 It is now 6 p.m. On Wednesday, February 28, 2024. We have a quorum present, so I'd like to call to order this regularly scheduled hybrid meeting of the Chittin, the Board of Commissioners of the Chittin and solid waste district. First item on the agenda is the agenda itself. Are there any requests for additions or changes to the agenda? I'm hearing none and I'm seeing none. Therefore, the agenda will be followed and accepted as presented in the board packet. Item number two on the agenda is the public comment period. Are there any members of the public present either in the CSWD office conference room via phone or via zoom who wish to make an address to the board of commissioners. I am seeing none via zoom. I believe there are none in the office. And I believe there's no one on the phone, so I will go ahead and close the public comment period. Next item on the agenda is the consent agenda, which unless a commissioner asks for something to be removed. Will be accepted and approved as presented in the packet. Consent agenda consists of the minutes of the January 24, 2024 board meeting. Program update memo executive director update memo. Finance report. A approval of a contract award for hazardous waste hauling. Your authorization to include the new mirth that is will soon be under construction in the district's solid waste implementation plan. Also an item to approve a contract for the Williston drop off center on the to build a maintenance lean to. And also to approve a contract extension for the Burlington electric department, McNeil would waste depot. Any requests to pull an item in that list on the consent agenda for further discussion or questions. I am hearing none for the consent agenda will be accepted. As presented in the board packet, and we're ready to already to move on to item number four, which is the main event of the evening. We have a discussion on the solid waste management fee. This is an important part of our overall district revenue. It's an important part and some, some commissioners, including myself took a long time to really get our heads my head around the, what the solid waste management fee is all about so this is a great opportunity for us all to have some education and also learn more about it and potentially have some discussion. So with that, I'll turn it over to Sarah to lead us through this conversation. Very good. Great. Thank you. This is a bit of a continuation from the solid waste management fee review that we did back in October. So we have updated that. We have some information that are requested by some folks, both at the executive, sorry, the finance committee and just having some conversations with some newer commissioners. Just a few of the questions and actually one of them. Keep doing research on and I'm going to rely on some of the longer 10 year board members to help me out on, but just again review of what it is and what we use for how are we authorized what are we authorized to charge a management fee. How do we turn it, how do we change it, what do other sister districts do, and who, who's charged the fee who pays the fee and how are they charged. So essentially what the fee is. It is a fee that is used to fund district activities that are necessary to ensure our efficient economical environmentally sound management and regulation of the waste generated within the district. And the fee does not fund all of our activities any longer used to when we were first starting out and before we had facilities that generated user fees or produce materials that we could sell for for revenue. It did fund all of our activities and that is in our charter. So right now, it currently fully funds all the items that you see on that list, and the components contain their end so for example, the fee fully funds, the finance department, and and within the finance department are the funds for the community cleanup fund. So the community cleanup fund is fully funded through solid waste management fees, compliance and safety activities, all of our outreach and communication activities are funded through this fee, as is all of our systems are our information systems our technology, our maintenance roll off division and our administrative functions. And so this is an update from October. So I put in the unaudited revenue from fiscal 23 so you could get a sense for kind of what the, the component of our overall revenue is the solid waste management fee. And what it is is charged on each ton of trash that's generated in Chittenden County, that is then sent to the landfill for disposal. So it is not charged on recycling that goes to the market is not charged on food scraps that are sent to the organics recycling facility. It is just on that material that is disposed of in the landfill or there's much that goes out to incineration there used to be occasionally some that went out to incineration but it is most of the material goes to the Coventry landfill. So currently we are charging $27 per ton. And in doing some historical research, we've only increased this fee twice in our history. And so since we started the district. We had to determine the 27 and last time we increased it was in fiscal 13 up from $22 to 27. At the time, we had intended that to be a five year fee so we were intending to take another look at it and possibly raise it again in fiscal 18 and 19. And what we do is we do take a look each year and see if the revenues are sufficient to meet the needs. And we did that in each year. And we determined that we did not need to increase the fee that the fee was sufficient for what we needed to be doing. And the, the makeup of the fee as a percentage of our overall revenue changes each year. So, and it is very much related to the component of the whole. So it's a portion of again our fees are a revenue from user fees which are tipping fees so fees that are charged at drop off centers or at the materials recycling facility or at the organics recycling facility. That is you can see is the largest component. And then it's not always been the case. In some years the solid waste management fee portion has been over 30%. What we see in fiscal 22 is down around 21%. The big swing tends to come in that material and product sales piece of pie. So in fiscal 22 we were coming off a, a roaring year at the Murph where we made more money than we had expected in the sale of commodities. This past year that, that re leveled itself out so it was not as large a wedge of the pie. We have not set as far as I know recently a goal for what the portion of solace management fee as a component of the entire pie should be. We've been talking about it over the years every now and then saying we want to make sure that it's no more than X. But I think the reality is that we don't control to large extent what we can receive, particularly for the recycling, because it's sold on the market we just don't control that portion of our revenue. We're at the mercy of, of the general market. So it's not, it's not a clear science with that respect, but that is last year's an unaudited version. And again, why, how can we do this, what is, what is our authority, and the authority first stems in our charter, the charter was established back in 1987. And it rests in these essentially these two sections section five powers and section 12 management fees. So, I highlighted in a part of the management fees section because I think it's important that we remember that. You know, sometimes you'll hear out in the world wise and this should all be free, you shouldn't have to pay anything for this. And yet in statute and that is what our charter is it is essentially functioning as a law, it says that, and further references from our statutes, the generators of waste, all of us should pay disposal costs to reflect the real cost to society of management and disposal. And that is what we are attempting to do in, in how we approach the, how we set our fees and why we set them the way we do. We also have language in our own local ordinance. So as a municipality, we are able to to and required to set an ordinance to describe how we do our business and how the entities that we regulate are to be regulated. So we have sections in our local ordinance, article eight and article nine, so always management fee and then payment of fees to the district. And this is where the fees are established. Article nine, so article eight states the fee specifically, it says this always management fee is $27 per ton. That is, is how or where that fee is set. Because the fees are specifically named in the ordinance, they can only be changed as part of a formal ordinance amendment or ordinance change process, and we'll be talking more about that over the next month or so. Other districts do have this fee in or have a mechanism in the ordinance some have a theme in the ordinance others don't. And one of the questions that was asked recently was, well what does the fee pay for. And this is again based on kind of unaudited numbers from last year and it's a it's a rough kind of amalgamation of where the fees went to. And you can see, hopefully you can see that, hopefully it's large enough. But the bulk of the Solwis management fees will be flowing into reserves from last year, and the board a couple of years ago authorized establishment of a priority funding of our reserves and a maximum to some of those funds so the Solwis management reserve has a cap. And that cap is has been reached so the excess revenue that is not used for the other programs is then going to flow into the next reserve down which is also kept. So we'll flow to the next reserve down, and so on. And that is usually done at the end of the fiscal year after all of the bills are paid. And after we've been, I think it's prior to us being audited but then we get the final resolution of how much goes into each each reserve flow. So but of what was generated. This is kind of where the fees were used. So, you know, as you can imagine it was designed to be used for administrative purposes, that is where the bulk, aside from reserve, where the fees are used. So and again, you know, who pays all generators of solid waste into an accounting pay some form. So it is essentially can be seen as a tax, although we don't call it tax we call it a fee but because there is no escaping this fee. So you can consider it a tax, and the fee is generally all the time actually not in generally incorporated into the bills that haulers charge their customers. So it's a component of that fee. The haulers are charged or charged the fee at the point of disposal whether it's directly at the landfill or transfer station. And then generally is Kasella who is remitting those fees to us because they run both the landfill and the transfer station. And then we also pay this fee so former materials the trash that is collected at our drop off centers for example, we pay Kasella to dispose it at the transfer station so the bill the Kasella sense to us incorporates our own fee into that bill. And as part of Kasella's contract for operating the materials recycling facility, they are responsible for paying for the disposal of the residue is generated at the facility so that fee is incorporated into that processing fee. And this is an example of some of other sister districts and kind of what what they do. Okay, so in Addison County. They charge $35 a ton. They do have one of the largest always mentioned fee. Unless you combine the per capita, but they don't charge a per capita fee and their fees established through their budget process each year. Central Vermont has two fees and administrative fee which is essentially their solid waste management fee. And their fee is currently $30 a ton but they also add an additional per capita fee of $1.43 a ton Northwest similarly they call there's a franchise tax. So they have that base tax in their ordinance at $15 a ton but that has been amended over the years is currently $25 a ton and they also charge a per capita fee as well. And greater prevailing has two fees they're calling it a waste generation fee essentially a solid waste management fee at $23 a ton and that one has not changed, but their tipping fee, what they're calling it tipping fee has changed and that's currently at $15 and 71 cents a ton. And they set that through their budget, and that is functioning essentially as a per capita fee. Yep, that is the end, I'm going to stop my share. That was a very, I'm sorry, I apologize, quick run through of kind of what the solid waste management fee is, how it functions, where it currently goes. One of the things that as I mentioned, Amy and I have been doing some research on is how the fee was initially determined. I think I mean this predates you, Ellen. And we're having difficulty finding out how it was initially established back in 1992. So we're still looking to kind of just for historical purposes, and because a question arose at our latest staff training well how, how do we set that solid waste management fee. And really what we do is we look at the needs in our budget. And one of the things that we're proposing in this upcoming fiscal year budget is to increase the fee from $27 a ton to $30 a ton. And the need this time around, in prior years, the need was due to a decrease in revenue from recycling, it was, there were a couple of crashes back in 08. And then again in 111213 that precipitated an increase. So what we're looking at now is needing to, to beef up our reserves that don't have another source of revenue to generate specifically the closed landfill reserve. We know we need to to beef that reserve up. So we're looking at supplementing that reserve with this additional solid waste management fee revenues, and also looking at ways to supplement our capital reserve as well. So that's why and how, what percentage, I'm still looking into that and I will, I will continue to read past packets. So, questions, thoughts, comments on the fee itself. So I just wanted to jump in before we open up conversation on it. I'm just going to take privilege to do it. You know, you talk about $27 a ton. I just wanted to share with the commissioners like, if you take $27 a ton and you divide it by 2000 pounds in a ton current solid waste management fee is 1.35 cents per pound. I'm a typical homeowner and I'm just a homeowner I go to a drop off center but if my bag of trash weighs 30 pounds, which I think is actually rather heavy, that equates to 40 and a half cents of the fee that I pay to dispose of that bag of trash. To me, you know, that puts it into a context, we may get talking about 27 versus 30 and it's kind of an abstract number but I just, I just wanted to get out in front of everybody was personally I think it's helpful. To bring it down to the personal level. I don't know I'm not I don't use a hauler so I don't know what people pay for their weekly or bi weekly pickup. But again, if you're picking up, or if you're putting out 30 pounds of trash to be picked up and you've been the cost, you saw the waste management to use right now in the 40 to 41 cents. If if you're disposing of 30 pounds could be higher could be lower but again I think that's a helpful number to just kind of have in the back of your mind. Thanks Paul. Thank you very much for giving me that privilege to point that out. Margie, you're up and then Ken, and you're muted Marty. Sorry. So, I hope this isn't a stupid question but can you explain Sarah how a per capita fee works or would work. So per capita fee is essentially, you know again the two districts that I called out charge $1 and 43 cents, and it's per person in the district. So that dollar 43 and multiplied by the members, the population of the town, and then that town would be sent to bill for the total of their members in their town. And that fee is built probably through property taxes. Exactly. Thanks. That's what I imagined but I just wanted to be sure. And we paid the first three years there was a per capita charge for the members of those communities. But we got away from it and the select boards, at least when I was on the select board are very glad that there isn't that additional charge. That they have to raise to general funds. And it's interesting. Thank you all and you're exactly right and it's interesting when I go to present our budget to our member town cities. Every now and then because obviously folks change off the boards, you know, fairly regularly they'll say, I've been looking in our budget and I can't find your bill. And I say, yes, you won't. You won't find a bill from us, because here's how we generate our revenue and is through other other means, and that tends to ease the conversation. But to Paul's point, you know, it's what we do, we do very well and we do very affordably and economically and I think our member towns appreciate that. And your hand is up and then Kailin and then Bryn. Great. So it's kind of a two part question. So, Sarah, did I understand that you were saying that you, we increase the fee. Then we have this excess money, the reserve is captain and it flows down to where you want it to be flowed down. Okay. The second part is that you described what the fee is for. And it was things administrative it and finance blah, blah, blah. And it didn't include things like clothes landfill and your description of what it's for. But your description of our ordinance it says we're supposed to it's we're allowed to charge to pay for the cost of trash seems to include things like helping the clothes landfill so I just want to make sure that we're not sending the wrong impression that we're like using this fund. It seems like it's totally appropriate but we kind of made it sound like we're using it to pay for something we don't normally use it for. That's a really good clarifying question. Thank you, Ken. We, we also have the ability so no one and I can direct excess revenue to specific funds. And that's what we would be doing with with a portion of the always measure a few revenues raised. So, you know, again, because the clothes landfill. Is not generating revenue. And that one does have the need to be directing more of the excess revenue from the salaries management fees not needed for administrative functions to that close landfill reserve for that specific purpose. You know, again, the, you know, we'll most likely for the next couple of years, rearrange that order. We have capital reserve above that cell that closed landfill reserve, but we will want to, for the first few years of this increase to rearrange that order. So we hit what we think should be a comfortable, comfortable amount in that that reserve. We've landed on a million dollars as a, as a, we think will be enough to manage what we need to manage for the next five to seven years, not knowing what may be coming down the line for leachate treatment. And then, and then once we hit that cap, we'll go back to again flowing through the waterfall as initially described. Thank you. It's a good distinction. Thank you. You're all set Ken with your questions. Okay. Hi there. I'm the alternate in Williston, if people don't know because I'm not here all the time. This is a helpful presentation. I am wondering if, like how much of a factor the unfunded reserves are in this decision and if other ways to fund them have been considered before this. And then maybe I'll pause at the second question. Yeah, so this past year we did flow the bulk of the interest revenue that we made from the interest invest the reserve fund investments into the closed landfill fund. So we, we had a good, I think a pretty good year made over just over $150,000. So we were able to put a good chunk into the closed landfill to kind of jumpstart that. But as, as interest rates, we'll start to decline that's going to be less of a reliable source of additional revenue will we're we are still investing those funds. So we will see generating that revenue but that will be going down so we're looking for a steadier, more reliable source of revenue for that unfunded reserve fund. And this was so that's a, is it fair to say that that's a significant factor in pursuing the increase and this was identified as the best way to do that. Because generally for so generally land post closure funds for landfills are are pre funded. So they're funded during the course of operation of the landfill is is a piece of what you have to do. It's a federal requirement is the state requirement and it's just best practice for managing that landfill. So you have to, you're supposed to put enough money into that closure fund that post closure fund to provide for 30 years of care. So we were doing pretty well. And any landfill manager will tell you can never have enough money in that post closure fund. And the, the new factor is PFAS, and having not knowing what that treatment is going to look like. And we'll find out very soon in the next year, I would assume. But we know in year 28 of a 30 year plan. We're pretty sure we're not going to have enough. So, you know, the alternative would be to move money from the undesignated fund, which is our basically our rainy day emergency fund. So that would that's always an option. We don't really want to move it out of operating fund that needs, I think to be for our facilities. We couldn't move it just out of just the general saw always management reserve, but we like to try to keep that there and as a, as a hedge against increasing unnecessarily. So, the fact that we haven't increased this fee since you know fiscal 13. We felt that this was a reasonable approach. Great. That's really helpful. And it definitely seems appropriate and the, you know, the way it's written of capturing the full cost of managing waste, which the long term closed landfill is part of that. So, from Kelton's perspective, I just wanted to share. It sounds like we're really talking about the raising the amount of the fee, and not necessarily the process for it being raised in an ongoing way but could you clarify that because he had some concerns about the process for raising the fee. Kind of long term. So we discussed this at the executive board and we'll be bringing a proposal back to the full board next month. The way we raise it now is through ordinance change. And we had a good conversation at the executive board about the kind of pros and cons. The, the proposals that we will be bringing to the full board is to take a look at going forward how we want to, you know, what's the mechanism that want to continue to employ to change that fee. And we're staff is proposing that we look at changing the mechanism to similar to what Addison County does, and similar to greater upper valley, where their fee is a part of their annual budget process. So we'll be bringing that information to the full board for conversation discussion. Next month we bring the budget. Can I just interrupt Sarah, if you could just kind of walk through the steps. If we follow through on the proposed $3 per ton increase. Can you just walk us through the ordinance change process that will kick off soon. Yeah, so currently, we regard this will need to have an ordinance change request we brought to the full board, whether we change the mechanism by which we change the, the, or just change the fee. As I mentioned, right now the fee is stated in the ordinance as the fee is $27 ton. So if we want to change the feed to $30, we would still need to go through an ordnance ordinance change process to say, change that language to say this, change that fee is $30. So that requires us to go to the board, the board has to authorize language to go out to public comment, it would authorize the public hearing, we would hold a public hearing, and then the board would the next month. We would take the responses from that public hearing under advisement, and that either would authorize the ordinance change or, or not authorize the ordinance change. If the change is authorized then our process internally has been that we allow for another 45 days before the change takes effect. So we're hoping that any changes that changes that if they are approved would take effect for July one. I hope that was clear the process we will have an ordinance change process that we will go through no matter what comes forward with a potential change that the board might entertain. Thanks for the clarification. Bryn, your hand was up and then after that I just want to go back to the meeting room to see if anybody in the conference room has has any questions or comments. Thanks. I might have missed this in your presentation, Sarah. Was there any review of how much inflation is increased since 2013 and how that compares to the proposed $3 increase. I did not include that in there we have included that in the past and I will look at that because, as we know the past several years couple of years anyway, the CPI has been pretty out of control. So, when we did the increases the last time, they were in the 20% there was the last increases about 25%. And this increase is so going from $27 to $33 it's just over 10%. So it's a smaller increase than has been proposed in the past. As far as accumulative inflation over the past, you know, X number of years 13 years. I don't have that handy back and certainly find out. I'm sorry to interrupt you, Bryn. But to that point, I wish I had it in front of me but I did some back of the envelope calculations and certainly not reliable but I think that $27 per ton that we're still charging would be in 2013 dollars, probably down around $21 that we'd be if we were collecting that fee in 2013 dollars right now would be about 21 bucks a ton. Yeah, I asked purely for context so that, you know, when we're looking at like, what, what would comparatively if we were to raise based off CPI. How much of an increase would that be like year over year. Like would that be $35 so again it's just it's just for some point of it's a data point, a reference point. So following up on that. I mentioned at the beginning of your presentation that the 2013 increase had been intended for a five year plan. Are you also intending this for a five year plan. Well, so that's a great question. And that actually gets at kind of the pros and cons over. Do we include this in our annual budget or do we continue with keeping the fee in the ordinance. If we were to look at it annually to our annual budget process. We would be looking at it from the perspective of certainly is there a need. And because we already utilize the CPI for our wages and benefits to determine the cost of living adjustment. We would then look at using that the same that same index or there's also a garbage and trash index that the Bureau of Labor Statistics produces looking at that index. The index talks about any increase or decrease of the costs involved with managing trash and recycling. So we would propose if we move to the budget process, using those two indices to basically say if we were to raise this fee. This would be how much we would recommend we not exceed the increase by it still, we would not necessarily guarantee an increase it still would have to be what are the needs in this next. fiscal year. So, I think going 1012 years is is excessive we most likely, you know, should have done a deeper dive back in 18 or 19 and really taken a harder look at it. If very likely could be satisfactory for a number of years, but I wouldn't want to guarantee that. Again, we saw what happened over the past couple of years with the, the large swings in the cost of living and in the consumer price index so I like having a mechanism and automatic mechanism that we can, you know we know we're going to look at this every single year. There's also nothing stopping us from looking at every single year as part of the ordinance process. So, either way, I think we're going to want you to go through that exercise, regardless of which mechanism we choose. Okay, thank you. I can't see everybody in the conference room but is there anybody there who would like to ask a question. So, we have a number of a fact Paul in 13 when we did raise the fee. It was a very, it was probably the most input that we've had at any hearing, but it was the intent of the board to raise it. So that there was money put aside in years one and two that would be able to pay the required increases for the other things that we fund with it in years three, four and five. And the haulers, even though it seems like it's a very small number of the haulers felt that they like that proposal because we were going to keep it fairly steady or we were going to keep it steady for five years. And they would not have to go out to their clientele and get a raise every year to match what whatever it was but it, it worked out really well for us because we've kept it constant for much longer than that almost twice that long. Thanks for that bit of history Alan Leslie, can I see your hand up was up first but I want to give Leslie a chance to ask her first question and then we'll go back to you can. I'm, I know this is probably premature because we will be having a conversation the board is as Sarah just said but building in annual reviews or annual increases makes me a little nervous, because it, it's a disincentive to efficiency. If you think all your costs increases are going to be covered. You know, all you have to do is change the ordinance every year. That that is a concern of mine. We need to be looking at building an incentives to cost management. Thanks for that comment Leslie I think keep that in reserve when we get to the discussion. I guess it'll be at our next board meeting. I think that's an important point to bring up. This goes to Brits. Brins question sorry. I just plugged in, I just pulled up the consumer price index inflation calculator from the Bureau of Labor statistics and if you plug in $27 in 2013. That has the same buying power as $36 in 2024. So I hope that makes everyone feel a little bit better we're way under that. Yeah, I was kind of anticipating. Thanks for looking that up. Yeah. Marty. Yeah. So, Sarah I was interested, you know, in your point and I agree. People often think, you know, well why are we paying for this? It should all be free but you know we're producing this trash. I'm wondering whether there's, and I didn't know whether any of your presentation focused on the, you know, food scraps versus trash. I mean this is being paid on every ton of trash that goes to the landfill and 30% of that tonnage is, if I have it right, material that could be diverted to, you know, organics recycling. And I'm just wondering whether there's any possible incentive effect of raising it to encourage more use more diversion of food waste. And I get this question a lot. And I struggle with a good way to explain it so if it's not making sense, definitely give me some feedback because I want to keep trying to find better ways to explain this. It's, if you get your trash picked up or food scraps picked up at the curb, it's not a linear reduction, right? So you're going to pay $27 a ton, kind of regardless of your efforts to reduce. Because you're probably getting your collection once or twice a month or maybe, you know, four times a month, and you're paying that $27 a ton baked into your monthly bill, whether you're putting out one bag of trash or four in your card. So just where there's an incentive is at our drop off centers where you are controlling how many bags that you're bringing in. So customer who goes to our drop off center pays for one bag $8. If they can reduce the amount of food scraps are in that $8 bag and can pay for the $3 bag, they have effectively reduced their portion of the solid waste management fee. So at the drop off center, no, not really. At the drop off center, better chance, yes. Well, except, at least my hauler charges a separate fee for the food waste. And, yeah, so you're not paying anything at that food waste that $27 is in charge there but you are, it is still baked into your trash bill. So if you put out one bag in your cart or five bags in your cart, you're not paying the $27 your portion of that the few cents on each bag you're paying for the cart, essentially, whether it's full or not. This might need some help in explaining this so. We're less full over time, because I put more in the food waste. Yeah. And that night has possibly another day. Say, say hello to the board and thank you my name's Matt Wallace. I'm the alternate from Shelburne, new to the time of entry job here last summer. So I have the fresh new resident perspective figuring all this out and setting it up. And I see a couple things. First is that this is much lower than I thought it would be. Um, and you coming from the South Virginia and North Carolina. I'm used to landfill tipping fees being substantially higher than this. So I, this is a very example of Vermont cost of living being surprisingly low. So I, it doesn't feel offensive to me to increase it and certainly keep up with inflation. There's a lot of money of that going on in other service fee adjustments that we've done as a, as a new resident, I saw exactly that calculation that you described that I signed up for a curbside service because it was reasonably affordable and convenient. But I thought about it, and I looked at where your convenience centers were and I thought, okay, that could be my lifestyle, and it was close. But I chose the convenience. If that price went up because the hauler passed through the cross that you're describing, I could reevaluate that and I would, I would do it and save a buck and people do respond to those choices. And I think it's, it's well within your original policy mission to express that and try to note those choices. So the need you've been describing the uses of these funds as driven by your budget, when the original policy intent in the law was to capture the total social costs of all of these ways management impacts. So you're, you're not yet measuring or capturing overall societal impacts and trying to offset them. So I commend you by all means pay the bills build up reserves but it's okay to send a stronger social signal to and you'll change behavior of people like me. Thanks for that perspective Matt. Margie are you satisfied with your. Yeah, I think I thank you Matt that's a, that's a very good point and I guess what I was, you know, wondering was whether, you know whether this is, you know, part of can be part of a communications effort to make the point that the fewer tons we send to the landfill. The less the haulers are going to have to pay. It's a larger, you know, fee. I'm not saying that very well but I agree. I think I was trying to get at the point that Matt stated much better is that there's we need to be cognizant of the total social cost of this stuff that we are throwing out. And just one observation should this if disposal of material at the landfill goes way down, then so does CSWD's revenue from the solid waste management thing, which is a good thing. It's a good thing we're in a bit of an upside down business model in that sense that we want that fee to go down. Lee your hands up. Yeah, just listening to Matt's comments he referred to the tipping fee that in the solid waste management fee or two different fees correct that would be baked into the tipping fee. I'm looking at my bills when I bring roadside trash to Kasella, the tipping fee is $170 a ton doesn't specifically say in the invoice. You know that there is that solid waste management fee in there it refers to it but doesn't give you an amount because you're paying based on tonnage that you're dropping off. It's similar to our solid waste generation tax that we have in the city of Burlington that we use to fund our recycling program. So all the local haulers that pick up trash that residential units in Burlington pay the city a solid waste generation tax per residential unit per month. And a lot of our residents don't know they have that tax because it's not seen in their bill. So it's kind of similar to the solid waste management fee I think. Yeah, just wanted to get that out there to see if maybe it helped clarify, you know, retract my previous praise what 110 is not a good price. Yeah, it is it is wrapped into the overall fees. Yeah, it's not called on separately. And the state franchise is also in the tipping fee. Yeah, there's an additional $6 a ton that has not changed ever ever. So, and that $6 a ton that is charged on on all tons going to landfill that is admitted to the agency of natural resources. And that is, you know, used for grants and for agency support but that is also not called out on the bill. I can also use an increase. More questions folks. Rick has a question. He doesn't actually. It's a proactive request because the purpose tonight is to discuss the solid waste management fee and not how much it is. But at the point that we bring the perspective increase to the board. Okay, seeing a projection of what will at what point we would get the closed landfill reserve to a million dollars at $27 versus $30. I have a philosophical question that I continue to be confused about and it may be a sneak preview of a further discussion on on increasing the rate or how we would do about it but you know we've talked about the solid waste management fee as you've said it's a fee or a tax. We have a tip fees, which we've also used that word we have a tip fee at the mirf when you bring in materials. We have a tip fee at the organics recycling facility when you bring in materials there. It's really a two part question when my first questions why we call some a tip fee and some would you know in the solid waste management fee is not a tip because it seems to me you pay a certain rate based on the volume. You pay a certain rate basically that you take to these different facilities so why aren't they all tip fees is one question. And then the second question which is really for down the road. Why are we, we raise our tip fees through the budgeting process at the mirf or or even outside of the budgeting process I believe it's possible to raise some of our tip fees at the or at the mirf. So we're in an ordinance change process for the solid waste management fee. But my first question is, why are some called tip fees and some aren't. Well it's interesting to in. And the charter doesn't help us out here, because it says though that the, the district is allowed to charge a either stat to establish a management fee and then in parentheses says tipping fees. Even in the charter it's equating the two. But in practice, we do not equate the two, as you said so tipping fees are charged by the immediate user or generator of the material at the location where they are bringing their material so you know if you are not a, a customer of the doc. You're not charged a tip fee. If you are not a customer of the mirf you're not charged to be in the or. You cannot escape the solid waste management fee. So it is, it is charged to all generators as part of some fee. Thank you man. They are charged by either their hollers or by us. So you can choose to not pay a fee associated with food scraps at the or or at our drop off center by composting at home. So that fee is not automatic. The solid waste management fee is automatic. A holler can choose to bring the recycling down to the Murph and Rutland. They're not required to bring their material here. So I think that there is that that option of moving movement of the material, but once material is designated for disposal in the landfill that is the only place it's going to go. And that material is charged that that essentially tax on trash. I think I got it. Yeah, a comment, Paul. At one point, we were trying to ensure that those activities that had tipping fees, the tipping fees paid for the service that we were paying for them to have, and that the management fee was paying for those other activities that didn't have, you know, money making capabilities like administration. So that was the specific difference and we've blended those a little bit, but we do have a tipping fee for trash. And then on addition to that, we have the solid waste management fee that goes on top of that cost. We do pay. So our customers are paying that $27 to turn the portion of it in their tipping fee to us at a drop off center center. Yeah. And I want to be clear the tipping fee at Coventry is established by Kasella, not WD. That's right. And how often do they change their tipping fee. That's a good question and we have a contract. We pay them for what we pay at the transfer station. So if you're, if you don't have a contract with Kasella presumably they could change the tip fee really whenever they, they need to. We know that they tend to change the tip fee at the Murph in Rutland, which they own an operate on a monthly basis. I'm guessing unless you have a contract with them. So it's a privately held facility in Coventry so they can change prices whenever they need to. Thank you. More question and discussion on the solid waste management fee. I think there's been a. A quick clarifying question based on what Alan said. By extension, it would be counter to our way of doing business. If we said, we're going to raise the tipping fee on trash in order to fund the closed landfill reserve, because that's crossing boundaries. So we just have historically not done that. As a matter of practice, right. If there was a surplus in. The money that we collected. Yes. That could go at the end of the year into a lump sum that right that they would transfer into that reserve. Right or into the waterfall. Any other discussion. I hope for all commissioners. This has been beneficial and illuminating perhaps a bit confusing at times, but it's a complex. Complex part of our operation. I think then we're ready to move on to the next item in the on the agenda, which is other business. Is there any other business to bring before the board tonight. Yes, Alan. I have asked this question before. I can't remember the answer. But the construction debris that Myers disposes of. We have to double check with Josh to see if Kasella is reporting. You've talked about the deep packaging facility. If they're reporting those numbers. I'm not sure, but we do get the numbers from Kasella from Myers further. We would help our exact next of our recycling efforts. Yep. We definitely to make sure that we have the total picture of diversion out of the landfill. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. Really. Yeah. We get the numbers from Myers. I'd have to double check with Josh to see if Kasella is reporting. You've talked about the deep packaging facility. If they're reporting those numbers. I'm not sure, but we do get the numbers from Kasella from Myers further. Thank you, Paul. Really, Alan. Paul, I have another item to for other business. If you could go ahead. So you'll be, the board will be receiving from either me or from Jen holiday, a request for if you are feeling comfortable to send out a, an email or to call your local senators regarding the extended producer responsibility law for batteries. That bill is mostly going to be voted out of committee. The Senate committee this week and then it'll head over to the house. Jen has prepared an excellent fact sheet on that. And what it will do is it will expand the current extend producer responsibility law. And then it will also expand to, and Jenny should probably be talking about this to, to include. Lithium ion batteries or chargeables, et cetera. So expanding that to include the really very dangerous batteries that can wreak a lot of havoc. Lithium ion batteries are one of the leading causes of fires at recycling facilities across the country. And then we have the news. The fires that are happening for batteries. That have overheated into damage from e-bikes and other kinds of electronic. Scooters and things of that nature. So we would love for you again, if you feel comfortable. Sending a short email and we can provide you with some, certainly information and there are three key points. And I think that's the first one. So we would like to thank the commissioners to pay attention to the bill when it comes to the floor. And to please do support that. So that will be coming to you. This week. Again, that's a heads up that something's coming, but we're on, we're not under an obligation to do it. Correct. Each commissioner can exercise their own judgment. in community, but the hope is that it wouldn't. And Paul in the chat, Lee put in some info saying that for them, Kasella's tip fee increased $12.35 a ton from last year to this year. So sizable, 10%. And we saw the same as well. And 10% the previous year. Nothing else, then I take it under other business. If that's the case, then we're open to a motion to adjourn. Some moved, Essex. Second, Hinesburg. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded that we adjourn for the evening. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, Seine? We are adjourned. Good night, everyone. Good job that you've already checked. It's 7 o'clock. You know, freaking good, huh?