committee meeting. So that information that memo is included in the packet is at the end of your budget information for discussion if you would like. Our total FTEs full-time equivalents are slightly down this year and we do have some unfulfilled positions that we are budgeting going forward into fiscal 23. But overall, the FTEs are again slightly down. So when we talk about allocations the only budget that we do fully allocate is maintenance and roll off and essentially it is charged, like I said, according to usage. So the operations programs utilize the bulk of the services. There's some that are allocated to admin but mostly it is to operations. And then, again, just as a reminder that the support programs which is essentially everything that is not an operational facility is funded by the salaries management fee revenue. And another reminder that our capital plan we do not consider that a license to spend or authorization to spend. Capital projects, large purchases will always come back to the board for approval. For the newer members of the board, spending limits I can authorize purchases up to $50,000 as executive director between $50,000 and $100,000. I need to bring that request for authorization to the executive board and then anything over $100,000 must come to the board for approval. So again, as I mentioned, this is, we're in a very heavy capital investment in infrastructure period. We are drawing down on the reserves. We will be building them up in future years at a slower rate but we also be drawing down at a much slower rate. We are looking at just under $4 million for repairs or placements infrastructure. And again, that is the high, very high end. We always aim to come way under our capital spend and where that is unavoidable such as with the Waterline project and with the delays and I mentioned the global pressures that increase in costs. We will always come back to you and talk about it and say, is this project still something that we think is really going on? The major investments that we're looking at for the next year is in the administrative building improvements to, sorry, shouldn't have written out that acronym to the Milton Drop-off Center and site preparation for a new work. So for the funds and again, we had mentioned that we have a new system of our reserves. We added a couple of new reserves. We also are implementing a priority list where we fund certain reserves in order. One of the things I did want to draw your attention to and again, well, two things, all the reserves are adequately funded according to the guidelines that we had established with the Finance Committee of the Board aside from capital, if you can probably never have too much in capital, I suppose. As well as you can never have too much in landfill post closure. We are currently in or entering into year 27 of our 30 year post closure care requirement. So we currently have adequate funds to get us through to year 30, but the goal is to enter into custodial care. So what I'd ask Josh and Jeanine to do is to really take a hard look at the closed landfills and to make sure that there aren't any issues that we need to be addressing now. Because we want to be able to enter into year 29, year 30, feeling very, very confident getting into custodial care. So you will see some activity associated with the landfill that are going to be generating that information, that data and potential action as needed. We've already identified some areas that need some minor repair. So we'll be doing that over the course of the next few months because we budgeted some of that in this fiscal year as well as moving into fiscal 23. So there'll be, I think some pretty significant projects significant for the landfill, not millions of dollars but several tens of thousands of dollars just to make sure that it is where we need it to be so that we can have it in the course and go to the studio. And then again, this is the motion that we'll be asking for the board to meet and post the making motions in the second day, open up for questions. I'll stop and make sure I can do that successfully. Okay. Thank you for your presentation, Sarah. And I take it as nothing else at this moment that you'd like to add to what you've already stated. So then we're ready. As I previously stated and Sarah just affirmed like to have a motion to approve the budget in order to get this on the floor for us to have a detailed discussion. The wording of the motion was presented. I can read it into the end of the record. Excuse me. Being resolved by the CSWD Board of Commissioners that it proves the proposed fiscal 2023 budget and that it be submitted to the member of legislative bodies for approval as presented. Thank you. Do we have a commission who is willing to move that motion? So moved. Thank you, Ken. We have a second. Thank you, Katie. I'll have the budget on the floor for discussion. Since this was originally reviewed or deeply reviewed by the finance committee, I would like to give Leslie an opportunity if she so chooses to offer any comments that she has about the budget as presented in the work that went into it. Thank you, Paul. I appreciate that opportunity. And as Sarah has I think made clear to the Board of Commissioners, this has been a very challenging year for budget development, not merely because of all the moving parts internal to the district, but because of the larger changes in the world out there, you know, we started our budget work, what, back in December or January and already some of the considerations that we were grappling with, the landscape has changed very dramatically just in that period of time. Just by way of example, we will be discussing the compensation issue later, but as you will note, as Sarah told you, there is an assumption of a 2% cost of living adjustment on all wages and salaries in this budget. And that is increasingly looking unrealistic. And I for one, I'm not sure how we deal with this, but that was one of the major concerns of the Finance Committee, I wanna clarify that in seeking to keep the current wage and salary structure we had a number of concerns, only one of which was the impact of COLA going forward and whether that 2% was going to be realistic. Looking at all the global economic forecasts and just today I sent Sarah the latest forecast from the World Bank, which is really quite dire, that 2% COLA to me anyway and to a lot of observers is looking very, very iffy. And so when we come to consider our compensation outlook, and remember that this is a budget in which the forecast expenses are considerably higher than the forecast revenue already. If we wanna factor in, let's say a 4% COLA, there's going to be a major impact on this budget. I'm not sure how we deal with that honestly because of the need to take something to all the towns. And this is absolutely unprecedented now and Paul and anyone else, I think whatever we bring to the towns has to have some caveats attached to it because three months from now when the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, when we see what's happening to the cost of living into the CPI that we use for our cost of living adjustments the whole landscape could be totally different even than it is today, let alone to when we started working on the budget. So I think there has to be some conversation amongst us as how we prepare for that to my mind likely eventuality. The other thing that is, I also have a little bit of a process question, Paul. In our packet, we have a memo from NOLA and Sarah on the budget. This is very different from the overview presentation that Sarah gave us. And by the way, Sarah, I wanna compliment you on the clarity and some sickness of that presentation. That was a really nice job. But my question is whether this memo to us dated April 21st is expected to be the basis for some kind of letter or presentation to the towns or whether this is purely for the benefit of the Board of Commissioners. Because if it's something that's likely to go to the towns then I would have some specific comments on some of the substance in that memo. So could we understand what this April 21st is this purely internal or is this something that's gonna be the basis of something that goes to the towns? Leslie, thanks, you've raised, I think, two core questions before we get to next commissioner's questions. Let's just stay with this for a moment. I think we'll start with your second question. My comment then turn it over to Sarah is, ultimately we're going to be voting on a dollar item or the dollar is presented in this budget, not a memo. So I would characterize whatever memos are that that's informational, Sarah can clarify what the intent is but ultimately we're voting on a dollars and cents budget that can be presented to the towns for their approval. So let's stay with that question then Sarah maybe you can address the question about the memo. Sure, and you may recall that I started this kind of longer version with our second COVID budget because there were so many changes and it really needed some explanations and the towns and this would be the third year using this kind of format. The feedback I received from the towns was excellent. They really appreciated having the level of detail and the explanation of both the rationale and the background and where we were intending to go why we were making the decisions we were making. So I would most likely include something very similar to this if not this. So if there are content questions or concerns that you have Leslie and I'd be more than happy to discuss those offline if it's kind of a format question. If it's something significant in any field that it's misrepresenting the will of the board then that is what we should be discussing now as far as the content of the memo. But it is my intention to send something very similar to this out with this life board package. Thank you. I wanna now address your first question that why I took it to reframe it Leslie just you were expressing a level of concern that with so many dynamic factors at play here will this budget ultimately prove to be realistic or workable? My response and I'm certainly open to correction from Sarah and others is that again we're going to be endorsing or approving a set of numbers, dollars and that's going to be the marching orders to make it work. I believe there's a process should things not work according to plan to such a degree that adjustments are made I believe that there's a process that will follow but I would point out that there is a level of discomfort but as Sarah pointed out there is one key variable and that is the ACR through the MRF where she's pointed out that it is a conservative number. And if we wanted to discuss adjusting that and direct staff to change that ACR assumption that will certainly change the bottom line numbers as we see them. We have to be careful of course not to just kind of fool ourselves into thinking everything's going to be rosy by raising one assumption but this may be something that we wanna kick around here and get the wisdom of the full board to say perhaps that assumption can and should be adjusted to make it a more realistic budget which would then create some more breathing room should some of the cost side of this plan proved to be unworkable. So I point that out but I do, Katie your hand has been up for a while. I think we'll come back to what I've just suggested but I do wanna follow some process here and the respect board members who've had their hand raised. So Katie. Thanks, I forgot that I had my hand raised that long. Thank you for reminding me. Just to say, I would like to make motion to move that the FY23 budget as presented by the executive director be amended to include the 22 25 step compensation schedule as recommended by the ad hoc committee on compensation and benefits and proposed by Gallagher Flynn in the review of our compensation plan for a budget increase of $78,000. So Katie has made a formal motion to amend the motion that is on the table. If we have a second for this motion then we'll go on to discuss this particular amendment resolve that and then we go back to the main motion which is the budget. Do we have a second for Katie's motion? I'll second that. Thank you, Ken. And just to restate the motion that Katie has put forward and been seconded and now be open for discussion is to focus on the compensation table that was reviewed and endorsed by the ad hoc committee based on work done by Gallagher Flynn and the projections are that would that to be implemented in this budget it would increase the expense side of the budget by $78,000. Katie, you made the motion. I don't know if you have more that you would like to say to it or open up for other commissioners especially those on the ad hoc committee if they'd like to talk about this. I just like to comment that I thought that it makes sense to have this move to this schedule. I mean, when I was on staff I didn't think it made sense that certain long-term employees had a certain step and then couldn't go any further. I feel like this is a kind of no-brainer to take care of our employees. There's really low turnover here at the district and feel like if we're taking care of our employees that can see themselves establishing a career at CSWD and they know that they're gonna be continued to be supported throughout their career. It's more beneficial to the district as a whole having seasoned employees there who have been in the game for a long time means a lot to a lot of this operational stuff. So I fully support that. Thank you, Katie Ken. Yeah, I also wanted to say that both I do very much appreciate Leslie's sharp eye and concern for making the right budget that is for the benefit of the district as a whole and I was struck by the logic of the 25 steps echoing what Katie said. And I believe my understanding is that after months of review the Ed Huck committee was found consensus in supporting the Gallagher Flynn recommendation and I haven't really understood why that didn't come forward and I would love to hear from anyone on the Ed Huck committee about why they felt so supportive of the Gallagher Flynn proposal for the board, for the whole board. Thank you, Ken. You just reminded questions should be addressed to me and then I'd open it up just so that we're not so we're managing the conversation but I fully appreciate that request. So I'll make it on your behalf. While there are other commissioners particularly those who were participating in the Ed Huck committee work that would like to make a statement. I'm hearing none at the moment. I saw your hand, Leslie went up. I was gonna make a comment and then I'll get to you on in my role really as a member of the Ed Huck committee we hammered out a statement of philosophy that aimed to compensate our staff competitively, adequately but the aim of attracting and retaining staff and a combination of both salary and benefits and extending that table out to provide an incentive for a longer-term employees to have some more meaningful opportunity for meaningful staff salary increases. As presented or as indicated already on page 50, I believe it's 55 of the memo of the board packet memo from Amy regarding this, the new step schedule. $78,000 is to projected impact on the budget for this fiscal year. She's run numbers for the subsequent three years fiscal year 24 of $100,000, fiscal year 25 and additional $135,000 and fiscal year 26, $175,000. So I think there's some information before the full board to gauge the impact of this expanded salary schedule. Leslie, you may be muted Leslie, you're muted. Okay, thanks very much. Neither Amy's memo nor the findings of the ad hoc committee fully convey all the changes included in the recommended new salary schedule. And I'd like to speak to that right now. Aside from extending the number of steps from 20 to 25, which is a change that I would recommend and I find acceptable, there is a major change inside the pay structure. Right now, and this was a deliberate policy adopted I think maybe 10 years ago, I know Alan was on the finance committee at that time. So Alan, maybe you know exactly when this was happened, when this happened. But at that time, the finance committee felt that there was an inequity inside the yet previous pay structure, which had the effect of giving much larger pay increases to the highest paid employees. And thereby widening the pay gap between the highest paid and the middle and lower paid employees. So back then there was a policy change that reduced the percentage increases between the steps at the highest, at the far end of seniority progression. The proposal that Katie and Ken are supporting and that the ad hoc committee supported reverses that. And it includes much lower pay increases in the early steps, steps one through seven, and shifts doubles the percentage between steps for the higher, for the longer seniority steps. This redistributes the benefit of pay increases from the lowest seniority employees, lowest paid, lower seniority employees within any grade towards the highest paid, high seniority employees. And I ran some numbers and unfortunately, I don't know how to do the screen sharing. I actually have a spreadsheet which I will send to Sarah and Amy and anyone else who's interested. But basically I looked at grade seven and grade 14. And I looked at steps seven and step 14. And I calculated the impact on any given on employees in the mid steps compared to those at the upper steps. And what you find is that the difference between the current pay structure and what is being proposed in this amendment basically shifts pay increases from the lower paid people to the higher paid people. So just by way of example, crude example, under the current pay structure, someone let's say in grade seven, step five or six, after a 2% COLA when they go from step seven to step eight, they would let's say get under the current pay structure an additional $1,300 a year. Under the proposed pay structure, they would only get 1,000. The people at the upper end of seniority will get an additional 300. They won't lose 300. So this proposal redistributes the benefits of future pay increases from lower paid people, lower seniority, lower paid to higher seniority, higher paid. When and if you add in a change in a 2% cost of living to maybe a 4% cost of living, that change gets magnified. And then you add it up across the entire labor force and it is not trivial. According to the memo that Amy provided for us this evening, between now and fiscal 26, the current proposed step schedule that you're considering under this amendment will add with only a 2% COLA in it, half a million dollars to our payroll. And that's, and it's not clear to me whether this actually includes rollup, FICA and all the mandatory. So I don't know how Amy calculated this, but if there's, is there FICA in it or not, Amy? There is, it assumes however, that fall, it assumes status quo for staffing because we certainly don't know or can't project what FY24, FY25 and FY26 are. So we made assumptions based on status quo, 2% cost of living. Those assumptions are reasonable. Those assumptions are reasonable, but with only a 2% COLA, which I consider unrealistic right now, that's adding $500,000 to payroll. Over the course of four budget years, that's correct. Exactly, exactly. And neither Gallagher Flynn nor the ad hoc committee when it was meeting on this ever did any kind of forward forecasting. They never ran any numbers. You know, a consultant can come out with a great idea, but they're not doing the financial modeling for the company. Well, I don't know. That's our responsibility. Let's keep it, keep our discussion to the facts in front of us and I wanna be careful not to do it. The fact is that neither Gallagher Flynn nor the ad hoc committee did the exercise of figuring out what the impact was would be on future payroll costs, either with a 2% COLA or a 4% COLA. That's the fact. And that's the reason why the finance committee was not comfortable with this proposal. Okay. That's a good important point to hear, especially your explanation of that level of discomfort for the finance committee. If I could just remind the, just for a moment, very briefly, I do support and I think my colleagues on the finance committee would support extending the current pay structure up to 25 steps. That's a separate issue. And I think, I appreciate you're making that. I think it's important. So depending on the disposition of this motion, we may bring that, I would ask you to bring that back up for further discussion, but let's not get into that at this point in time unless other commissions would like to know more about it. But I wanna give Amy a chance to weigh in here and offer a response and perspective. Thank you. So, yes, there, I just wanted to clarify and I know some people have heard this multiple times. So I apologize, but our pay grade and step schedule changed in 2013. We did have from 2006 to 2013, a 30-step schedule with 1.25% between steps. In 2013, because we do this study every few years, that changed and grades one, or steps one through six are 2.25%. Step seven through 19 are 1.4% and step 20 is 1%. And the range between the grades is a 35% salary range or 40% salary range if it's higher. So that was changed in 2013. This proposal when we went out to the consultant came back with trying to accomplish several things. One of those was as they identified encouraging employee motivation and feeling of mobility for employees so that they did have, we talked about the career length of 20 years versus 25, which I appreciate Leslie just pointed out. She felt the finance committee was in favor of, it really just establishes a longer runway for our employees and keeps employees in the competitive range as identified by Gallagher Flynn. So one of the conversations that the ad hoc committee had was it's not recognizing tenure, our current step schedule. So employees are receiving that higher step and then it's declining over time and they tasked Gallagher Flynn with looking at another way to do that. So the proposal changes that to include steps at 2% 2.15% and 2.2% so that it's recognizing tenure. And I just wanted to speak to the COLA piece, the finance committee probably 20 plus years ago approved so that we had consistency within our plan using the Northeast Urban CPI class BC. So we've used that for the past two decades in our pay structure with the exception of a year where it was a negative number and we didn't take away and there was a high year where I think it was 5% and it was like four, three point something. Historically it's been low. I know that's changing as Leslie pointed out in FY 15 it was under a percentage and FY 17 it was zero, FY 18 it was under 1%. We know that that's likely to not be the case in future years, but it's not a guaranteed 2%. The current structure that we have is to look at the Northeast Urban CPI and see if that's a reasonable number to use and then the finance committee sees that every year when they do the roll up. So I just wanted to point out those, couple of additional pieces. Thank you, Noah, your hand was up. I just wanted to clarify some math. I actually have our current employee roster with the various step schedules, the 20 versus the 25. There happens to be an employee who's at grade seven, step seven and the difference between moving from seven to eight and the 20 step schedule is 1785. The difference in the 25 step schedule is 2078. So they're actually making about $300 more. Thank you, Noah. Other questions and comments from the commissioners, observations on this proposed amendment to the budget? I do have one other quick comment. The total compensation philosophy does outline that we will review this. And the wording is at a regular cadence so that we typically it's been five to seven years that it's reviewed. Gallagher Flynn's recommendation was three to five. So there is that backstop to review that. And certainly if inflation continues the way it is, we may be directed by Sarah to look at that before the three to five years because cost would be a concern. But if the 25 step schedule is implemented it doesn't mean that it's for a long period of time it could be reviewed sooner. Thank you, Amy. Bryn, your hand was up. Did it come back to me? I saw that Allen was trying to talk and was looking and he did your attention for that. So he's gotta send a good mail. Thank you. I missed you, Allen. Sorry, go ahead. You're muted. Allen, you're muted. Haven't spent 18 years as a select board member looking at these budgets from the municipal organizations that don't fall under the purview of local government. One of the things that the board always looked at is how the salaries is compared in those organizations versus what we were doing in the town. And I just wanna remind the board that in November we're going to be going out and asking the voters of Chittenden County for a significant bond issue. And I think that when the ad hoc committee was working on this, you know, part of our thought process or at least mine was to make the district look as positive as it could to two folks out there. And I think, you know, waiting a year to implement the new pay schedule is a smart thing to do. But that's just one voice in the wilderness. Thank you, Allen. Bryn, did you wanna make a comment? Sure. I mean, I sat on the ad hoc committee and was one of the group that did support the 25 sub-schedule. I do think that there is benefit to compensating for tenure. And I also think that the committee did not have the chance to look at the multi-year, year over year forecasting. And that was something that the committee said, you know, we're going to leave that to the finance committee to look at, you know, just to say like, okay, this is what in concept the ad hoc committee is comfortable with. Let's leave it to the finance committee to look at the numbers. And so that is what the finance committee has done. I think my concern is not, it's not quite the same as Leslie's, but I do agree that I have some concerns. I mainly knowing that the challenges that we will face with our capital budgets, staying within forecast with supply chain challenges, with inflation, with other anticipated contract increases that my greatest concern is that we don't increase user fees significantly for our residents and for our businesses when they also are facing financial hard, anticipated financial challenges and hardships. We're not, we will have some support to reduce the capital expenses as much as we can. I have confidence that Sarah and the team will look for grants and other funding sources to offset that cost. But I think that's one, those are one or two projects in the long line of capital projects that we know are anticipated. So I think I come at it from the angle of like, yes, I do support a 25 schedule and I wanna make sure that we're being fiscally judicious so that we're not, we're not looking at just FY23, but we are looking at year over year. So I think in that regard, I would support Allen's recommendation to at least postpone for one year until after bonding and give a chance for finance committee to just assess what the, what that full picture is with the goal of saying like, yes, the philosophy of the Adkehaw committee is to compensate our employees and our long-tenured employees. So I'm not usually a fan of postponing big decisions, but I would support Allen's recommendation in this regard. Thanks, Bryn. Other comments related to this motion to amend the budget. I think then we're up, Tim, you may be. This is more of a process question. This is an interesting issue. Is it appropriate that former CSWB employees are casting a vote about compensation of current CSWB employees? I'm not answering the question, I'm just weighing in. Yeah, from a process standpoint, Katie does not have a conflict of interest because she is not a current employee. And I think because, oh gosh, Katie, you may need to remind me, but I think you struck out on your own in 2017. It was 2017, correct, five years ago. Yeah, so there's been some space. And again, Westford was fully aware that Katie was a former employee when they appointed her as their representative. So I believe the town has confidence in her ability to cast those appropriately. I would concur with Sarah's assessment. And I also believe in reading the conflict of interest policy, this may be too, the line may not be that fine, but that commissioners or individuals may vote in favor of something that would generally benefit them indirectly, but not necessarily specifically, so that somebody might be able to vote for a reduction in property taxes, even though it benefits them directly, but it's done, the benefit is spread much more far and wide. But I think my opinion is that Katie would be entirely appropriate for her to vote on this. And if it's more of a concern, I guess we can ask Thomas to weigh in at this point, but I'm not certain we need to take the time to do that, Tim. As I said, I just posed the question, I don't know the answer. I think we've addressed that then. Other comments on this motion to amend the budget? I believe we're ready for the question. I believe this will not be a unanimous vote. So I would ask all the commissioners who are currently have turned off their video to turn on their video, and we will take the vote by a raise of hands so that the secretary, Amy, can record them and quickly add up the tally of votes to determine whether the motion passes or fails. So again, the motion is to amend the budget to implement the step schedule that was reviewed and endorsed by the ad hoc committee, which was originally developed by the Gallagher Flynn Study. A vote in favor of this motion would insert or would change the budget to using that table and would increase the expense side of the budget by $78,000. Leslie, do you have a procedural question? Yes. You know, last meeting, we went to a roll call vote simply because to me, trying to count hands, if you miss somebody who doesn't show up on your screen, no matter how they're voting, to me, the opportunity for error is not insignificant on a Zoom meeting. If you know it's not gonna be unanimous, why not do it by roll call just for the sake of accuracy and fairness? Thank you. Just somebody who's, you know... Yeah, we'll go ahead and do a roll call vote. Paul, is this a weighted vote or a one down one vote? It's a weighted vote. This is a... Thank you. So Amy, when you're ready. Yep, Burlington? No. Charlotte. Ken. Ken, you're muted. Sorry, yes. Colchester. Liz, you were muted, I believe, when you voted. I'm sorry, no. Essex. And Essex Junction. No. Heinsberg. No. Huntington is not here tonight. Jericho. No. Milton, I do not see Richmond. I do not see Shelburne. I apologize. My battery died. What am I? What's my note? The amendment for the 78,000 to go to the 25 step schedule. No. South Burlington is not here tonight. St. George is not here tonight. Underhill. Yes. And Westford. Yes. Williston. No. And Dwinoski. No. Motion does not pass. Thank you, Amy. So as she said, the motion has failed to amend the budget. We are now back to the main motion, which is the budget as presented. Further discussion. I would invite Leslie at this point. Yes, your hand is up. Please, Leslie. Yeah, I'd like to move an amendment to add five steps to all the current pay grades at the same percentage between steps as exists between step 19 and 20. Which would be a 1% step. Right. Yeah. That's clear to you, Leslie, your motion. Yes. Thank you. Second to Leslie's motion. Second. Thank you, Tim. We'll now open discussion on this proposed amendment to the budget, which I'm not sure I can clearly stated. So if either you, Leslie, or perhaps Amy, somebody could just explain for the full board the ramifications of what this proposal is. Sure. So we have six folks that are at the end of a 20-step schedule. So they were currently in the budget presented as a half a percent lump sum increase based on a successful evaluation. If this passes, it would be $2,738. So $2,738 change essentially for those six employees because we're adding another half of a percentage availability for those. So just for FY23 costs. Thank you. Tim, your hand was up. It came down. You're good. Leslie. Yeah, I'd just like to point out that even though it seems like a small increase for this year, it does put people at a platform. In other words, in the next year, they're gonna be starting at a higher level than they otherwise would if we did not make this change to the step schedule because when you get a lump sum, it's just like a bonus, a one-time check. It's not wrapped into your salary status. So this just literally lengthens the ladder. It's not a one-time bonus payment. So it is a little bit different even though it seems like a small change. Over time, it will have a bigger effect. Thanks Leslie, Tim. I just wanted to confirm. I think I did the math and I wanted to confirm with Noel that I didn't get it wrong. But so if the ACR in the proposed budget is, the assumption is $80 a ton. Tim, I wanna, we're focused on Leslie's amendment here on the salary schedule. I don't wanna introduce the ACR question at this point. Okay, so we're gonna go back to the total budget then. Oh yes, definitely. Go right now, we can only deal with the proposed amendment dealing with the step schedule. Other comments and questions relating to Leslie's motion to amend the budget. I believe then we are ready for the question which just for clarity sake, Amy, can you restate what the motion is? Do you have it? I do not. I didn't write it down, but it's to change the current. To amend the budget as presented to add five steps to all pay grades at the same percentage as the current 19, the current percentage between steps 19 and 20. So it actually should say amend to add five steps to the end of the pay grade schedule. At 1%. At 1%. And Leslie, that clarification is acceptable to you. That's fine, yeah. Thank you. And I trust any board members who are unclear as to what we're voting on, which again is to amend the budget to extend the current salary schedule. I just have a question. Is this for just this year's budget? And then are we, so this is just an addition for the five steps for this particular year's budget or is this staying in perpetuity, you know, for forever? Or I guess I'm just trying to understand is this a stop gap or is this in stone for just this year or for how long? What precedent are we setting? Sure, each budget is reviewed annually. So it can be changed in any way every year. So it does not have to be in perpetuity. We're looking at adding five steps to the pay grade scale and unless it's addressed as an individual item next year it's gonna stay in perpetuity. That is correct. Katie. So what does that mean exactly for the tenured employees that are maybe coming close to this year? Or is there a possibility for them that are close to that step to get, you know, be able to get their increase? How many people does this impact if we don't do this this year? If we don't, if we don't include the 25 step schedule this year? If we, I'm sorry, if we don't, if we do not do the 22 to 25 step, we just do what Leslie's motion was just included. Yeah, so right now we've had multiple people that have been at step 20 and have not received the, more than the half of percent lump sum. So what this provides to them, those six employees is the ability to move out on the step schedule based on a successful evaluation to step 21. And then if it were to stay, as Alan pointed out, and nothing changes in the next couple of years, those people that are on 18 and 19 that would have hit that end of salary range have that same ability to go out the 1%. Does that answer your question? Yeah, it does. Thank you. Other questions pertaining to this motion, which is to amend the budget. Lee. I may have missed it. What was the total impact gonna be for this addition on the budget for FY23? $2,738 is the estimate. It might be off by a couple of dollars with retirement affected at 6%, but it's, that's the quick estimate. That's what I thought I heard. Thank you. That's a good question for Clary on what you'll be voting on. Other questions? My sense is we're ready for the question. My sense is also that we will be able to do this by voice vote. If the results are unclear, then we can go to a roll call vote. But I'll call for a voice vote on this. All those commissioners in favor of the amendment, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Aye. Any abstentions? The motion carries. The budget has been amended. We're back now to the main motion, which is the budget as now amended. Tim, I'd like to turn it over to you. You were having, start to ask a question about the ACR. Yeah, I just wanted to confirm that what, if the assumption the budget is $80 per ton for the ACR, we're currently at 135. What's the full year impact if we say at 135? I think it's $2 million, but I just wanted to confirm that I'm not doing my math wrong. That would be like a $55 per ton difference times the number of marketed tons, which I think made $38,000. And then divided by two. Somebody got to calculate it there to quick run it. So it's a million dollar impact. So can you just repeat one more time, Tim, what you had indicated and I might be able to. If the ACR, we budgeted at 80, how much more cash do we generate if it stays at 135 for the full year? It's a million. A million. Okay, thank you. Is there any interested discussion on the board to direct a change in that ACR assumption, which is currently $80? I think that what's implicit in Tim's question is that should the ACR stay on the high side, there is potential good news on this budget. Leslie. I would only say that it's good news on the revenue side, but the same forces that are pushing up that ACR will push up all the other costs. They'll push up our fuel costs. They'll push up the costs of when we go to bid for some of this equipment. So I feel that it would be prudent to leave the ACR where it is because we're gonna have, my sense is from everything I'm reading in economic forecasting, there could be some ugly surprises when we have to go out to bid for some of these capital costs we're anticipating, some of this equipment, some of this consulting, everything's a little haywire and the uncertainty level is at unprecedented height. So I think we have to be very cautious and very prudent. Paul, just also to clarify, Leslie brings up a good point on capital projects and purchases. Josh is budgeting a higher than normal contingency for each project and purchase just because of those reasons. So normally we would budget about a 10 to 12% contingency and in some cases we're budgeting 20 to 25% because we simply don't know. So we are keeping a very close eye on that. May, I have some real estate updates. Abby, did you have a comment? Moving on, I think we have addressed the ACR question in this budget. Other discussion on the budget, any elements in the budget that board members would like to address. I am seeing none, I'd say then we are, I think getting ready to address the question as to whether or not the board will vote to approve this amended budget. Again, I think we're ready for the question. We'll do a voice vote. If the result is unclear, then we can go to a roll call vote. With all those in favor of approving the budget as amended for the fiscal year 2023, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? I declare the budget as amended to be approved. And now Sarah has a lot of work to do in the next several weeks, many meetings. We also point out that it is very good if when the schedule comes out, if commissioners can join Sarah at the meetings in your specific towns. And Amy will send out the schedule. We are still waiting for a few towns to confirm, but we do have the next week's schedule set. So Amy can send that out to everyone who's affected. And yes, I would love to see you there. And I can assure you, Sarah will do most of the talking and the heavy lifting. So not to worry, we don't have to be an expert on the budget. Next item on the agenda is item five, the Redmond Road Waterline Expansion ODF Phase II expansion. I will turn this over. I presume to Josh or perhaps Sarah. Josh, yes, please. We're on page 62 of your board packet. Correct. So the first part is the municipal waterline extension. So we brought this to the board about two or three different times. We've had a consultant working with us the entire time. The plan is to extend municipal water from roughly where the global foundry's entry is off of Redmond Road down to the compost facility. This is a multi-layered project because it will provide services to our proposed admin building and our proposed MRF. But currently the compost facility has had a problem with a water source over the last couple of years because we've got a lagoon that we pull water from for process purposes. But the lagoon's full when it's raining, we aren't necessarily that dry. We don't really require that much water during our processes. When it gets hot, our lagoon's pretty much empty. So that actually requires us to truck water from that fire hydrant that I told you about that was at the global foundry's entrance down to our compost facility, which is roughly, I think I wrote in there, 10 times more expensive to do that. So back in FY21, we'd kind of asked permission to kind of investigate this. It's come to full fruition. We've got a full set of design plans and we've gone out to bid. Our initial engineers estimate had us upwards of $800,000. Thank goodness. There's some hungry contractors out there. It did come in about $466,000. We had budgeted $400,000, but that budget was prior to cost increases for materials. For 66, I'm relatively happy with, but as Sarah indicated, we also added a 20% contingency in the event, any materials increase or we run into any complications. I don't anticipate complications, but the 20% is really just reflective of the environment that we're in right now during construction. So that's kind of the overview. We did go out to bid with three different, we actually went to about 12 different local contractors. We got three back. I've contacted all three and I've followed up with the Orman, Bush and Sons and they're bids accurate. They just were looking to get some work. They're a well-established and very good construction crew. I vetted all their references and spoke with the town about it as well. So I do think and feel that their services will be exemplary. Thanks for your overview. Josh, let's again, follow our practice of having a motion and then putting it on the floor for discussion. Can the motion be read please? I can read the motion. Be it resolved that the board of commissioners of the Chittenden Solid Waste District hereby authorizes the executive director to enter into a contractual agreement with Orman, Bush and Sons of Essex Junction, Vermont. The total amount not to exceed $583,000 for the purpose of extending municipal water down Redmond Road to the ODF in the town of Welleson, Vermont. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Essex moved second. Did I miss it already? Who's seconded? Greenlington. Thank you. We're now open for discussion and questions on the motion. I'll start out. I have a question. I think it's already been reviewed, but where does the money come from? The capital budget. Thank you. And there's money in the capital accounts to pay for this. Yes. And one of the things I wanted to point out is that we are, actually, I apologize. I said a 20% contingency. I actually put a 25% contingency because ductile iron is the requirement by the town of Welleson. So we are on a significant lead time. I think it's about five weeks. And with the volatility of metal right now, that's why I bumped at the 25%. But the difference in the contingency is around $116,000. We had in our capital budget included, roughly, strange enough, $116,000 to upgrade Richmond, but we no longer run Richmond. So that's why I felt comfortable putting that 25% contingency on this and not exceeding our capital budget, or approved capital budget total for FY22. Thank you. Other discussion from the board? Bryn. It may be preemptive to ask, do we have any sense for what cost estimates might be for the extensions for the admin building and for the MRF? This actually includes an extension up that Velco Road to service our admin building. So there will be a requirement to feed, we're going about 250 feet up that Velco Road. Once we're out of the cities right away, we can use PVC, which is about a third of the cost. So that'll help manage that price to actually hook up to both the admin and the MRF. And we spoke with the Williston Fire Department and they had significant concerns if we didn't connect water to the MRF for fire suppression reasons. So that's why we just decided to bring it all the way up at this point. And I see that use, the memo includes estimates for the water rates from Williston, maybe. Yes. Yeah, so when I include the water rates for Williston, I just approximated the cost between the trucking of water and municipal services. Has there been any indication from Williston that those rates will be increasing in FY23 or beyond? Not that I can tell. And we've actually, we reached out and contacted the Champlain Water District as well, just to check and it doesn't look like there's any volatility in that, other than like a standard rate increase, but nothing significant due to the current climate we're seeing, dynamics we're seeing. Cool, okay, those are my questions. Thank you. Other questions from commissioners? I think then we're ready for the question. All those in favor of the motion as read by Sarah, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, say no. Abstentions, motion passes. Thank you very much, Josh. And staff, we're now at the point of our agenda for a five minute break. We're running a little bit ahead of schedule, which is welcome. I have it at 739 right now. Let's reconvene at 745. Thank you. The video is off for many commissioners, but I'm going to trust that you're actually back in the saddle here. Maintaining our quorum. I missed when we entered the break, I overlooked the fact that there was actually two parts of item number five on the agenda, the second part being the ODF phase two expansion. Sarah had earlier today sent out the document, two documents that were not part of that package, in case you didn't have a chance to review them. We're going to pick this item up now and Sarah, if you could put them up on the screen, we will. Yes, they were sent out on Friday, so they came out kind of immediately after the package, but I do apologize if they were inadvertently left out of the package. So you did have those two days ago, but I'll bring up the memo just in case. And then Josh, let me know if you want the map shown as well. I think if we show the map at the end of the discussion, I think it would be great just so people know what I'm talking about. Absolutely. Okay. Everybody's ready for me to go. I can jump right into it. Oh, right ahead. Okay. So the second part of this, which is why I look so confused five minutes ago, is our Organics Diversion Facility. It's our phase two expansion. So if you guys remember about a year and a half ago, we had expanded our footprint in our wind row and curing area and our business sales area. That was to increase site efficiency. That was also to increase site safety. So this next phase is to really address the front end of the operation. So that's the approach to get into the facility and really kind of revolved around the scale itself that we use on site. The existing scale is quite old. I don't know if I referenced it in here and how old it is, but it is on its last legs. We do need to purchase one. We were approved to purchase one, but along and we pushed that early on because there were material lead issues on that. So we purchased it back in, let's say, November. And I think it's going to be ready to be delivered here in the next month. So this is the next step of that. And what we're planning on doing is we would like to fit up the existing H60 residents to become the new ODF administrative office. And that will be built in right next to the scale. We're going to increase our approach so that we can accommodate more traffic through and more efficiently. And then this approach will also separate the residential kind of leaf yard and woody drop-off away from the commercial drop-off of food scraps. So this is kind of like the final major capital investment we're performing with this site. So that's kind of the basics. We again went out, we broke it into two different bids. The first bid was to prep the site for putting the scale in and fitting up the new administrative office for the ODF in the existing H60 residents, which is what you see right here. We went out to multiple local contractors. We got four back. Farringting construction was the lowest upon awarding bid. We did multiple site visits. We're adding on redoing the roof of the existing garage because it got hit by a tree. And then we're also adding on some long-term efficiencies. We're going to redo the windows in the existing H60 house. So with that, we actually brought that Farrington construction cost up to $225,000. And what we added on was a relative apples-to-apples comparison on what everybody else would have done. And again, as Sarah had mentioned, I'm adding a 25% contingency onto that $225,000. And really that's because we're opening up an old house. We're performing construction. Right now, a lot of materials are hard to get, but we do have a good, pretty good working relationship with Farrington construction. Their communication's been wonderful. So we do feel that we're in a pretty good place to not exceed the $225,000 unless something comes up. So that is the first portion of this memo. The second portion is the site expansion, the approach itself. We're going to use an existing Jeep trail off of Redmond Road that we have. It'll increase the line of sight into the facility, so it's a safer approach into the facility. And then we're going to install a 30-foot-wide road all the way into the materials drop-off areas. And we'll see the site map here in a second. We went out to 12 local contractors on this one. We saw three come back. All three are very, very good construction companies. We're going to go with Orman Bushes and Sons on this one as well. We had them out multiple times and they are very aware of the scope. Again, I'm adding a 20% contingency to this, which brings the project to roughly $400,500. So that's kind of the basic overview of this project. And, Sarah, if you want to bring up the map, I can kind of give people an idea of what we've got going on. So we're, all right, that's great. So with the increased improvements, I didn't show us coming off of Redmond Road and coming into the site, but that gray area, that's that 30-foot-wide road. We're installing a 70-foot-long, 11-foot-wide scale to a little oversized to meet all trucking requirements. We're going to build out a scalehouse so that we can have the option of having an attendant there if needed, but the scale will most likely be unintended so that we can allow the person who would be in the scalehouse to operate the scalehouse halftime and also be on contamination control, which is new to the ODF, which is also very much needed at this point. The Laguna I was talking about and the Waterline project is right there, that big body of water. We will be removing that. We'll take out the liner. All of the cut and all the fill that we will perform in this construction project won't require us to bring any material on site. So what we cut to bring the road in will fill in the pond, which works out well. And then this will go hand-in-hand with the Waterline extension because you can see that W, that blue W line, that's bringing water into the site. But that's what the approach looks like. What we're also doing, if you look at the yard, you can see kind of a black outline. We're expanding our receiving area and we're going to start taking wood at the site as well, which we haven't historically taken. We typically aggregate everything down to the Wilson Drop-off Center, grind it there and then bring it up to the ODF site. So to just find efficiencies and not have to truck it more than once or handle it more than once, we'll just collect it all here. We'll grind it here and we'll use it here. So it's an efficiency of an input as well as aggregating at the site that uses the actual woodchips. Again, as I had said, the larger trucks will go up and around the yard and all the way around, this works there. And then they will go and they will dump at our tip floor and that keeps them separate from all the residential and other traffic that brings in leaf yard and wood because those people will go into the actual yard itself, dump their materials and then exit at a four-way stop on the way out. We do have this as a one-way approach, but we are designing the road to be 30 feet in width so that we can, if we want to make that change to two-way, we can do that as well. And that was one of the questions that the Wilson DRB had for us. So that's basically the project. Thank you, Josh. Sarah, can you read off the motions and then we'll open it up for discussion. Paul, do you want to take the motions one by one? Yeah, let's do that. This is your choice, okay. So the first motion reads, be it resolved that the board of commissioners of the Chittenden Solid Waste District thereby authorizes the executive director to enter into contractual agreement with Farrington Construction located in Shelburne, Vermont for a total not to exceed $270,000. The purpose of, and I should say retrofitting the 860 Redmond Road office, scale house and garage modifications in town of Wilson, Vermont. I have a commissioner willing to move this motion. Essex, move it. Thank you, Allen, a second. Second, Jericho. Thank you, Leslie. Discussion from the board on this motion. I'll ask the question again, where does the money come from? It comes from our capital budget. And we did budget conservatively when we did this in 2021. So with the 20% contingencies, we anticipate being at or under our budgeted amount for this project, for this capital project. Thank you. Additional questions. I believe them are ready for the question. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Opposed say no. Are there any abstentions? The motion carries. Sarah, could you read the second motion? Be it for the result that the board of commissioners of the Chittenden Solid Waste District hereby authorizes the executive director to enter into contractual agreement with Ormond Bushie and Sons located in Essex Junction, Vermont, for total not to exceed $400,500, the purpose of constructing a new approach road component of the phase two expansion of the ODF in the town of Williston, Vermont. Thank you. Someone to move this. Essex. Second, Jericho. Thank you, Leslie. Questions or discussion from the board? Tim. Josh, what's the payback? Is it a one year payback or a 20 year payback? You talk about off efficiencies. That is a great question. It is probably a 10 to 15 year payback to be totally honest, but this allows us to not have to significantly invest to increase the amount of food scraps we take on site. So right now as Sarah had indicated, our sweet spot is between five and 6,000 tons. If you remember two years ago, our sweet spot was 5,000 tons because of the efficiencies we've seen in our current capital investments, we can push that. With this, we can do a minimal capital investment and I would say hit 8,000 tons if we need to. So in that scenario, as more food comes in, it gives us the ability to exceed, increase our capacity. It puts us in position for that. So that's why I say 10 to 15 years, it depends on how much more food, source separated organics come in. Thank you. I just want to go on record. I think it's appropriate that we see some type of a consistent return calculation on capital investments going forward. Other commissioners, Lee. Thank you, Paul. This kind of question about the contractor, is this project gonna, what's the timeline with this project compared to the waterline installation? It's a great question. They go hand in hand because we can't remove the pond until we get the waterline in. So we have to wait for that lead time. There is some flexibility in the contractor that we could build the road around the pond and pause and wait for the ductile iron to come in. So that's really, once we get approval, I'm gonna sit down and negotiate what kind of timeframe we're looking at. Ultimately, if ductile iron meets its existing lead time, this full project of waterline and ODF expansion will probably be done end of September, early October. If we can be creative, we could probably get this expansion project done probably middle of July and then wait for the ductile to come in. Mormon, big enough, still the hand handle this type of project? Yeah, we had a long talk on Friday about that timeline and that timeframe. And they said, yes, they're more than willing to be flexible with us. Thank you. I have a question on process, Zach. Do we vote on this ball? After the vote? Yeah. So Josh, I'll ask. Oh, go ahead, Bryn. Did you get their flexibility in writing? That's gonna be part of the, I was waiting for approval from the board before I do that. And that's gonna be part of the contract. We haven't written up a contract yet. But that will absolutely be in the contract. Great. So I'll ask for the third time tonight the question of where's the money coming from but also how to compare it to budget? Same thing. Coming from the capital budget with 20% contingency we will meet or be slightly under our budget amount. Other discussion on this motion? I'm seeing none. I think we're ready for the question then. All those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, say no. That doesn't count. And abstentions. Motion carries. Thank you, everybody. No, I appreciate it. Thank you both for supporting this. Allen, you had a question about process? Yeah, I mean, I only spent 30 years putting out government contracts and I've never never publicly made a statement as to what the contingency was for the job. Whereas, you know, I mean, all that the contractor has to do is to come to this meeting and see that, you know, the board gave you approval up to, you know, X number of dollars and, you know, so when I put my first change order in, it goes, you know, 50% of that way. And then the next change order is another 25%. I just, that making it public like that, you know, where the contractor has a leg up on us, I just don't know that that's a good process, but I leave that to you guys to work. It's an interesting question. And again, we are clear with our contractors that when they bid a project in consultants, anyone who bids us a project, their response becomes part of the contract. And so we do discuss, you know, ahead of time often the need for contingency and they'll often bring them up, right? You know, particularly in this time of our history where everyone is telling us, this is what I can bid you now. Your best bet is to add 10% just in case. And, you know, our guys do a great job at holding our contractors to their initial response. I do think that it's important though, for the board to know the potential full cost of the project so that I'm not coming back to you with, you know, requests to add more money, like we had to, you know, with the truck. That one was ordered so long ago and it's taken so long to come in that we thought we had built in enough contingency and it just, you know, wasn't the case. So I hear you, Allen, and that, you know, when we're, it would certainly be different if we were to put out an RP and saying, this is our budget. We don't do that. We don't include that amount in our RPs. And we've also been dinged a little bit by some folks who chose not to respond because they said, well, how do I know what your budget is? They said, well, I'm going to look in our document. But we also want to get what you feel vendor, potential vendor is the actual price. And then we can make the decision internally and if we need to come back to the board, we come back to the board to say, like we did again with the waterline, this isn't what we had estimated. This isn't what we anticipated. So I do hear you in that respect that we don't want to, you know, kind of give that, but also like a blank check. It certainly is not. And if we take change orders very seriously, we don't see many of them. And we have very good project management. So I know Josh is going to, he knows us already, but he is tasked with holding them to the bid price and then having them justify new changes in writing it to Brent's point as well. No, no, I just hadn't seen it before too much. Yeah, and I appreciate the question and it gives me the opportunity to kind of explain a little bit of my thought process behind why I would bring it this way. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for bringing it up, Alan. We are now ready to move on to item number six on the agenda, the Household Waste Survey Report, which was a holdover from our March meeting. Thank you, Nancy, for waiting this extra month to make your presentation. I'll turn it over to you. Okay, I just have a notice that the host disabled participants screen sharing. Amy? Stand by. And while we're waiting for that, I'll just offer my observation that this is part of a, I characterize it kind of a longitudinal study. This has been done for many, many years and it's important to kind of frame I think what this district is all about. So it's a lot of good information that we need to internalize and understand. Nancy, can you share now? I can. Thank you, Amy. Good evening, everyone. I have a lot of good news to share with you from the survey. First though, I'd like to talk about the purpose of the survey, the type of survey conducted and the sample of households. Then I'll review the results and comparisons to previous surveys. And at the end, I'll provide some conclusions and recommendations. The survey's objectives are to quantify households waste management and waste reduction activities, measure the public's perception and knowledge of the current system and to gauge public opinion on various solid waste initiatives. These are also the survey help guide future facility program and policy decisions. We've been conducting household surveys roughly every two years with the last one conducted in 2019. We contracted with the firm partners in brainstorms to conduct the 2021 survey. They used a hybrid telephone and online model. Our previous household surveys were completed through telephone interviews only. We made the change for two main reasons. One, we hope to reduce the social desirability bias that can occur in surveys. Recent research has shown that respondents typically are more truthful when answering questions about their beliefs or their behaviors in online surveys versus with a live person on the phone. Number two, we also wanted to increase participation by younger residents and renters who have often been underrepresented in our telephone surveys. In our survey, respondents chose whether to complete the survey online or on the phone was their choice. 88% completed it online. Please note that reading potential responses online may have prompted fuller or different responses by residents to certain types of questions compared to how they may have responded in a telephone survey where possible responses were now provided. This and the expected reduction in the social desirability bias may explain at least in part some of the major differences between the results from the 2021 and past surveys. Our sample included 507 residents. There's an estimated plus or minus 4.4% margin of error. The research firm looked for statistically significant relationships between demographic variables and responses to questions and I will be highlighting some of those. Due to the small numbers of respondents in our smaller communities, municipalities were grouped regionally when they looked for geographical differences. Now onto the results. On this slide, you can see the public's impression of CSWD continues to be positive. Only 1% have a negative impression. This chart shows how responses to this question have changed over time. The dip in 2006 may have been due to very vocal opportunity to the district's planning of a landfill. This discussion died as a decision on a landfill was postponed to focus on increased diversion. The additional boost in 2013 may have been a result of a positive response to our handling of the persistent herbicides problem. Since then we have had a heightened digital presence which may have bumped this up further. Suggestions for improving trash and recycling services in Chittenden County were all over the board, but some repeated comments include increased education on what's recyclable, how to prepare recyclables, what are the benefits of diversion, what happens to our waste and recyclables and how are we doing. Suggestions also included increased emphasis on reuse and waste reduction, increased availability of recycling containers in public areas, consolidate curbside collection, use the latest technology, expand hours at drop-off centers, increase school outreach, provide incentives and the most common response was that no changes were needed. Regarding consolidate collection of trash and recyclables, we saw a huge jump in support as compared to 2019. The increase may be related to the different survey format with most respondents reading versus hearing this rather lengthy question and or it may be related to the fact that the topic has been in the news for a few years as the cities of Burlington and South Burlington consider implementing this type of system. The strongest levels of support were reported by individuals residing in region one which includes Burlington, South Burlington and Manuski with 75% choosing strongly support or support and by individuals who have lived in Chittenden County longer than five years. This chart shows how responses to this question have changed over time. Similar to previous survey results, there is stronger support for consolidate collection system for just household food scraps. As with support for trash and recycling collection, there was a large jump in support to 92% in this case. The increase may be due to the reasons just stated and or because of the food scrap being that went into effect in 2020. The strongest levels of support were reported by individuals residing in region five which includes Bolton, Jericho, Underhill and Westford with 81% choosing strongly support or support followed by those in region one or Burlington, South Burlington and Manuski. A majority of respondents expressed support for a MIRF bond, only 8% were opposed. Survey takers were asked why they did or did not support the bond or what additional information they would like to receive if they said they needed more info. Respondents main reason for support of the bond included environmental benefits, increased efficiency, additional items accepted, low cost to public, old facility needs to be replaced, increased recycling and or reduction in landfilling. The main reasons from the 8% of respondents that do not support the bond included need more information, not sure it is needed and cost. The 7% of residents who wanted more information were interested in more details on the project including timing and location, quantified benefits and environmental impacts and budget details. Moving from public perceptions and opinions to trash disposal and recycling choices, compared to past surveys, there was a big change in what residents reported as their type of service for their regular trash and recycling. 28% said they use curbside service. This is way down and I'll talk more about this in a minute. 28% said drop off center which is in the range of earlier surveys. 32% said both which is much higher than in the past and 12% said they bring their regular trash and recycling to work which is also higher. But total of 60% said they use curbside service or both curbside and drop off center. I believe some of the change is a result of the change in survey types. Respondents were not provided with possible answers in the telephone only surveys in the past. In 2021, the mass majority of surveys as I said were completed online where options were listed and may have queued the respondents. By listing both curbside and drop off as a possible response in the online survey, I think that many people with curbside service for trash and recycler selected this response because they also use drop off centers for what we call special recycling items such as yard debris, batteries, electronics, tires, appliances. They may think of these as part of their regular waste. Another possible contributor to the change is that a third of respondents said they bring food scraps to drop off centers and likely consider this part of their regular trash and recycling. This compares with 9% in the 2019 survey. This is probably the result of the ban on food scraps disposal that went into effect in 2020. 81% of curbside customers said they use docs for special recyclables. 87% of all respondents use the docs for some purpose which is similar to the last few surveys. This chart shows drop off center use over time and the trend has been up. The average rating of trash and recycling services is a little off of what it was in 2019 but still high at 8.3 on a scale of one to 10. Individuals who have lived in Chittin County longer than five years had a statistically significant higher mean of 8.5 as did those who own their home with a mean of 8.4. Means were also higher for individuals residing in region one, Burlington, South Burlington, Manuski and region three which includes Essex Junction and Williston with means of 8.4. The lowest rating overall with a mean of 8.1 came from individuals who rent their homes. Of those that work outside the home in Chittin County 81% said their employer has a recycling program. This is a 10% drop since the last survey. Perhaps people were more honest in the online version of the survey than those that had been interviewed on the phone in the last survey as we discussed earlier or there's been a drop in programs. 78% said their employer has a food scrap collection program, a big jump over previous surveys possibly because of the food scrap ban. It is still surprising those since most businesses don't generate any food residuals except perhaps for employee-generated meal waste and many businesses or their employees may have set up in-house programs to manage it. This graph shows the percent of employers with recycling programs over time including the dip in 2021. And this graph shows the same for food scrap diversion programs with the big jump in 2021. Moving on to waste diversion at home, 92% of respondents said they recycle at least some of their recyclables at home. It's disappointing that 25% said they put some or all of their recyclables in the trash. The decrease in recycling participation might again be explained by the change in survey type. Respondents being more honest about their behavior when not speaking directly to an interviewer. It may also be at least partially attributable to the pandemic and that some people were reluctant to go to drop-off centers as well as the fact that some drop-off centers were closed for several months before the survey was conducted. Among the 25% of respondents who reported they put at least some recyclables in the trash, residents in region two, which includes Colchester and Milton and region four, Charlotte, Hinesburg, Huntington, Richmond, Shelburne, and St. George engaged in this practice to a significantly higher extent than residents in other regions, 35% and 32% respectively. As did individuals living in the county for two years or less at 43%. 91% of respondents said they divert at least some of their regard termings from disposal. 66% of respondents said they divert all or don't generate any. 25% of respondents said they divert some of their yard termings and dispose some of their yard termings. This is up from 1% in 2019. 10% burn or put their yard termings in their trash. This is up from 4% in the last survey. Overall, residents in region two, Colchester and Milton, reported the highest rates for composting yard termings at home and for using a drop-off center for composting. However, they also reported the highest rate for putting at least some termings in the trash. Again, some of the changes we see compared to the last survey may be the result of respondents being more likely to report socially unacceptable behavior in an online format or due to impacts of the pandemic. Regarding how households manage food scraps, 74% say they currently divert all of their food scraps from disposal. Most use a combination of diversion methods. 51% say they compost at least some of their scraps at home. 40% use a garbage disposal. One third bring food scraps to drop-off centers and almost a third say they set out at least some of their food scraps for pickup by a hog. 15% of respondents said they divert some and dispose some of their food scraps. Only 11% of respondents said they put all of their food scraps in the trash down from 23% in 2019. Perhaps due to the food scrap disposal band going into effect in 2020. In 2015, 37% said they put all of their food scraps in the trash. So we've come a long way over the few years. There was a big jump in the percentage of respondents reporting that they put at least some of their food scraps in a garbage disposal from 15% in 2019 to 40% in 2021. Perhaps due to implementation of Act 148. Though use of garbage disposals is acceptable under Act 148, it is not considered a best practices option for most in our district. And this may be an area to add to the list for increased awareness. There was a significant drop in the percentage of respondents that said they divert all of their hazardous waste from disposal. And a significant increase in the percent that said they divert some of their hazardous waste and dispose some, including in the trash or down the drain. There was also an increase in the percent that said they dispose all of their hazardous waste in the trash. It is possible that the pandemic accounted for some of the increase in improper disposal methods because they would be the easiest ways to get rid of hazardous waste when people were forced to stay home. The depot closed for a month and the rover didn't operate in the previous 2020 season. It is also possible that respondents were more truthful in their online responses and having the options listed prompted more complete answers. Residents in Region 5, Bolton, Jericho, Underhill and Westford were more likely than others to report that they put at least some of their leftover hazardous products down the drain, while residents in Region 4, Charlotte, Hinesburg, Huntington, Richmond, Shelburne and St. George were more likely to report they put at least some of these items in their trash. Additionally, homeowners and county residents of two years or less were significantly more likely to use these two improper disposal methods. We may want to consider targeting these segments with added communication efforts to inform residents about the health and safety issues related to these two disposal methods. I understand there was some concern expressed at the last board meeting about the increases in disposal stated. So I want to add some additional information. First, the last residential waste composition study was conducted in 2020 with samples taken in August and November in the thick of the pandemic. Hazardous waste items were separated and weighed. Only 0.2% of the waste sorted was identified as household hazardous waste or about 12 and a half pounds out of almost 6,400 pounds. And that weight included the container the material was in. The goal of course is zero hazardous waste in the landfill. So we do need to continue our education efforts. Second, the question asked was what does your household do with leftover hazardous products? For example, chemicals, paint, automotive fluids, pesticides, batteries, fluorescent lamps, mercury-containing products. Not all batteries are banned from disposal and until fairly recently, there was no recycling option for many of them. Some people may have included these in trash disposal. Also, latex paint is not hazardous and some residents may have disposed of this in their trash. We don't have any detail on what they specifically put in their trash or down the drain that they defined as hazardous waste. We may want to add follow-up questions in future surveys. But the bottom line is we don't know for sure from the survey what percent of respondents put actual hazardous waste in the trash or down the drain or whether that practice has really increased or not since the last survey. For the first time, direct mail was not the top choice for receiving new information about trash recycling and composting. Instead, the top choices were email, newspapers and television, including access online. As with other questions, some of the changes we see may be the result of the change in survey types. Providing online respondents with a list of possible responses may have prompted more accurate and complete answers. Also, more people may be comfortable accessing information digitally. Overall, there was an increase in preference for every means of communication except the use of direct mail. Overall, I think we can conclude from the survey that district facilities and programs enjoy high participation. Residents are satisfied with their trash and recycling service and most use appropriate methods to manage their waste. While respondents are satisfied with their current trash and recycling services, a large majority supports a consolidated system for curbside pickup of trash recycling and food scraps. CSWD should continue to support communities considering consolidated collection and assists with communicating the benefits of this type of system. There is strong support for a MRF bond. Financial details and information on the benefits and environmental impact of a new MRF should of course be widely communicated before the vote. Most residents have a positive impression of CSWD and want increased communications. Use of digital media appears to be a good strategy to reach our members. Newer residents should be targeted with info on proper disposal of hazardous waste, recyclables, and yard trimmings. And we may wanna look at targeting particular communities. And finally, all residents and businesses should continue to be reminded about what materials should not go in the trash or down the drain and why. Are there any questions or comments? Can we go back to the full screen? Nancy, just so we can see all the commissioners. Sure. I wanna thank you for the presentation. Very thorough, a lot of great information in there. I did have one observation that it seems like our positive perception in the community recently still comes despite some of the negative press that we might have received in the last couple of years about our NOAV and our glass issue. I don't know if you have any comments on that. I do. And when we asked people or people were asked what improvements they would like to see, there was only one comment that referred to the glass. So I don't know. I mean, some people may not have thought of that and thinking of improvements, but that was something that only one person actually mentioned. Other comments and questions from commissioners. Bryn. Yeah, I wanna thank you as well for the thoroughness of the survey. I think it's extremely insightful. It is intriguing to see the change in responses from phone in relation to online responses. I guess I'm one question I have out of curiosity is when is the next survey and who will have the honor of doing that for CSWD? It will be in the budget if it's not already in marketing communications. So Michelle will take the lead on that with these. And I haven't seen that budget. So I don't know if it's in for next spring. Usually the actual survey takes place late very end of the fiscal year. And so it would need to be in FY23 budget if it's gonna occur next year. You certainly will miss you in your thorough special project. So thank you for the presentation tonight. Thanks Bryn. And thank you also for speaking to the HHW component. I certainly think that as we look at any toxics that could be in leachate, anything that CSWD can do to provide additional education and just awareness about our services is just added benefit to the greater community in Vermont generally speaking. So thinking from our core community here but expanding out into the destination of where those materials go via wastewater treatment plans, landfill, et cetera. So I do look forward to seeing additional outreach education on that. And I think that leads into some of the next presentations from Josh S.D. too. So one follow-up that might be for Jen Holiday. I don't recall there being any EPR this year or extended producer responsibility for HHW. But maybe you can jog my memory on that just if there was anything in the legislature. Yeah, thanks Bryn. There was a bill for the legislature. This is the second year of the biennium it was introduced last year. And it passed the House this year and made it over to the Senate. And it was in pretty good shape to get through the Senate but we just ran out of time. The Senate Environmental Committee is completely inundated with bills to get out. And this did not make the top of the list, unfortunately. But I think we will pursue it again next year. We can find sponsors easily enough. And I think because this is actually the third iteration of an EPR for HHW bill. It's been going on for six years now. Legislators are pretty familiar with the concept with the ideas and supportive. So it's just a matter of getting the time to get it through. All right, thank you for the refresher. Josh, your hand is up. Yeah, I just, I've talked a lot with Nancy and with Sarah separately about doing some of that outreach specifically around HHW because obviously those responses are concerning. And I like the approach that is laid out in the survey results in especially reaching out to those communities that were more than likely to have responded in those ways that we don't want. I will say one thing that I did with the help of Nancy is look at those waste sort surveys, the results and just to see what types of materials they were pulling out as hazardous waste. Because I was concerned and still I'm partially concerned that it's a reduction of access to HHW events that's causing that, by and large though it's materials that we take at all of our facilities including the drop-off centers that were found in that waste sort survey. So I think it's probably just a broader issue of HHW disposal and knowledge out there and some follow-up questions I think would help sort of refine those results and give us the more detailed information that we're looking for. Given those things that Nancy pointed out what type of materials are they really talking about putting down the drain and throwing in the trash and are they receiving the messages that we're putting out there? Like if you dry your latex paint cans out you can throw them in the trash. Those types of educational points that we try to make when we host rover events or we get people down at the depot and try to save people trips to the depot or save people trips to the rover and not necessarily venture out every time they have an empty aerosol can that they want to get rid of. So I think doing a little more of a deep dive into those survey responses would sort of give us a lot more information. I hope that we can do that. Thank you. And this is a late in this discussion but a reminder that HHW stands for household waste. When we do abbreviations and acronyms it was good to remember to try to explain what they may be. Other comments? Thank you again, Nancy, very much for this presentation and for the years of expert service to the district and to the board. Well, thank you very much. We are now ready to move on to item number seven on the agenda of a 2022 rover schedule that appears on page 115 of the board packet. Sarah or Josh? Yeah, we'll turn that over to Josh Estee, please. I won't bore with you with just rehashing the memo. I will take the opportunity to say if anybody knows of anyone looking for a job we have lots of great openings at the depot and would be happy to receive a resume for those jobs. We are certainly struggling in that realm and I won't miss an opportunity to make that plug. So I just hit the highlights. We heard a lot over the last year since we hosted our first post pandemic rover events that people certainly missed the rover coming around to their community. And we heard that loud and clear and wanted to find a way to compromise because we have seen over the years a significant reduction in rover visits corresponding with a significant increase in visitation of the depot. So we wanted to figure out how to blend the two while also sort of addressing the labor shortages we are seeing at the environmental depot in our hazardous waste program. So working with Gary Winnie, who's our facility manager we came up with this blended schedule whereby we would have a rover event in each sort of geographic region of the district. And then each year go to three other municipalities and do an individual event for those towns. By doing that we think we're giving a good opportunity for folks to have a couple sort of cracks that visiting one of the rover events. And then every four years give those folks who are potentially transportation challenged an opportunity to visit the rover or find a neighbor that's willing to do that for them. So this is just our most recent rendition of trying to figure out what's best for the community while sort of balancing the realities at the depot as far as labor and sort of the changes in demographics of who's visiting the rover and who's visiting the depot. So with that I'm certainly open to any discussion or any questions and happy to answer them. Thanks, Josh. And again, this is informational and an opportunity for engagement and dialogue. No particular, there's no motions behind what's being presented tonight. Katie. Yes, I reached out to Josh who was great. Thank you for responding. I did want to put in a little plug for Westford and getting on the schedule for earlier than year four based on the fact that we don't have a drop-off center close to us really and the environmental detail depot was pretty far away. So I understand your ones already planned out but I was hoping that we could get a bump from year four sooner than that. So we'll throw that out there. And just a reminder, I don't know if Josh had mentioned this but there's not a vote needed. And again, this is just kind of a representation of how the rotating schedule might work. So we're certainly open to revisiting and taking another look at year two. And we'll just continue to evaluate, as Josh mentioned, the usage and the need but we can certainly take another look at years two, three and four and just by judging how this first year goes, take a look and see if we need to adjust. Ben? Yeah, so thanks for putting this on the agenda for further conversation. I am thrilled that the rover is coming back. Again, just reiterating that Winooski is municipality that does have a higher rate of residents that do not own vehicles and that are renters. So between the two, just a population that may not be able to make it to the depot, having a rover is really valuable to our community so that we can increase access to these services to ensure that they don't end up down the drain or in the trash. I think along the lines of what Katie was just mentioning, I think I'd like to see a three year rotation rather than a four year rotation. Obviously there are challenges with the labor components and I leave that to Sarah and the team to navigate. And I do appreciate the reference to the waste management article. So purely speaking from preference on that side of things and it feels like a three year rotation feels standard for a number of inspections and that it feels like it's just more reasonable timeline than four. I hear you on the brain and I completely understand when I was managing the Rhode Island program we had a three year rotation but we also had more access to kind of event services. It's just a different time. I'm glad that Josh put in the plug for anyone looking for a position, a good job at the depot because that is truly the factor right now is the staffing issue. And it could be getting a little bit better with some colleges availability. Maybe kids are looking for an interesting summer job but then that brings us back into potential crisis in the fall within the next school. So it's, we really can't stress enough the dire situation that in particular the depot is in with staffing. We really could use some help. And I want to thank all the commissioners who have kind of distributed our notes or please on your local front porch farms. It's really important to get additional eyeballs on that and we really appreciate you helping us out with those but that's, we are certainly in approaching crisis and I don't want to, this is not a chicken little situation we may be having to have another conversation about the sustainability of some of these offerings. So we are going to do our very, very best and providing the service this first year but we need some help in the staffing. I will say, if we are staffed up and we have that ability adding essentially a rover a year is not a taxing thing especially if they're on the smaller scale than they are but the problem is exacerbated because we run the depot on the same day and so we truly are pretty taxed on those days especially when we are holding the Milton, the Essex, the Williston, the Jericho those are five person events that we run and then we try to also have three staff at the depot just because we're, that's our busiest day at the depot as well. So not to be a little, keep the point pressing but that truly is the kind of limiting factor here is staffing at this point. So. And is the staffing issue because it's a hazardous exposure to hazardous materials? Not really and it's just the general unemployment level unemployment level struggle that everyone's going through. I, and talking to some of my colleagues who are the district managers, I think of the four or five that I reached out to in the past month or so, we are all looking for people to work at in either their versions of the depot sort of in HW all looking for seasonal help. Some of us are looking for drivers. Some of us are looking for mechanics. We're all pulling from the same pool. And it's, you know, it's just the nature of where we're at right now. It's not a good one. I've had two open positions since September. Yeah. Full time positions, one mechanic and one recycling driver and almost zero applicants. It's tough. Other comments and questions from, from commissioners or staff on, on the Rover at this point. I suspect we'll be hearing more about this as the year progresses. Then we'll move on. I was conscious of the time, but we are remarkably on schedule. Item number eight, the solid waste management ordinance. And it's time for the board to take some action on this. It's been presented on several occasions over the last six months or so, I think. But a lot of work has been done. So we're ready for action. I would hope that Sarah, I'll turn it over to you and perhaps Josh. Yes. We'll turn it over to Josh and also Jeanine and Crime is here too. They both put in a tremendous amount of work on this over the past six months, as you said. So Josh, I will kind of describe the process that we've had to date and ask you to look for the recommendations. And then we've had some, you know, we've had some comments from the public and, you know, we, I just put like Josh, if you can run through kind of how we've responded to some of those comments and we feel some next steps may be combining a couple of those in particular. Sure. First of all, I do want to just recognize how much time staff has put into this. It's been a long haul. It's been a over a year and a half process at this point. And particularly call out the work that Jeanine has done keeping us organized and on track. It's invaluable certainly. So I do appreciate that and want to make sure that's recognized. So we brought the proposed changes to the executive board in December. Early January, we sent out a hauler newsletter to the hauling community, giving them the heads up that these proposed changes were coming down the line, giving them the early opportunity to review and respond to the changes. And then at the January full board meeting, January 26th, we came to the board requesting approval to go out to public comment period, a 30 day public comment period. During which we did hold a public meeting. We did not have any members of the public show up, but we did have comments from board of commissioners at that January 26th meeting, as well as from two members of the hauling community, Myers and Cassella, and incorporated those comments into a responsive summary, which was included in your board packet for this evening. There were sort of mixed reactions to the comments that were received. A lot of good points were made and some concessions made on our part. And I won't go through the specifics on those since they were sent to you. I will just say that on Monday, I sent over our responsive to summary to those who had submitted comments and actually received comments back for a second time last night from Cassella. So they were addressing some of the comments that we had made in our responsiveness summary, which needless to say complicates things a little bit here tonight, given that they were additional comments made, albeit outside of the public comment period. But there is one comment in particular that Janine and I discussed this afternoon and feel like maybe should be incorporated into the proposed changes. So I think there are a couple of paths forward. And Sarah, this is sort of new to you, but one is to have the discussion here tonight, get any final comments from board members and move this agenda item to next month's meeting where we can provide an update to the responsiveness summary, or I can try to, I can pull up the comments that are received yesterday, go over the one comment that we agree with and would like to incorporate and move forward with a vote tonight on the ordinance. And I sort of defer to you, Sarah and you, Paul, on which path we wanna move forward with, knowing how long of a, Paul, this has sort of been and without knowing what the may agenda looks like to the full board. Paul, just for, before additional consideration, I think the key point that Josh just made was that the comments on the comments are not part of the official comment period. A lot of use of the word comment. So the board does not be holding to accepting them as an official comment. However, as you said, you certainly can consider what the comment is. However, you should not feel like you need to then delay another month if you feel like you have another commission as a board and that the comment is, again, coming, the reflection is coming from staff as appropriate to be considered. There's not a compelling reason, nor a legal reason to wait another month to make a vote. So you certainly would be within your purview and prerogative as a board to continue the process tonight, if you like. There's also, there's also no harm in keeping it down the road, other than it's just another item on the May agenda. And you'll have to refresh me what the May agenda looks like right now. You'll be happy to know it's not nearly as large as this one. So we have a couple of items that will meet approval. We are reviewing the annual organizational mean what that looks like. It's a lot less substantive than tonight. My reaction is, I never know where a good idea comes from. I think it's always worthwhile entertaining ideas and thoughts and engaging with all of the constituencies. It shows good faith on everybody's part and working these things through. I was pleased to see that there was dialogue going back and forth. Staff was hearing some of the comments from Kasella and Myers. I thought that was a good thing. So if it's time for me to make a decision tonight, I guess I'd kind of kick it back. If they can, you've reviewed it, with one change that you're recommending, if that can be concisely presented tonight and we can accommodate that into our brains, I guess I'd be inclined to pursue that tonight. And Paul, Tom does have his hand here. Yeah, and we always work to the will of the board. It's not just me. So Tom, you had a comment and then Brandon, then we'll decide what we're gonna do. Yeah, so I don't understand the requirement to collect recyclables at least as often as trash. At our condo association at Jericho, we chose to have bi-weekly collection of recyclables. And we were offered the option of weekly, but we chose to go bi-weekly to save money. So Josh, I think if you could address that after we decide if we're going to add the other item or take it tonight, let's put a pin in that question for Tom, but we will get to that. Thank you. Bryn, do you have a comment on this particular question that might lead us in one direction or another? Yeah, I do. Thank you for the opportunity. There were changes made to a particular section of the ordinance after the commissioners had a chance to provide our first round of comments. So I believe the commissioners had our chance to provide some comments and then it went to public comment. Now I'm seeing the public comment response and CSWD's response to those comments for the first time. And my preference would be to at least move the conversation to May so that commissioners can have a chance to think about the impact and repercussions of some of the proposed changes that were made in following the public comment. Thank you. I really appreciate that, Bryn, and I think you've got some, you think deeply about this and we've got to work our way through it. So I think it's a very helpful comment to move this discussion item over to May. But again, this is really subject to the will of the board. If there's a serious objection to that, then we can continue tonight. Yes, Janine, and then Tim, you're muted, Janine. I got it. Yeah, I guess one of the things that I would like to understand too, if we're gonna do that, if there, you know, Bryn obviously has a particular concern with the things that have been presented in the responsiveness summary, if there are other commissioners that have read through that have similar things just so we could be comprehensive in our response and not kind of do one here and then one there. And so I don't know how much people have looked at it or how deeply they've read, but if there are other concerns or particular concerns that commissioners have, we'd appreciate knowing that, you know, now and then we can kind of address everything in May, if that makes sense. That's a point well taken. Thanks, Janine. Tim, your hand was up, it came down. Yeah, no, I'm just a little bit confused. It sounds like so we've gone through the process, we've proposed the changes, we've received feedback, but now Josh has said that we have additional feedback and we're not sure if we should push forward, but we don't know what that feedback is or what it was in reference to. Am I correct or am I missing something? I have not presented the feedback that we've received since the packet went out, that is correct. I think if the issue is a matter of time and brainpower that we have tonight, not only the issue that Josh has not fleshed out for us, but also the issue that Bryn has raised, that might actually take a bit of time and clarity for the commissioners to weigh on. Bryn, you mean? I guess I just have a procedural question. It may be worth articulating what the changes are proposed or the comments to the comments. And then procedurally I'm curious if there's a need to remove those topics from question and being able to move forward with the remainder of the ordinance. And then like if another round of public comment or public hearing needs to be made, so I'm not articulating that well, but basically do we need to remove the items in question? Can we move forward on voting on everything else? And then for the items that are still in question, do we have to go back out for a public comment? I would sort of be interested in hearing if Thomas has an opinion on this, but the way I understand the process is that we are not beholden to the public comment period, especially since we have already been out for the public comment period once before on the vast majority of changes. And that is sort of above and beyond what the requirements are set forth in Vermont statute that we could move forward with taking comments tonight and updating the responsiveness summary based on the comments we received yesterday, as well as any additional comments that commissioners have amending the responsiveness summary, providing that perhaps farther in advance this time in advance of the May meeting, so that we could vote on the full Solid Waste Management Ordinance in May, if only because when we approve of the ordinance within 14 days, that has to be posted in a paper and in five public places. So getting into that changes the timing a little bit as far as getting that out in the paper and posting it in public. So I'm wary of doing it that way, I'd rather do it wholesale. And I don't believe, and again, I hope Thomas can weigh in that there's a reason why we would have to go out for that public comment period again. Thomas, can you weigh in? I see Mike Cassell, your hand is up, we'll get to you in a moment. Yeah, so I think that the fact that you've had the solicit of the public input, I think if you want to approve the changes that have been vetted so far and are being presented, if you want to adopt that, you can certainly adopt it, but in order for the amendments to become effective, there is a process of posting a formal notice of it. And then within the 45 day period of time, if you have more than 5% of the voters within the district petition, then the question of the ordinance amendments need to be put to a public vote. I don't see a clear process by which you say, well, we'll approve these, but those won't go into effect until we consider some other changes. I think if that's the approach that the board wants to take, I think you're better off delaying it until you see what additional changes are being implemented. I'm not aware of any other requirement that you then have to go back out with a public hearing or request for additional public comments since you have received held a public hearing and have already received those public comments. I, as the chair would agree, I think we need to wrap this up and do it all in once and not pass part of it and then go back and through an amendment process. I think whether or not we have to deal with the public issues and notification issues, it just makes much more sense to deal with this in one concise action. Micah, Kasella, I'm interested in hearing what you might want to have to contribute on this and then we'll make a decision. No, absolutely. We would love more time. I think we submitted our comments on February 8th and we didn't receive anything back till the 28th or the 25th. So we get any response from staff. So we want to just do it right. We have a lot of customers that this can impact and actually even in one of the responses, actually when I looked at the ordinance to what the response was on that, you must do recycling weekly to match the weekly trash service. Actually that got addressed in the responses that that was going to be removed, which when I look at the ordinance, it's not. So I just think from my standpoint, we're willing to work through these things, but there are a lot of concerns that we did submit on February 8th. Kim? I don't know how many comments were received after the fact that we don't have visibility to, but does it make sense to have discussion on topics that we haven't received additional feedback on since we're all here, we've been nominally prepped for it with the understanding that we're not going to approve or disprove, but for discussion topics. I'd be happy to, I see Janine has her hand up. I'd be happy to pull up the comments that we received from Cassell yesterday and review them if that's what you're asking. No, actually it's just the opposite, Josh. It's, if we look at the, I don't remember the exact number of items that we received feedback on, but let's just assume that there were 10, assuming that Cassella gave additional feedback and we don't have visibility to on three of those, should we discuss the other seven issues or do we just want to table the entire thing until May? I say. Janine. Yeah, I think that's what I was trying to articulate earlier, Tim, was, if there are additional comments, if there are comments from the board on the responsiveness summary that we've presented, I think it would be worthwhile to hear those, whether we do it now verbally or I think that would be our preference, but understanding, again, that we are trying to give a comprehensive, and just to be clear, the responses, the comments that you haven't seen yet are kind of responses to our responsiveness summary, if you will. So it's not like these are new things that are addressed. It's just, they were responses to our summary and some of those, we might say, yeah, that's a valid point. Some we might say, we like where we are. So I just wanted to be clear that it's not, these aren't brand new things being raised, but yeah, so it would be helpful, Tim, for us, I think if we could hear other concerns that commissioners or if there are other people here that would like to voice those at this time, that would be great. Okay, what I'm going to say then is we have on our agenda, this discussion was to go through 9.20, it's now about 9.05. So let's give this another 10 to 15 minutes with pretty much a hard stop at that point. We're in discussion mode here, information sharing. We'll do what we can till 9.20 and then we'll move on to the next agenda item. So Josh, if you could start then with reflecting on Tom's comment about the requirement to have, suggestion to have collection and at least as often recycling interest. That was Tom Jocelyn's question from earlier. Sure. We actually removed that requirement for commercial haulers to collect. Solid waste desk and for disposal, sorry, mandatory recyclables at least as often as solid waste desk and for disposal. We removed that requirement for commercial haulers. However, we kept it for multi-residential units. So buildings with more than five units essentially, mandatory recyclables will have to be collected at least as often as solid waste desk and for disposal with the caveat that there is an exemption process in place by which the district can be notified that exemption is being requested and we can approve it on a case-by-case basis. Tim, your hands up. Yeah, Josh, can you please refer to the handout at which everything is listed as a C number? Which one are you referring to? Sure. C6. C6 is the hauler requirement that we removed. I don't know, you're saying that you're rescinding it except for multi-unit housing? It's a different section. This section applies to commercial hauler requirements and then there's a separate section for requirements for multi-unit residential in generator requirements that that change was also made in. And it's being kept in that section. I guess, you know, I would just, I look at this and I don't think it's a good idea for a CSWD to try and step in between the haulers and their customers as long as they're meeting the requirements of, as long as they're providing services to a lot of customers to meet the requirements of all to go ahead and dispose of their trash and the recycling in an appropriate fashion, but we shouldn't dictate frequency. You know, they, I don't see a lot of value here. Thanks, Tim, Alan. You know, I guess I would like to know what the reasoning behind the multi-family every week pickup is because, I mean, these haulers are in business to make money and they have roots set up. And, you know, I know like right now we pick up our recycling every other week, but they also stop at an apartment house that's a, you know, a quarter mile down the road and they would need to send their truck out every week to pick that up, but not pick up, you know, our development. I just doesn't, you know, time-wise I don't, somebody's gonna tell me what the advantage picking up every week at a multi-unit complex is for. Yeah, and we're not proposing weekly collection or proposing that it gets collected as often as solid waste doesn't for disposal. But most solid waste because of the summertime heat and everything is picked up every week. Bryn. Thanks. In terms of best practices, it really is advised that recycling and trash are collected at the same time. With curbside services, it gets very confusing for residents on what day, which type of material is supposed to be set out. So I would be, I'm highly in favor of what CSBD is proposing in terms of as frequently as solid waste collection. I think if folks are really maximizing and recycling up properly, they will actually have more recyclables than trash. And it would be an interesting study to see how many totes are out there that have vacant space because folks are recycling more because there are more materials that can and should be recycled than trash. So if anything, I think would think frequency for recycling should be more than trash. But again, that's not a good practice because then people will behavior wise, education wise, they will inappropriately put trash in their recyclables and that will degrade our quality of product at the merge. So I disagree with Tim. Ken. You're muted. Yep. I just wanted to agree that anecdotally that my recycle put out quantity is higher than my trash quantity. Just want to back up grin on that one for myself. Lee and then Kelton. Thanks, Paul. So in Burlington, we have weekly pickup. And I think in regard to consolidated collection, one of the big options would be in every other week recycling pickup or those options that we have explored. And just knowing, going out on a truck myself, I've grabbed onto a 95 gallon container, rolled it up to the truck, flipped the lid open. There's one newspaper in it. It's just, but these people are trained that recycling comes every week. And that's what they do. I think there's an education piece to it. I don't think it's ever going to change in Burlington as far as weekly or bi-weekly pickup. So yeah, I don't know, I'm kind of on the fence with this one. It definitely contradicts options in consolidated collection that we just saw the presentation on and that we've had our own study with. Thanks, Lee. Kelton. Yep, I would just caution to say anecdotally, everybody on this call probably recycles more than they put in their trash versus what happens in reality. I think you got a very engaged audience here. So just from seeing what happens in reality in the everyday working this industry, I would just say that's not the case for everybody. And I would just put that out there. And part of that is why in our response, R6, we sort of acknowledge that we have that same anecdotal information that recycling bins are overflowing while trash bins stand empty, but we haven't been able to quantify that information yet. And without that strong data to back up the decision on the hauler piece, that's why we've sort of moved to move that down the road, but maintaining sort of a focus on it so that we can try to justify that change in the future. Because we hold the position, which is why we propose the change to begin with that Bryn and Ken have put forward. But we want to just be able to back it up with good data. Bryn. And I also want to speak to just the broader picture of should we build and structure the system for how it should work and how we are striving towards making it work, especially with looking towards bonding a new recycling facility, or should we create a system that reinforces the status quo? I have a recycling container that's twice as large as my trash container. And so they come every two weeks and it works out very well. And these guys are in the business and they know what they're doing. And I don't think that we ought to be limiting what they can do. I don't want to see my trash rates go up because they got to go to the apartment house down the road every week to pick up recycling. And Ken, yeah, Ken. Yeah, well said, Alan. You know, CSWD is not a hauler. And our haulers have commercial relationships with all of their customers who are our constituents. We can absolutely go ahead and place requirements on the haulers if they're going to go ahead and bring recyclables or MSW into our facilities. We should not inject ourselves into the relationship between the haulers and their customers. We can certainly put incentives in place to go ahead and incentivize good behavior, but we should not place requirements and there's, I'm trying to remember where the most interesting issue, we've got one, the really interesting example, like C10 talks about the fact that, okay, we're going to find the hauler with the expectation that they're going to go ahead and pass that fine through to their customer. I don't think there's any legal power there, but that's a really good example of the fact that we're going, we're placing, we're trying to inject ourselves in between the hauler and the customer. And I don't think that's our role at all. I think it's inappropriate. Other comments on the solid waste management ordinance to get before the, before other commissioners and staff before we move on to the next item. Yes, Brynn. Yeah, it's interesting you bring up section 413 or comment C10 that ordinance was previously adopted and it has been in effect for six and a half, seven years. So clearly it is a legal structure that has been in place. And my comment actually relates to section 413 in that I don't agree with the proposed, some of the proposed changes as presented. I think it's a bad policy decision to in effect have a municipal mandate that allows, that issues a penalty on generators that is retained entirely by the private sector without any parameters around how that money that's collected is spent. I think if there were some directives that the money that's collected needs to be utilized for education programs, then I would be more comfortable with section 413 but as presented here, I can't support this. Katie. I'd just like to say too about 413 that again, what Brynn said, this has been actually a part of the ordinance since I worked there. This was enacted as the band materials fee at the transfer station and it was actually, we had a system where the transfer station would be in communication about these types of loans and it did work and it's been in there for a long time. There is an incentive actually in the ordinance for people caught in its unit-based pricing, which is people that have the incentive to recycle more because it is cost less than disposing of trash in an essence. The unit-based pricing gave people a reasonable economic incentive to dispose of less trash and recycle more. So there is incentive in the ordinance as well. So I just wanted to mention that as part of incentives for the ordinance. Thanks, Katie. We are approaching 9.20, any final comments? Clearly we're gonna be discussing this again in May, but a good opportunity to get some of these issues out and aired, Tim. How much time are we gonna allocate to this in May? You have a suggestion. A lot. I think these are some, these are very significant issues. This is some very deep philosophical stuff. And just because something's been in place for six years doesn't mean that it was appropriate when it was passed. Can I also reiterate Janine's request that the board provide us some additional feedback now that you've seen this part of the response of this summary. Josh, I think we can probably get the additional item out to the board as a follow-up so that you have kind of a fullness of what we've received to date. But if commissioners, if you could, again, get your concerns, your thoughts, even if they're not quite formed, just get some responses back to us so that we can again incorporate that into the next month's meeting. And then hopefully kind of help to structure some of the conversation that will be very, very helpful. Lovely. I just have a process question. If we're gonna handle this in May, are we gonna sort of take it section by section because this evening we've had sort of essentially people pick one or two issues in sort of random fashion. I'd like to suggest that to the extent we're gonna devote considerable time on this as Tim has suggested in May that we go through it in a deliberative section by section. So we can at least dispose of certain sections and then we might flag something where we need more work or whatever. And I just feel that this kind of approach is not efficient and I hope we can do it a little more efficiently in May. I think that makes a lot of sense because certainly take each change and corresponding comments in turn. All right, I'm going to say we've reached a lot of time for discussion on this. Time to now move on to item number nine, the executive session, which is informational that Sarah will present earlier today. She sent out the link to the executive session. So we'll entertain a motion now to enter executive session. I have that language. Yes, I move that the board of commissioners of the Chittenden Solid Waste District go into executive session to discuss contract negotiations with respect to the city of Burlington Flint 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 move Jericho. Poston. Thank you. All those in favor of entering executive session, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Seeing none, we will move over into executive session. We're willing to entertain a motion to exit executive session. So moved. Yes, thanks. Thank you. A second. Second Burlington. Thank you, Lee. Presumed there's no discussion on this. All those in favor of exiting executive session, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? We are now back in public session. Like we're ready for a motion if it could be read out by Sarah. Be it resolved that the board of commissioners of the Chittenden Solid Waste District authorizes the executive director to extend the MOU with the city of Burlington under the same terms and conditions to no later than December 31, 2022. Thank you, Allen. A second. Second, Jericho. Can I just clarify something? Should I recuse myself from this vote? Yes. Okay. I recuse myself. Thank you. Any discussion on the motion? All those in favor. Sorry, I just want to confirm our word. So we're going to continue to receive payments per the original schedule. Yeah. Same terms and conditions. Correct. That's, okay, we're ready for the question. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Lee, I think you could... Mr. Recusal. Recused. Motion carries. The last item on the agenda is other business. Is there any other business to bring before the board tonight? No. And here in my... I want to compliment Sarah or Amy, whoever did the projections on the schedule. It was spot on. It's 9.57. Only two minutes. Thank you all. Appreciate you all. Long meeting. But entertain a motion to adjourn. Promote. Second. Westford. Thank you all. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Good night, all. Good night, everyone.