 Everyone, the YouTube stream has started. So when we have a quorum, we can begin. All right, thank you. Good morning everyone. Good morning council member. Hey folks, I just got an email from the mayor that he's having trouble finding the link. So I'm forwarding that to him and he'll be here shortly. Good morning everybody. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning Chair Howard-Ton. Good morning, Councilwoman. I like the orange. It's pretty. Morning, everybody. Good morning, Mayor. Good morning. Sometimes problem with getting in on the link and I appreciate Mayor Pro Tem sending it to me. Yeah, sometimes we still get challenged with these zooms. I know what we're doing. It's not just an old age problem either. No, I don't think so either. So let's see. Do we have a quorum? I think we do on our side. And do you all, how many members do y'all need to? We have three members here and you all, or do you all have enough to get going? Chair Howard-Ton? We don't have a quorum. I'm not sure what your quorum is for this meeting if it's two or three or... Good morning, Mayor. Good morning, Chair Howard-Ton. It's Monica. Good morning, Monica. We do need three commissioners on the line and right now it looks like we only have... Commissioner Carter just joined us. Commissioner Carter is there, yeah. So we've got three. She's not a committee member. It's, we actually need Vice Chair Jacobs or Commissioner Burns. I'll send them texts real quick. Well, we can always get started, Mayor, and anything that we have to prove to vote on, we can hold off on that. So I'm going to call this meeting of order at 9.03 a.m., a.m., yeah, 9.03 a.m. On October the 12th, 2021, and want to welcome everyone here today, my wonderful City Council colleagues and from the County Commission. It's good to see everybody. And of course, the great staff who helps make all this work. Again, great to be with you. The first order of business is the approval of minutes. So we'll wait until we have a quorum for that as well as the approval of the meetings, the meeting schedule. And so I think we'll move right into the main order of this today, which is a discussion of the potential bag fee or ban that has been brought to us by members of our Environmental Affairs Board, as well as various community groups. And I will ask what we know about who's making that presentation. There's Chair Jacobs. Since Chair Jacobs is here, I'm Vice Chair Jacobs, I'm sorry. Since Vice Chair Jacobs is here, let's go back to approve the minutes. Let's go ahead and do those items and then we'll come to the substantial item. Move approval. Thank you, Chair Howerton. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Johnson that we approve the minutes of the last meeting. Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll? Certainly. Chair Brenda Howerton. Here. Vice Chair Jacobs. Here. Commissioner Alam. Yes, sorry. I don't know what it's supposed to be, yes or here. Please, yes. Okay, Commissioner Alam and is Commissioner Burns with us? Not yet, Madam Clerk. Okay, Mayor Shul. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. And Council Member Freeman. Aye. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Now we'll move to the approval of the meeting schedule for the following year. Colleagues, have you all had a chance to look at that? Are we, any comments or should we go ahead and have a motion for approval? Move approval. Thank you. Second. Move Chair Howerton to approve the meeting schedule seconded by Council Member Freeman. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Chair Howerton. Yes. Vice Chair Jacobs. Yes. Commissioner Alam. Aye. Mayor Shul. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. And Council Member Freeman. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. We have a schedule for next year. And now we'll move into the item that we're, our main item for today. And I see Michelle Nallen is here. I'm not sure if Ms. Nallen is going to be leading the presentation. Is there a staff member that wants to introduce this for us? Okay, then. I'm gonna, I don't hear one. So I'm gonna ask Ms. Nallen, can you make yourself available to be heard, please? Yes, thank you very much to all the members of the committee and staff for allowing us to join you this morning. I believe, first off, I am Michelle Nallen. I'm a clinical professor of law at Duke University and the co-director of the Environmental Law and Policy Clinic. We are a nonprofit teaching law and consulting firm, joint enterprise of the law school and the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke. And we teach students how to practice environmental law and about the development of environmental policy. And in doing so, we represent nonprofit organizations and low-wealth communities throughout the Southeast, predominantly in North Carolina, on various environmental matters. In this instance, we are working to represent the Durham-based environmental organization, Don't Waste Durham. And I believe that Crystal Dreisbach, the executive director of that organization is with us and she was going to introduce the matter for us this morning. Ms. Nallen, thank you so much. We appreciate that. And I do see that Ms. Dreisbach is here. Ms. Dreisbach, welcome. We're glad to have you. And go ahead and let us hear from you. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Mayor. Hi, everyone. I'm Crystal Dreisbach, founder and executive director of Don't Waste Durham. Today represents an important day for Don't Waste Durham and I want to thank you for having us. My organization's mission is to reduce waste by preventing trash in the first place. And we work on systemic change to reducing waste made up of behavior change, not just by individual consumers, but those of business, industry, and government. And we work on this in three ways, by innovating and demonstrating solutions that give consumers and businesses sustainable alternatives now, and by advocating and raising awareness among consumers so they can make better choices. And finally, by evidence-based policy change or supportive regulations, that's the third key facet that supports behavior change. So we're here today to talk about pollutants like plastic bags, which are preventable if we combine better consumer choices, positive influence on industry and these supportive regulations. So I want to briefly talk about the why, but behind Don't Waste Durham's mission. Yes, one thing is we obviously, we would like to make an environmental impact, including reducing the clogs and stormwater drains, reducing microplastics in our food and drinking water, and slowing climate change. Specifically in North Carolina, reducing waste means less trash in our landfills, many of which are approaching capacity and are located in low-wealth communities of color. Cutting down the number of plastic bags in our Durham community also reduces the tanglers, which are a significant problem and cost in the already struggling recycling industry, contributing to the rising cost of recycling contracts for cities like Durham. But the most important thing I want to emphasize is that waste like single-use plastics and the toxins they represent are increasingly recognized as an equity issue. Durham is widely known to be growing in population daily and our growing trash input continues to be trucked daily, far away to a low-wealth community of color. And the Kohari Indian tribe of indigenous Americans is also located primarily in Harnett and Sampson counties, where the landfill is located. The fees for single-use bags we'll be talking about today is not a novel concept. Bans, fees and other regulations placed on single-use bags is an evidence-based legislation tool and is well-documented to work in 400 cities and states in the US. We know that Durham can do it too and needs to do it too. As we all know, systemic change can often feel very challenging, especially when we look at the news and sometimes real change feels futile. But we at Don't Waste Durham are in it for the long game. We've worked with the EAB since 2012 towards styrofoam and plastic bag regulation. And we are very lucky to be working with the Duke Environmental Policy and Law Clinic whose staff will now be presenting details about what we know about bags in Durham. Thanks. Thanks, Crystal. This is Nancy Lauer, I'm a staff scientist with the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic. We have a slide show that I'm wondering if we can share or have shared before we start the rest of the presentation. Yes, your name is Lauer. Can you share your screen? Mayor, I'm also wondering are all the presenters, are they being blocked from putting, showing their videos? That's what we're gonna find out here in a second. Apparently we're okay. Would you like me to wait until my video can show? We're seeing your screen right now, I believe, Ms. Lauer. Okay. Thank you all so much. The purpose of this slide show is to give you all some more background and to share some of the research that the Environmental Law and Policy Clinic has done over the last few years, looking into the problems and the costs associated with single use bags. After we give you some of that background, Michelle's gonna pop back in and talk through more of the nitty gritty details and specifics of Don't Waste Durham's proposal to reduce these single use bags in Durham. So what you're looking at here on this first slide is kind of towering over the landscape in the background. That's the Samson County landfill that Crystal mentioned. The Samson County landfill is where Durham sends most all of its trash. It's located 96 miles from downtown Durham in a primarily black community, known as the Snow Hill Community. According to the US Census Bureau, this community is almost 80% black compared to the state of North Carolina being 22% black. And 17% of the trash that Durham sends to this landfill is plastic. Along with this trash comes a number of nuisances like truck traffic and noise, foul odors, buzzards and really just an increased anxiety and loss of community that comes with living next to the largest landfill in the state and one of the largest landfills in the nation. And before I get too much into kind of some of the problems that come at the end of plastics life, I wanna step back and talk about the injustices that are associated with plastics right from the beginning, right from their production. These are environmental injustices that don't often come immediately to mind when we think about plastic, but really plastic production alone gives Durham enough reason to want to decouple itself from single use plastic. Plastics are produced from oil and natural gas and the oil and natural gas industry is heavily investing in plastics. Basically it's lifeline as its future for hydrochloric fracked gas. And what that investment looks like is literally this photo in front of you. This is a photo of Cancer Alley, which is an area known in Louisiana that is a people of color community that is now home to almost 150 petrochemical facilities. Along with these petrochemical facilities come some of the highest cancer rates in the country and some of the highest pollution rates in the country. Thinking about just the production of plastics and single use plastics, really a comprehensive policy would address all single use plastics at their source to really limit those injustices associated with their production. Our immediate recommendation to the city and county of Durham is to start with plastic bags. And we feel that plastic bags have some specific problems associated with them that are really directly related to Durham that should be mitigated. So the first one of those that I wanna talk about is litter. Between 2017 and 2019, the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic conducted a number of stream surveys across Durham. So we went out to segments of urban creeks and streams and we counted the amount of litter in those streams. And we took note of what types of litter was making up the trash in those streams. And the picture you see here is really a good representation of what we found. Most of it was plastic and a lot of it was plastic film. This next slide is showing you on the left is a map that shows you, those are the stream segments highlighted in red that we went out to all of them being in the LRB Creek watershed or the Sandy Creek watershed. And then the graph on the right is showing you basically our data. Each one of those bars is representing one of the stream segments that we went out to. And the colors that make up that bar is showing you the portion of the different types of litter that made up the trash that we found. So again, a lot of it was plastic. And if you draw your attention to the parts of the bars that are that kind of dark purplish gray color along the bottom, you might be able to see my mouse here. That's the portion of litter that was plastic film. So across all the streams, we were finding that plastic film made up 39% of the trash and Durham streams. And if we break that up even more, plastic bags were about 8% of the litter in the streams that we've sampled. And this is concerning for a number of reasons, but one of the reasons I wanna highlight is that the Hall Riverkeeper has actually gone out and done a sampling scheme in many of the rivers and reservoirs in the area and in the Hall River watershed. And they are looking for microplastics. When plastics get in the environment, they don't break down into soil and nutrients. All they really do is break apart into smaller pieces of plastic over time. And these are called microplastics that are concerning if we ingest them when they get in the food chain and when they get in our water sources. So the Hall Riverkeeper is finding these microplastics essentially everywhere that they sample, including Jordan Lake, which is a primary drinking water source for the area. Another really concerning problem that we find with plastic bags is that they are notoriously difficult to recycle. You actually cannot recycle a plastic bag by placing it in your curbside bin. What happens when you place a plastic bag in your curbside bin is that it gets taken to the Snoco Recycling Sorting Facility in Raleigh. That facility's purpose is to take those recyclable materials and sort them into things like aluminum, paper, glass, and then send those bales off to recyclers to ultimately be made into new products. This sorting is done primarily by machines and plastic bags totally just gum up these machines. They get wrapped around the screens and wrapped around the sorting mechanisms. And Snoco estimates that it has to shut down its machine something like four times a day for 45 minutes just to clean out the plastic bags and the plastic film that gets tangled in it. So what I'm gonna show you here is actually a video. What they try to do is all day long, they have employees stand along the conveyor belts trying to sort out the materials that they don't wanna go into those machines. And most of what you'll see them sorting or what they're pulling out here are plastic bags and film that ultimately are just gonna go back to the Sampson County landfill. And then the last thing I wanna bring your attention to before I hand it off to Michelle to get into the details of the actual proposal is that businesses don't really care for single use bags either. Plastic bags and disposable bags are actually a really high cost for businesses. A plastic bag can cost a business somewhere about two to three cents per bag to purchase which then they in theory give to their customers for free. A paper bag can cost a business somewhere around 10 to 20 cents per bag. And one study did a survey of different businesses and what they found was that plastic bags or sorry disposable bags were the fourth highest operating cost for businesses. And this is after things like payroll, credit card fees and other large operating expenses. So this is really a huge cost for businesses. And one of the reasons why when we did our own survey of local Durham businesses on their attitudes towards reducing single use plastics and in particular, their attitudes towards Durham implementing a fee on bags we found that businesses were actually really supportive of this idea, likely in part because this is just a huge cost and burden for them to provide these bags for free. We found that out of 60 local businesses that we surveyed in Durham in those businesses came from the different census tracks that you see here on this map, 85% of those surveyed businesses were either in favor of or indifferent to Durham requiring them to place a fee on bags. And you'll see that most of those businesses were actually quite in favor. It's really only a handful that fell in that indifference category. All of the things that I just talked about here these are all outlined in a white paper that we provided that I believe was appended to the agenda for this meeting. So that really explains some of these issues it explains other issues and it also explains the costs that we quantified associated with all of these different problems with plastics and plastic bags. And with that, I will hand it over to Michelle. Thank you very much, Nancy. As you can tell, we put a lot of effort into researching best practices and what would fit Durham's needs best in terms of reducing the plastic waste burden on communities and on the landfill itself. I'd like to mention that Nancy is our staff scientist. She has a PhD from the Nicholas School of the Environment here at Duke. And it has been really helpful to have her as part of this project team because she's able to help us identify studies that were actually done appropriately and that are reliable indicators of both the effectiveness of these plastic bags and the impacts the plastics have on human health, on the environment and on community wellbeing. So what we are proposing is a 10 cent fee on all single use bags, regardless of their composition of the material they're made of at the point of sale. We've done a lot of research into different approaches to stem the tide of plastic waste all along the supply chain. And that research has conducted or has included policies adopted not just in North, excuse me, in the United States but all over the world. We've also reviewed the literature on sources of plastic waste. We've examined the social science literature to learn how the most effective approaches of changing consumer behavior, what those approaches are. And that's how we've landed on this 10 cent fee because the literature tells us that bands will sometimes provoke resentment. Fees still protect consumer choice but they also signal to the consumer the actual cost that bag or that product has on the community and how much it costs the retailer itself to provide that service. So that's why we're recommending this 10 cent fee. Some of the research that we've done throughout the United States shows fees commonly range between five cents and 25 cents. And we thought that 10 cents would be a good initial starting point for that cost signal for the community. And then could be increased over time as needed to encourage more people to adopt reusable practices or to reduce the generation of waste entirely. We're recommending that that 10 cent fee apply not just to plastic bags, which is what our research is focused on but also on paper bags or other single use materials. The reason that we've proposed that it includes a broad category of single use bags regardless of their composition is that the research on different communities that have adopted these policies shows that if you, for example, say you're going to ban or impose a fee only on those very thin flimsy bags what happens is that businesses will resort to a much thicker plastic bag that maybe has a little bit more life that ultimately causes some of the same problems that these flimsier bags have. Other communities will resort to paper bags using paper bags and paper bags as Nancy noted are more expensive to purchase but they also come with their own environmental problems such as a lot of the problems with intensively managed forests, pesticide use, runoff, soil compaction and emission of greenhouse gases. So just in sum, we recommend a 10 cent fee on all single use bags regardless of the material of their composition at the point of sale to deter waste making and better protect our environmental resources while encouraging more reusable options. Attendant with this is a recommendation for the departments of solid waste management at both the city and county levels to develop metrics and work in concert with us or with other contractors to evaluate the effectiveness of the bag fee ordinance to make sure that Durham is getting what it wants out of this policy. We've reviewed a number of studies from different parts of the country some of which were well-designed some of which were less well-designed. And so we can help work with the departments to develop those metrics and well-designed studies to evaluate the effectiveness of the ordinance. And that way the city can have some information and the county can have information to adapt the policy as necessary over time. We also recommend that this fee be remitted to the solid waste management departments so that they can have this money to go into other waste reduction programs hire a staff person to implement the program help with communication and education of the public about different other mechanisms that can be used to further reduce plastic waste. Nancy, can you advance to the next slide? Now, one of the concerns that we had in designing policy recommendation for the community was equity. This is very important to us, to our clinic. It's very important to don't waste Durham to make sure that we're not imposing insurmountable barriers to communities that are already struggling within Durham. And many of those communities of course have been struggling even more during the course of the pandemic. And so we have done, again, a lot of research looking at what other communities have done to reduce the impact of that fee on low wealth communities, low income communities and also figure out other ways of appropriately sharing information and communicating these strategies to all segments of the community. So the easiest thing to do of course is to define groups of people within the community who would be exempt from paying this fee with the acknowledgement that even a 10 cent fee could be, you know, it's added over time and could be a burden for some members of the community. And so what we're recommending is that customers who use nutrition benefits or receive Medicare assistance and other assistance programs, they would be exempt from paying the fee if they were choosing to get a single use bag at that point of sale from the retailer. Another option though that we have recommended and this is something that don't waste Durham is already starting to roll out is providing efforts, excuse me, providing free reusable bags and recirculating bag programs within the community for all Durham residents. We're recommending that perhaps part of that fee could go collected on the single use bags could be used to support these efforts. The program that don't waste Durham has rolled out is called boomerang bags that originated in Australia. And it is using scrap materials, discarded t-shirts, other fabric remnants, largely from donations from other people within the community and also from the scrap exchange to make and distribute reusable bags. This program has been already, don't waste Durham has rolled out this program on a pilot basis at Save a Lot stores here in Durham and it's going pretty well. They're collecting those bags, sanitizing, washing them and then resupplying them to the retailer. And if you have questions about that, I'm sure Crystal would be able to address that at the end of this conversation. We're recommending the implementation of complimentary waste reduction programs to maximize the benefits of this policy. That can be something very simple such as more community outreach and education but also demonstration of other voluntary measures that can be employed to reduce plastic waste. Very simple things like asking businesses to not default to giving those plastic utensils for takeout food but asking the customer whether they want those things or whether they want the condiments rather than just dumping them in. And if you're like me, you have a whole drawer in your kitchen that is overflowing with a little takeout packets. We can cut down on that kind of waste through these complimentary waste reduction programs. And then of course also using culturally appropriate messaging and communication and unrolling the program and educating members of the community about it and the reasons for its adoption. Nancy, can you move on? Oh, thank you. So this is the last slide. And so this is just a quick review of where we've been and where we would like to go with this. So we made our proposal in conjunction with the Durham Environmental Affairs Board responded to a lot of their questions and concerns as we were formulating this policy recommendation. And then in August of 2019, the EAB voted unanimously to support this proposal. We were hoping to be able to move forward with the proposal back in March of 2020. But as we all know, life as we knew it kind of was upended at that point in time. And so we put this on pause and use that time to prepare a thorough white paper that summarizes some of the problems that Nancy has already discussed goes into significant detail about the actual economic costs, plastic bags, imposed on the community in Durham and other policy solutions to reduce plastic bag consumption and the consumption of other single-use plastics. We've also spent the time doing thorough legal analysis, examining the authority of local governments in North Carolina to implement a bag fee, a bag ban, or take other measures to reduce single-use plastics. This is largely recommended under the policy recommendations that are articulated in the Solid Waste Management Act at the state level. The Solid Waste Management Act specifies a policy of reducing waste at the source above all other forms of solid waste management. And then the statute goes on to explicitly confer on local governments authority to adopt measures that are necessary to address waste management problems and concerns within their community. There are some specific requirements that are presented, which just as an aside, includes mandatory reduction of 25% in the use of plastic bags overall against some baseline. But those types of policies and requirements actually have not been enforced throughout the state. So what we're proposing would actually come back into compliance with that policy articulation within the Solid Waste Management Act. As I said, there are some other specific requirements that the statute mandates that local governments include, but significantly, several points in the statute are suggestions that the local governments may go beyond the minimum state standards to address pollution concerns and solid waste management concerns and costs within that community. So we're confident that Durham and other local governments have this authority. And in fact, there are many local governments throughout the state that are looking into exactly these sorts of policies and hoping to move forward in the next year. And then finally, we have prepared a draft of an ordinance for the consideration of the committee and the County Commission and City Council. And that I think was made available to you prior to this meeting. So we are happy to look over that with you and talk through the different proposals and answer any other questions that you might have. So thank you very much. Ms. Nolan, Dr. Lauer, Ms. Driesbach, thank you so much. Could you take down the slides, please, Dr. Lauer? Thank you. Good, great presentation. And I thought the white paper was great and really very, very appreciative of the work you all have done to get us here and persisting through the pandemic to do it. So thank you. Before we go into discussion by members of the council and commission, I wanted to know if there are attendees today. We had a bunch of people say they signed up to speak, which I received previously. I don't see most of their names actually in the attendees list. So what I'm gonna do, if you were an attendee who would like to speak on this item now, if you could raise your virtual hand and we can make you available to be heard. Are there attendees who are here who would like to be heard? And if so, could you please raise your virtual hand? It looks like we have Donna Allison. Thank you, Ms. Allison, welcome. And we're glad to have you. You have three minutes. As a longtime Durham County resident, I'm very much in support of this measure. When I'm shopping and going around Durham, I see a lot of plastic bag use and I'm really concerned about the impact it's having on the environment. Many people who are recycling in my neighborhood put plastic bags in their recycle bins. So not aware that's not where they're supposed to go. So I just wanna really lend my strong support to passing this measure of the 10 cent fee. I think it will raise awareness so much of the people who are shopping that there is an impact of using these bags both in terms of financial and in terms of waste. And it will really encourage the use of reusable bags. So thank you. Ms. Allison, thank you so much for being with us. We very much appreciate your remarks. I see now Elizabeth Robinson. Ms. Robinson, welcome. We're glad to have you with us and you also have three minutes. Thank you. I appreciate the time. Are you able to hear me okay? Yes, we are. Okay, great. Thank you. I appreciate the time and I'm mayor and members of the County Commission and City Council. I think yesterday you should have received an email from our president and general council of the North Carolina Retail Merchants Association, Andy Ellen, citing concerns that we have with a proposal which is similar to, and we pointed you to a similar email from fall of 2019 when this proposal was being considered by the Environmental Advisory Council. Our members have thought bands such as this as they've popped up in localities and cited the outside of the policy and operational implications would just point to our statutory concerns and constitutional concerns on the authority or lack thereof of the City or County to be able to do this type of fee. And as we have cited the general statute and I know that there was a citation for 130A-309-09A but that's very broad authority about looking at sort of disposal capacity and programs. Any specific programs cited within that are actually things like white goods or scrap tire that are given explicit statutory authority whereas actually it runs contrary to the general statute that says that all taxing authority rests with the General Assembly that is then directed to the local government in Article I, Section 8 and also Article II, Section 23 of the Constitution and would also cite Article V, Section II of the North Carolina Constitution. In addition to that in the statute actually there's been affirmative legislative action to say that plastic bags and similar property are a component of the sales price and therefore exempt from state and local sales tax. So first and foremost, we would question any statutory authority and would look more closely at that. We obviously have also operational and policy concerns with how this type of fee could even be implicated implemented at a point of sale level particularly if there were exemptions to be put in place and some of the cost concerns have been cited earlier. There have been some concerns particularly through COVID that was mentioned, what we've all been faced with over the last year and a half even from sanitation issues, we've seen some places reverse previous positions on plastic bags because of sanitation concerns with reusable bags. And also just as we try to get our businesses back on their feet after everything that they've been dealing with for the last year and a half and are dealing with supply chain issues as it is, would not wanna impose any additional burden. So with that, I would respectfully request that you all look to oppose this proposal. We very much have supported voluntary efforts through the years that we've seen many of our retailers implement. But thank you all so much. I appreciate your willingness to hear our concerns and happy to continue the conversation. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Robinson. And we also, as you say, we did receive from Andy Allen, his email on behalf of your association as well. So thank you. All right, I see now Pamela Wyman, Ms. Wyman, welcome and you also have three minutes. Hi, thanks so much for having me here. Really excited to see this happening in Durham. We are pretty newly here from California where we lived and really got used to the 10 cent bag fee and saw a really major change happen. It created incentive for consumers to carry tote bags and reusable bags and it really made quite an impact. We saw parks and waterways and public areas, the reduction of litter strewn about the amount of plastic that we as residents had to deal with disposing of, reduce greatly and it was really exciting over the years because I think this passed in where we were in the Bay Area many years ago, it was exciting to see this reduce the toxic, constant flow of plastic and garbage. And also just to see people really change their behavior and start to carry tote bags and so on everywhere they went. So that was something that happened successfully and I'm really excited to see that happen here as well. Just wanna add my two cents there. Thanks for considering. Thank you very much Ms. Wyman and we appreciate you being with us. All right, I see Derek Rowe, Mr. Rowe welcome and you also have three minutes. Thank you very much. I think I would really be in favor of the city instituting this fee because over the last few years living in Durham now for over 11 years, I have become increasingly learned about more about the systems, about what the city offers as far as stormwater management and recycling services and these things are really important to the people who live here and they are sort of hidden away from them. But as soon as you start to meet people who work in these fields and have real costs for the city, you learn that plastic packs are a real problem for them. And I did not realize this and I don't think a lot of people realize this about how they clog storm drains, they pollute our waterways and they cause a real problem for recycling in so many ways, which is a really big way that the city tries to deal with its solid waste growing issues, especially during COVID. So I think this would be a really good way to de-incentivize the use of bags and I've seen lots of grocery stores and businesses coming up with easy alternatives that don't cost money. We have good examples like Costco where they just use the cardboard boxes they already have that they would have to spend pay someone to pick up. And they also, there are other solutions like Aldi and even organizations that are offering reusable bags for an affordable price. So I don't think it would hurt our businesses at all. And I think we could join the other cities in the country that are standing against this problem, this hidden cost of plastic bags in our communities. Mr. Bo, thank you so much for being with us. We really appreciate it. Is there anyone else today who would like to be heard if so please raise your virtual hand. I see and I'm hoping I get this name right. Zoe Diana, is that correct? Hi, yes, that's me, thank you. Welcome, you also have three minutes. Okay, hi everyone. Thank you so much for the wonderful presentation today. Just wanna introduce myself first. I'm a PhD candidate at Duke University in the Marine Science and Conservation Department. And I'm also part of the Integrated Toxicology Department as well. And for my PhD, I'm actually studying plastic pollution. And I specifically wanna add to the conversation a bit by discussing that it's not just plastic, this one pollutant, but also additives, a diverse chemical cocktail that's in plastic, including the plastic bags that we're here talking about today. These can include endocrine disruptors, heavy metals like lead and tin. So when we're talking about plastic today, we are also talking about all, sorry, all of these other environmental health benefits by keeping plastic bags outside of our waterways. They produce these microplastics and nanoplastics that will have these downstream effects on our environmental health, the animals environmental health as well in Durham. So I speak of course today in support of the bag fee. And thank you all for all of your hard work on it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much Ms. Diana. We really appreciate you being with us. Is there anyone else that would like to be heard on this item? If so, could you please raise your virtual hand? I see Rachel Kerasik, Ms. Kerasik. Good to have you with us. Hi Steve, hi everyone. It's good to be here. Again, I wanted to thank all of you, the city council and the county commissioners and the Don't Waste Durham and Duke team. I also wanted to introduce myself. I'm a policy associate at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University. I happen to spend quite a bit of time studying plastic policy. And I would also like to throw in my support for this ordinance. I think not only was the legal analysis and white paper very thorough and well researched, but we would not be reinventing the wheel by implementing this policy. There are many other policies that have fee exemptions for people who are on SNAP and WIC and other low income conditions. And those are implemented in larger cities like New York City. So we would have a model to draw from. And there are also a recently implemented bad fee in Fairfax County in Virginia, where folks on SNAP and WIC get a 3 cent rebate on a 5 cent fee. And that money goes directly towards supplying low wealth folks with reasonable alternatives. So I appreciate the different sides of this argument, but I do think that we have all of the tools available to us to design a policy that is equitable and fair and will be successful and not harm businesses. So thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Karasik. We appreciate you being with us. All right, who else would like to be heard? If anyone, could you please raise your virtual hand? All right, I'm not seeing any more, but we very much appreciate the comments that we have received. They're always very important to us. So thank you so much. All right, colleagues, you have now heard the report from the presenters as well as our comments from our public. And I'll now open the discussion. If there any comments or questions by colleagues either from the council or from the county commission and believe that I just wanna make sure I just wanna make sure that all the council members and commissioners are, yeah, okay, good. Okay, who would like to start us off? Any questions or comments by my colleagues? Commissioner Jacobs. I'm actually gonna defer to Mayor Pro Tem. I'll go after her. She, I noticed her hand up first. No problem, thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you everyone for the presentation. I really appreciate all of the work and research and thought that you've put into this. This is an issue that we've been, that has come back up over a few times over the last couple of years. And I think that the main question really comes down to the legality of whether we are able to do this given North Carolina's preemption laws. So just wanted to first hear from, if we can, either the city or county attorney on that question, because I feel like that's really the piece of the puzzle that's gonna inform the rest of the conversation. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. Would I believe that Mr. Darby, and I know Ms. Raeberg are both here and would either of them like to comment at this point? Good morning, Mr. Mayor. This is Kim Raeberg, the city attorney. I would really like to have our office have a little more time to analyze both the white paper to get reacquainted. I did send some time yesterday, reviewing emails and correspondence from Sherrys Ann Rosenthal, who was the attorney in the city attorney's office who had previously been following the spatter. I don't want to just on the fly, opine right now, but we will get some analysis to you very soon. Thank you very much. We'll look forward to that, Ms. Raeberg. Mr. Darby, do you have any comments? Likewise, I think this needs to be studied a lot more, especially coming from our office. I like the concept and I like the way the direction we're moving into. And I was just thinking here, how can I change the things that I do when I go to Walmart or any place else and get all those plastic bags and bring them home? But yes, I think we just need to study it some more to be sounding in our opinion and that way all of us can hopefully get on board. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Darby. Well, Will, hopefully you and our city attorney can work together on this. I know you will. Ms. Nolan, Ms. Nolan. Yes, thank you. I know this is not the appropriate forum to litigate this issue. So I just want to quickly reference that we had received the concerns of the Retail Merchants Association back in the fall of 2019. And that guided a lot of the additional research we did over the last couple of years. We've examined every one of the concerns that were raised. We have a short condensed legal analysis that we shared with you for this morning, but we are compiling a much more comprehensive document that we would be happy to share with members of the committee as well as the city and county attorneys. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for that. I know that our attorneys will be very happy to have that. And as well as members of this committee, but let me just say that the attorneys are the ones that are really going to need it the most. So thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Commissioner Jacobs and then Commissioner Howerton and then Council Member Freeman. Go ahead, Commissioner Jacobs. Thank you, Mayor. And first of all, I just want to thank everyone who has worked on this and for this presentation. This was really an excellent white paper. I learned so much from reading all of the condensed research and analysis of this issue. And my takeaway from reading it was this, for me, this issue is on par with climate change. This is the use of plastics in our society and the impact that it is having on people's health and also the environment is just, and it's, and the trajectory that we're on and the linkages to climate change, to communities of color in this country, but also internationally as well. This is a global issue. And I appreciate the connections that have been made with how we use plastic and how it impacts our planet and people all over the world. So I just really want to make that point because we cannot just look at this issue with a narrow lens. And I think one of our challenges is going to be, and I know that was one of the recommendations, is that we're going to have to figure out a way, not only to use culturally appropriate language, but there also needs to be a lot of discussion with our community, with people in the community and education and making the linkages. Because for me, you know, for Durham County, you know, as a County Commissioner, health is one of our most important issues, health equity and health, and this is a health issue. So I'm really supportive of finding out how we can do this. I appreciate the recommendations. To me, this is a great model of our public-private partnership and the importance of our institutions, our universities and our nonprofits partnering and helping because I think to move forward, it's going to have to be a partnership with the business community as well. I think that there are a lot of businesses who will support this, especially if we're all working together. So I'm looking forward to next steps. And I guess one question I have about all of the studies is I wasn't sure if I saw a lot of references in some of the charts to the cost to like city, general services, you know, trash collection or city stormwater. Did you all look at County as well? Because we have our County General Services picking up trash and also we have our stormwater, our triangle wastewater plant. And I just was wondering, I know personally I get called all the time about the trash in Northern Durham. And if you go out to Stagville Road, Bahama Road and you look at our watersheds up there, which is Durham's drinking water and you see the plastic bags that have blown off and they're sitting in the watershed for Little River drinking water. And this, you know, again, this gets back to the impact to the water that people are drinking in our community and the microplastics and all of those additive chemicals that we've heard about. So I guess, I don't know who's appropriate to answer whether you all did look at the cost also to Durham County government. This is Nancy Lauer. We focused initially our economic analysis on the city of Durham and then went through a little bit of the same thought process that you just went through where after we did the economic analysis for the city of Durham, we started thinking a lot of these costs would apply to the county in terms of litter pickup and pollution and water resources, as you mentioned. We have not yet compiled those costs for the county of Durham, but that is certainly something that we can get working on over the next few weeks. Well, thank you. I think it would really be helpful to have a big picture of city and impact to city and county. Yeah, we can absolutely compile those costs. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Jacobs. Mr. Hallerton. Thank you, Mayor Schultz. Good morning, everybody. So most of my questions have been answered. There are just a couple of statements that I wanna, couple of things that I just wanna lift up. And the first thing that came to mind, which has been mentioned before is around the business community and having the business community weigh in in this conversation. The other one is, I'm hearing all of the research that's being done. None of it is being done around with people from NCCU. And if we're gonna do this, then there's gotta be racial equity included in this conversation. And we've got a great university here in Durham as well as Duke and UNC that have people that can have this be in this conversation. So I'd like to hear that those voices are involved in this conversation. And the other thing is to make sure that our attorney is advising us around this because there's a lot to unpack around the legal piece of it. So other than that, that's all that I have right now. It's a great idea. And I appreciate all the research and the work that everyone has done. But I would love to make sure that NCCU is in this conversation and helping to unpack it. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Hallerton. Council Member Freeman and then Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Council Member, there we go. Yes, we can. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm having a little bit of internet trouble. I had to switch to the phone, but I do want to appreciate Chair Hallerton's comments and note that the Masters of Public Administration Department program at North Carolina Center will be a good partner in this. I want to first just thank Crystal Driesbach or Driesbach for all of the work that she's done. I know when I first joined the council, we talked about this issue and we also included straws in the conversation acknowledging how much harm is being created by all these plastics. And so I really want to just sit back and say, like, thank you, Crystal. I noticed you've been carrying this load and doing this work for a long time. I want to appreciate Dr. Lauer and Coleman for joining in to add the white papers and all the research. Because I think that that is really important and acknowledging how cancer alley has an impact on a disparate group of people that are usually of color, especially in Snow Hill and many other areas across the state. I am very mindful of the context of how this is all set up. And as soon as, I think it was, if Becca didn't catch your last name, I apologize, with the National Retail Association mentioned that there would be an undue burden on the businesses coming out of COVID. I did want to ask, as an organization, what exactly is the National Retail Association doing about cancer alley or to address cancer alley and the pollution and health concerns that are coming out of the pollution that's created based on the information that we've been shared today. And you may not have an answer today. I just would love to hear more about what it is actually that the National Retail Association is doing because it is a huge part of this problem and it needs to be addressed. And so I can appreciate all of the legal issues that are in play in the context of how in this state we are preempted, but I'm also very clear that we have to do something as it is, as Chair Jacobs mentioned, on par with climate change. And if we don't do something in the harm that we know it's creating in our water, the harm it is creating in chemicals that are released into our air, like all of that has to be addressed. And I want to do it in a way that creates the conversation and the actual behavior change so that we aren't using plastic bags more so than just having a fight about whether or not we have the law or the rule or the ordinance or the fees on the book. So I know that we saw the preemption with the straws and I'm concerned, even with our legal team as fierce as they are, I mean they're not gonna find a way around the state legislature and moving this forward, it's gonna take a commitment to actually pushing at the state level beyond this conversation. So I really would love to have that conversation with my colleagues here on the county and on the council side, on the commission and the council side because it is gonna take all of us to figure this out. The conversations that I've been having over the years, I really, really want to just step back and say, again, Crystal's drive-thru work to make sure that those, I still have my, what did you call it? Your, maybe move again, the boomerang bag. And I do want to note that Save a Lot needs a lot more of them because they are of very high use in that area. There is a lot to be said about balancing the negative implications of the cost because I do want to say that the cost is way more than 10 cents, even tax. And 10 cents is a very minor cost for some, but it's a major cost for others. And I appreciate the work to actually lay out how the exemption could be in place for EBT, NAPS and other folks, even by request, just noting that they just don't have it. And I know how this rolls out and how it moves forward. And it's kind of like, we kind of push pull. I don't want to do the push pull. What I really want to do is figure out how we move forward. And so if that means having a conversation, having more conversations with the National Retail Association, I want to make sure that I let my, let the representatives know that I'm available and avail myself as much as possible in this conversation or by request. Thank you, council member. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson and then commissioner alum. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just wanted to make a couple of additional comments. I'm looking forward to hearing back from the attorneys around the legal pieces. I was also really excited about the reusable bag exchange recycling program. I feel like that has the potential to resolve a lot of the issues that we might worry about with implementing a policy like this. I think the environmental concerns are serious and are really important for us to address in that we can't ignore the equity issues on the landfill side, on the waste side, to try to deal with any equity issues that might exist on the consumer side. But we do also need to think about how this might impact consumers. I know that when I was in Europe and you had to pay a euro for a plastic bag, I was really, really good at remembering my reusable bags. There's definitely a motivation that comes into play when a cost is imposed. But we, of course, also want to make sure that we're not imposing costs disproportionately on low-income communities. So I feel like the reusable bag program paired with the bag fee is a really excellent way forward. And I'm excited to learn more from our advocates about that program, the pilots that they've done and how we might also be able to support that as a city and a county. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Commissioner Lam. Thank you, Mayor Shull. And thank you so much to the presenters. This was very informative and helpful. As someone who studies sustainable materials and technology, I really appreciate the level of detail you all talked about of the impact, not just when we're using the plastics, but what goes into the entire lifecycle of producing plastic bags and also addressing the fact that the production of plastic bags also releases PFAS into our air and water and how that impacts our most vulnerable communities, especially since right now, to my knowledge, there's no in-store water filtration system that someone can even buy to filter out PFAS. So the impact of that reducing the usage of plastic bags will actually have on people's air quality and water quality as well. And I also wanna highlight, I had similar questions to Mayor Pro Tem Johnson and Council Member Freeman about the reusable bags program. As Council Member Freeman mentioned, the 10 cents can seem nominal to some of us, but it can add up very quickly if you go to the grocery store multiple times in a month and that fee just keeps building up. So how can we make sure that the rollout of the reusable bags is done in an equitable way and making sure our community members who don't have access to coming to the city or coming to the county programs to receive a reusable bag that we are going out to them to make sure that they have access to participating in that program. So like working with the shelters across Durham and different community organizations that work with our lower income residents and making sure that they have access to these reusable bags. I'd like to know more about that project. Thank you. Thank you very much, Commissioner Alam. Commissioner Jacobs. Thank you. I just had a few follow-up comments from the excellent comments that my fellow Joint City County Committee members have made. I do want to give a shout out to Crystal Drysback who has been an incredible leader in our community of Don't Waste Durham and who has just been that one award as a national award for being a champion waste reducer. So I do want to acknowledge Crystal as council member Freeman has for your relentless commitment to this and enthusiasm, this vital issue. And there was a comment that she put in the chat which I agree with that remembering this is not a tax. This is a fee. And we know that the county and the city do impose fees to reclaim address costs associated with different services that we each provide for users. I think that's a very important point. And I also wholeheartedly agree with the whole program about the reusable bags. It definitely has to be just as strong and it's, you know, funded, strongly funded so that that is absolutely available and not a burden to residents. And it could be something really exciting in the Durham way already the fact that the scrap exchange is involved and that volunteers are making them kind of like we had with the face masks during COVID. And, you know, there could be some really exciting partnering with organizations throughout the city and with local artists, maybe in terms of bags being so coveted that people will want to use them. So I think there's a lot of exciting possibilities. And I look forward to the city and the county working with our partners in the community on this. Thank you very much, commissioner. Colleagues, any more questions or comments? Council member Freeman, council member, we're unable to hear you now. I think we can hear you now, go ahead. Okay, thank you. I do want to just make sure that I'm clearly noting there is a context here around our state and the preemption that definitely is more harmful and toxic than us being able to move forward that I would really like to focus on. And I want to make sure that it's clear that even if we did move forward, what we don't want to see in motion is the kind of situation we have with the PRIP program or the straws. And so, yes, I think it would be phenomenal to have this in place, but I think we have to do the work to make sure that our state legislature understands the importance of why we were trying to do this before we move forward. And so I think it'd be great to do some voluntary programs that support the kind of policy that has been brought forward, but I don't want us to kind of pit ourselves against the state legislature in a way that's gonna make it so that they might even try to attack our stormwater fees or any other fees that we have in place. Thank you, council member. Thank you. Any further comments? I'll make a few then to Ms. Driesbach, Ms. Nolan and Dr. Lauer, we so appreciate you being here. The report was great. I think to me, the thing that was most eye-opening was the information about the landfill in Sampson County. I had never thought at all about the area in which that was located and the implications of that and was very grateful to have that information. You have, I think, heard the really excellent comments and of all my colleagues here today, I would just add my enthusiasm for this idea. I have been a couple of times to the Sonoco plant. What you see there, one of the things that you see is giant, giant bales, a huge ungodly number of bales of plastic bags that have been hand-picked out of the, as we saw in the video, it has been hand-picked out of the recycling. And it's just a staggering sight to see that, not only to see people picking the bags out and the thing about the video didn't really do justice to the kind of extremity of that experience of picking those bags out. I'll also want to say that, just for the people that work there. So I think that you have heard unanimous enthusiasm for the idea from both commissioners and council members. And you've also heard the concerns about the potential legal issues. And I know that our council members, I know that our council member, I know that our attorneys, both for the city and the county are gonna do a great job with this. One of the things I would say to my colleagues is, when at one point Ms. Nolan and her group brought to us, gosh, eight or so years ago, maybe I'm thinking, early when I was on the council, the idea that we ought to take up some anti-fracking regulations here in Durham, they had done a great job on it. At that point, and I think my colleagues all agreed, and I think the members of that legal group also agreed, that we would be in the way that council member Freeman described kind of tempting the legislature and over something that really didn't matter much to us. We don't have many fracking opportunities here in Durham. I don't think we have any fracking opportunities here. So we didn't wanna raise our head in that case to have the legislature potentially come down on us, hard for something that we didn't feel there was much benefit. This does feel like a substantial benefit. And so making that judgment about whether or not to take this on, I think is something that we could do in light of the fact that we know this would be a tremendous benefit to our community. And we have a different Supreme Court now in this state. And I think that one of the jobs that we have as elected officials with the advice of our attorneys is to figure out which of those cases really makes sense to take to our Supreme Court majority. And I know that our attorneys will give us very good advice. And I hear, we've already heard today laid out both sides. And as Robinson talking as Council Member Freeman pointed out about the preemption and as Mayor Pro Tem discussed earlier about the possible preemption, the argument on the other side that there is enough explicit protection for this kind of activity already in legislation. And so that's something our attorneys will have to sort out. But I do think we ought to think about the Supreme Court context as we go forward. As far as I say, as you go forward with this. The, yeah, and my final comment is just that I wanna really just again appreciate everybody who's brought this to us. It's a tremendous amount of work you all have done. And I know that we're all excited about the prospects and look forward to what we will hear from our leader. Anything else, colleagues? All right, thank you all so much for this discussion. Ms. Noland, Ms. Noland. Yes, thank you very much, Mayor Schull. I just have a quick question to clarify how we should proceed. We will of course share our more detailed legal analysis with the city and county attorneys. But is there anything else that we should be doing to keep you apprised of that progress for further this conversation? Thank you. Yes, I'll give two pieces of advice on that. One is, I think one of the decisions you all are gonna have to think about and that this council and the commissioner are gonna have to think about is what is the appropriate? Let's assume that the legal analysis either for the city or county or let's say both comes back that there is, that this would be something that we felt we could do. At that point, part of the decision, I think both in the legal sense about which jurisdiction might have the most protection to do that. And also in the sense of who ought to be covered, it should this be something that the county or city should do. And so I would urge you to think about that and advise on that. And then I think that once the, our attorneys have been able to discuss this, I think that there will be an appropriate time to come back before this body or if the decision is made to go to one of the, either the city or the county to come back before them and the attorneys can advise on that. And of course, you can be in touch with the mayor who will not be me and with the county commission chair and they will help you through the process. How does that sound? That sounds perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Nolan. All right, colleagues, there's one more item on our agenda but council member Reese, this was the, we were going to have a discussion of the crime cabinet at Chair Howerton's request, but council member Reese, let me know, Chair Howerton, he was in touch with you and he's asked that it be delayed until the next meeting so that he's able to attend. Yes, mayor, Charlie was in touch with me and we agreed that we've moved this to the December meeting. So I'm perfectly fine with that. Thank you, Madam Chair. Colleagues, I believe that that concludes our business for today and I want to thank you all very much for an excellent meeting and I'm going to declare this meeting adjourned at 10, 21 a.m. Thank you all so much. Thank you, Mayor Churl. Can I just acknowledge that this is your last meeting? Yes, you can. It is. I appreciate it. Of the Joint City County Committee and I've enjoyed it immensely and I look forward to watching you all doiding it without me sometimes. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Steve, for everything. Thank you, Wendy.