 You have two. You had two? The ordered one. And then one of the things available for worship in Montpelier came in. Sold it. Workers has the Arabian. And those are pretty sweet too. They've filed all these new, you know, totally different looks too. You know, versus cars for years looked the same. Now you've got these totally new looks coming out. That's better than I know. Like the look of the Tesla truck. Oh God. Tesla truck. It's still haven't seen one up here yet. No, I haven't either. We're going to be talking the day we see it. Okay. We're ready. We have a recording in progress. Good evening. Today is Wednesday, January 24th. 2024 is approximately 603 PM. I'd like to call to order this public hearing of the Chittenden solid waste district. There is a quorum present of the board of commissioners. The purpose of this meeting is a public hearing on the proposed item on the agenda itself. Are there any requests for additions or changes to the agenda? There are no requests in the meeting room. I'm seeing none via zoom. Therefore, we will follow the agenda as presented in this meeting packet. I don't number two is the public comment period. Are there any members of the public present via zoom or telephone who wish to address the board of commissioners on the agenda? On the issue before us on this public meeting. There are none present in the meeting room. There are not online. There being no members of the public present in person or online. I'll close the public comment period. We're now on to item number three, which is the public hearing for the fiscal year 25 proposed preliminary budget of the Chittenden solid waste district. I'll turn it over to our executive director, Sarah Reeves. Each year we are required to have a public hearing about the, our proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year. And this budget is. Posted as required by state law. And I'll close the public hearing. I'll close the public hearing. I'll close the public hearing. I'll close the public hearing. I'll close the public hearing. I'll close the public hearing. I'll close the public hearing. I'll close the public hearing. The public hearing is posted as required by state law. And copies of the budget have been available here at the office, but the highlights for post it as well in the board packet. And again, we are projecting total revenues for fiscal 25 in the amount of 15,777,404. 691,466. Thank you, Sarah. I'd also point out that this budget will be further refined through a process, primarily through the Finance Committee of the Chittendot Solid Waste District with several meetings. Well, at least one in meetings in February, where we will be going through the budget in detail, likely that there will be some changes to the budget, but the bottom line expectation of coming in with a budget with a slight surplus will no doubt be maintained. And we intend to, if there are not significant changes in the February meeting, we'll bring, so they will bring the budget to the board in February, but it is likely that they would come to the board, but we'll come to the board very much. Thank you very much. Are there any questions or discussion on the proposed preliminary budget? Comment in the chat box. I don't know if there's a chance to see that. It's just about the camera. I do not see any hands raised with questions or comments about the proposed budget. This has already been presented to the board. We do not need a motion to accept it. This is really for public information and public discussion. I don't want to close the discussion prematurely, but I'm not hearing any discussion. This is for members of the public to comment on the budget if they would like to. I move we close the public hearing ethics. Seconded Wilson. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded that we close the public hearing. Sorry, any discussion on the motion? I'm sure we require discussion on that. All those then in favor of closing this public hearing, please say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Any abstentions? This public meeting is now concluded and closed. Thank you very much, everybody. We'll now move on to the regularly scheduled meeting of the Chittenden Solid Waste District, our January meeting. Again, we have a quorum present, both in person and via Zoom. First item on the agenda is the agenda itself. Are there any requests for changes or additions to the agenda? Hearing none and seeing none, we will then proceed and follow the agenda as presented in the board packet. Second item on the agenda is a public comment period. Again, we invite any members of the public who might be present to address the board of commissioners with any issues or concerns that they might have. And no members of the public present. Seeing that there are no members of the public present who wish to address the board of commissioners will close the public comment period and move on then to item number three, which is the consent agenda consisting of the minutes of the December 20th, 2023 board of commissioners meeting, program updates, executive director update, finance report of warrants, cash and investment in reserve balances and also a summary of the Q1 financials. Any requests to pull an item from this consent agenda? I don't wanna pull anything, but I wanted to make a comment just thanks. Congratulations. I thought the recap of the minutes of our December 20th meeting, specifically the meeting with Josh Kelly was excellent. And I think it's a document that we would want to keep foremost in our minds board of commissioners and perhaps even refer back to, but I thought it was an excellent recap. And while not everything may have been clear, it really is probably the best documentation we can have of that discussion we have at the state. Congratulations. Thank you. And we wanted to specifically make that portion of the meeting much more explicit than we normally might in minutes. And normally we don't provide this level of detail as far as who's asking a question and responses, but due to the importance of the topic, we felt that it was really important to do so. And also the recordings of the meetings are not necessarily kept in perpetuity. So in order to have a good reflection of what was said, the meeting and the conversation, we intentionally added more detail than we would necessarily do. And so for that specific purpose to be able to go back in future years and to have a good sense for the conversation and the questions that the board asked. Thank you, Sarah. And that was, again, these are just comments, not a request to pull this further discussion or question. Again, I have not aware of anybody asking to pull anything from the consent agenda. Therefore, this consent agenda will be accepted as presented in the board packet and we will move on then to item number four, which is the materials recycling facility, the current and capital projects update. This is something that has been brought before the finance committee and the executive board, but it certainly is an important official to come before the full board for thorough review and discussion by all board members. And with that, I'll turn it over to Sarah to walk us through it. Thank you. So I wanted to provide an update on our, really our two MRFs. The MRF that is of the construction and the MRF that we've been operating in for the past 30 years. And just to address any questions that the board may have and just again, give a progress update. We are moving along very, very well with both the architects and the equipment manufacturers. The equipment system is fully designed. It is complete. So that is very exciting. We're now down to picking paint colors, which is always exciting. So the goal there is to keep the facility light and bright and reflective of CISWD's branding, but also to be able to have certain parts of the equipment easily identifiable to the public so that when we bring them on tours to see what they've paid for, we can say these are the things that are doing all the sorting for you and this is super exciting. So we are literally picking paint colors today. So that's super fun. So the new MRF project is the one that you received overwhelming support from the voters of Chippin County on for the bond vote. And as I think we all can understand, costs are coming in higher than estimated. So as I think I've been found its way for the two MRFs, old versus new. No, so we're just gonna kind of keep with old and new for now. New, we have to be constructed. And that's why I'd say old, but it's current. So I'll try to make sure that I'm being clear on that. So now I'm talking about the project in progress, the new MRF. So both components of the project have come in over budget or over estimate. So the equipment price came in about $800,000 over the initial bid from 2022, early 2021, actually. And we knew that that was going to be coming in higher, which is why we went back out to each of the three respondents to get a new estimate. And then that new estimate from each of them came in over what the board had approved in 2022. So, but the three revised estimates were extremely close. So we feel confident that the cost of the system is what it is. So that did come in $800,000 over the first approved contract. Had we, and the reason we went back out to each of the three respondents was because the initial awardee told us that they were going to have to increase the price by a million dollars. So we knew regardless that equipment system was going to come in over the cost estimate. So the design, system design is now complete and it is within, it is at that approved item. So that might add and will not change. It's higher than we wanted, but it does not change. In that cost estimate though, what is now reflected in 16, eight, that is the outlay. We did also receive a grant from the recycling partnership for $250,000 to help cover the cost of one of the optical sorters. So we will be getting that money back over the course of the construction. And we can request reimbursement in phases. So we just need to request the first phase now and then we'll continue until completion over the next two years or so. The building is really where we're seeing significant over estimations driven by the size initially of the building. So when we were first estimating our needs, we were looking at a 60, the 62,000 square foot building. The current Murph, the existing Murph that we're operating in right now is 37,000 square feet. So we were looking to just about double that square footage. The initial estimate was for 72,000 square foot building. And the reason there was the processing system also grew by 7,000 square feet. We had estimated 30,000 square feet for the operating system. It is coming in at 37,000 square feet. So basically squaring off that 37,000 square feet led us to a 72,000 square feet. We are working on shrinking the size of that building. The system size has got to stay the same. It cannot and should not get any smaller. In fact, we were agonizing literally over inches to try to regain some passageway for equipment on the north side to the extent of, can we grab another foot here? If we grab another foot there? Very, very tight. But we feel that where we're at now on the processing floor, the system side is safe and is adequately spaced and gives enough access for mechanics and for repairs, which was critical. So that is not changing. Where we can shave some cost potentially is on the tip floor and on the bail storage floor. And that's important because the main driver and the cost of this building is the cost of steel. That is the primary driver as is excavation. The excavation, the site work, the earth work is dependent again on the size of the building but also the length of the drive in the road in. And we are bringing, starting the road at just across from the Global Foundries Entrance on Redmond Road. And we did debate whether we should move that entrance further down Redmond Road closer to the Velco Access Road. A determining factor to a couple of, to not do it that way. There's a very, very large wetland just before you get to the Velco Access Road. Excuse me, so we absolutely must avoid that. And we also want to not bring a lot of trucks by the one resident who faces the field. We really want to do our best to not disturb their life anymore than is already disturbed with the trucks running down Redmond Road. And so it was really important to us to be sensitive to their needs. Even if we went in directly across from their house it would not save a ton of space on that road. But that is, that is a driver. Brenda, you have a hand up. Did you want to ask a question at this point? I'm just curious for the neighbor that we're looking to accommodate. Do they already have fencing or other screening from the road? Would it be something worth considering of offering to build a fence for them? So where their house sits, it's where they're looking directly at the field. So directly at the site, right in front of them. And they have good trees and visual buffer. We will be planting more visual buffer so that essentially what they're looking at will only be vegetation. So that'll be part of our landscaping plan is to make sure that there are a couple of gaps in their sight lines that we cover those gaps. So directly in front of their house they'll see nothing but trees. So we've already talked with them about being sure that we're planting native trees and things that are designed to kind of help buffer noise. And where we're bringing the trucks in it's going to be as far back as we can get it into the property while still then maintaining a straight line into the building. And we're doing that also to again avoid another wetland. So it does help that it's coming in further down the road from them going basically down the middle of the site and then we will screen as much as we can. So over time should they decide to stay and they've been there for a very long time. They shouldn't see anything if they're looking right out their living room window. It was really sound and vibration that we wanted to avoid by bringing the trucks in further down by the Global Foundry's Entrance. So that was, yeah, no, thank you. So that's where some of the big part of the costs are. When we were looking at the road we did narrow the width of the road and that is having some savings on excavation, fill asphalt, et cetera. But we really want to try to claw back as much as we can and we're four million over. I'd love to try to claw back two million. That is proving difficult. So this is still in the estimation is still in the estimate phase. We have not gone out to bid yet. The construction documents are being developed now and the RP will go out in February. So that's really when we'll know how close our estimate is. The estimate also contained a very large contingency and that was because there was someone knowns in the estimating, 20% is extremely high. Industry standard is about 10 to 12. Right now we've achieved a back to about 15%. As the estimation gets closer and we get the actual bids we'll know whether 10 to 12% is adequate and it may be. So as we get more of those knowns coming in. So that will take another chunk off of the overage as we're looking at it now. We definitely don't think 5% is enough. It needs to be at least 10%. And this does not include all the community room, the educational room. So we will continue to see grant funding for that. And that probably has a higher likelihood of being funded, believe it or not. So there's also the potential for seeking private sponsorships and corporate sponsorships that would make sense from many of the great companies that are here in Chittenden County. So that's something I would need to talk with the bond bank about I'm confident that the square footage of that room will not trip the restrictions on the bond covenant. So I think we have a couple of different options there for that room, but that is not part of this $14 million estimate. Leslie has her hand up, I don't know if you want to... Oh, yeah, I had Leslie. Leslie, did you have a question? Sorry, I'd mute it. I have a question on those contracts that you were referring to when in your discussion of the appropriate contingency. Is there anything in those contracts that enable the contractor to invoke an additional cost? And I'm trying to remember what they're called in the industry when you make a change in the design or the... Change order. Pardon me, what's that called? This is... Change order. Pardon me? Change order. A change order, yes. Is there anything in the change orders that might make us vulnerable to something exceeding any contingency, any reasonable contingency? I mean, you're talking about, well, when the actuals come in, then we'll know what the contingency ought to be, but could there be this other change order factor in major construction, you can always run into some unforeseen something that to where the project would be vulnerable to further unexpected cost impact. Yeah, that's something that... And the bid documents, the RFP has not gone out yet. It'll go out next month, mid next month. And that is something that I am sure will be brought up by potential bidders when we go through the pre-bid meeting, would be how do we intend to manage change orders? Because you're right, that could blow a project completely out of the water. And our initial guidance will be as a municipality, we are really requiring you as a bidder to be as confident as you can be with what we are presenting you. And the documents are very, very detailed. And any change orders, what we can do too, is we would have to, I think, set a limit on that. Certainly nothing can be done, no change orders we processed without several people approving that. It could be something where, depending on what it is, it's not critical, then it doesn't get done. I think the danger is in some of the unknowns. And that really is more with site work, right? It's the site work and cause significant overruns. I don't know what you're digging into. But we've done those pre, pre, not wells, but they did it at geo, geo tech. Just called test pits. They've got to test pits. So we've done seven or eight of those around the site already. So we under have an understanding for the soil composition. We have an understanding for, we know where the ledge is. There is no out ledge actually on the site. We know the contours. We know the condition of the soil. So we've done quite a bit of pre-work, pre-civil site work on this. So hopefully that will give a good confidence level to the bidders to be able to provide us an accurate estimate of what the work will be. But Leslie, you're right. We can only put in what we hope will be enough. I just want to understand how we're anticipating that, how we're gonna handle it. I understand you can't make any definitive statements right now. I just want to understand how that issue fits into the whole process. At this point, I would say I have some other questions, comments, but I'd rather have other people ask their questions. And when you're finished with your presentation, they're finished with their questions. I'd like to be able to come back. Thank you. Thank you. So yes, if I can just, I'll just go on a little more and then we can come back to questions again. So one of the questions that we was asked in the finance committee and the exec board was basically related to, since we did not get the EPA grant, the Swiffer grant, and this is coming in at four million over what the initial estimate was. Do we have the funds to be able to do this project? So included in the packet, we had it anyway in the packet, the latest update for the reserve funds and there are only two reserve accounts that are restricted in totals about a million dollars. The rest of the reserves are unrestricted. So we do have cash on hand in the reserve funds to be able to tap into should we need them at the time to fully pay for this project for the overage. We still want to not go over the four million. We want to bring that down as much as we can. We're still looking at the possibility for additional grant funding, but really it's in the savings of steel, of the concrete and the construction, the fill, things of that nature. We've been able to shave five and a half million dollars off so far in value engineering. We're looking to do at least another half a million, try to find that anywhere we can and then keeping those change orders, like you said, Leslie, to a minimum. So we do have the cash on hand to manage the current overage, but we are working very, very hard to continue to minimize that overestimate. Okay. Henry has his hand up. Henry. Yes, Sarah, that's quite the effort you got going on there. And the one thing that came through repeatedly is space. Is this, I'm not going to tell you folks how to do your job, but just a question. Is this Murph being planned in such a way that given more money in the future and need, it's readily expandable and not interrupting the existing floor plan as much as possible? It's a great question. Thank you. So where we've shaved off some of the cost is on the tip floor, so the inbound where the inbound material comes into the facility and on the bail storage floor where we stack the finished product, that's where we're saving concrete and steel. So the tip floor will be able to be more readily re-expanded. So we could grab that space back easier than we could on the bail storage floor. The reason for that is that we're changing the roof structure to get further save money on the steel trusses. That will make it a little more difficult, quite a bit more difficult to expand back out the bail storage. However, we have plenty of room on the actual site to construct bail storage outside of the building if we needed to. We could build a pole barn, we could build a coincident hut elsewhere on the site that if we needed to have additional storage, we could do that. Also in the bail storage area, we have two bays for tractor trailer trucks that we can load material directly onto the truck and not have to store it on the floor itself. So we have, and the floor itself right now is basically being doubled just about doubled on the bail storage. If for some reason we needed to grab some storage space on the tip floor, we have just about tripling the size of the tip floor. So we have additional storage on that side. If we, for some reason, we're not moving any material for weeks, and we're looking at weeks where we would be in trouble, probably closer to a month. If we didn't move anything for a month, we would be in trouble. Also, depending on what we do with the turf we're in right now, if we do decide to keep that facility, then we also have not that we wanna load material and unload it twice, but we would have storage capacity there as well. So we have options for bail storage, both onsite and offsite if we need that. Thank you. Thank you. And you're gonna stay on the new turf still at this point. I know Leslie, you said you had some follow-up questions, just give other commissioners a chance their first crack at a question. Anybody does raise your hand. Yeah. We'll do Bryn since you were a little bit older in your first question, then go to Leslie and then the next commissioner after that, that will be Alan. Well, this should be just a quick question. So I just wanna confirm what I'm hearing. The overestimate for costs, is that two million or is it more than two million? The overestimate on the building is just over four, four million. Okay. And the overestimate on equipment? With 800,000. Okay. And I'm assuming you've exhausted all possible opportunities for acquiring that additional funding support? No, not at all. We're still looking at additional grants. They won't be in the millions, but they could be in the 700,000s, but we'll take it. So now there are some opportunities. And I think I'm just saying like a 4.8 million more with a lifetime of the Murph being 25, 30, hope 30 years with, you know, anticipated technology improvements. I caution from downsizing too much without exhausting all opportunities. I don't want us to be in the same place where we are with our current Murph where we try and do an update and it still doesn't meet our needs. So I just wanna put that out there. Yes, no, understood. And that's why we're not short changing the actual system, the processing system itself. That is remaining as designed. Where we're shorting are, you know, the concrete and the inbound tip floor and the nail storage, but the system itself is not changing. You're economizing. Yeah, I mean, you know, and we already did kind of economize down on the system where, you know, from seven optical disorders to five, but five gets us everything we need now. And it's adjustable for the future. We left in space for robotics. So that is an option for the future as well. So we did not change the design to eliminate that. So we feel like we still have good amount of flexibility for new packaging as it's developed over the next few years. But we will need to upgrade the equipment in about a decade. That's standard, that's normal. Leslie and then Alan. Thanks again. So I responded to you by email, Sarah, after I first saw the report. And one of the questions I raised or is whether it's possible to find other sources for steel, for example, you mentioned steel being a significant cost driver or excess cost driver. What it wasn't clear to me is whether the pricing of the steel comes as part of the bid package from the builder. And if so, what can we say to the builder about getting creative in sourcing materials? I mean, are we just assuming that they're going to do that or are they going to rely on their usual suppliers? I mean, the supply chains have loosened. In many areas, there've been dramatic drops in prices. I've been told by knowledgeable people in the construction industry. So I just want to know, I want to understand better how much we're like three steps removed from the price, you know, the sourcing and pricing question, I guess. Yes, we're definitely not that far removed and you bring up an excellent point. And one of the, if we had been awarded the EPA grant, we would have been required to buy materials covered by the grant being sourced in the United States, including steel, which at the time was significantly higher than say, Canadian steel. So in the bid documents, we will be requiring the bidders to source the best pricing and to be transparent about that in their bid so that we have a means to compare and contrast the bids and to be able to question the potential bidders about their sources and why they're selecting certain material. And, you know, this is why it will take a little bit of time to analyze the bids. We're looking at about a six week period. So the construction recommendation will come to the board in April. So we're going to take, you know, good six weeks, four weeks to analyze packages. But yes, we will be very clear that this is a municipal project that we are constricted by what we can pay, what we're going to afford, that we are expecting them to source very competitively and that we will call them out on that. And if I could just slip in another question on the seeking of new grants, is there anyone at the state government that is sufficiently knowledgeable and willing to help us find other federal grants? There's so much federal money sloshing around out there for infrastructure projects. I don't know if we have anybody knowledgeable at the state level to help us with that. And if not, perhaps another, perhaps one of the regional or national associations for municipal solid waste might be another source of assistance in locating more substantial grants than what you've referred to. So yeah, we have been very, very clear and direct with the state in our need for assistance with this project. And so we have been talking certainly with A&R with other departments at the state about accessing some of these federal funds, because you're right, there's an unprecedented amount of money available for infrastructure projects. It's not free-flowing. There's a lot of hoops and strings and for some reason, our project doesn't fit neatly into any of the buckets that we've been made aware of so far, but we are continuing to look into additional buckets. So we do have, again, we've had requests out to Josh Kelly who was here last month. He's very well aware of this. We've talked to his counterpart in the climate office. We've talked to folks at the EPA directly in communication with them about their different projects. But we'll talk to anybody about wherever we can overturn any rocks. The issue for our project is that we may be too far along in the process to be able to access some of the funds. The grantors don't always like to give money to projects that are in progress and are not in danger of failing without the grant money. So had we been any further behind, it might possibly have increased our chances, but we can't take the chance of being any further behind. I mean, the last part of the memo refers to why we can't do that. So we're in a funny little predicament, a weird spot. It doesn't mean that we won't get anything. There may potentially be another round of Swiffer. If there is another round of that particular solid waste infrastructure grant money, we could be put back into that pool. So it's a long shot, but there's some potential there. But there is again, there's climate money, there's energy money, there are different buckets. And so we do have our fillers out to each of the ones that we're aware of, but would happily accept assistance from anyone. Well, I just have to say, I'm really sorry to get in Ellen's way, but what concerned me was your response to Bryn, because if you're saying that in 10 years, we have to plan for a revisit of the facility in 10 years. In 10 years, will we have replenished our reserves if we're going to draw down those reserves for this project right now? What's the answer to that one? Yeah, so it's not a complete rebuild. It's an upgrade if needed, and we may not need it. But the equipment has a certain shelf life and we may want to get a different model of an optical sorter, we may want to add robotics. So it's not a complete gut, and another 17 million, it's something significantly lower. So we're talking about, we wouldn't be replacing conveyors or not replacing bunkers, it's certain components that like your software needs an upgrade, your computer needs an upgrade, those kinds of things. Your question about how we're replenishing the capital reserve is a valid concern, and that is part of where the conversation at the budget process about increasing the Solwaste Management fee, we need to start looking at ways to be able to make sure that we're putting money into that capital reserve. Some of the other projects that may be on the list for other facilities, we have to take a hard look at those. And are there other projects that we're going to be looking at those, and are there grant opportunities for some of those projects, which don't fit neatly into the recycling world, but might fit into the compost world, or into the HHW world. So looking for creative funding of some of those other products, if they end being really hard to say or on ourselves saying, are these necessary? Or are they nice to haves? And being very strict with ourselves on that. I think we're quite nearly at the point where the big, big projects are complete. So I think we're in a good position to be able to say, okay, our annual capital spend is now going to start to come back into a more reasonable, rational place for every five years. Every seven years, there'll probably be a bump. So how do we plan for that? And that is something that we do want to, as a board and staff team, be having some very pointed and directed conversations about strategies to manage that expectation. Thank you, and thank you, Alan, for your patience. Alan and then Kelton. Yeah, as someone that has over 35 years in bidding public funded projects, I would strongly recommend that we stop talking about our anticipated design cost and construction costs in public section and take that to private sessions so that it doesn't come back and buy this during the bidding process. I think it's very, very important. Thomas may have something to say with respect to making it into public private session, but I don't think we ought to be talking about prices in public session. And Alan, you know, I thank you for bringing that up. I had the same question for our architect team. And, you know, asking does, you know, do we, in the bid documents, do we say this is a project price of X? Or do we say we have estimated this project to be Y? Or do we leave it completely to the bidders to tell us what they think the project is going to cost? And their professional opinion was, well, we've seen it all three ways. Well, that's helpful, but not helpful. So your point is well taken. And I think though, in this instance, in this, because, you know, this is, you know, being mostly funded by a bond that was voted on by the public, it is spending public dollars. I do think that we need to be very transparent about where this project is heading. But certainly when we get talking about the specifics of the bids and contract negotiation, absolutely that is executive session conversation. And, you know, as I said, I feel that even before that, you know, my experience is that a lot of these contractors talk to the same subcontractors and there can be some collusion. I hear you. And that's where it will be incumbent upon me and my team to push back on what seems reasonable, unreasonable. And, you know, really push hard on the bidders and just to make sure that we're not being unduly taken advantage of. I hear you, Alan. Milton? Yeah, just curious on the East Coast or to similar sized mercs that are handling similar amount of material. Are they around the 70 something thousand square feet or what, like, where are we at size-wise, you know, with our amount of storage compared to mercs of a similar, I guess, stature? Yes, so we are building to be able to accommodate upwards of 70,000 tons annually of material. So if we're looking not at what we're doing now but at what the future capacity could be, this building size is slightly larger than the average Murph of that capacity. However, keep in mind, there haven't been many public Murphs built in the last two decades, right? Well, public or private, like anyone handling a similar amount of material. Yeah, so the systems were tended to be smaller, more compact, the actual sorting systems, the way the materials flowing through tended to be more compact. We wanted it to be a little bit more wider, with a little bit more space to open. In part four, again, ease of maintaining and doing preventative maintenance, replacing, repairing just movement, safety throughout the facility, being able to combat dust and have air movement through. So we're slightly larger, I would say, on average for a light capacity. But also, we don't want to be shorting ourselves on bail storage and on tip flay. Any Murph operator will say you can never have enough of either. We're saying, right, and yet the cost is there. So I don't think, I think a question may be, are we overbuilding? And as far as what is needed to move the ultimate goal of material through the system, this is a very well and adequately sized stuff for that amount of material. I'm only coming from the perspective of seeing, okay, we have a certain, and we've talked about the certain number of tons in Chittenden County and the certain number of tons coming from outside Chittenden County and also coming from the private, where when we're getting funding, even where I worked before, for something we were pushed on the size that we want by private, by our private industry. And I just think, I just look and I worry if we're going too big and making it something, I don't know, I just worry that we're making it too big to cost so much more and we might not need that capacity. I mean, obviously I get five days storage, especially in a facility where we have one baler and when that goes down, that's a major thing, but in a facility with five days of storage when we probably won't be going down because you have redundancy with the two balers. You know, I just, I think it's definitely worth, you know, I think there's, you know, as the board, we definitely have to look and say, does this make sense? Can we save? You know, because obviously I see we're talking, oh well maybe we'll just raise the fee we charge on trash and you know, anything that makes it more expensive to live in Chittenden County and run a business in Chittenden County. I know I'm personally not four and I know, you know, it seems like it's just, oh we'll just raise that money, but that drives value to, or that drives serious costs to businesses that create waste to homeowners, that create waste to anyone that lives in Chittenden County. So I just think that, you know, I don't take that lightly raising any fees that we operate or we charge. So I just, I don't know, I'm just looking at the thing holistically. I'm just curious if we, you know, 4 million, 4.8 million over is a lot of money. And I just know from where, you know, working in the private industry, if we said we were 4.8 million over, they would, you know, it would come back and say, all right, so either we're not doing the project or what are you doing to get the 4.8 million gone? So, you know, that's just where, you know, again, I think that's, you know, perspective of, you know, looking at the representing, you know, our constituents of Wilson and making sure that, you know, we're not making stuff more expensive. I just think it's worth expressing that opinion at the meeting. And Jen wants to comment. Yeah, I just wanted to comment. Keep in mind, it'd be helpful actually for you to see the floor plan layout, but more than or at least half of the building itself is containing the equipment. And as Sarah explained, there's no room. We're right up against the walls on all sides, just enough for it to get heavy equipment around it. And so the building is what it is. Like there is no making it smaller at that point. So then you're just looking at the tip floor and the bail storage, which we did have to cut. So we did cut that as much as we thought was smart. And, you know, in terms of weighing the future versus we need to save some money here. So, you know, we've taken a really hard look and we just were in a rock and a hard place in terms of what space we have for the equipment. And the pricing is reflecting the increases that everyone has seen in everything over the past three years. So when we were first looking at this project in 2017, 2018, it was probably two thirds of what it is now. So we've seen one third to maybe even 50% higher costs just in four years. And that is completely outside of our control. Does that mean that we should not have done this project? I don't, still don't think so. This, the Murphur I know, again, this is the last half of the memo. We cannot continue to do the business in that facility. And there was no place to expand there on that site. And it doesn't build it for the future. There doesn't offer any advancement for the future. Packaging is changing rapidly and we have to be able to adapt. So that is why we are scrapping for penny every dollar that we can, because you're right, four million over is a lot. And yet I still feel that this project is needed, not just for Chittenden County, but for the state. We fully serve 55% of the state with Addison County. That's another 4,200 tons that we're bringing in. There are going to be other opportunities for us to process more material to maximize the investment. So it is a lot of money. We just happened to catch it at the peak of pricing. But to Leslie's point, there has been some relief and there's starting to be some relief and we will push the contractors on getting that relief to us. I just wanted to offer a comment. And Lee, nobody knows what the future will bring. We can have economists and everybody making predictions. From my perspective, I think there is a good chance of growth in Vermont. We know we are getting climate refugees. I think I'd read somewhere in the last couple of months, Vermont actually had one of the largest net increases on a percentage-based per capita basis of its population. The state is now starting to address the housing issue, affordable housing, and if we get that resolved, there could potentially be a lot more people in Vermont. And it behooves us, we're all lay people, but I guess I'll go back to Bryn's comment. We have to make sure that we're not building something too small. Certainly we don't want to build something too large. And to answer back, like I begin, I'm not opposed to, I think we need a Murph, you know, again, clarifying my statement, we need a Murph. I'm not opposed to that. I just, from the perspective of any project for many private businesses, if they say they're going $5 million over, there's got to be some hard conversations. And, you know, again, there's a lot of nice to have. It's nice to have the equipment really spread out. It's nice to have everything like that for the Murph of the future. But I, again, I just still think $5 million, or, you know, $4.8 million, I'm looking at raising what's effectively a waste tax. It hasn't been raised in 12 years. But again, I just, I don't think we should have raised it. You know, and I know that last time what Alan said is when you did raise it, the whole idea was to not raise it in little amounts. So the whole idea was for it to be for the long haul. But, you know, I just look at any, you know, any way to not make it more expensive to live in. And that's what we're doing, right? So I'm letting the board know that we know this is not, we can't just say, oh, well, that's it. Throw up our hands that we're actively engaged in finding every bit that we can to reduce that overage. Knowing that, as Jen said, the system size is what we need. And it's not just what we want, but it is what we need in order to manage the material, not just the materials coming in now, but what we don't yet know will be developed and being able to set ourselves up to manage that material. Lee and then Paul Sabler. Yeah, I think the longer you wait, the more expensive it's gonna get. I don't believe materials costs are dropping that quickly. You know, in comparison, city of Braillington, we used to be able to pave a mile of road for $400,000 now it costs us over a million. Steel is a big driver of costs. We have two trucks that we ordered in FY 22. It takes so long to make those trucks, they no longer make that model. So we had to go with a year model of 2024 and it was an additional seven and 10% respectively for each truck in $16,000 and $20,000. And steel was a big driver of that cost increase. So I think it's something, I get what Pelton's saying, but the longer you wait and thinking about, language added to these contracts to put these guarantees, you make it so restrictive when we won't either even get multiple contractors, but if it's so restrictive, they'll just put some high cost in there just to cover their selves in case there is a possible change order or something they find in construction. But those are just my thoughts. Thank you, Paul Steele. I was just gonna make comment to Willison's concerns, which are valid, but I think the last time when we actually raised the solid waste management fee last time, we estimated that we would have to raise it again after about five years and we're now at year 12. So I mean, the staff has done an excellent job managing our budget to eliminate, to prevent that. So again, I don't think we'd be profligate in our spending to do that, yeah. Heather. I just have a cool question about the value engineering. I was wondering if you could comment a little more about where you'll be getting hopefully the 1.5, 1.7. Yeah. I know you mentioned trusses maybe, but like what else? Exactly. So yeah, the drivers on the cost are again, the site work, the earthwork, the digging, paving as Lee mentioned, the steel involved in the roof system itself, the concrete that is going down into floors. So where we're trying to value engineer, to get more value out of that process is in the type of roof. So we are doing a truss roof over the processing system because we can. So that saves cost. On the tip floor, we can't because we need to have the loaders go freely back and forth and you don't want columns in the middle of the tip floor. So we have to have a certain type of roof structure there. So there's no savings on that, but we can skinny up the floor to reduce the amount of concrete that gets poured down and rebar that is used there. On the bail storage, we didn't necessarily need a wide open space. We could get away with having three columns. The loader, the forklift driver will need to be very careful and skilled and we will put ballards around each of those columns to protect them to make sure that when accidents happen, they don't cause lots of problems. But that is where we can change the roof structure from a very expensive clear span, which has no supporting columns, to one that is columned with trusses. That is just a list, costly type of a roof structure. The initial road was designed to be very, very wide, very spacious and roomy because we had the room to do it, but it greatly exceeded the minimum requirement. So we went back to what is the minimum required and then we did a little bit larger than that so that we could have good sight lines for trucks crossing and for the scale, but that shrinking of literally of the size of the road again saves on the paving, saves on the excavation. So it's those kinds of like nitty gritty things that you look at, but they have a ripple effect down across this structure. Hopefully minor inconveniences for a fair amount of savings. Right, exactly. And when you're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars or a million dollars, you do it. As long as it doesn't impact safety and the efficiency and the efficacy of the facility. And we feel comfortable that these particular changes were to right off the top, were able to be done without affecting those conditions. Thank you. No, thank you. We've been talking about the new Murph up till now. Are there further questions kind of centered on the new Murph because Sarah's going to talk a little bit about the existing Murph as well. We can cycle back if other questions come up, but seeing no hands raised, I think let's move on then to the second part of your presentation on Murph's. The second part is that the, where we are operating now has, we've been in operation for 30 years. We're going into our 31st year. And that is basically what you can expect from a workforce of a building like this without doing major, major repairs and replacements to the building scan itself. And so we're looking at right now, because everything that was covered under the operating contract with Costello, we had a contract addendum that covered what they would be responsible for as far as replacements. That is now expired. So they were responsible for basically 20 years, 10 years and 10 years of that equipment. Now that's all on us. So conveyors and engines and things like that, false CSWD. That has again been a known part of the contract going back 20 years. So that plus, again, issues with the roof, it's starting to leak in various areas, needs to be patched. All of these things are going to be adding up to about $350 to $375,000 additional investment in this building that we intend to decommission in two and a half to three years. So it's to let you know that there will be necessary investment to be made in this building in order just to keep it running. This is nothing fancy. It's not any bells or whistles. It is duct tape and rubber bands and making sure everyone who works in the facility is safe and that the material is processed appropriately. So, this was again an update on that. Some of the pieces will be able to take with us. So rolling stock is coming with us to be used at the new facility. Obviously we're going to reuse that baler, pulling that out, compactors. We can use anywhere in the district. Half of the glass processing system is going to be installed into the new merge. So not everything is going to be not useful in that building. We are taking some of the material and then at the end of the decommissioning, depending on what we all decide was going to be the fate of the building, we will look to sell what we can sell rather than scrap. But if we can sell the conveyor system, sell pages, whatever we can, we will to help recover some of the cost of the decommissioning. Or if we decide we need to keep it to reuse it for other purposes for the district, we will do that. So, but that decision is a good ways away still at least a year, a year and a half away before we have to actually decide what we want to do. But this was to let you know that the old gal is requiring some additional work in this one. Alan? Yeah, I think that if we are going to end up keeping the building, you know, any fiscal plant modifications, renovations, improvements that we do, well, you know, it's just as we move other activities into the building also. If you're fixing a leaky roof that fix, you know, it should be more than for a couple of years. Right, and that's where, you know, we really do want to decide the fate as best we can of that facility so that we can plan for those kinds of repairs if we want to because the roof should be replaced. For example, it should not just be patched. We're patching and we've been patching for a while, but yeah, if we intend to keep it and use it for different purposes, that will be part of the recommissioning into whatever it becomes and part of the cost of that, the investment in that facility, yes. Agreed. But for now, we patch. Further questions or discussions on either the new or the old Murph, or excuse me, the new or the existing Murph. Right. All of this discussion is informational. We're not looking for any action tonight, but it's really important. I think there's one of the major functions for providing oversight, representing our communities and constituencies and giving it a strong indication to Sarah how we think she should be proceeding. And clearly, you know, we're all concerned about the cost. We would like very much value engineering. There are questions about the adequacy of making sure that our plans are adequate for our estimated future needs. And as we now know, you know, sticking with the current Murph continues to be not a reasonable alternative to proceeding with the plans that we've been working on for the last three, four, or more years. With that, I think then we can conclude this portion of the meeting. Hearing no other questions or objections. Next item on the agenda is executive session. The town of Williston property. Are we intending to go into executive session to discuss this? Amy, do we still not have any members of the public? We don't. So we don't have to go to another link. We can just stop recording and CCTV would have to just step off. Okay. Well, I think we could do that then that saves a little bit of time and inconvenience for those folks who are on Zoom and perhaps for Amy as well. So as we have confirmation that recording has stopped and CCTV is no longer present. We need a motion. Thank you. I'll just read the motion. Motion that the board of commissioners of the Chittenden Solid Waste District go into executive session to discuss contract negotiations with the town of Williston regarding property and where premature general public knowledge would clearly place the district, its member municipalities and other public bodies or persons involved at a substantial disadvantage and to permit authorized staff, other invited interested parties and the Solid Waste District attorney to be present for this session. So moved. Seconded. It's been moved and seconded that we enter into executive session. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Abstentions. We will now enter into executive session once the recording has stopped and CCTV confirmation is not present.