 Okay, great. Thanks a lot. Welcome, everybody, to this May 2019 edition of the Chittin and Solid Waste District Board of Commissioners. I appreciate you coming out on such a lovely evening. I know it's tempting to stay home on a day like this, so thank you very much. So the first item on the agenda is the agenda itself, and I, with the Board's permission, I am going to actually move the consideration of the resolution for Patrick Benner to just pass the public comment period. Unless there are any objections to that, we will proceed without any other additions to the agenda topics. Okay. The next is the public comment period, when we allow members of the public to speak on any issue that isn't necessarily on the agenda itself, but if it's something on the agenda that you want to speak to, I will allow you to make a comment regarding a particular issue. So are there any members of the public that would like to speak about items not on the agenda? Okay, next is the resolution, again, for recognition of the service of Patrick Benner. I wanted to kick this off just by sharing a few personal comments and observations. I met Patrick 20 years ago, say, when he started working at the drop-off center in South Burlington, and grew to know him over the time, and we, I think, developed a real friendship, and I always was just enjoyed and looked forward to talking to Patrick every Saturday. I talked about many different things, but I was blown away at his memorial service. I knew he had served our community in many different ways, not just the district, but as a justice of the peace, because I'd seen him in the voting lines and stuff like that. So I knew that he did things like that, but I did not realize the depth of what he did over the years. He was remarkable of his community service and the sense of community service. At the memorial service, I was like, wow, I had no idea. So I urge you to pass this resolution, and I would like to open it up to any board members or members of the public or staff that would like to make any comments. Michelle, to read the resolution first. Yes, sorry, I should have had to do that, yes, please. This is a resolution in honor of Patrick Benner, Chittenden Solid Waste District Resolution, whereas Patrick Benner served as a South Burlington drop-off center, Operator Class I, for the Chittenden County Solid Waste District in an outstanding manner for the past 20 years, whereas he served as a dedicated and conscientious public servant, working continually for the betterment of the community, whereas he was passionate toward CSWD's mission and fulfilling the mission by providing ongoing education to the customers, whereas he oversaw and managed the onsite collection of municipal solid waste, recyclables, universal and other special waste in accordance with state and federal regulations, established drop-off center procedures and followed those guidelines with the utmost certainty, whereas he continually exhibited wisdom, fairness, commitment and kindness to customers at the South Burlington drop-off center. Therefore, be it resolved that the Board of Commissioners on behalf of the residents and businesses of the 18 communities in the Chittenden County hereby convey their sincere appreciation for his outstanding service of the past 20 years. We have a motion? We have a second on that. Second it? Again, I'd like to open it up if any members of the public or staff or the board. Well, I'll start. My name is Jim Turry and I'm the operations manager. I've been Patrick supervisor for the past 21 years and I just want to go on record to be known that Patrick was like one of the most dedicated employees to CSWD that I ever managed and he's dearly missed and I'm really glad. I wish he was here to see us honored his, you know, his dedication and workmanship, but we didn't invite his family. This is Lorraine Leonard Patrick's wife, his daughter Ann Marie, which is also a district employee Saturdays, her new baby Laura, Laura Ann, Laura Ann and also his two co-workers, Ollie Nassau, who's worked with him, Ollie's full-time employee was working with him for many, many hours over the last, what, six or so years and then Hunter Hart, which is also, he's a Saturday employee who's worked with Patrick for what, six, five years? Six years. About three years. Two years. Hard to call. But anyway, I was really glad that they all thought that they would like to come in and witness this and I appreciated the family. Would you like to say any words, but don't feel like you have to. I'm not meaning to put you on the spot. Okay, anybody on the board would like to or any other discussion regarding the motion? Okay, all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. All those in favor of the motion passes unanimously. Thank you again for coming and many, my many thanks for Patrick's service. I'm really fortunate to have him. Okay. Okay, great. Super. Thank you. Okay, the next item on the agenda is the annual organizational meeting. Sarah wrote an excellent memo regarding that. That's coming up next month. Our June regular board meeting will be preceded by the annual organizational meeting. So I thought I'd just have Sarah just summarize so that everybody's clear in case they didn't have a chance to read it. Right. And thank you all. So for this will be due every year and for the newer members is building an exercise so that everyone was kind of understood the process and also to suggest a election process. So there are only a few requirements in the charter for the annual organizational meeting, number one, that it be held and that it be held in June and that at that meeting we elect a chair and a vice chair. The other two officers secretary and treasurer can be elected at any time they are elected positions but can be elected at any time at the organizational meet the annual organizational meeting. We need to elect the vice chair and the chair. So in the memo you have what I've listed are the current officers, the fiscal 19 officers, their duties and I did put in an estimation of the time that they they spend with me. So I should have been clear that this is the time that spend either at the board meetings or with you know dealing with me that does not count time that the officers may spend in reading information or talking on some cells or talking to their fellow commissioners. So from and that's just from my view and it could also be wildly wrong. Paul may tell me no I actually spent six hours a month I don't know but under normal kind of non-crisis times this is what I think I would expect to as far as time to interact. And so I listed again the duties these are right out of our charter for each of the positions and then on the committees we again the charter only specifies that we have or says that the board may elect an executive board. So that is the only committee that is called out in the charter and then again the board may appoint committees as needed. So the only other standing committee is the finance committee slash investment committee and so I've listed and attached the charge that was created back in 1996 as far as so what that was when the board decided to delegate some of the duties to a standing committee of the finance committee. So that documents that we do not have a similar document for the charge of the executive board. So we I mean I looked through a lot of minutes and we had not find anything that was specific to the charge. So that may be something that mean we may want to do to have something similar to that memo that we have for the finance committee. So I've also listed again the members of the finance committee and the investment committee and then I outlined a potential election process. So the charter is silent on how we conduct the elections is completely up to us and is in should be in accordance with Robert's rules and it does say that we should conduct our meetings in accordance with those and there are a number of ways that we can elect the officers and the executive board. So what I've described is just one option and the way that I landed here was simply due to our time constraints. I felt that if we could use a process like this or this one that would at least allow for some time in between this meeting and the organizational meeting to have everyone here kind of consider whether or not they would like to continue to serve or if they haven't served on any of the committees to step up to serve or serve as an officer and to give some time to think about it. And then also due to self nominating and nominate to me that I would create that document and then that would be distributed and then everyone could have time to consider that essentially consider the candidates. So instead of doing something in the moment like we have been, this allows a little more time for reflection. That does not mean that it cannot be nominated at the annual organizational meeting. Absolutely you can. You can self nominate then as well. So that this does not take away from that, but it offers a little bit more time for consideration and pondering, so to say. So I would welcome obviously any questions about what was in the charter or really comments that you may have on what I've suggested as a potential election process. Yeah, that's great. And as she says, I mean, it doesn't mean you can't nominate someone at the organizational meeting, but it was just a thought that in terms of, you know, organizing things that be good to get names ahead of time, maybe have a ballot in the past. We haven't had anybody. We haven't had a contested election, I should say. Related to this, I wanted to just announce that I will not be able to continue to serve as an officer or on a committee. Just do the personal issues and I need the time. So I would encourage you to consider serving with Burlington having left recently, as well as Williston. That really means when I step up, that means there'll be three new positions that need to be filled on the executive board. In the past, we have just as a matter of protocol had Burlington and Williston on the exact board because Williston's a host town in Burlington's our largest city. However, that's not written in stone. And I would actually argue that potentially since the commissioners would come on for those two communities are brand new and aren't familiar with the business of the district, it might not be appropriate for one of the members of the executive board. But that of course is up for the executive board to decide. So I encourage you to consider serving either as an officer, or as a finance or exec board member, you don't have to be an executive to be on the exec board, you don't have to be an accountant to be on the finance committee. I think usually find the best questions come from those people who actually know the least about it and may ask what may sound like a dumb question, but ends up really being very fruitful. So I encourage you to please consider serving. I think you'll find that working with staff is just a wonderful experience because we've got a great staff. And that's sorry. That's what's got me here so well. Thank you. I wanted to clearly thank you for your service for your long service and for your guidance to me as chair and guidance of this board. We've served through a lot of difficult times. And I think you've served as well. So I appreciate and I want to let everyone else also know that the city of South Wellington has reappointed Paul for a term of 20 years. So he's with us for a long time, which is a good thing. But they were thrilled to have him continue to represent the city. And I as well as you have that. No, no, no, no. So on the executive board to just to make sure that I was reading the language of the charter the same way. The only member who is required to be on the executive board is the chair. It does not have to be the other officers. It doesn't have to be as Paul said, a particular city or town, just the chair. So really, there are four seats that are open every year on the executive board. So I wanted to make sure one was aware of that too. And currently, Alan is serving as Secretary Treasurer. But they are technically two separate positions. So but he has served as both for a long time, I think the combining so please get your names and to Sarah or I and we will you know, compile a list and well, are there are there comments on the possible procedure? Do we think it's good enough to try this year? I mean, I think, you know, again, because of the timeframe, it may be that we wanted this does not have to be written in stone, right? So we can revisit this next year, probably should to establish what how we want the elections to go. But I thought this was maybe a good place to start. So if there are comments or improvements, please do let me know. And we can make those changes. But otherwise, we can give this one ago, and then see how it worked or not. And then we can adjust for next year going forward. The questions any comments on the procedure or proposed procedure? I think I like it. I like the fact that it's going to be more transparent. Might have felt that they needed some time to change. Any other comments? I tend to buy first executive meeting last week or two weeks ago, I expected it to be more intimidating in this environment. It was much less intimidating, much more fun, chill, good time. So I highly recommend joining that group. Thank you. I even got her to make a motion. Thank you. Alright, any further discussion? Okay, great. Thanks. Next year, the minutes of the previous meeting. I would move the minutes of April 24. Motion in a second. Seconded. I do have a correction. So page seven under other business. It says Rob Green was recognized for 30 years of service to the city of Burlington. Mr. Green's replacement on the CSWD board is Lee Perry. And Lee has not yet been formally appointed. So we can probably simply strike that last sentence. Is that acceptable to the motion? Any other additions? Corrections? All those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. All right, next is the finance. Yeah, in the world of transitions, this is also my probably my last board meeting as well. It's been a pleasure and an honor. And so for just to begin, we'll go with the report of warrants and bank balances. Those are fairly straightforward. And the memo explains just where we are, leaving approximately a million dollars and unrestricted bottom line fund balance for this month. This hasn't I will work with my successor. I'm trying not to lock him or her into any format and that that person is going to want to take a look at what's going on and understand how the system works. So I didn't roll up all the capital funds and I will do that and work with that so that in June that'll reflect the way things are supposed to be. But as of the last as of the approval of the reserve policy. So other than that, are there any questions on the bank balances or on the All right, third quarter. One quick question. Sure. We talked a few months ago about doing a different sweep account or whatever. So we got more interest. Is that all been finalized in the bank accounts? Everything is in a money market account. There is some room to now buy some CDs. It's a small with people's because I haven't landed on exactly how much money is needed. I haven't wanted to move something into a longer instrument. I think July one is the time to buy a slightly longer instrument on some of our money. We did we were starting by getting point two 5% where we when we moved all of our money to people that moved to 1.82. So the interest ballooned at that point. And so so the next step is to kind of go through that money and figure out what we need in the short term and start making some long term investments. So the answer is everything has been changed over and it's just you can move the money now. I can't let me let me say there is one small and I say small if it were mine, it wouldn't be small. But if it's ours, it's $225,000 still in Morgan Stanley. It doesn't mature until January of 20. And Morgan Stanley gave us permission to retain that through that period. So what we tried to do is we tried to sell it and see if we could at least sell it at par and we couldn't. So we made the decision to just hold on to it and let it ride and get the interest. Okay. Right. Third quarter financials were running ahead. And we're kind of outlined. I appreciate your patience as we go through, even though I'm trying to get everything to look the same, but all of the backup on this switch from Great Plains to QuickBooks in this report. So I'm still trying to get it to work right and hopefully we'll work with the finance committee and get this thing get get the way we show it ironed out. So it's a it's a bit of a challenge for everybody because the chart of accounts changed and the and the system changed. So we're working through the getting those reports back in shape. And this is the first one to come out of QuickBooks. So it's it's our early stab and I think we'll improve it as time goes on. Bottom line, however, is it looks like at this point, we've raised $400,000 more in solid waste management fee than we intend to then we're using at this point. And when you project that out, because we have the best revenue quarter and some of the lower expenses, especially in Greenmont compost in the first fourth quarter, we will probably we will do much better than the 405 at the end. We'll go through that that projection. But we're we're well ahead. And when we budget it to have $330,000 in solid waste management fee left you last year, given where we are this year, I think, you know, that's probably pretty close. Your comment about support programs that they they've charged out at 65.2% budget. Does that means that you're saying that they would have charged 75% of the work on traffic? That's right. Okay, so they're not they're running almost 10%. Do you think this is a timing issue? Are we going to be truly underspent than in our support functions? So and I'll explain this when we when we look at the finals. There's a bunch of things that happen. For instance, we budget every as if every single position is going to be filled all year. And that never happens. We budget all new positions to be family plans. And when people come on, they opt out. So there's a huge amount of savings in in salaries and that hits support programs. That's a lot of the reason why some programs underspent. We're also very conservative, we under budget our revenues and over budget our expenses, not not by extreme, but when we're calculating, we're conservative, we should be we're less conservative than we were when we were doing budget to budget. And now that we're doing budget to actual, we're a little closer. But so that's a lot of why those are under, I would say most of that is is basically salaries, I haven't been able to tear it completely apart. But that's huge. We also haven't printed a chuck it guide. And there's some grants that we haven't awarded on that on the side. So there's a fair amount of savings that should carry through questions. Not that I'm complaining about this at all. But for the compost center, the expenses are a lot of dollars below. How do we do that? I mean, that's Dan here. Yeah, we're not. Are you looking at? We're looking at third quarter. So the expenses are 156,000 under. Right? No, I'm sorry, I'm looking at them are beg your pardon. I just I didn't. Yeah. Yeah. Now, now remember, that's the variance from the third quarter. So that's the total variance between the full budget and the third quarter spending. So that will go down. That's not that that number of 500,000 isn't the third quarter budget to third quarter expending. It's full year budget. So so at the end of the third quarter, we hit only the expenses were only 57. That's correct. So that's that's correct. So there is so there's a that's significant savings. Curious. What drove that? So a big part of that was after the beginning of the fiscal year that we decided to shift course and not be back, but if you recall, so there's a bunch of cost of goods expenses that didn't occur by antibiotics, we didn't buy any associated products that go into those. We had substantial labor savings for a similar reason. We ended up went into the budgeting process for a 19 thing that we were going to hire our full slate of seasonal health and then made a decision partly through that that was not going to be required. And so on the program updates recently, we also had one of our longer term employees move along. And so there's some additional savings there. So it's a combination of things. But I think we'll ending the fiscal year, we're going to be better than budget by a fair amount for the first time in a long time. Are there questions on this? Yeah, sorry. The same. And you want to take an offset by increasing the tip food that we did not budget for. That's what the revenues is. Yes, I heard. Further questions? Question for Dan for cream up compost. So you aren't spending any monies in producing more of the bag, but you still have enough bags out there so that, you know, profit such as it is, is still coming in for a little bit. You still have some stock out there. You know, we had enough existing inventory to get us most of the way through our projected bag sales. But we do six months ago. So that we made a decision six months ago, not to invest in a whole new run of empty bags for us to use up what we had. So we were projecting a shortfall bag sales by two to three thousand. But we're more than making up more of the savings by not spending coffee with the additional labor and so forth. Yes, all of the bag product is out in the market. All good questions. Great. Thank you. Just some notes when I did verbally just go through where we when we projected out and we're still working on this. And there's some there's some challenges internally with the change in the chart of the chart of accounts, but bigger. We've got some big business models that are changing the Murph completely changed from being funded with material sales, while solids lost South Burlington and Greenmount compost has shifted their business model. So we are looking at probably about six hundred and twenty thousand dollars in solid waste management fee to reassign at the end. And I have a memo on this. I think I'm going to hold it just a verbally report here. It looks like the Murph we had originally wanted to contribute two hundred and sixty nine thousand in the original budget. But we that was back before we were dealing with the issues, but we still look like we're going to save about eighty thousand dollars there. So so as far as the use of reserves, those are the only real stand out issues that we have. I'd like to take a we've been working on this all day. I'd like to take a closer swipe at the year end projection just because there's so many variables that we're trying to deal with. But just from from first look and where we were today, I'm fairly confident we'll be over six hundred thousand dollars of solid waste management fee to assign at the end of the year. We're and not a whole lot is changing dynamically from here other than what we talked about in the third quarter. So I will do that. I will get that report out before I will also send you a copy of the audit. We were hoping to have the auditor here tonight and we just couldn't coordinate. As folks know, it's really hard to get an account to come in before April 15th tax season. And by the time that was done, we couldn't schedule her for tonight. So we're working. We're going to try to work to get her here in June, which will bring me back. So that's that's where we are. So it's been a pleasure. There are a lot of changes that that have been made and appreciate your patience as we kind of worked through a lot of different opinions and a lot of different ways. Folks wanted to see things and hopefully in the next four to six months we'll land at a place that that we can move forward. Well, I think QuickBooks is a big win for our staff. So we'll be moving along. But thank you very much. Thank you, Deke. I want to just express my appreciation for all you've done over the past two years. A remarkable amount of work that she put in. Very hard job. And she did a fantastic job that you asked me. So many thanks. Yes. I want to say thank you to Deke, Sarah, and Paul for organizing some of these budget sort of boot camps. For the first time in my 10 years being a commissioner. This has been a lot of sense. Thank you. Appreciate that. I'd like to say, Deke, we were really happy to have the right person come along at the right time. Good. And I hope the next person will be the right person to take the next step. I just want to also express my profound thanks to Deke for not just her expertise, her willingness to be in the fighting the good fight to helping me tremendously develop not only in my role, but as a leader in general. I appreciate her guidance and mentorship. And luckily for me, she's not going very far and has said she will make herself available for lunches as needed. So I promise to take you up on that and appreciate all the work you've done and the help here. And I agree. I think we are have been set up in a really good trajectory. And thank you. I appreciate you. Any other questions? I just want to say amen is someone who can work and work on the best for your new position. Well earned. Although, of course, we did have one question substance. At one point, I know Alan asked if we had some way of getting some further insight on the increase in volume. Generating them. I mean, it's all very nice to have those revenues, but we really don't want them in a sense. And I don't know whether the staff has had any opportunity to think about that, how to find out whether anything has been done in that. Actually Nancy is good that you have to be here tonight. She's talking about something else, but that is one of her projects slated for this coming fiscal year. So we have money in the budget to assist us in trying to get a better handle on that. And to see, you know, are we really missing something big? And to see what others have done up there and to be able to perhaps generate some kind of a model to help us be better predict what's going on and then to be able to better target the areas that need some assistance. So yes, because you've been asking the question for years, I hear in this board, in the city councils, and why does it keep going up? And we keep saying, well, it could be this, it could be this, it could be this. Well, this year we're going to take a look and try to really narrow that down if we can. If we can't, we'll tell you that too. And so, but we'll find out this year. Thank you. So, you know, again, prompted by great questions from Kailin, Michelle Morris and Alisa Arda and I worked on a document and also with thanks to Michelle Divia's input on how are we financed? Where do we get our money? And I have to say, I was really happy to have that document because the question was asked in South Burlington and we happened to have something in hand that I could pass out and walk through and it was very, very helpful. I also used that in Winooski, you know, three out of the four council members are new, so it was a very good resource to have and will continue to be refined with the goal of that document or something like it being included in the budget packets for next year for all of the legislative bodies so that they have that, and they can put that on their website. They have it in that format that they can, you know, distribute it. We could distribute it to anyone who wants just another fact sheet. So, you know, we've been hearing for a long time that there's a lot of general confusion over what is a solid waste management fee and why, what does that do? This is going a long way to helping me to better explain that and the feedback I'm getting is like, okay, it's kind of similar to Logan right now. I understand a little bit better what that is for and what the purpose is. So, I'm not sure if we, I don't know if we put that in the packet or not any, but if not, we think it is, okay, perfect. So that's in your packet and that's what we're using. So feedback on that would be great. So if you haven't seen it yet, take a look at that, you know, and that is a work in progress. Please offer suggestions as to how it might resonate better, make better sense to you, to your constituents, and we want to continue to improve that document, but it already has been very helpful. I was very glad to have it. And we didn't prime the question in South Carolina. It came out naturally. It was perfect and just happened to have the document there. As I mentioned, we have the two positions are out. We will be having our first round of interviews for the finance director position tomorrow. The hope is that we would have someone from maybe the finance committee sit in on the second round. So I would invite any of you to be able to sit in if you're able to and we'll let you know when that second round will be. The goal is to try to have those by next week or the week after so that we can start into some negotiating if we can find someone who we really want to bring on board and with the goal again to have them, if at all possible, in before the end of June to try to work with Deek a little bit. But Deek has said that she would make herself available after June but it would be just different hours but we'll work on that. So that is progressing well. We have some, I think, good candidates. And the director of operations position has been advertised as well. That's still in the very beginning phases. So that one's proving a little more difficult. It's a bit more specialized, I think, than the finance director position. So that's why that position will be open until filled. And we'll do a bit more notifications through industry publications and other things if we're not seeing them roll in the way we want to. That is also ongoing. It's been out for about a week. So that's coming too. And as an update, we have presented to over half of the communities and we do have our 10 approvals. So we are good for fiscal 20. However, that does not mean those I have not gotten to yet are not important. Every one of our communities to be able to have the opportunity to vote and that is, so tomorrow I am at Westford and Underhill. So we'll be there and going forward. And then the last three are on Monday, June 3rd. So do you want me to address Richmond? It's probably a good idea, yes. Would you like me to talk about Richmond? Okay. So I do want to let you know. I think no one would be surprised to hear. Richmond was a tough meeting. They're still very, very concerned and upset about the loss of the reuse zone at the drop off center. So the town to take the opportunity to have members of the public talk about their concerns and their loss. And it was very passionate group as you can imagine. And they were really sad about that, that loss still. So as a result of the select board did disapprove the budget. And I think that's probably the first time that that's happened in a very long time, if ever. So I have sent on to Logan and to the town administrator with their next step is in the charter, what the town needs to do is submit in writing a list of objections to the board outlining their specific, specific line items in the budget to be changed. So that is due within the original 45 days. So they have until June 8th to submit that list of items. And their town administrator said that they would, he would work with them to get the list of objections approved at the June 3rd meeting so that they can get that in the mail. And I had them address it to Paul as chair by June 8th. So what the charter does not talk about is what the board needs to do with that list. So, but it is the right of the community to state their objections for consideration by the board. So that is where that ended up. I don't know if Logan, if you would like to add anything or discuss it. I think it was, it was an incontentious meeting. I appreciated your resilience and the basis of your belief at times with or without. And both of you had criticisms about how the reuse of the decision-making problem, what it means to be a member of CSWP, et cetera. My hope, and I'm still sort of young in this, but my hope is that some of the thoughts and concerns that were raised in terms of wanting to find some way through are in good faith and that we can find something that can help. I don't really think it would provide neighbors in my community, but for our district in terms of some of those other key questions in terms of why we're generating more. And what we can do to encourage reuse of the community's sort of benefit of all this kind of good stuff. So I appreciate that you both came and other members of staff came and sat through a very long meeting. And I think there's work to be done maybe in a special projects type thing or just a way of bridging what seems like a divide that there are good folks who want to do something good with CSWP and not simply against the board or the district or otherwise. It's going to be an exciting couple of months and have a 45-day window produces a document that can be useful when it's working to us and to staff. This is going to be an interesting process that I would like to part of and share with you as my colleagues. So I would let you know that I totally support there that if we deliberate it on it three times in order to bring it in again it has to be essentially different. I don't know if they'll come up with something like that and I fully support maybe there are some creative ways to think about how you can solve their issues but as I said, as far as the chair and this board we've deliberated three times it would have to be something substantially different. So that was my position. Yes, Alex? It came up at Essex also when Sarah gave a very good explanation. I think it was probably the same explanation she probably used in Richmond. I mean we've discussed it we've gone down I mean I'm not looking for staff to spend a whole lot of time personally on this issue. We got one town that voted down the budget because of a single issue in my mind and we have a bunch of other towns that have approved it and we need to focus on those issues and spend our time on those issues that the board thinks are important for us to move forward on. There is a alternate idea I'll put it out that way floating around on the Jericho front porch forum of creating a list of items that folks have available that would have gone to the reuse zone and basically what they're proposing or talking about is just doing that, creating a list and maybe a phone number that you could call and then go to that person's house and pick it up. Don't know on front porch forum whether it will progress any further but at least it is an alternate idea. Anything else in terms of executive director updates you want to share? For our budget to be adopted we need a simple majority so it's 10 of the 18 need to pass that. Generally everyone does but we only need 10 and it's not a weighted vote each town gets one vote. Any other questions? Okay let's move forward to the solid waste management. Green up day. Green up day, sorry. I'm skipping. No worries. I'm not Lorraine. Come up to a microphone. You do, sorry. Sorry I'm an actor by training. Hi I'm Elise Serda. I am communications and marketing manager for CSWD. I'm three months new so there are plenty of you I have not met yet. So what a privilege. Thank you so much for letting me fill in tonight. So basically green up day I'm just going to mention some of the highlights of the day. You have full information in your packet which includes breakouts by town so if you're interested in basically what was happening in your community is available to you. Also to let you know that the green up coordinators in your towns have been provided with this information also for Lorraine Lane from Lorraine and if you have more details that you need Lorraine is happy to talk to you about it if I can't answer the question tonight. So basically green up day took place on Saturday May 4th. If everyone I think knows but litter is collected by the roadside by volunteer teams in your municipalities and basically then they're delivered by the municipalities to facilities on either that Saturday or the Monday. Tires are delivered to CSW's special waste facility in Williston and then any trash is then disposed of at the Cassella Transfer Station at Avenue B in Williston. This year our efforts brought in 29.8 tons of litter and an estimated 3,197 tires which equals like 34.38 tons of tires. We didn't receive any scrap metal or electronics or appliances so that did not come in you'll see that reflected in the numbers. Trash collection has been trending downwards basically since 2000 and this year was well below the average of 35.2 tons of litter collected so that's something to think about. Also we did see that the numbers of tires collected has varied up and down since 2005 but this year the gradual trend has been that it's continued upward and this year is the highest total number of tires collected since 2000. Also if you're familiar with GreenUp Day CSW contributes or this year we contributed $4,400 to GreenUp for one and a half of the member municipalities and in addition outreach and communication the budget will reimburse the drop-off center budget for $6,876 in fees that for tires that were brought to the Willis to drop off. That's sort of something to look at we've been seeing overall tire collection has been going up so that's something that I think we are going to be looking at in the next year potentially from an EPR standpoint as a possibility for extended producer responsibility is there some rule to be played there to help offset that tire collection and you will see in some if there's a question when you look at your numbers there are some towns that reported zero pounds, tons dropped off and those towns actually did participate but they didn't bring in their loads by municipal trucks they actually worked with let's see I've got Casella, Myers and Myers again for three towns that reported zero because if they haven't come in through the municipality we're not counting them the same way we don't have those numbers but they actually worked out for them better to work with a Myers or Casella instead of using their own municipal vehicles so that's why you'll see a zero and if you want more information about that you're probably your coordinator can get you a pound of Georgia tons any questions in terms of the map where you show five years of trash and tires you have a calm for state highway at the interstate or is that like Route 15 where there is partly a town road and partly a state highway or how is the state highway number where does that come from I think it's the interstate she's just calling it out of state highway and so Lauren didn't tell me how they designate state highway all I 89 from north to south or is it only the I 89 through Chittenden County yeah I mean that it's limited to Chittenden County it is and but that's that's you may recall we had I think we had this conversation the board level that talking about do we want to limit this because the AOT brings us the tires that they pick up in Chittenden County and I'm not complaining about showing the number I'm just trying to understand where what roadway is included in that number and the other question is are they just holding on to them throughout the year to get rid of them on this day and that that you know we see that from some of the municipalities do that as well they'll come in with many more tires that we know could not have been picked up on that one day so we really do I think want to look at tires in a much more strategic way and because it's not a problem it's going down it's increasing and why so I think there are a couple of areas that we can quickly attack it but that would be again we want to come talk to you about the potential repercussions of that by telling whether AOTNO or the DPW don't hoard your tires for a year and there's got to be some other way to manage that that's part of it really questions, yes Alan Saturday I drove 40 miles in Chittenden County in five different towns and I saw 11 tires and people aren't going to lug tires very far because they're heavy and if they've been out there they're covered with hay and they're covered with water they're filled with water and there is something, as I've said continually, there is something else going on with tires at this event that's why I say we need to get in yes sir a comment along that line I think it was five years ago at the bottom of the road that I live on the pickup green up day someone had backed into the road and neatly stacked about 60 tires all lined up in a row like a wall they didn't come out of the woods they came out of the back of somebody's rather large truck yep so yeah there's something that needs to be looked into here yep um maybe you can remind me which fund the $4,400 comes from that goes to green up day it's a separate account for a green up day it's budgeted for green up day how are we reaching communications budget is this a specific line item yeah and then that's for that reason I was was trying to understand the reasoning for having this $6,800 $6,900 that are covering tires coming from the outreach and communication when their budget has already been lowered for this kind of planning ahead if tires are going up in terms of green up day and I could be not remembering correctly thought the outreach and communication budget was decreased for this coming just years ago it's slightly decreased this line item has stayed relatively the same for the past few years around $10,000 to $11,000 with the $4,400 being dedicated to green up Vermont and then the rest is again it's an interdepartmental transfer or we're essentially paying the drop off centers costs for running around and collecting these things so I guess I'm not sure yeah the $4,400 is a contribution from the district to the green up I think your question is the $6,800 is that what you're trying to put it all in context where those funds are coming from and if they should be coming from somewhere else and that is that is a conversation that maybe the finance committee could have or just we could have internally as staff and the rationale for coming out of outreach and communication is because it tends to be a community event and it's something that we promote and it's something that we go above and beyond in order to make sure that we are taking care of the ways it's being collected it could just come right out of the drop off center budget but because it's not necessarily an operation of the drop off center they're kind of providing that service it's almost like a delivery service pickup service that we're reimbursing them for but it's a line item budgeted item it's in there and if it was to move the money would move with it budget would stay would be lower for whatever area that it's in the budget stays the same it's just who who's originating the expense further questions just one more question about the towns that aren't directly reporting one of them being my town and I can tell you probably what your town did if you I attended on that day I'm familiar but just thinking about holistically if there's any interest or effort to try and capture those tip sheets from those towns so we can have a better idea across and Lauren's been in contact that's how she actually just found out today that Winooski had used Myers so she's trying to get those numbers from the coordinator for yours they use Myers, South Burlington, use Cassella I made some rounds myself so yeah and we're still within a pretty short time frame from when the event happened and getting that information back but I wasn't sure if that was part of the plan yes that definitely is at first we didn't know quite what happened but Lauren was following up and got that information thank you do we have a similar paragraph of the numbers of tires over the last five years from the drop off centers we can get that we can get that Lee has the information if that's going down at the same time the greenhouse is going up or if both are going out where are the tires coming from why Scrap Metal or Electronics was zero that seems like it's going down obviously but zero is like really I can ask Lauren none came in we don't know exactly why if they're being people are doing it as they go so it's better I could ask her it has to be a marketable commodity so when people find it they do tend to bring it to a dealer and when the markets are good they'll get paid for it so that's why we tend to not see a whole lot of it most every town has a scrap metal biome behind the barn and the electronics we accept it no charge so it's not an item that you would normally see as a litter and that's where that big dip from 2010-2011 occurred when some of those programs started to really kick in Lauren does have those numbers I think she didn't get them in time to put them in packet but we can get those for you I don't think Peanut Vermont must keep tabs or have numbers as well they do they just don't have them available on the website so we have to request them thank you how do waste management ordinance propose amendments and Nancy's going in for Josh as discussed in Josh's memo in the board packet staff is proposing amendments to the districts and is seeking board approval this evening to solicit public comment on those changes the proposed amendments reflect changes in state law this last year amend sections that have been difficult to enforce or provide clarification there's a staff committee that is currently reviewing the entire ordinance and staff will be back with additional recommended changes down the road amendments proposed tonight are considered time sensitive and legal and executive board review with their recommendations incorporated to what you see tonight I'd like to provide an overview of the proposed amendments and the next steps and then answer any questions you may have about individual amendments I may in section 3.11 the first proposed change allows district staff instead of just the executive director to approve exemptions to the requirement that recycling containers be paired with all public trash containers there are some situations where this is problematic this will allow outreach staff to make judgments on site while they're in the field outdated effective dates were also removed from this section 4.6h2 the proposed change allows for the collection of fees at solid waste facilities including our drop off centers for recyclables that are brought in without trash as required by residential rates mandated by act 148 the trash includes the cost of managing recyclables that are brought in with the trash and has been covering the cost of recyclables customers bring in alone as well a change in state law allows fees to be charged for recycling brought in alone now as you know charging this fee at the district drop off centers is included in the FY budget so this section needs to be amended for that to occur contrary to what is in the memo we are not proposing a change to section 4.6h3 at this time in section 4.8 j3 the proposed change allows recycling containers to be labeled with an abbreviated or subset list of mandatory recyclables versus a detailed comprehensive list as long as it has been approved by the district this will be especially helpful at public venues such as gas stations special events and the airport where you have only a moment to convey what goes in which bin and allows focus on the types of items that are typically generated at those specific venues it should help to decrease contamination in these public spaces in section 4.8 at this time the proposed change simply deletes outdated effective dates for the labeling requirements section 10.4 requires businesses and institutions that ship materials to facilities that are not licensed by the district to report the types, quantities and destinations of those materials to the district the proposed changes add a minimum annual generation amount of two tons for such materials to be subject to the requirement of providing frequency for businesses from every six months to annually staff is asking the board to authorize the director of compliance to initiate a public comment process to seek input on the proposed changes and my solution is included in Josh's memo any public comments received will be reviewed and staff will bring the amended ordinance back to the board for adoption at your next meeting there are by law that the board seek public input but it has been its practice are there any comments or suggestions or questions? one question on the businesses that ship to non-district facilities can you give an example of that and how does that work? sure there are businesses who generate large quantities of say cardboard or plastic film from and they can ship it directly to a broker that's not in the district and get money for that material a lot of the large grocery stores they backhaul they have stuff come in delivered and then their own trucks backhaul the plastic film that they collect in front of their stores as well as other materials to distribution centers that are outside the district breweries that have a lot of spent grain and those are going to farms that might be in the county but we don't license those farms or they're outside the district so there's a few examples you'd be surprised there's a lot of material and it's helping us to get a better look at what our diversion really is sure I think these are quick for the change on page 10 allowing the district staff to approve public waste exceptions is that all district staff it just says approved by the district it could be all district staff it's going to be part of some of this job description of being designated by the director who is allowed to do that just curious if there was some level of authority that was being delegated down to sure that that discussion was held but I was not a part of it and then the only other question was in relation to the direct markets or will reminders be sent out I'm just kind of curious about getting that information when that cycle might easily be forgotten it's not a new provision it was implemented beginning July 2016 and we were at that point until now well if this change goes through requiring reports every six months and yes the businesses that we had been able to identify that we knew either had material that they shipped directly or we expected that they would received reminders copies of the forms we put the form on our website to make them fill it out online we also send them other versions or they can just hit reply and say it was this much this you know for this yeah of this material and this is where it went does the federal government give you any figures on what they processed and what the federal service handles all their own stuff internally the post office is reporting to us now I don't think we have other federal agencies that have buildings that are but likely most of their generating paper cardboard and that's being handled by their regular hauler but the post office yes generates a lot of paper again really diversion reporting you had mentioned an interesting situation where somebody who generates a commodity is able to sell it to a broker that makes a lot of sense and I think Duncan actually brought up this example so there are organizations that are sending solid waste that have found to the landfill outside of the district today I have not come across any that's usually that's going through licensed hauler as far as something that's getting landfill or incinerated so we're getting that data because it's going through licensed facilities in the county or it's going straight to the landfill so what they're reporting is any material so if they are they're supposed to report that but no one is reported that they're sending it's strictly recyclables and compostables and some are reusable are any of these expected to be controversial to the public which any of the changes I don't think so because well there has been discussion about the new recyclability and I know that's come up in some of the governing board so I guess that one the other ones I mean the first one is the benefit to the business you know there's less bureaucracy in their situation they really can't get recycled container for whatever reason that can be simply dealt with reducing who should be ordered to report the business materials that is a benefit to the business changes in the next couple of years the date changes obviously the labeling is also a positive I can say that there's something simplified and we're working with the staff to give something better for their container so the only one would be that I guess I'm wondering why if it's not required that we're going out for a public comment on things that we don't expect to get an engagement around like why we're taking that extra step I think I personally think it's really important that we always said we might think there's nothing controversial here and we do know that that one is so to some people there is we believe there's something so it's an opportunity for the public to provide what you said that they really want to know that we do not have a lot of information that we're hearing it's on our website these are a lot of changes the next batch there'll be more so I think we're interested not a question just a comment building on that I think personally anytime there's changes to ordinances that should be open for public comment that's good practice we have a motion on this I would make a motion that the board will move itself for public comment there's a resolution all the bottom I move the resolution motion do we have a second? second further discussion all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye aye abstention next is other business any other business program updates any questions on program updates can you tell us about the miscoding of materials so I'll preface if you don't mind so we are very fortunate at the district to have some very cracker jack eyes looking at all of the data and it's not just Nancy looking at it John Dorr looks at it also in our compliance and we're looking for consistency and we're looking for trends and anytime anything blips up or down we ask sometimes it's a minor mistake in coding where the scale operator happened to hit the wrong button or something we've been seeing too many of those over the course of quite some time so Nancy and John have been working with the different scale operators mainly with Cassella but have been working on trying to figure out what's been happening and since Cassella moved over to a new finance system a couple of years ago the increases of errors it's actually caused a significant amount of staff time at the district to be tracking down the errors and so recently just kind of ticked up and we've been working with them they try to make improvements we go over, we watch what they are doing in the scale house and it's not improving to the point yet we're comfortable not watching so we're moving forward along other avenues at this point but it's you know because we have some good people who have been looking at this for a long time they know when something just doesn't look quite right but it's it's an ongoing thing but we wanted to make you aware of it and mention it and just say that this is something that may cause additional changes down the road but we're working on it so are there any is there any compensation for the district based off of the contract for tracking down these errors and is there any on the converse side aside from staff time being spent what other impact financial impacts are there to the district based on these errors there's not a contract per se it's a licensing issue so that would be our recourse would be through the licensing and the enforcement process so they need to buy our requirements and buy agreement through the licensing and they agree to provide us with accurate data in a timely fashion and we determine what that is so if they're not they're required to work with us and to our satisfaction so it's not that there's a financial issue there's a fine that could be levied if we could shut down their transportation and we don't think anybody wants us to do particularly them so there are enforcement things that can happen but that would be where money could be does the miscoding end up benefitting we thought maybe it had to do having the C&D recycling rates higher or something but it's just not maybe we have not made it to come up with a financial benefit to anyone from anyone it's not like they're bringing out of district material and then calling it in district that can happen but that's what we're seeing is just at least a couple of those cases in the past that can be audits done on that but it's more that loads it's roll-offs basically roll-offs that are being coded at the scale and it as MSW when in fact they're from a construction site that's our pound per person tell me about it I'm as unhappy about it as I'm sure you are you knew there was a reason right it was very frustrating and we have been able to work with them and we have corrected some of the data we'll never be able to correct all of it from the past but we're doing our best so yeah you'll see some different numbers next month when I do I'll get you a quarterly further questions program updates okay motion to adjourn favor signify by saying bye