[Zac Bears]: Medford city council subcommittee on ordinances and rules meeting notice, Tuesday, April 4th, 2023 at 6pm. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Present. Councilor Knight. Councilor Knight is absent. Chair Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Present. Two present, one absent. The meeting is called to order. There will be a meeting of the Medford City Council subcommittee on ordinances and rules on Tuesday, April 4 2023 at 6pm in the Medford City Council chamber on the second floor of Medford City Hall and via zoom purpose of this meeting is to discuss the proposed waste hauler ordinance paper 22-605 subcommittee has invited dpw Commissioner Tim McGivern Health Director Marianne O'Connor and Alicia Hunt, Director of Planning, Development and Sustainability, to attend this meeting. For further aids, information and accommodations, contact the City Clerk at 781-393-2425. Sincerely yours, Zach Baer, Subcommittee Chair. Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Subcommittee on Ordinances and Rules of the Medford City Council. We are here to discuss a proposed waste hauler ordinance which has now partially morphed into a series of updates to the city's chapter 70 solid waste ordinance. We had a meeting was that in March or late in March? Can't remember if it was late February, but in March. Thank you for the correction. I think so. In March to discuss this proposed ordinance, and I think we had some great feedback from our city staff. regarding both why these changes are useful and then also maybe some adjustments that should be made to better reflect the practice of the city, specifically the board of health and the health department and how they regulate solid waste and recyclable removal in the city. So we'll follow up on that. We also discussed we've been working on this for a while, and we've been. Figuring out exactly how the proposed updates should fit into the existing ordinance and had some motions on that, and Councilor Collins. Did some great work on pulling that together, so we have something to share. On our screen at some point to discuss that as well. But before we get into that, I just want to see if there's anything. That Councilor Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Sure, thank you. Yeah, just to piggyback off of your preface, I think that our conversation just a few weeks ago was very helpful in setting the table for what we could do here between this new proposed language and our existing language. I went ahead and kind of did a couple ways of comparing old and proposed in the space between the first meeting and this one. My hope is that if we're able as a group to sort of do that meshing together in conversation by looking at a couple documents that we've prepared, that'll help us pinpoint where we have to make decisions about what to get rid of, what to keep, what we can update using the new language, and just go from there with the guidance from our city staff that are related to this project.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Thank you, Councilor Collins. I'm just getting my Zoom set up. Give me one moment. Great, so I'm going to share my screen in a second. Oh, can you make me a co-host, Mr. Clark?
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Great, thank you.
[Zac Bears]: So we have here basically a document that incorporates the existing or the proposed changes into the existing that we're not quite sure. Um how much if any of it needs to remain or what should be removed or what should be modified so we can come back to that. Um but really, where we get in here is is just says recycling. This would incorporate the title of the proposed waste hauler ordinance. The general or the basic organization of this is there's kind of a first division, a general division around purpose, intent and authority. And we can come back to specifics when we need to. And a second one around definitions. Anything that's red here is new. Anything that you see in black is currently in the existing ordinance. Um, The second section is around administration. So this incorporates much of the new ordinance, as well as this section here is actually something that I wrote up just because there was a kind of a whole list of sections in the existing ordinance around collection, and I felt like most of those don't need to be there anymore. They're very outdated and kind of seem to imply like DPW directly picking up recycling, which is not our current practice, but I did try to incorporate some of that section in here. Again, just a really first draft. The rest of this, we have this permit requirement for haulers. Most of that language is from the proposal. This here in bold is from Councilor Collins. kind of a simplification of some of the details that were, excuse me, included in the proposed ordinance, kind of reflecting some of what we discussed last meeting regarding the Board of Health and all the regulations that the Board of Health puts out for regulating this. Similarly, around the annual permit renewal, there's some proposed language here in bold that's a change from the original proposal. And here again, in general permit requirements, another change that kind of, you know, as an attempt to say that the Board of Health will control what the requirements of a permit would be. Then we have this last section here on enforcement. And again, this is from the proposed ordinance for waste hauler. And there's one other. here, which again is trying to make sure that the Board of Health has control over the schedule for any appeals for penalties for violation of this ordinance. That's a very short summary of what this document is. I don't know, Councilor Collins, if you want me to turn this over to you, think about where we should start here. Over to you.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Yeah, I guess. where to start I mean I think I think our goal here is to simplify but since we're kind of trying to simplify something that is currently to kind of big aligned but not quite aligned ordinances I'm not not quite sure like if where I want to start content wise but. One option could be going to a place in this current document where we've suggested to replace some of the current language with language from the new proposed language and just kind of going through the why I know for me personally and going through this there are a lot of sections where I. you know, right now be very comfortable saying let's go ahead and motion to replace the existing language with the language from the new proposed language or let's motion to delete this, consolidate or replace. And I think those are some of those are just discussions that I think would be helpful to have out loud and to, you know, directly ask for staff feedback on before we before we go ahead to make sure that I think some of these are gonna be really clear where it's like even a lay person would know this language is clearly outdated or it's overly prescriptive or it's empowering a city department that like it's not relevant to how we do things right now. But others, I think we should maybe just walk through.
[Zac Bears]: Great, yeah, maybe we can start with this division one here. So purpose, intent and authority. This is from the proposed. Essentially, it replaces the purpose language from the existing ordinance with the language from the proposed waste hauler ordinance that we reviewed last time. I'll go to you, Mary Ann. Sure. Director O'Connor, how are you?
[Unidentified]: Good, good, good. Thank you.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So, I have submitted a lot of changes or edits and comments and I'm sorry I don't. Know why they're not there, but I can certainly redo. It's just there are certain like, right from the very beginning. under 70 dash one, you know, rather than saying the chief police or the director of the health, rather just say the police are the Department of Public Health. I mean, there's just certain little edits that I threw in and certainly I do think some of the language is obviously outdated and needs to be updated. Gosh, yeah, I did a lot of comments and edits and I'm not sure why they didn't say why they're not there.
[Zac Bears]: That's I may have missed that. I apologize, Mary. I may not have gotten that document.
[Adam Hurtubise]: So that may be on me, I apologize for that.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Just, you know, because some of it aligns with a lot of it, most of it aligns with our current Board of Health regulations as far as the permitting process goes. But there were just some nuances that need to be tweaked as well. Going through so I don't know, I don't know how you want to proceed if you're going to go through it, like, from the very beginning. are just certain aspects.
[Zac Bears]: If you don't mind me asking, could you send me by email the document with your edits and maybe we could take a look at that?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, I can try.
[Zac Bears]: Sorry about that.
[Adam Hurtubise]: No, I'm sorry too. I'm not a Google doc expert. Okay. Translate a lot better.
[Zac Bears]: You know, like, Marianne, we can hear what's going on in the background just great. Um, while director O'Connor sending over those edits, which I'm certain we would be happy to incorporate into whatever drafting I think we ended up maybe in a multiple document situation here. So we have a few different things have been floating around. Um, we're going off of something that I kind of compiled based on some other documents. So I may not have seen Marianne's and didn't bring those changes in. Um, so we can take a look at that. I'm going to skip through this article one and we can come back to it because I think really this is Um, definitely something that needs to be updated. Um, I guess in general, um, holding for for any comments and edits from from director O'Connor, um, which will incorporate, uh, in this in this purpose intent authority under Article two. Um, This is basically just pulled right from the proposed private waste, or the proposed waste hauler ordinance verbatim. And, you know, I don't have any comments on it. I was just wondering if, you know, I think it made sense to just replace the existing purpose and intent section with the new one. Go ahead, Councilor Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Yeah, I think this is one of those cases where the new language, if our goals are for this to be more clear, modernized, and also make it clear that we're hewing to regional and state best practices, I think that this new language is a pretty straightforward way to do that. The previous language, I think it used some other language just to describe Recycling and solid waste which are just not in common parlance anymore. I think that this The new language references our most up-to-date metrics for how to recycle. It mentions the Massachusetts Waste Ban Regulations, which I think is where we can reference higher-level policy goals as benchmarks for our local waste collection. I think that's a good thing, because that way it'll automatically update when things shift at the state level that we're going to have to pivot to. I think it's just good to have those referenced so it's clear why we're going for what we're going for. And I think that's true in the definitions, or I think the same theme holds through in the definition section as well, right below that, you know, why would we do the work, you know, on a local level of enumerating like every single recycling, recyclable material that we could think of when we can just point to, this is what the state says are recyclable materials that haulers need to be considering and sort of have it be a, a pinpoint instead of a list that will have to be updated in this kind of like onerous way in the future.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, got it. And similarly on this definition section, it's mostly the new definitions from the waste hauler ordinance, although we did include leaf collection season and paper leaf bag, which were in the prior ordinance. We didn't remove those. or at least the comments that we have would not remove those. Although I don't think that those two are referenced any longer in this proposal, because I did suggest deleting most of the collection section, and I think that's where it was referenced. So I'll pause there, and Director O'Connor, maybe we could start not with 70-1, but maybe with 70-41, if you have any comments on Well, I guess this is tough. You probably weren't looking at this document when you made your comments, so. I'm not exactly sure how to approach that, but I do want to hear from you. And if we could make Marianne a co-host. Oh, she is a co-host. All right.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So 7D-41. I didn't have any specific updates to that. I mean, that looked like it was consistent with what we currently have, and that wasn't an issue. That wasn't an area that I had concerns.
[Zac Bears]: In terms of definitions, obviously, we're We're adding in a lot of new definitions. Was there anything that you specifically saw around definitions in the ordinance that should be changed or added other than what we kind of were already looking at last time?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: The only thing in the definitions were second to the last at the bottom of the page was says, permanent hollow show me in any private holler who has obtained a valid private holler permit from the city of Medford I would just say from the city of measured border health.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: other definitions of residential customer generators, I mean, you include mobile homes. I'm not aware of any mobile homes in method at this point, but probably no harm in leaving it there just in case. And that was all for the definitions.
[Zac Bears]: Great. So we have here. legal provisions. I don't know, Director Hunt, maybe if you might be able to speak to that. It was kind of a blank section in the proposed waste hauler ordinance, and I kind of get the intent, which is just to say if there's any state, if there's any other laws or legal provisions that we need to reference or need to be incorporated in here, but I didn't see any content there. So just wanted to flag that as, you know, maybe we, Maybe that's something that council will add at a later date, but I just wanted to see if there was any additional intent beyond what was in the text of the proposed waste hauler ordinance, if you have any additional info on that.
[Alicia Hunt]: Our recommendations all came from the templates that were provided by MassDEP, and so I think it was a placeholder in the event that a municipality as you said, wanted to put something like that in.
[Zac Bears]: Great. And then this effective date also came from the template, I believe, of 90 days after passage. I mean, I don't know.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. The idea there is that the piece that we're really looking to change was that they have to bundle services together. And you certainly don't want to make them change their business practices on the fly. So we should give any companies notice. And they won't, you know, to their credit, they shouldn't have to make changes until they know for sure. So right, first it passes, and then they get a notice. What we might want to do is, be more specific about which, because in this case, we're looking to edit the whole ordinance, and a lot of it is not new, and a lot of it is just modernizing language, as you said, and therefore, a lot of it ought to stay in force and not take it in. you know, come into force 90 days after passage, perhaps there's some language, and I'd have to think about it, that we could put about the way taller bundling takes effect 90 days or passages that are, if there's some way, if there are anything else that was new that we wanted to give people space. to comply with, if there was some way to state, you know, parts that are new as of this date or as of this passage.
[Zac Bears]: We could even say specific sections, section X, section 70-something, you know, we could say section 70-something. 74, right, which is the bundled service requirement that shall take effect. You know, we could say certain sections take effect immediately, certain sections take effect within a certain amount of time.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, I wonder if you would put that into that section. You know, it's got ABCD and then D, this section takes effect 90 days after the passage to minimize confusion. I think that most of this document you would want to go into effect immediately because most of it is not new like i said yeah that's a comment um and director o'connor i think my only concern is that
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So, would this be going into effect when the new waste management contract comes into play? Or is this going into effect prior to a new contract? A lot of these establishments are, you know, folks absolutely get these services free of charge right now, right? The recycling via the city. So what we're, I think, I'm not, you know, and I could be wrong, but what this ordinance is proposing is that now they're going to be paying for a bundled service on something that they had been given free of charge prior. So I think notice should come and if it should come as the new contract comes, so you know, if that's a year from now or so, you know, I'm not sure.
[Alicia Hunt]: And are you thinking about businesses that have recycled dumpsters, but then the recycling is picked up like I'm thinking businesses in the business districts and squares, exactly.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So they're dumpsters are picked up privately but the recycling is picked up free by the city.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, I'm starting to picture a couple of those. It tends to be more restaurants, people who have larger volumes of trash.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: See along Riverside Ave, you know, any morning, or there's the other square. Yeah, absolutely.
[Alicia Hunt]: Because most of the businesses in the square have toters and they put that, the city picks up their trash. But I'm picturing there are a couple of dumpsters
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: It's a recycling piece that's usually picked up by the city for free that now they'll be paying for, you know, they may have dumpsters, but they put the recycling out. I'm just, yeah, as far as as far as notice is concerned.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. I'm also picturing there are a couple of off the top of my head. There are two churches that I know we pick up. They're recycling because their volume is small, but they have their own dumpsters. I'm trying to figure out if we understand how widespread that is. Like, is it a handful that we could sit offline and name all 10 businesses or is this like.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: No, I don't I think it's a little more widespread than that but certainly something we can look into because but that's all I'm thinking about for noticing and timing. Yeah.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. We hadn't been thinking of that. That's a legacy issue with our system in that we rolled out recycling and said, well, let's just pick up everybody's recycling because we want everyone to recycle and no one's going to pay to recycle. There was no way they would back in 2010 or even before that when we started doing that. Not that Marianne or I was a party to that decision. I can just imagine how that conversation went.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, well, well, I think we have we've flagged it. It's definitely we have some questions around effective dates for different provisions. And maybe even there's a this special case that we need to be aware of as well, or, you know, maybe not so special, but unique. Councilor Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Yeah, I just want to make sure I understand sort of what we're, what we're thinking about with a specific question. just am I right in understanding sort of the issue is that there are some establishments like institutions as opposed to residences that a swift change to bundled service will affect them because previously they haven't had to worry about paying for recycling at all. And perhaps it's a, perhaps this is a case where we have to be, you know, extra careful about a proper notice time or maybe it is a more administrative decision around somebody's been grandfathered in, maybe there's an exception made.
[Alicia Hunt]: I just want to make sure that I'm understanding the... Part of what we're trying to do with the new waste contract is to be more transparent and more I always debate which words I'm using, but equitable. But there are a number of people, a number of organizations who said, hey, can you pick up my trash? Hey, I want to be part of the contract. And some of them, the answer over the past 15 years was, OK. And the city started picking up either their trash or their recycling. And it was like, if it occurred to you that you could ask the city to do that, then you might do that. Whereas a business who is not comfortable or doesn't think they should just ask the city to do something for them, never thought to ask and therefore didn't get the same treatment. So part of the goal is that it's either it's spelled out, these kinds of businesses, these kinds of situations, get this level of service and these kinds get that. And it's not a case of, oh, well, they asked and you didn't, right? That's what we're trying to move away from. Through the course of that, there is, so that's sort of like where we're trying to do this baseline. And when we were first thinking of this bundling, part of what's come to my attention a number of times over the past 10 years Is it there are businesses and included in that apartment buildings that do not choose to offer recycling to their tenants, right so you live in that building or you have a business net building, and the building provides a trash dumpster because they have to do waste removal, but there is no recycling service to you. That technically shouldn't be allowed because there's a waste ban and they shouldn't be allowed to put their recycling into their dumpsters. But they have, that's as a tenant, that's their only choice in Medford. And so this would push those organizations that were choosing to not pay for recycling. Like actually, it's not a choice. You get it all for the same price. So now, you know, you should be, your provider is providing both trash and recycling at the same time. It's no additional cost. You're paying the same amount anyhow. And so now you do it. Because what we find is it's almost never the occupant of the building saying, I don't want to recycle. That's very rare in 2023. What it is, is somebody who's doing budgeting doesn't want to pay for it. That's much more common. Or they don't even know, or they don't care, right? So that's what we were addressing. And I think that what we weren't thinking about is the number of places. I'm picturing if you were to walk down, if you were to walk down Medford Square and up Forest Street, you look down alleys, you may see some not large dumpsters, right? Dumpsters the size of one of the desks in here. And those are trash dumpsters are on that order. And those same businesses probably also have a couple of recycling toters that they put out. And when we rolled out the recycling and trash program, those places were already paying for trash services, but were not choosing to pay for recycling. So we decided to include them in the recycling program because that was better than not. And it was not much of an added cost for the city. So that's where we're sort of figuring out which are these. Like I'm aware of a couple of churches that got recycling toters. I'm actually aware of one business off the top of my head that had eight of our trash toters and like six recycling toters that of their own accord this past winter replaced all their trash toters with a dumpster that they pay for themselves. But they're still getting their recycling picked up by the city.
[Zac Bears]: Sorry to cut you off. I didn't mean to.
[Alicia Hunt]: I just sort of this is what we're trying to figure out sort of how widespread it is that people might actually be on the recycling.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, having had the discussion, if you don't mind, Councilor Collins, it seems to me, and I think maybe Marianne was pointing this direction to, does it make sense for certain provisions of these changes to go into effect July 1, 2024, when the new contract goes into effect? And then anyone who's on the mixed system now, where they may be paying for trash, but getting city recycling, we would no longer be offering that because we'd have a new contract Not just signed, but actually operating. instead of going for a 90 days or 180 days after passage, just pick a date. And I think obviously aligning that with the contract to me makes sense in my head. I'm not sure which sections need that yet. I think that's the other discussion we need to have, but to me that might be, you know, then all the transition happens at once. Anyone moving over to bundled service is doing it at the same time that the new trash contract is coming into place. And then we're not worried about people changing over. So, you know, I mean, you know, I can't speak to what the individual businesses might choose to do. Like I could see the other way, you know, them wanting more advanced notice. You know, I could see it either way, but I think some alignment with the contract makes sense. But but similarly, I just I just kind of had an argument in my head and and you know, maybe they would want to know the price of bundled service, you know, three months or six months ahead of the new contract coming into place. Cause I could see a business maybe wanting a little bit of a different timeframe on it, but now maybe I'm overthinking it. So I see Tim's brain working a little bit. I don't know.
[Tim McGivern]: I mean, I was thinking about this, this was one of my comments about why not just wait and implement it when the contract begins. The whole ordinance, because if you're just editing the existing ordinance, well, you have an existing ordinance in place that maybe is outdated, but functions. And you know, the start of the new contract is right around the corner. And I'm not saying delay the work of this body but once this body is finished with it, it could be on the shelf until you know that day arrives at the piece that has the biggest substance to I think is that combining recycling and solid waste and making that a requirement of substance I'm not sure if there's. anything that big in there. I mean, I know there's a whole bunch of permitting process that was added or changed, but besides that, a lot of it's clarification, adding definitions, refining process, stuff like that.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah.
[Tim McGivern]: So anyway, that's my two cents at the moment.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. And I mean, if we pass it in two or three months, but it doesn't go into effect until July 1, 2024, then it's functionally sitting on the shelf, but it's also enacted. And people could start to do pricing and bidding and make conversations knowing this is what the ordinance is going to look like, but not actually us have to start enforcing or changing, you know, asking people to really start changing until. the new waste contracts in place.
[Alicia Hunt]: And there's precedence for that. Both the plastic bag ordinance and the polystyrene ordinance were passed on the order of 12 months before they were enacted or before they were in force.
[Tim McGivern]: The other serendipitous piece here is that the preferred hauler program that we discussed with you that's part of the new contract, that goes into effect when the contract starts too. So it's a landing place for these businesses that have to change. So they'll know that two things are coming. They'll know that the ordinance has changed and they're not going to have a choice. They'll have to pay for both with the bundled service. they'll also know that there'll be a preferred hauler option for them to fall into once that date hits. And there could even be a grace period. There could be like a 30 day grace period to say, get your house in order. You got a month to do it once it goes into effect or something like that before we start fining.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, and then we're giving. And honestly, to me, I would like to leave that up to the regulators, but I'm gonna go, Director O'Connor has a comment, then I'll go to you, Councilor Collins.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: No, I think that all makes sense. And that's what I was looking for. I do have a couple other concerns with the ordinance as far as oversight and stuff. I'm not sure we're going to go over there if I'm changing topics right now.
[Zac Bears]: We'll definitely go there in just a second.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: OK. OK. And just to know that this is probably going to double or almost double the dumpster permits we're currently doing and managing. So just keep that in mind.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, no, that's important. Important for us to have Councilor Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Thank you, Mary. And I think that'll, you know, that'll be a piece for us to handle very delicately. But on this on this last piece, before we move off of effective date, I just wanted to add, I agree, I think that I'm not opposed to, you know, exactly similar to what we did with the polystyrene ban. I think that potentially passing the ordinance, you know, should it pass when this body is ready to vote on it, could be part of, The update information campaign that we're doing, you know, to residences are probably more significantly to businesses in the city and if it's aligned with the start of the contract then it. I mean, ideally, it would sort of present the quote unquote problem and the solution to commercial generators at the same time it's like these, your environment of options is changing. There's this preferred hauler system going into place. We're letting you know about the bundled service requirement, ideally with a lot of lead time, and then if it's also giving people, you know, potentially multiple months to comparison shop between the preferred hauler and the bundled service cost with that option, you know, I think it could, I know with these ordinances that create budget changes, especially for businesses. We're always trying to make sure that we give people enough runway to really handle it comfortably. And I think that, you know, moving this along and just setting the implementation date back to align with the new contract could hopefully make the whole project more visible and give people more time to know about it and to react and plan.
[Zac Bears]: Thanks, Councilor Collins. Yeah, and I agree. I think I think we're all trying to do that. And I think, you know, some of the One of the pieces of education we're gonna have to do is people understanding that they were receiving essentially a free ad hoc subsidy from the city that we really probably couldn't have afforded then and definitely can't afford now. And that's a tough conversation to have, but I do think we're handling this, not just this ordinance, but this whole question around the contract itself and what can the community bear with some tact. It's a hard conversation, but a necessary one. To Marianne's point, I wanna go through section by section just so we can keep the discussions targeted, but I do really wanna get to your oversight points, Marianne. I think that's really essential part of the meeting tonight. Just starting here with this mandatory recycling section, do we have any specific comments on these two paragraphs here? Again, these I believe are directly pulled from the proposed waste hauler ordinance. That we reviewed last meeting this is section 70 dash 71.
[Kit Collins]: I might in a 2nd, I'm reconciling 2 notes documents.
[Unidentified]: Silence.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Not 70, 71, unless you want to include industrial, it says commercial customer generators. I don't know if you want to include industrial slash commercial, if that's different or not, but that was just a thought I had. I have nothing on 70, 72.
[Zac Bears]: Okay, just to that question about industrial, I believe in the definitions, we're lumping industrial in with commercial for the purpose of this ordinance. Is that correct? I'm asking Director Hunt, too. I don't know. Does that sound right to you, Alicia? I'm getting a yes, nod. So weird.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, sorry.
[Zac Bears]: That's okay. I've got the share screen up. I've got, you know, we're all looking at our own screens on our own desks. Sometimes it can be hard to remember who can see what.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah. What is he to rate the this? So just to be clear, it had said previously that the powers of the commissioner of the Department of Public Works, the city commissioner shall have the power to require the separation of designated acceptable recyclable materials. And this has been sort of updated. to indicate that it's the Director of Health, the Director of Systems.
[Zac Bears]: We're moving to 7072 now. Oh, yeah, sorry. Sorry, we were on 7071, but that's okay. And that's why I wanted to hit it section by section, because I think- Right, I think that the- That's okay.
[Alicia Hunt]: About the commercial generators, I think that we made a definition, there was a definition up above.
[Zac Bears]: Yes. That commercial- Shall mean commercial, industrial, institutional, mixed use, yeah. Okay, great. have a comment on 70 to 71.
[Kit Collins]: I think I was also leaping ahead.
[Zac Bears]: All right, let's go to 70 to 72 again this is me, I wrote this. that you can delete all of it. I was trying to capture a broad intent and try to encapsulate a bunch of sections that currently appear as, I think, division three collection in the existing ordinance. I do wish this had kind of the Google Docs. This is Word, I wish it had Google Docs, but you can kind of see over here, There was mandatory separation of recyclable materials, separation of leaves, separation of other acceptable recyclable materials, preparation and collection of acceptable recyclable materials. This was the old section 7101 to 7104. And then there was also in 70-72 what you were just, excuse me, bringing up around the Commissioner of Public Works shall have XYZ authority. I just put in here as best the broadest language that I could think of to try to capture some of what was being said in the existing ordinance around. there being, you know, it pretty, it pretty, the ordinance was very prescriptive, right? The existing one, it basically says, you know, this is exactly how the commissioner shall separate recyclable materials or leaves and yard waste or composted waste. And I felt like it made more sense to allow, and just FYI, your mic's on over there. We can, we can catch your little, we can catch your chat just through the mic, so it's okay. And, Essentially, just my goal with this was to say that whoever is in charge of whatever shall be able to regulate those things as they need to. I don't know if this language captures that intent well. So I'm definitely interested, Tim, to hear your comments, and then I'm guessing Marion will come back on it.
[Tim McGivern]: I think that listing three people is too much. If it was previously commissioner, it can stay commissioner. I think a lot of this is private. hauling anyway, so I'm not even sure my authority is there, but we can define it as such. I guess the idea, I suppose, would be to have consistency with our public hauling system, I would imagine. But I think leaving it in there is fine, and leaving it as just a Commissioner of Public Works is probably fine.
[Zac Bears]: That's fine with me. I just wanted to make sure everyone who had a hand in it Can you at least be able to comment on it?
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. Can you clarify? I just wanted to make sure, because I'm looking at the original, which sections in the original were you thinking? Because there's a lot of detail in the original.
[Zac Bears]: So this is a combination of what I believe is the existing 70-72, which is what Tim is talking about, and then the existing 70-101 to 104. Um, and those are saying, you know, during leaf collection season, the recipients of solid waste service shall place their leaves and paper long bags and open barrels provided by the resident. You know, it's very, it's, you know, the separation of aluminum tin cans, glass containers, newspapers, yard waste and plastic containers has defined shall be mandatory upon the initiation of curbside recycling. I mean, it's just very, it's basically telling people by ordinance how to separate their recycling. And I don't think that's a smart thing for us to be doing by ordinance.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right, right. So this, the sentence, the requirements shall be pursuant to any contracts entered into the city for the collection and disposal of solid waste and recyclables basically says, if we change if so right now, here's a here's a great example, we put recyclables mixed in one container. And we put food waste in one if you choose to compost and we have trash. In theory, a best practice might be to put your paper products in one container and your glass and plastic and metals in a separate container. And if we were to enter into a contract in eight years or 10 years that had that, then this would say we don't have to go back to the ordinance and change it. It would be the authority of the commissioner of the public works to just say now our our contract requires X. And so now we're sorting it this way.
[Zac Bears]: Technically, as I read this ordinance right now, our single stream recycling program is illegal, which obviously it's not because the city has entered into a contract and we do it. Everyone in the city does it every day. But it says that aluminum and tin and glass shall be separated. So that's why that's I was trying to take that whole back section out and say, we don't need to say how exactly we're collecting and separating recyclables. And I felt that that actually aligned very well with the idea of the commissioner should have the authority to determine that. But again, if, you know, I wanna hear from Marianne too on this one, if you have a comment on 7072, Tim was saying that he thinks it makes sense for this to be commissioner of public works. If we all agree on that, then that's fine with me, but I just wanna make sure we all agree on that. And Councilor Collins, did you have a comment? Okay, but Councilor Collins is going to hold to hear from you, Director O'Connor.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: No, I agree. I mean, it makes more sense for the Commission of Public Works, certainly, to have that oversight with whatever the contract then states, it would make sense.
[Zac Bears]: Great. So we'll change that right now. Do you want to have a Commissioner of Public Works or their designee, or do you just want to have it be Commissioner of Public Works, too? Well, designee is always helpful. Great. The intent of this was to help, so I'm glad that we are on the same page on that. Great. Go ahead, Councilor Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Yeah, and just, just, I guess, for context I know all of us here in the room are very in the weeds but just in terms of kind of explaining our steps for the record and for any constituents who might be interested. You know, I think what we were looking at a couple of weeks ago in the existing language, you know, and I was going over this last week, you know, there's just many, many sections in our current chapter 70 that describe recycling and who decides how we recycle and what exactly is recycled and how exactly we do it and the same thing for leaves. And I think that, I think it'd be ideal if we can get it down to two very succinct paragraphs, like recycling is mandatory because of the state law. Everybody has to recycle. And then this one department in the city is responsible for letting you know how that is done, because that will evolve. And maybe the state regulations for what must be recycled will evolve, but we don't have to enumerate all of that in the ordinance. We're just pointing to the state law that says we have to do it, and we're pointing to the department that will update those promulgated regulations over time. And I hope that's what we can do on the permitting side with the Board of Health as well.
[Zac Bears]: Right. And I, you know, and I'm hoping we can simplify the next couple of sections down to some cleaner language, too. And I think maybe Marianne is right on the same lines of that. And we'll get there in just a second. But that's and that's, I think, where we need to go with this. And the other language I put in here, I tried to capture the specifics that are in the collection section now. So that's why it lists out solid waste recyclables or separation, separation of leaves and yard waste, separation of, I added composted waste, but any other requirements as needed was also included in the sense of we may not know what waste, solid waste and recyclables will look like. So those requirements should, that should be more open-ended so that the folks who are working on that, you know, it seems to me that there was someone who was very, very, very interested on this council with exactly how Tin and aluminum should be separated in 1993, and that's not always the best way to write a law. Go to 7073, if I'm hearing no further conversation on 7072, we have permit for required haulers, and this is definitely, I think, the longest section here of this proposed ordinance. It has a lot of details. You know, Councilor Collins, I believe, has proposed some adjustments, but I definitely wanna hear, Marianne, from you about what you think should be included here in this 7073, and if you want, you can maybe, well, let's leave it at 7073 for now, and then we can go into some further sections, maybe we'll kind of get a framework as we work through this section that we can apply down the line.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Sure. Um, so yeah 7073. I mean, under a obviously get a permit generated with an assembly required for the city method should say the permit from the city of Medford border health. Obtain the permit permit from the board of health again on the annual, the 2nd, the last line there under a. Instead of saying city board of health, the permit application part of B, it really. it's really covered in our border health regulation already. Pretty much all of those requirements, I mean, we're going to add, besides just contact name, address, and telephone number, we are updating to add email. But other than that, most of those requirements are really covered in our application and our regulation. So I don't know if you just want to refer to that, NB, instead of listing it all out again. you know, just as set by the permit application and set by the Board of Health, as opposed to listing out all those requirements again, because again, those are already in the regulation and the permit application. The only thing, again, under C is the annual renewal, again, just sticking in Board of Health. And then under a though we don't currently ask for the total tons of solid waste collected in our application process we we asked for. A number of accounts type of thing, but we don't currently ask for a total tons and I'm not sure the intent of knowing the total tons of waste recyclables is. But again, we just currently ask for a list of our number of current accounts that they have in a list of customers.
[Alicia Hunt]: so great let's pause there um since this is this is a heady one and let's let's talk through that one right uh councillor collins did you have a comment first or director director hunt i just the um i can actually speak to why the total tons we um would use that in doing greenhouse gas reporting and measurements of reduction of waste so we would want it separated total terms refuse versus trash versus recycling versus organics. But that's, it's extremely helpful to us when we do greenhouse gas reporting. And then we could talk about whether we're reducing waste overall in the city of Medford and not just that picked up by the city.
[Zac Bears]: Great, I wanna pause really quickly. I know we're gonna get into, I just wanna, I wanna go back to B for a second. Would we be comfortable essentially, and I think everyone can hopefully see what I'm highlighting here, removing this language and just saying the City of Medford Board of Health shall determine the requirements for permit applications, annual permitting fees, and other such procedures by regulation. Or is there anything in this paragraph prior to that that we feel should be enumerated in some way? Yeah, sorry.
[Alicia Hunt]: I'm curious what Marianne thinks, but there is a sentence in there that I thought was interesting, that it said the permit application should include a statement that the private hauler understands and is in compliance with the Massachusetts Waste Bans and the Mercury Disposal Prohibition. And I'm wondering if there should be some statement like that at this level of ordinance and not just in the regulations. but as a general rule, I'm very much in favor of just saying the board that's enforcing this promulgates the regulations. Yeah.
[Kit Collins]: Yeah. If I may, I would, I would agree with that line of inquiry. The only other sentence I think in that vein that stuck out to me is the, the last one that's highlighted.
[Zac Bears]: Information which intends to ensure that customers prevent waste bin materials from being disposed with solid waste. Yeah.
[Kit Collins]: No, I guess. Maybe if the first one is kept within the ordinance, the second one is not as necessary. But putting that question aside, I'm very happy to just leave it in the hands of the Board of Health.
[Zac Bears]: Any thoughts on that, Mary Ann, in terms of keeping in some more specific language around compliance with the Massachusetts Waste Bans and Mercury Disposal Prohibition, or do we, do you?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: I mean, I don't have a, that would be fine. I don't have an issue with that at all, because that's not specifically called out in, I don't think it's in our regulation at this point. So that, with that, I don't have a,
[Zac Bears]: Okay, great. So here's my thinking on that. That this would be now the permit application section here, and I'll re-highlight it in just a second. The City of Medford Board of Health shall determine the requirements for permit applications, annual permitting fees, and other such procedures by regulation. The permit application must include a statement that the private hauler understands and is in compliance with the Massachusetts Waste Bans and Mercury Disposal Prohibition.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Sounds good.
[Zac Bears]: Great. So, hopping down to annual permit renewal, we have Each permitted hauler shall annually submit a renewal application of their permit and pay the annual permit fee. And then we were talking around these requirements around accompanying that renewal with the following information and annual solid waste and recyclables reporting form. So we have the total tons of solid waste, which was raised as a question. Alicia kind of explained why that's helpful for reporting purposes. And then we would have the names of commercial customers where they're providing solid waste service only, commercial customers where they're providing recycling service only, and then copies of any waste ban violation letters. So I want to turn that back over to you, Director O'Connor, for how you'd prefer that we take
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So that's fine. We'll just have to update our regulation on our permitting process. We don't, like I said, we don't include the total tonnage rate now, so we'd have to adopt that. We don't currently ask for copies of any waste ban violation letters or notices, and we don't currently Failure to provide a complete and accurate annual solid waste and recyclables reporting form. Is that, can I assume that's the same as the tonnage or? Yes.
[Zac Bears]: I think that is all four of these things right here. The tonnage, the names of solid waste only service, the names of recycling only service, and the waste bin violation letters.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Those will all have to be adopted and added to our current application process.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Probably look it up and I'd like to do that too.
[Zac Bears]: Okay. And then just one question here on D, unless actually, do you guys have comments on C, on the annual permit renewal?
[Alicia Hunt]: I actually have a comment on A. Okay.
[Zac Bears]: All right. We'll jump back up to A then.
[Alicia Hunt]: Um, so one of the things that we've been sort of learning about through this process is that, um, in some situations, dumpsters and trash doesn't does not get weighed. It gets estimated, and there are industry accepted tables that if the waste comes from a restaurant and it's this size dumpster, this is the expected weight. If the waste comes from an office building and it's the same size dumpster, it's lighter. It's a different weight. and residential. And so there are tables that indicate that. And so what we may want to say is the total tons collected, I guess off the cuff, what I'm thinking is if the waste in question is not weighed, then an estimate should be provided based on industry standards for the volume of waste collected.
[Zac Bears]: Okay.
[Alicia Hunt]: And I wouldn't mind actually after this taking that language and just vetting the exact phrasing of that, because I know there are industry standard tables, and we may actually want to just state what that, you know, according to X industry standard table. I know those exist for trash. I am not 100% certain how they do it for recycling.
[Zac Bears]: Okay, and so we're saying in in C, C, a total tons of solid waste collected for disposal. It looks like we already have a parenthetical in here for a best estimate for if a load of for disposals combined across municipalities that there'd be an estimate for the city and obviously there's no real table you could use for that. are we thinking?
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. I just don't want to put businesses in a situation where they have to weigh their garbage just to provide us with a number that they're not already doing. If they are weighing it in order to dispose of it, then yeah, give us a number. If they're not, then they're probably charging their customer based off of these tables. because they need to dispose of trash by the pound. So they probably have calculated these numbers. So if you are the city, we pay on pickup and tonnage. If you are a private entity and you have a dumpster, they may not weigh that dumpster. They may just estimate the weight of your dumpster based on the volume and what kind of entity you are. So I just wanted to capture that, that we're not forcing people to weigh things just for our metrics, but rather if they're not weighing them, they're probably estimating that anyhow, getting us those estimates.
[Zac Bears]: I'm going to try to align this with the language that's in there. Yeah.
[Alicia Hunt]: And it may just be that if... I should log into the Zoom so I can see the screen.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, sorry about that.
[Alicia Hunt]: Or we can get bigger screens next year.
[Zac Bears]: We were literally talking with Kevin about that before you walked in, so.
[Alicia Hunt]: We have a big one.
[Zac Bears]: We have lots of thoughts. Maybe another meeting. But let me just... And I'm just putting this in there as placeholder. I think we should all, after this meeting, review maybe a non-red line version of what we're considering as a draft, provide comments on that, and then also run that by council. But here's the language. In the case where the permanent hauler estimates the tonnage of a specific loan for disposal or recycling, the permanent hauler shall use X industry standard table.
[Alicia Hunt]: And provide the estimated tonnage to the city.
[Zac Bears]: And provide.
[Alicia Hunt]: The estimated weights.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay, got it.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So and obviously if they're a new hauler, or a new company to the city that we're not going to penalize them for putting in zero right for the year before.
[Zac Bears]: Right, right, right. Yeah. This would only be this is only for the renewal. So if it was the first part, they wouldn't even have to give out.
[Adam Hurtubise]: They don't have to give it. Okay.
[Zac Bears]: Right. This is only for the renewal. So I think we Yeah. I had a question here on subsection D, which is, it says failure to provide the complete reporting for maybe grounds for denial of a permit. And it also said annual permits will be issued by the 1st of April each year. Is that when you issue permits? And so that's fine. Okay, great. And then there's a general permit requirements, which basically says that you can, the Board of Health shall, and I'm gonna put City of Medford Board of Health, since that's how we've been saying it, shall promulgate general permit requirements to which all permit haulers must be in compliance. And I think that just gives you some general authority as needed.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So, right. little d and big d don't are not currently big d and big e yeah but little d above and big d are currently not in our regulations or requirements so we're going to have to we can have the border health update um okay um
[Zac Bears]: So I think, and again, we're gonna have another round of everyone looking at this, but I think having us all in the public meeting to get close, once we're reviewing something, we'll be in a good spot. I wanna remove to, not remove, move to 70-74, which is the bundled service requirement, and see what kind of comments we have there. This is, again, I think just essentially pulled directly from the proposed, waste hauler ordinance except for subsection 774, subsection A, which was added at our last subcommittee meeting.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So again, my only concern with that is that, and again, I know we can work with the establishments and we can look at toters and smaller dumpsters, but we encourage food establishments, especially to have dumpsters, like we want them, but there are many, more than several, so I'd say many food establishments that just don't have space. for dumpsters now. We've worked with them and tried to do some shared arrangements with some of them, but my concern is that if you're now requesting recyclables collections separately as well, if that's a separate second dumpster, second toter, there will be some, so we will have to work with some of these establishments to try to figure out a good plan, because space is seriously a concern for a lot of these establishments.
[Alicia Hunt]: And I would actually just second that, but also add, so we all have many things on our plate, so Marianne hasn't been part of the planning for the RFP for the new waste. and other than when we've needed her to be. And one of the things that we've actually started to raise, we had a pre-bid meeting with potential bidders today and did mention the fact that we are expecting the awarded bidder to help work with us in the business districts to look at some way to consolidate some of this trash pickup that we've spitballed ideas in the past about putting in some shared dumpsters in Medford Square, especially if those businesses are getting picked up by the city of Medford, then they could be sharing some rather than having all those toters lining the square all the time. And that we are expecting whoever wins the contract to need to work with us to help us figure out how do we get this done. So we're aware of it, but we're hoping to bring in some extra resources.
[Zac Bears]: Councilor Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Yeah, I think that's a really important issue to be flagging at this point and it's my hope that I know this has been discussed in many rounds through the RFP process. It's my hope that another silver lining of doing this, hopefully when we're done with this, it still counts as ahead of time. But to be able to have those on some discussions with whoever is selected from the bidding process and the preferred hauler, so that it's not an issue of everybody who already has a toter or everybody who already has a dumpster has to double their footprint for collections when they're already short on space, but so that we're having able to through this ordinance but also you know largely the RFP and what comes out of it be figuring out how do we need less footprint overall maybe that's working with businesses to say since you now are getting recycling or maybe you didn't before you don't need as big of a container for your trash that frees up space maybe it's consolidation just to say I think that there are you know a lot of potential solutions here and you know, not for me to say I'm not the expert on that, but I know that that's been a focus of the, the crafting of the RFP is how to engage with that issue.
[Zac Bears]: Thanks, Councilor Collins. Yeah, and I think for this section, you know, it really I think a consequence of this section may well be this question around space and having enough space for the dumpsters or whatever other receptacles that folks are using or will need to use. But this one, this section is basically saying if you are a hauler, you will provide bundled service. And then I think it's up to us to figure out, you know, as needed with the businesses, the hauler and the business or, you know, whatever the arrangement may be, what the specific, how they can fulfill the requirements of the ordinance given their specific constraints, right? And I think, you know, it sounds like we're generally already doing that. with dumpsters already like we're facing this issue. So I appreciate that there's some creative problem solving that's already happened and is happening. I don't think this section of the ordinance says that you can't or affects the options for that creative problem solving that the relevant folks will have. Whether we solve the problem is another case, but. Um, okay. So we'll move, move, uh, to enforcement. So, um, okay.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Um, I'm not sure anyway here, but I'm thinking maybe particularly here we should call out, um, or separate out construction, um, dumpsters as that part of, or I don't think you want the part of this, but we do have, situations where there's construction work that's just being permitted. And I don't think that they would be also, it'll be having a bundle service requirement.
[Zac Bears]: No, that's a good point. Councilor Collins.
[Kit Collins]: I'm wondering if that's something that should be like flagged in the definition section or if that, or if we do want those I guess I don't know, maybe to Mary Ann, is any part of this ordinance relevant to these sort of temporary construction dumpsters, or should we maybe in the definition for commercial generators, make it clear that it's not applying to?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah, that probably makes sense. Call it out there that temporary, because we do a lot of temporary permits, construction permits. So maybe call them out that they're not part of, all fall under this.
[Zac Bears]: Right. And I guess the question is, yeah. I don't know if director Hunter, do you have any thoughts on that either? Where does that come up in any of your discussions around the temporary construction haulers?
[Alicia Hunt]: Well, construction waste has to be dealt with differently and separately. It actually is also a waste ban and can't go into the same waste facilities, it has to be separated. So it actually falls under sort of the category of mandatory separated.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Which I think there's somewhere earlier that I read. But it's just that they're not specifically called out.
[Zac Bears]: Right. So do we think we should put something under, I like the idea of putting it in the definition section. And maybe we put it, I'm guessing that applies to commercial construction and residential construction equally, right?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Right.
[Zac Bears]: What are you thinking, Tim?
[Zac Bears]: Right. It's something different entirely. It's something different. Yeah. Temporary construction. waste. I don't know how to say it. What do we even want to call it? Is it temporary construction waste?
[Alicia Hunt]: Is that even a... Well, I think you would... First of all, you would talk about construction waste.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Alicia Hunt]: And that that would be different, even if it was permanent, right? Even if it was a contractor who had a permanent dumpster for construction waste, he would have to dispose of that differently. And that is different from what we're addressing here. I was looking to see if any of the state's best practices address this at all.
[Zac Bears]: I mean, see, I think we talked, sorry, go ahead Councilor Collins.
[Kit Collins]: I just wanted to note, like we do call out waste band materials in the definition section. And obviously I didn't know that construction materials were a waste band material. So I'm just thinking in terms of, I want to avoid being redundant like where it makes sense to be while also being specific enough that we, you know, the ordinance can be read and understood.
[Zac Bears]: Right. And that's where I think we're sorry. Go ahead, Tim. I was just going to say you probably just simply exclude construction, debris and waste. Right. And I think we actually like if I read the definitions for recyclables and solid waste here, I think we're when it says recyclable material that's banned from disposal in the Commonwealth pursuant to 310 CMR 19.017. Like, that actually probably does mean construction materials are excluded, right? But it's so technical that it's not explicit.
[Tim McGivern]: I'm not an expert, but I think it depends on the way. Some of it does go to the landfill. OK. It's just dealt with differently. So I don't think it would hurt by defining it, excluding it, and having a reference to the waste band. You know in my opinion. Yeah, I mean the point I think the strong point is that it's treated differently than What we're what we're really dealing with here, right?
[Zac Bears]: I'm actually gonna throw this in as a suggestion up in the purpose intent and authority section and just say Construction Waste I've got Alicia laughing, so.
[Alicia Hunt]: No, I looked up the state's, that regulation, I pulled it up. And there is a list of restricted materials and the effective date. Asphalt pavement, brick and concrete's been restricted since 2006. There's a ban on disposal or incineration or transfer for disposal at a solid waste disposal facility. Also true for metal, for wood. Clean gypsum was added in 2011. So I just found that to be interesting that these things have actually so so they are they do literally and legally fall under the waistband. I was looking to see where it said we couldn't put our toilets in there but.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah, it's not a construction material, which is interesting. And I guess my concern is just when you, the language in here, when you say all permanent haulers serving residential, like that's kind of, so if we call them out as separate, they're not including in all permanent haulers serving residential and customers and generators, so.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right, I think what I'm sort of playing through, you know, if somebody's clearing out a house, for whatever reason and they get a dumpster and they start filling up because they're moving whatever, right? And would I really prefer that some of those things got recycled and reused? Yes, but it's not construction debris. And it's not something where you're saying, that's not the intent of this. Oh, you just got a dumpster or a bagster to remove a bunch of trash. You also need to have a recycling version of it. That's not what we're getting at all, right? permanent ongoing service.
[Adam Hurtubise]: So this is all temporary dumpsters and you need to call out because that's a lot of what we do.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right, so temporary dumpsters are exempt from this and that I think it would be on the Board of Health, the Health Department to know when somebody just said it was a temporary dumpster and they had it for two years, is that really temporary?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: know, is that we have a definition for temporary so 90 days but yeah okay yeah as long as we call it separate that out I guess so we're not lumping the language together.
[Zac Bears]: Right now I have it as construction debris shall not be regulated by this ordinance is there something we want to be more specific about temporary dumpsters to cover them. and temporary dumpsters. I had construction waste, but I think debris actually is probably a fairer term. Temporary dumpsters, the one temporary dumpster shall not be regulated by this ordinance. All right, well, I'll throw that in there, or we'll throw that in there, and then if somebody has a better set of language that we should use that's more descriptive, I'm certainly not gonna object to it, so. So that brings us back down to... Can we go to 7074C?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah, sure.
[Zac Bears]: My only question on that particular
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: let's say permanent halls may charge separately for the collection of recyclables. I guess, reading the whole thing, I guess my concern was who is the oversight for this and how? Solid waste only commercial customers to the city, so the city can follow up to ensure that those customers are complying with the waste bans. How? Who?
[Adam Hurtubise]: I guess.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I see what you're saying. It just says this to the city. So the city.
[Alicia Hunt]: Do we really want to dictate how the city would do that? I mean, I think from a practical purpose, we're like, well, we don't have the staff to do that follow up at this time. But do we actually want it in ordinance? Because It may be that for a while it's the building department, and maybe it's the sustainability department at first, and then it gets handed off to the health department or the building department. And do we actually want that enshrined in the ordinance?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah, permanent haulers must provide the names and addresses of their solid waste only commercial customers to the city so the city can follow up to ensure that those customers are complying with the waste ban. I have no idea on that.
[Alicia Hunt]: I mean, Part of me thinks that if we had a robust economic development department that was working with businesses and stuff, it would be the kind of thing that maybe we're following up. Do you have all the services you need? Do you have a new business that's set up in the city? Are you complying with stuff? And I'm not trying to say that we have the staffing to do that at this time, but I could see, because you would normally think that something like this would come up when a business is new, or if they had changed services.
[Zac Bears]: So I guess that's, is there some... Oh, as I read this, it doesn't require that the city follows up. It says that it can follow up. So go ahead, Councilor Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Yeah, exactly. I was just gonna make that point. I think that most of the time in a case like this with an ordinance, we would wanna make sure that we're not legislatively prescribing something that we have no short term prayer of actually executing. But I think in this case, if it's a relatively easy data point that is on the, you know, the hauler to provide and that is a requirement, it doesn't create a requirement for the city to do anything for it, but it kind of creates the possibility of us growing into doing something with that data and hopefully being able to follow up with it to the extent that we do have capacity in different departments over time. For that reason, I think it's worth Because I also, I could be wrong, I don't imagine this being a particularly difficult thing to export and send over.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I would also just add that I actually think the sentence is redundant in the sense that when they do their annual permitting renewal, they're required to provide this information anyway. And I think that this last sentence, the last clause, I should say, or this mid clause, so the city can follow up to ensure that the customers are complying with waste bans, that's a discretionary, you know, we will have the information on the annual permit renewal if the health department or the sustainability department or the building department or the economic development office that we've imagined here tonight wants to, No, no, no, I mean, I know that we have obviously PDS, but the robust economic development team that we are yearning for, they could follow up to make sure that those customers are complying with waste bins, but we're collecting the data already above as part of the permit renewals. So do we need to have a sense in here at all?
[Tim McGivern]: Just a suggestion. I mean, the waistband already exists, so could the language be reworked just to give the city, whoever it may be, the authority to enforce the waistband so we have the option of doing it if we need to? And maybe we're not staffed up to do it at the moment, but at some point in the future, it just leaves that door open. Just a suggestion.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. I mean, I think I'm just reading. We're trying to read back up. Yeah, so right here in the authority section, these regulations establish or I'm going to change it to this ordinance. Coordinates establishes minimum requirements for systematic collection of solid waste and recyclables in order to promote waste reduction, comply with state mandated waste bans and further the goals of city of Medford. So I think we're already doing that somewhere else. Yeah, I don't think. Yeah, I just don't think it needs to be in this, to Director O'Connor's point, to be in this bundled service requirements section specifically. It's already in the permit renewals and it's already in the authority.
[Kit Collins]: Yeah, it's in permit required.
[Tim McGivern]: I think there's a lot of things like that in the city too, where we have the authority to enforce, but we may not because we don't need to, it's not a problem, but if it ever is, we can't.
[Zac Bears]: Right, and I think that's captured here, but I agree, I hear you completely, Director O'Connor, that this phrase, this way in this section makes it seem like we're asking you to do something versus just giving the authority to do it in general. So I'm seeing general nods that this seems redundant. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna take this sentence out. You got it. Anything more on that on that 70 74 Marianne.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Okay. I mean we do I just put a note in here to myself and I that we are already required an additional room control fee right for for dumpsters now. I don't know if we need to cover anyone that we're not going to add an additional fee for an additional, that'd be one fee. We deal with that later. Maybe under the rodent ordinance go back to that or something, but I just don't want people to feel like, okay, now we're going to have to pay another fee for another PM because we're having an additional dumpster, you know.
[Zac Bears]: I could take a quick look at the rodent or control ordinance that we passed, because in, you know, in my mind if you wanted to charge that all as one fee. I just want to make sure you have the Board of Health has the authority to do that, because I don't think it would be a problem. In my mind, if the Board of Health decided so we're doing. road and control fee for dumpsters. And we want to now we're doing a permitting fee for dumpsters let's just do it as one fee, but I just want to make sure that the, you know, right, and I guess restricts it.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah, no, but I mean if we're now saying okay now you need a separate dumpster for recycling that does not mean anything. You know what I mean. fee for the rodent control. They should be wrapped.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: But that was just a note I put to think about and figure out.
[Zac Bears]: That's helpful. I'm going to flag that in the comments somewhere.
[Alicia Hunt]: We might want to think about it, because I'm picturing, right, if it's a box store type place, and they now have a recycling dumpster, and they're now recycling all those cardboard boxes, I would assume we're not really concerned about rodents. But if they're a restaurant and into their recycling dumpster is now going all these metal cans that they dumped the food out of, did they rinse them out first? Is that not a, hopefully they did, because that's the right thing to do. Hopefully they would start, maybe they won't need such a big trash dumpster anymore, because they'll put all these giant food cans and stuff in the other dumpster. But it might also be a concern for rodents. Hey, can they get a waiver of their dumpster fee if they compost and they have a secure... No composting. Then they can have a secure thing that secures rodents for all their compost.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Oh, Alicia, the death of me.
[Zac Bears]: I was going to say, Marianne's about to jump through this screen.
[Kit Collins]: As of April 4, 2023, all people shall compost everything.
[Alicia Hunt]: I mean, there is, if you produce more than a half ton a week of food waste, then you are required to compost by the state. There's actually a list, I was just perusing it on the state of they think, which organizations they think do more than a half ton a week. So Tufts, for example, they compost their food. Hospitals and universities definitely fall under that. And then some food, like, hate to say this, but factories, if they have a lot of food waste that comes out of the production. they often get caught under, so it was a ton, and November 22, it went down to a half ton a week.
[Zac Bears]: Check on the TIF for monogram. But in any case. Don't tempt me. Yeah, I think there's a lot of things that we are, this ordinance does not address, nor is it intended to solve. But yeah, let's jump down to enforcement and get any comments on the enforcement section. So we have 70-101 inspection.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So that particular verbiage is already in the Board of Health Regulation. So I don't know if you need to repeat it or just say per whatever.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I mean, if it's duplicative but not conflicting, I say we just leave it in. So if anyone asks you, well, I don't see this in the ordinance, then we don't have to explain that away. For the hauler permit requirements, I think we're back to, oh no, this is, Oh, that's my comment is what I was about to say. So this says right now that the city of Medford Board of Health shall issue notice of violation, provide seven business days to respond, failure to respond shall result in grounds for revocation, individuals shall be Board of Health director or designee. I think.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah, I think I prefer that you defer to the board of health regulations. We have a 3 day notice to suspension and then attend a. Written appeal. So. You could just defer to the board of health regulation or. Yeah, I have to take it up otherwise.
[Zac Bears]: Let me see if I can get some language down.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: And a lot of our language also is, you know, to dumpster management maintenance as opposed to a specific caller as well, but they, the same thing applies.
[Zac Bears]: Um, so thinking here, just the city of Medford Board of Health shall issue regulations regarding violations of this ordinance and shall have the right to impose reasonable fines, revoke permits or take other action in accordance with state and local regulations. Yeah, I think that anything anyone else sees in this larger section that they think we should keep other than what we've decided other than that sentence? Seeing none, we will go with that. So down to 70-103, mandatory recycling requirements for generators. This just basically says enforcement shall be by criminal complaint or non-criminal disposition under Chapter 40, Section 21D. Just going to type that out. Board of Health or designee shall have the power to enforce the provisions of this ordinance. City shall have the option of seeking equitable relief to enjoin violations of rules and regulations of the Board of Health. Seems like pretty standard template language. Then that brings us down to 70-104, which is penalties and appeal provisions. This basically says reasonable fines or revocation of the permit.
[Unidentified]: I'm just gonna make sure.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, go ahead, Marianne.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Well, so if this is under 21D, what we have now in our current reg is first offense 50, second offense 100, third and subsequent offenses 200, but not to exceed more than $1,000, and each day constituting a separate violation.
[Zac Bears]: Okay. Yeah. What, what do we all think about that?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: I believe you might want to check with legal within the 21 day. I don't think we can go beyond that.
[Zac Bears]: Right. I don't think we can either. Um, I mean, we could raise first offense, second offense, you know, we could do a hundred, a hundred. I mean, I don't have a, I'm seeing no comments, so I'm gonna try to capture what you said, and then I'm gonna read it back to you to make sure I got it right, unless Councilor Collins, you have a comment.
[Kit Collins]: I also had a question on this. In general, I think this is another one where I'm very happy to just defer to Board of Health Requirements, but Marianne, while we have you, I'm kind of, I didn't think about this earlier, but It sounds like it is current practice for the penalties to be level for haulers and generators, or is it, well, I mean, that's the text that we have in front of us here, but I was just kind of.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah, I mean, the way it is right now.
[Kit Collins]: Yeah, I'm happy to defer to current practices.
[Zac Bears]: So I have it here as first offense $50 second offense $100 third and subsequent offenses $200 per day not exceeding $1,000 each day shall constitute a separate violation so it sound right.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes.
[Zac Bears]: And then I have here any permanent hauler cited for a violation may appeal the citation by filing a written notice with the City of Medford Board of Health. The City of Medford Board of Health shall promulgate standards for schedule, for schedule hearing date and other procedures for the appeal of citations.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, yes.
[Zac Bears]: Okay, great. Um, so that brings us through really the bulk of this. I do want to jump back up to, um, really the top of this, uh, ordinance really quickly. Um, I mean, we can look at this another time or two or we can provide comments. I know we're at around 7 30, but, um, We have 70-1, 70-2, basically 70-1 through 70-6. You know, removal of waste or material or debris, no person shall suffer or allow the use of his property as a gathering place for waste material. I mean, you know, it basically says don't use your front lawn as a waste, as a dump, right? So, you know, it seems, and I heard you, Marianne, say receiving written notice from, you know, maybe changing this to police department and board of health instead of chief of police and director of public health. But beyond that, you know, I'm certainly open to other ways to change this language to make it a little more, you know, not use suffer or allow gathering place some kind of more outdated language.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: I thought 70-3 and 70-4 were kind of a little interesting.
[Zac Bears]: I think that the placement of coal or fuel on sidewalks and streets.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah.
[Zac Bears]: It's not a common problem these days. Some of this section, some of this dates back to the revised ordinances of 74, which is a combination of basically every ordinance that was passed between 1892 and 1974. So these could be real old.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah, I think we could work on some updated language on those.
[Zac Bears]: Although we do still have people placing things on sidewalks and yeah, they're placing their crockery and scrap iron all over the sidewalks.
[Adam Hurtubise]: I'm kidding.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: But the other thing, so under 70-6, it has a 9 a.m. restriction. I thought we would have it early, like a 7 a.m. or something, is it? No earlier than 9 a.m.?
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, and again- That's really wrong, because I know- That's really wrong, yeah.
[Zac Bears]: I don't know that we need this section. Sorry, let's go to Councilor Collins, and then we'll come back. Councilor Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Yeah, I think, um, I mean, all of this language is really a rich text but I think ultimately it's coming down to, you know, the prohibition on allowing sidewalks and front yards to be junkyards it's a prohibition on littering, not obstructing the street and I think I think that there's some way to rework container requirements that just points to, you know, use the containers that you're told to use, which, you know, would probably be coherent under the new preferred hauler system, but even the collection from business establishments time of placement I think that gets back to one of those like three or four core you know, core themes of this article, which is like, don't block the street and don't put trash, not in a container. So I think that there's probably a way to consolidate this down to like, maybe one paragraph around prohibition on littering, prohibition on having trash gather in the front of residences and sidewalks, and a reasonable timeframe around the time and date of trash collection, and making sure that that's updated to when people are actually putting their trash out nowadays. Yeah.
[Alicia Hunt]: This section, we probably want to modernize it, but we should check with code enforcement because I suspect that some of this language is here. to allow them to enforce if somebody is doing something obnoxious and difficult, right? If they're blocking their side, there are different things they can enforce under. I'm not an expert on it, but I suspect some of this is to give them some teeth if whatever the person is doing is obnoxious to the community and they want to make it stop.
[Zac Bears]: Right. Well, I'm wondering just really quickly if the container requirements That section, it doesn't address any code enforcement issues, and I think it, to me, falls under this new 7072, where it says the commissioner shall determine any requirements for the collection of solid waste and recycles, including separation. I'll include including container requirements, separation, and then we don't really need that whole section, but I agree with you on, you know,
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Zac Bears]: 70-6, 70-4, 70-3, all of these are kind of code enforcement type things.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: But that's, and it's interesting though that code enforcement's not mentioned as far as it says the 70 dash six it says it should be the duty of the police officers to enforce this provision, and I would think that code enforcement absolutely should be included, and I'm not sure if there are some other ordinance and give some of the authority because they definitely do have the authority over this so. And I agree that 70-5 doesn't, isn't necessary now with this new ordinance requiring receptacles anyway, so.
[Zac Bears]: Right. And placement of receptacles, collection from business establishments. I agree with you, Councilor Collins. There's definitely a way to combine all of this to say code enforcement shall, you know, provide some level of conditions. But, you know, I think putting times in here is really, Again, an over prescriptive ordinance, but Tim saying maybe not.
[Tim McGivern]: Well, you're really good at knowing if I have something to say I will say that. So my thoughts on this is there are other areas in our ordinance that deal with things in the right of way that get in the way. There's also mass general law, as well as federal law having to do with that stuff, ADA requirements, for example. So the outdatedness of this goes pretty deep. So a lot of this may be able to be removed. It overlaps with other things. So there's... There's certain things in the ordinance that the Commissioner of Public Works is required to enforce. For example, if somebody wants to place something in the roadway that isn't a motor vehicle or something like that, I believe, you know, there's language in there that they have to get permission from commission public works. So my point is that it's probably worth doing a comparison of other things that are already encoded in ordinance to see what of this we need to keep in here. Okay. And then as far as the times go, I'm not certain on the reasons why these times are defined like you know, you commercial entities on a place that their bins up before 9am. I don't know the reason behind that. I also don't know the reason behind why people can't put their, you know, trash can't go up. Before 7pm the night before. Right. And we're not enforcing either of those things. Right, right, exactly. So they might be, I guess this this one just made this chunk of code just may need some cleanup work.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. Yeah, there is a little bit of like so what was happening is that we had businesses, we had trash collection in Medford Square, I want to say was Monday mornings, but a lot of businesses weren't open on Sunday evenings and businesses weren't here. So they were putting out their trash on like Friday or Saturday for Monday collection. And nobody wanted them on the streets of our, in the sidewalks of our business district, even if there was space for it for days. And that actually there was businesses that aren't open on Mondays. And we're having, we had trouble with that on Tuesdays. So by saying seven o'clock the night before, It gave code enforcement the ability to say to them, it's against the Medford law, you can't put it out, send somebody down here to put out your trash in a better time than this. Because there was some limit of which it's not reasonable, right? So it might be that we need, and that's why I'd like to check with code enforcement and see because maybe what it should be is a little bit more flexible. You should not be allowed to put out more than 15 hours before pickup, right? Before the scheduled pickup or the evening, the seven o'clock of the evening before or something so that they can prevent somebody from putting their trash out every week and leaving it out for 48 hours on the street. So.
[Zac Bears]: So it seems to me that there's kind of two categories here. Section 170-1 is no person or owner in possession of real property shall suffer or allow the use of property as a gathering place for waste material. So that's private property shall not be a dump. That's one thing. And then 70-2, 3, 4, and 6 all are about either putting refuse and rubbish or other stuff out on streets or public ways or public property. And I think there's some good stuff in here right around, you know, you don't want to be dumping leaves. You know, people can't just rake their leaves into something and dump it at the park across the street, right? I mean, obviously, you'd have to really read this paragraph to get that that's what that's talking about. That's probably a very valid public purpose and something we want to keep in an ordinance somewhere. And then there's these questions around I think, really, the second category is just all this public stuff but there's this 70 dash two which is just people don't throw your waste all around the city or throw it onto public property. And then you have three, four and six which are about placement of waste on public ways or placement and collection of receptacles on public ways. So I guess the only reason I'm summarizing that way is to ask who, you know, this first one I think we just need to update a little bit of language and it makes sense right that the police and the Board of Health would be the ones asking people on private property to remove their unusable vehicles or their glass piles and stuff like that.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: But I guess code enforcement there too I'm sorry to interrupt but we may want to check and see at code enforcement I believe has that authority as well.
[Zac Bears]: So maybe we should send all of this to Commissioner Forty and ask for his comments. And once we pull this together, we can provide some comments and language suggestions here as well, but it seems like really this first section is more of a general this first article, I should say, is more of general waste and debris on either private property or on in public ways and not so much about the waste, you know, collection, disposal of waste and recyclables. So I agree that code enforcement should look at that. Um, so maybe if you'd be so willing, Councilor Collins to make a motion that we send, um, article one of this ordinance to the... Because he doesn't need to look at article two. I don't think Bill 40 needs to be in the weeds on the waste removal and recyclables.
[Kit Collins]: I think we have enough department heads in the weeds on this. Huh? I think we have enough department heads in the weeds on this.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, exactly. So just send him article one for his review for purposes of code enforcement.
[Kit Collins]: Some of it.
[Zac Bears]: Got it. OK. And I'll second it. Real fait accompli here. I'm just waiting on the clerk here.
[SPEAKER_04]: Mr. Collins moved to send article one of the ordinance to Commissioner Forty
[Zac Bears]: and then do you have any further motions?
[Kit Collins]: I mean if we don't have anything more specific I would motion to send the adopt the changes revisions that we've discussed tonight into a non-redline version run that draft by subcommittee members our dream team of department heads for comment and perhaps run by legal counsel. Review and not create a non-red line version of this draft run by subcommittee members, DPW commissioner, director of PBS and director O'Connor and also run by legal counsel for comment.
[Zac Bears]: Great, so we'll take this, we'll put it into kind of a draft form, not redlined. We'll all take another crack at any comments that we have, and then we can send that off, and hopefully we can get some comments back from Commissioner Fordy as well. Great. You second it? Yeah, I'll second that motion. Before we vote on the motions, just any further comments or discussion from anyone on the process going forward? Does that sound like the right process to take? Great, got nods on it. So yeah, if Mr. Clerk, will you please call the roll? Or you don't have to, just...
[Adam Hurtubise]: On the motion of Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council Council To subcommittee members, the department heads here tonight and legal counsel for comment. Second from you.
[Zac Bears]: Great. All those in favor? Aye. Motion passes. Any further discussion before we conclude? Seeing none, is there a motion to adjourn?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Motion to adjourn.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion of Councilor Collins to adjourn, seconded by myself. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Thank you so much, Marianne. Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Alicia. I think we're close here.
[Tim McGivern]: Good work.
[Zac Bears]: Thanks. All right, good night.
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