AI-generated transcript of Medford City Council Ordinances And Rules Subcommittee 03-08-23

[Zac Bears]: 22-605, subcommittee meeting on ordinances and rules. Meeting notice Wednesday, March 8th, 2023 at 5.30 p.m. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll. present to present one absent the meetings called to order, there'll be a meeting of the Medford City Council subcommittee on ordinances and rules on Wednesday, March 8 2023 at 530pm 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. The subcommittee has invited DPW Commissioner Tim McGivern and Alicia Hunt, Director of Planning, Development and Sustainability, to attend this meeting. For further information, aids and accommodations, contact the City Clerk at 781-393-2425. Sincerely yours, Zach Baer, Subcommittee Chair. Welcome everyone to our subcommittee on ordinances and rules meeting. We are meeting to discuss a proposed updates to the city's, well, a proposed waste hauler ordinance, which would update several elements of the city's current solid waste ordinances. This project is parallel to recent work by the Planning and Development Sustainability Office and the Solid Waste Task Force to create recommendations for an RFP for a new municipal waste hauler contract. This is an opportunity to align our waste hauling ordinances with current best practices from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. By adopting these, we can earn more points on the state's recycling dividends program. As everyone knows, municipal waste hauling is a massive budget item, so maximizing grant funding is meaningful, especially around education efforts. And the goal of this process in addition to the RFP process is to make sure that both within and outside of the municipal contract for waste removal, all solid waste haulers are providing a recycling service and to create clear updated requirements for waste haulers in alignment with our environmental goals and state and regional best practices. And we had some discussions a couple of weeks ago around the solid waste RFP. And I think you could find more details about that by watching the recording of that meeting or looking at the minutes of that meeting. And I would also add that there was some discussion around how this waste tolerance ordinance fits into that larger process that we may not talk about tonight, but that you could find watching that recording or listening to those minutes. Given that introduction, I will turn over to Councilor Collins, who's the lead sponsor of this, and then we can have a discussion with our DPW Commissioner and PDS Director about where we go from here. Councilor Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, Councilor Bears. I appreciate that introduction that covers the, I think, the main thrust of why we're pursuing amendments and updates to this ordinance. At this time, it's both an opportunity to make sure we're in line with state and regional best practices, make sure that waste hauling in Medford is aligned with what other nearby cities and communities are doing. And it's a good thing. I think it's a good opportunity to clean up this ordinance and make sure that it's aligned with our goals ahead of putting forth this RFP, which is very you know a precursor to a very very significant and also multi year contract. So we want to make sure that all of the regulatory pieces are in place that we end up with the best status quo with that coming contract that we can. So much for the course has a has existing regulations on waste hauling and permitting standards for companies that do it in Medford. This includes topics that we're going to touch on in the proposed amendments and updates to the ordinance. And some of the so probably the language that we're going to be looking at tonight is based on a template language from the state from the Mass Department of Environmental Protection summit comes from a reputable source and the source that promulgates a lot of the state level. standards that we're trying to make sure we're we're best in alignment in. I think this updated language is the opportunity to strengthen mandatory municipal recycling provision clarify that mandate for all residential and commercial and municipal buildings. So a couple ways both by clarifying that its condition for all generators of waste in Medford and by making it a condition of any waste hauling permit. In Medford. So I would be happy to do a very quick. Overview of the proposed ordinance amendments if that's helpful but I also wanted to first invite the commissioner given or director hunt for their perspective or context on what we're looking at here. If you'd like to more we can I've read it.

[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you, Alicia Hunt, Director of Planning, Development and Sustainability for the city. We've been particularly interested in an ordinance like this for a long time because a lot of the bulk of this ordinance is about requiring companies to provide trash and recycling services for the same bundled rate as if they were to provide just trash or just recycling. And over the last In the last 10 years, it has come to my attention on many occasions when private residents who live in commercial buildings right multifamily, in particular, My building doesn't have recycling. Is there a way that the city can make my building do recycling? Like, why don't we have recycling? And it's a difficult conundrum because the state law is actually that there are waste bans, which mean you cannot put items that should be recycled into trash in Massachusetts, but it's not enforced at the level of these local buildings. It's enforced at a much higher level where they look at trash trucks and how much recycled content is coming out of them. And there's very little enforcement at the state level because it's been underfunded, the enforcement of that. So in theory, their building should be providing recycling services to them, but there's nobody who has the authority to make their building do that. and their building isn't incentivized to do it in any way. And one would hope that if the cost of trash and recycling together was the same as a cost of one or the other, then there would be no financial disincentive to providing recycling for these buildings and people would be able to do the right thing. So it's good for our residents, we hear from them about it. We hear from businesses who think they don't have recycling available to them, or they're not paying for recycling or they can't afford the extra, you know, so it would be good if they basically if it was there for them. I know that both the Councilors who are here tonight are very familiar with the fact that we're working on a waste RFP request for proposals for new waste service for the city of Medford. And one of the things that we are looking for in that is to qualify a vendor as the recommended and preferred hauler for the city of Medford. And as part of that, we would require that preferred vendor to provide this bundled trash and recycling services for the city. The benefit of creating a preferred hauler is that they would give fixed discounted, basically residents, anybody who's not on Medford's regular trash service. So multifamily buildings, larger commercial entities could then, get quote Medford's rates, Medford's contracted rate for waste services. So they wouldn't have to go out and figure it all out themselves. This ties hand in hand with that. So we are trying to get that discounted rate for the city, but we don't want other businesses to then also be able to undercut our preferred hauler by saying, well, I'll just provide trash services for you at a lower rate. Besides, we don't want that stuff going in the recycling. We also have a lot of really good altruistic people in Medford who care so much about recycling that I have heard from a number of them who take their recycling to the city yard for recycling at our city yard compactor because it's not provided at their own building. And if it was provided at their own building, it would take some of the stress off of our compactor, which gets full so often that it is emptied at least once a week right now. So that's sort of some of the like big picture behind this and where we're coming from and why we think this is a really great thing to move forward. So we're here to answer questions.

[Kit Collins]: Great. Thank you so much, Alicia. I really appreciate that context.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Director Hunt. I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, especially, there's a lot of laughing in the hall, it sounds fun. I'm just, so I'm hearing, I'm very clear on why we want to update the ordinance and what we want to get out of it. I'm also clear on the timeline and relative urgency around doing that and aligning it with the RFP process. So I think all of that makes sense. I think I wonder if we're slightly out over our skis here a little bit, just because, and I'm no expert here. I guess I'll ask a couple questions in terms of, and some of these, Councilor Collins has are questions that you already had as well, but I might just ask them in a little bit of a different order. This draft is based on, the draft ordinance proposal is based on DEP best practices and a template. Is that what we, there's kind of a template that DEP sent out with language and that's what this ordinance is based off of? That's correct. Okay. I think where there's two pieces of this just from an ordinance process that I think we might want to loop back in on outside of this meeting with DPW and with PDS and the Board of Health. And that's not to mean we can't have a bunch of discussion about how we want to do that right now or discuss other things. But where I'm losing the thread a little bit is we have this template and we have the goals that we want to input. Those all make a lot of sense to me. I'm not clear how this is updating the existing chapter 70 solid waste ordinance currently. And I think that's one thing I would wanna check out. Are we trying to strike a bunch of the existing ordinance and replace it with this? Is this updating certain elements of language? Is this maybe a piece of a larger project? And I'm more than happy for it to be the first piece since there's urgency around it. Is this a piece of where we maybe need to go through and update all of chapter 70 some of it looks like it hasn't been updated since 1982 some of it's from the original well not the original but the revised ordinances from 1974 some of it's from 1992 and then the other piece of this like that I know. Councilor Collins has been working on is around aligning this with Board of Health regulations and, you know, not doing things in the ordinance necessarily, or making sure that the ordinance and existing regulations, it's clear where they're aligned and where the regulations might need to be updated based on any ordinance updates. All of that suffice, all of that to say, like, I think we should take this template, plug it into the existing chapter 70 solid waste chapter in the city ordinances, and then we'll be able to see exactly what we're updating and changing within the existing chapter 70 solid waste ordinance. Then I think we should also have a discussion around especially what's labeled section 70E and section 70B. H, the 70E is the all haulers shall have a permit, permit required for all haulers, and 70H is... the enforcement section, because I think a lot of that maybe could be done in Board of Health regulations by updating Board of Health regulations. And we could have shorter sections in the ordinance that are basically just enabling the Board of Health to implement regulations with certain conditions. And I think that may flow better when it comes to both just the process of updating the ordinance and the actual process of enforcing the ordinance and the regulations to enforce the ordinance once it's implemented. So that was just kind of stream of consciousness a little bit. I'm happy to clarify anything I just said, if it was not exactly in full, full form. Do you get where I'm coming, what I'm saying?

[Kit Collins]: I think I definitely do. And actually that touches on probably the biggest, biggest category of question that I was hoping to at least start discussing in this meeting is, you know, reviewing our current chapter 70, and then this template, there are, clear areas of alignment where our existing ordinance is seeking to weigh in on the same topics. There are some sections where the new language is pretty clearly new. And then I think that there's a good amount of gray area. And also in my review, I was wondering how much of our existing chapter 70 do we want to keep or are there any outdated sections that could be called since we're already dipping back into our solid waste regulations through these updates. So that you're hitting on something that I already wanted to talk about, and I'd be curious to hear from our our staff about this, but I wonder if your idea of taking our proposed language here and seeing where it fits into sort of the existing formula that the existing ordinance creates could help us do that project of figuring out what of the old language to keep and what can just be replaced or what isn't being replaced, but can just be deleted anyway.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, and just to that point, maybe it is, figuring out where this overlaps with the existing ordinance and updating that now. And then seeing the unupdated sections of 70 and seeing if that needs to be updated relative to the RFP or, you know, I mean, there's just some stuff in here. I'm sure that we're going to generally follow this, but, you know, it shall be mandatory. Where was it? know, separation of aluminum, tin cans, glass containers, newspapers, yard waste, and plastic containers by solid waste survey shall be mandatory, you know, but we have single stream, right? So it's, is that separation after the fact? I'm just thinking that a lot of this ordinance written in 1992 is not actually how we are, necessarily how we are always practicing waste collection today.

[Kit Collins]: Alicia, did you have a

[Alicia Hunt]: I was seeing this. So we have chapter 70 has two articles in general and recycling. And then they each have sub areas under it. And it was my understanding that the reasons this was 70-A, B, C, D was because these were going to be in addition to everything that was already here. But a lot of what's here is Although the funny that we have it in our ordinances in some minds, like who knew that you needed to have an ordinance about the placement of receptacles. But on the other hand, if people are placing their receptacles in places that are inappropriate and blocking traffic or sidewalks, then you need to be able to tell them, no, you can't do that. And you need some mechanism by which to enforce that. So it kind of does make sense, even though you kind of laugh at it. And I guess I was reading the separation section as meaning that you had to separate recyclables from everything else, not that you had to separate each of those streams.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah. It could be the reading as well.

[Alicia Hunt]: Right. So it is helpful, honestly, to have other people read some of these ordinances and how they interpret it. Because we all read the same words and interpret them differently. Yeah, which is sort of hilarious.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I mean this entire article to is. And I mean this for no other reason than to say that I'm looking at the date, like it all was done before. I wasn't even born when this was passed. So I don't, it just seems, you know, and I don't think any of us were working here when this was, it just, I hear what you're saying. So, you know, maybe this is a new article two or a new article three, and we're putting it in after section 70-104, somewhere into one of these reserve sections. That all makes sense.

[Alicia Hunt]: If I may. There are two questions. There's the, what's the content and then how do we fit it in? And I think that if I was to sit with a lawyer, they would say, well, where you fit it in depends on what content you're putting in. So if you guys figure out what you want it to say, then we could work with like legal counsel to figure out how do we then break it up and put it in here? Is it a standalone thing or do we insert it into this article two?

[Zac Bears]: Yeah. And that, you know, I'll go to Councilor Collins in just one second. That's helpful. It's helpful for me to note the intent of this was to be additive and not replacing really anything that's currently in there. That's a good starting point for me to understand where it should be. We can talk about fixing the current article one and article two at a later date, perhaps, or at least as a second step after we get this stuff out of the way. Councilor Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, yeah, just on that same point, I think I'm glad that it's validating to hear that there were sort of multiple potential perspectives on this, because I was, my first read was, yes, this is in addition, or maybe it goes right at the beginning, or maybe it goes right at the end. And then I think the part of the existing ordinance where I started to feel ambivalent was actually not, it wasn't article one in general, but as I got further down, article two, recycling, definitions, administration, enforcement, and especially Division 3 collections. And so much of these new, the new language has to do with collection is where I started to be concerned that there would be, if we just added this, that there might be, you know, a sentence up here in the existing Division 3 that is, you know, could be construed as overlapping in a way that would be confusing, because I know that our goal here is to have, you know, and this process was very clear easily followable regulations for our waste haulers so that's not that's not an opposition anything that's been said, but I think for me where I started to feel confused about what the best path forward would be was when we get further down into this existing ordinance with definitions of recycling collection about separation and also talking about enforcement because I think the enforcement piece is one that I really want to confirm what department we are we're flagging in this existing ordinance and believe it's the Department of Public Works and of the Board of Health is also very involved as they're the promulgator of the the permits and the permanent standards. So potentially that's just flagging, you know, those, those areas of overlap that we will be dialing down on once we, you know, if we follow your process, Alicia of saying, here's the content that we want. Now, where do we put it exactly? That might elucidate, you know, questions that we have to definitively answer. But I wanted to wanted to flag that as questions. I didn't feel I really had an answer to going into this meeting.

[Alicia Hunt]: So one of my thoughts is that, cause I always, as we look at these things, I think about who's going to do the work and it's both the new work that we create by passing the ordinance, but it's also the like, who's going to get the ordinance all ready to go. Right. It's, it's just, it's just work. It's time to look at what's exactly there and how does this work? And it seems to me that we might have a couple of prongs. And some of it is, we have to ask Tim and his staff to read through it, because it gives the existing ordinance authorities to the Commissioner of Public Works. And it makes statement of that, the existing ordinance, not the new one. Yes, and so it would be good to, because you're right, we should, and my other thought is that we should ask our solid waste consultants to read through this with an eye towards the new RFP that we're doing and what do they see from a very outside perspective? There's absolutely stuff in here that they couldn't possibly know about how the city operates, but there's other stuff that would be very clear that should jump out at them as in conflict with what we're trying to do going forward. And I am no concern about asking our solid waste consultants to read through this and flag stuff for us, make recommendations. I feel like I would love to have what I would think of as like a neutral third party read it like somebody who doesn't isn't already steeped in it to see if they they understand or if they flag things that are that are wrong.

[Zac Bears]: Right.

[Alicia Hunt]: As well.

[Zac Bears]: Well, and that's you know if we're getting into the esoteric element of it a little bit with the existing ordinance. I kind of see, so I see this title here, Removal, Transport, and Disposal of Solid Waste and Recyclables, which is the, that's not in there, that's the title of the proposed ordinance. That to me, in definition, encompasses private hauler and everything else that's in here, and maybe other stuff that's neither in this new proposed ordinance, nor in the current ordinance. And I kind of see the, current ordinance as the in general, I thought I was going to be able to fit it into really clear buckets, but it's not quite clear. But article one in general seems mostly about, like, don't throw waste in the street and don't have collection bins, you know, about the impact of waste on public ways and on the public and on the beautification of the city, etc. But, and then article two talks a lot about recycling and it has a purpose section, which is helpful because article one doesn't have one, but the article two purposes to facilitate an effective recycling program in the city by reducing the amount of refuse sent to landfills, has a bunch of definitions, then has a bunch of administration powers of the commissioner of the Department of Public Works enforcing the article. And, you know, I think there may well be an updated version of this ordinance on solid waste would probably be. talking about beautification in one piece, talking about private hauler requirements in another piece, talking about general requirements around recycling, maybe, maybe not, or updating them. Like, I just think there would be kind of a holistic approach to look at the whole thing. I think we should have a discussion and should maybe have it now if we feel comfortable having it now. about, I agree with what you just said, I think we could move to have the solid waste consultant review the existing city ordinance and this proposed draft ordinance and make suggestions and recommendations or at least give an analysis. I think that would be super helpful. But I also think part of the discussion on the timeline should be If we want to do a holistic view and update this entire ordinance, do we want to start just by at least getting private hauler requirements on the books? You know, just do that piece of this first. And then I do just want to bring up again, and I don't know, I think we should probably also schedule another meeting and then see when, if Board of Health Director Connor O'Connor can be here. Is she on the call? Great. Then at the very least, we're gonna need to have another meeting on this and we should make sure she's on the invitation because I do have very lightly read through this regulation five and regulation six of the Board of Health around solid waste removal and dumpster regulations. And there is a lot of overlap or there's some significant overlap here too that I wanna make sure we work through. I'll leave it at that. I'll go to Councilor Collins if you have anything to say or if Director O'Connor wants to just say anything about the Board of Health regulations. I don't really know exactly where we want to go from here yet.

[Kit Collins]: Yeah, thank you. I think just to shore up the point that you just made, I think that that's generally where my head is at as well in terms of how to structure this. And just quickly back to Alicia's point of the workload of going through and comparing The ordinance that we currently have with these amendments I would you know later in the meeting entertain a motion to authorize myself as lead sponsor to do that I know that it's potentially just a lot of legwork I'd be happy to do the comparison as I'm also liaising with PDS and DPW and Director O'Connor to get their feedback on everything that we're looking at. But in addition, overall, I think that that is The best top down approach that we can be taking is try to separate out what do we currently have and what are the goals contained in our current ordinance beautification private hall requirements. I think again where I kind of get a little bit stuck on reconciling these two documents is that the new proposed ordinance to me has to do with recycling and collection. And in our current ordinance, there's a whole section on recycling, and there is a section on collection. And I just wanna make sure that there's nothing conflicting in what we eventually end up passing. So I think that a potential workflow in my perspective would be making sure that we're all on the same page about the general buckets that we want the final ordinance to contain, which I think already exists in some form. And then probably a slightly more slightly longer than fits into a public meeting process of just sort of categorizing everything that we have into under what category that fits and then choosing what version to go with what needs to be tweaked to what should be a Board of Health regulation instead, etc. turn to Director O'Connor if she has anything to add. We do have some of the documents that she sent to me earlier today in front of us relating to some of the regulations that the Board of Health currently uses for dumpsters and private haulers, which I think are really useful for us to have as we try to get a sense of just what we're currently working with. In general, Director O'Connor, I think I wanna make sure that we have a conversation about aligning whatever we have to do in the ordinance with your department's regulations to make sure that we're keeping everything consistent and making sure that, you know, what should be a regulation is a regulation, that things aren't in the ordinance that could just be better be in your permitting standards, or if you want to speak to that or anything else on your mind. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Oh, great. Great. Recognizing Director O'Connor, if you could unmute her, Mr. Clerk or make her co-host.

[SPEAKER_02]: Hi, thank you.

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Nice to see you. Yeah, I just echo all of your sentiments we do have you know specifically the regulation five at the Board of Health and solid waste house and permitting. And we do have the enforcement authority around a lot of that so I just want to make sure we do flag areas of overlap. I am concerned, very concerned about private haulers. The definitions that we use have to be very specific because there are, you know, several types of private haulers. We do septic, grease, you know, beyond solid waste. So really making sure that we address all of the definitions. And again, this regulation is pretty old as well and hasn't been updated for a long time. So this may be the perfect opportunity to take advantage and to update the requirements that we currently have. I am a little concerned about. And maybe this is longer somewhat different discussion but you know we we have a difficult time with some of our establishments and even at commercial properties. around space, right, they have very limited space for just, you know, a single dumpster or their, you know, their solid waste pickup, and putting on a recycling addition, you know, that's something that we will need to consider because space is at a premium at some of our specifically food establishments and commercial property so I think that that needs to be kind of looked at in this in the discussion as a whole as well. But, you know, happy, happy to go through this. happy to see where we could just update the Board of Health regulation, which might make things easier. I certainly don't want to have any conflicting information or definitions or anything between the ordinance and the Board of Health Reg because sometimes we found in the past that having a Board of Health Reg and an ordinance on the same topic, it creates difficulties. So I just want to make sure we're on the same page and have, you know, all of our questions answered and make sure that, you know, all of the duplication or. Definitions. In general, I make sure we're in alignment.

[Zac Bears]: Thanks, Marianne. That's helpful, too, yeah, I think we're all generally honing in on the same page here. which is making another pass at the existing ordinance, the proposed things around private hauler on aligning with, and potentially at least aligning with, but making sure there's no overlap or contradiction with existing or potentially updated Board of Health regulations. And I think we can do that. I think there's, again, I'm lightly, brainstorming and theorizing here, but I think there's probably some way that we could taper down a little bit the proposed ordinance changes, the ones that are proposed as of now, there may be future ones to enable more of this to happen through the regulation, but still have an ordinance on the books that points towards the regulation.

[Adam Hurtubise]: So I'll just leave it at that for now. Go ahead, Councilor Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Yeah, I think that a lot of the coming into this meeting, you know, having given the proposed new ordinance language a fairly close read, I came in with some specific ideas for how we can make that tighter, make it clearer, make it more consistent. But I think, you know, right now, especially being aware that we have another council meeting in 20 minutes, we're not going to solve the the question of this ordinance tonight. Mainly want to make sure that we talk about work flow and prioritizing how to get through this. You know I think that we're all kind of coming around the same ideas for what to do first to move this forward. But I do want to touch on you know and hear from director hunt and commissioner given on the private hauler he's on knowing that this is an important part of the rfp process. You know I am interested at the point we have this open so to speak I think it's worthwhile updating it going through it holistically. Both within whatever ordinance. It's it's re passed at the end of this and making sure there were a lining of the Board of Health regulations at the same time. And I know that the private hauler piece is urgent because of how it relates to the RFP. So I'm wondering if there's a way to try to do both at the same time, if that feels important, to be working on honing in on the right language for the private hauler piece to allow for this preferred hauler scenario fast enough that it can affect the RFP process. Maybe at the same time, we can also be taking a deeper dive into the ordinance But I'd appreciate hearing from Alicia or Tim about, you know, what kind of, when you think about this as it relates to the new waste contract, what sort of timescale would be ideal for having this be helpful.

[Alicia Hunt]: Yep. There's the we've put into the RFP that the city is working on on an ordinance like this. And I think that it's important for the haulers to see that this is actually moving. And that we there is a book And the patient, this is going to be passed the exact so right so from their perspective, there might be some devil in the details, it wouldn't be bad to have haulers review what we're proposing and get their feedback on it. And that may also help them understand that we're serious. If we're expecting to have bids back by mid to early May, then I feel like we have a window of time to work on this ordinance, work it through, that if we're concurrently saying to them, the city council is working on this and has requested input from haulers on this as well. And the same period that we're working on it, we might get some feedback from them on it, might not, but they'll be aware of it. And with something like this, there are a finite number of companies that do this. So it's not like there's some things that, you know, one tries to one way to try to regulate restaurants, for example, you could never get be sure that every restaurant heard about it, because there's like an infinite number of them. But for these waste haulers, there's a finite set. So I feel like if we were moving this through and there was another committee meeting in early April on this, and it was a committee of the whole by, is that possible by late April? Like, that's what I'm sort of thinking, right, is that there'd be another subcommittee meeting, then a committee of the whole meeting, and then it would go to the full council for approval. And so if our goal was to have another subcommittee meeting for a more flushed out version, that may in fact be actually addressing the whole of Chapter 70. And then there was a Committee of the Whole meeting by late April with the intention of having it on the council agenda for voting by early May. I think that timeline makes sense. If we thought that it was gonna get completely derailed or we couldn't get those meetings in the schedule, then I'd have more of a concern about it.

[Zac Bears]: Sorry, go ahead, Tim, and then I'll ask my question.

[Alicia Hunt]: Right, so we wouldn't right I guess the difference is how do people position their bids on the RFP, whether or not they know this, this rule is coming. Right. Because there could also be an implementation date on this that's a little later, right? We don't like to pass ordinances and say that people have to abide by them the next day. We give a window.

[Zac Bears]: And it looks like there's going to be a second, if we go this route, there's going to be a phase of updating BOH regulations too.

[Unidentified]: Right.

[Zac Bears]: So we'd be, you know, we would have the ordinance and instead of saying, I think that's something we need to figure out either, maybe we don't have, you know, Permits shall be required, right? But we don't necessarily need to have annual permit renewal. We should need to decide what elements of this giant 70E section really need to be in an ordinance that we want passed before bids are in, if we're trying to influence bids, and what elements of it could be in a regulation that's done after July 1, in the six month period before January 1, or even into a little bit of next calendar year. You know, so I think that would make sense. Schedule wise, we probably could swing it. I think we can along that timeline. My question was just going to be on the time frame for when we think people may or when, you know, is the window for getting some feedback from waste haulers on the language kind of like after an early April subcommittee meeting and before a committee of the whole meeting in late April? Is that the window?

[Alicia Hunt]: I would have no objection to actually sending this draft out like this version because what we're really asking them is a big picture question right like it. they're not gonna get in the weeds on the permitting and stuff like that, that Board of Health regulations. It's the big picture question that they would wanna feedback on anyhow. And I'd rather get that ahead in front of them sooner rather than later. I mean, the benefit of this RFP process is that we've got an email list with all of those contacts. I personally don't have it, but our staff have it. So reaching out to them is not, this, like, oh, I don't even know where I'll figure it out. Like, that's, we'll put together an email and send it out.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah.

[Tim McGivern]: Great.

[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah.

[Tim McGivern]: I think that covers it all. As I said, from an ordinance and regulation standpoint, and this is just, you know, my opinion, but anything that City Council doesn't want to take on and put in writing that can be at regulation level, you know, would work, because a lot of those permitting requirements that seem to be in the draft ordinance, a lot of that could potentially be regulation, depending on the comfort level of the council where you want to have the purview over. Yeah, I mean, right now it is, and it's very detailed.

[Zac Bears]: It is five, six single-spaced pages of regulation.

[Alicia Hunt]: I have sort of a guideline in my head of, What do you actually want people to have to come back to the city council to change right if how the permits are issued is something that you think people have to come back to the city council to change and it should be in there. And if actually you're like, I don't care the fact that a permit is issued is the important part. that that should come back to the city council to change. That's what belongs in the ordinance. And if you look at it and go, I don't actually care what these details are at all, then you defer that to the administration, to the department that actually has to do it to give them that flexibility. Because technology changes, staff change, you don't have to have that come back here. And then I think there was a thing about fees. and the city council ordinances do have a separate section where we list fees. Right. So there should be a decision. It should either be in that separate section or it should be deferred to the permitting body to set appropriate fees.

[Zac Bears]: Right. And right now, I mean, it's in the, right now it's by regulation and all we would really need to say is, you know, pursuant to 41 or 40, whatever it is, 40, 21 D, you know, the BOH of the authority to, you know, to set a fee schedule. And one side question, and you may not have the answer to this, there may be no one in the city right now who has the answer to this. Where are regulations posted? Like if DPW has regulations and policies, where are those made publicly available?

[Tim McGivern]: We try to have online. So yeah, engineering has quite a number. And those are on the engineers web page. Okay, DBW, not as much because regulations are usually associated with outsiders coming to do work here. Right. So yeah, so the engineering website page has, has those types of regulations plan requirements.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, a complete aside. I do wonder what it would take to get that into like muni code so it all be in one place I don't, you know, this is now I'm just off on a tangent, but I agree with you have all regulations and sort of And then you could say here's the ordinances, here's the regulation. You could even say we're doing this. You could link from whatever ordinance we create to the relevant regulation outline in the permitting process. Just may save people a step when it comes to figuring out what they have to do to get something done in the city.

[Alicia Hunt]: Right. I will say that the Board of Health has listed on their website a lot of regulations and links to some ordinances. And I just clicked just to confirm that and there are some things on here that I had no idea that there were regulations about yeah and that's how I you know.

[Zac Bears]: I would have put out a different notice and had Marion's name on it, you know, if I had realized how much overlap there was there too. So, and that's, you know, it's not a, not an issue that we didn't, everyone's here and we had the conversation we needed to have, but I, you know, that's one piece of the, when I'm looking at ordinances in general, and now we're just, now I'm just talking to Taka, that's one piece that I'm less informed on than I maybe want to be. So, or maybe should be.

[Tim McGivern]: The important thing, and Alicia correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I'm right here, the important piece from the private holler standpoint and how we're doing the preferred holler program with the RFP and the new contract. I think the critical piece really is that private haulers have to bundle the recycling track. I mean, it's a It's so when the services provided for the city and they put in their prices together, they have an expectation of what their competitors will be paying. Yeah. So that's really the whole point. So, you know, once once the new contract is in effect, that would kind of need to be pretty solidified. So you'll see here after signing. Right. But the more we can do earlier, as Alicia was saying, will allow our proposers to provide better information and for the contract negotiations to go smoother. So all of that, I think, are the points. Great. For the private politics, in my perspective.

[Zac Bears]: Great, yeah, and that makes sense. And that's why I think, you know, even if we do get more into the weeds, we may need to bite off that piece and just, we can throw that in as an article three and then look at the whole thing.

[Unidentified]: Right.

[Zac Bears]: Hopefully we can do it all. I think it'd be great to do it all at once and do it holistically and really update it. So cool. Great, I heard three motions.

[Kit Collins]: I might have a fourth, but I actually kind of want to. I'll repeat my three. Yeah.

[Zac Bears]: You're fourth. One was motion to ask PDS to have the solid waste consultant review the existing chapter 70 ordinance, the proposed ordinance language based on the DEP template and existing board of health regulations. I don't have this written. You should write it down. Oh, you can't hear me. Oh, I'll be more direct and slower. First motion, and I believe all of these will have to be Councilor Collins and then I'll second them, will be a motion to have PDS ask the solid waste consultant to review the existing Chapter 70 solid waste ordinance. The proposed ordinance link, yeah. Ordinance language based on the mass DEP template. Existing Board of Health regulations.

[Adam Hurtubise]: On solid waste.

[Zac Bears]: And that can be, Board of Health regulations five and six. You can put that in there if that's possible. and the minutes of the March 8th subcommittee meeting. Yeah, yeah, report, sorry, yeah.

[Adam Hurtubise]: And provide an analysis or suggestions.

[Zac Bears]: The second one would be a motion to authorize Councilor Collins to work with the DPW, Board of Health, and Planning Development and Sustainability, PDS, Planning Development and Sustainability, to gather feedback and present an updated draft. And the third one would be motion to authorize or motion to request that Planning, Development and Sustainability send proposed preferred hauler language

[Adam Hurtubise]: to potential vendors. Yeah. For their comments.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, what's yours?

[Kit Collins]: If this turns into more than a two minute discussion, I'll just save it, but towards the goal of the third motion to have proposed preferred language, caller language sent in advance, since this probably won't be passed by the time callers are seeing it. There was just one part of the section 70 F bundled service requirement that I felt should be stronger. I was hoping to make a motion to add a new first bullet point under that section.

[Zac Bears]: I think we're discussing right now, I don't think we're, oh, but yeah, you need it for the moment.

[Kit Collins]: Yeah, I'm just talking for a sec. To add a new first bullet point above service to residential customers slash generators, a new bullet point A that says all permitted haulers that provide solid waste collection must also provide recyclables collection. I think that requirement is gotten to another, sections of the ordinance, but I read this through a few times. I would just feel more comfortable with this language if it said it once clearly, just to make sure that it's crystal.

[Zac Bears]: I don't disagree with you on principle, but I think Mary Ann raised a good point that if we mandate recycling, there could be space issues for small businesses where they only have room for a single dumpster. I don't know if that's exactly tying into what you're proposing. Seems like maybe not.

[Kit Collins]: Well, I think that that is a issue regardless, to be honest. I mean, I think that what we're trying to do is put the mandate to collector cycling on the solid waste haulers. And I think that we do have that in different wording elsewhere in the new proposed language. Elsewhere we have that requirement on the waste generators. So in a sense, this motion would just be to try to make it consistent in all pieces of the ordinance.

[Zac Bears]: I saw Alicia stand up. And then sit back down.

[Alicia Hunt]: And one of the things that we're looking for with the RFP is for the selected hauler to work with our businesses to figure out solutions that might involve some sharing of dumpsters and centralized stuff. And honestly, it's a problem that I've specifically in detail looked at in Medford Square, for example, and I've looked at in Hayden Square. And it is a real problem, but I think that we should still require that this get offered as a service. And then we sort of put it back to like, let's figure out the solution. We shouldn't have people not recycling, because there isn't room for a dumpster. We've got to be able to figure that out some other way.

[Kit Collins]: That was my thinking as well as perhaps this is one of the many problems slash solutions such as education that we're hoping we can have the preferred hauler address.

[Alicia Hunt]: In theory, they'll have the same volume of trash, right? Like they're not gonna suddenly have more trash. So maybe they need a smaller garbage and a second recycling dumpster. They do this in very dense cities all the time. Let's figure out what the solutions are, so.

[Kit Collins]: So if you're not comfortable with it, I don't need to insert this at this stage. I mean, I'm sympathetic to Alicia's view that we can hopefully put this in and then have a solution.

[Zac Bears]: Do we think it's going to change the comments we get back to include it? That's the only reason I see it included at this stage or not.

[Alicia Hunt]: The reason for including it is to make it crystal clear, that there's no confusion about what we're asking for.

[Zac Bears]: Okay, let's do it. Let's do it then. Yeah.

[Kit Collins]: Great. So that is a, and thanks Alicia, I appreciate your insight on that. So the motion is to add, this is under section 70 F bundled service requirement in the new proposed ordinance.

[SPEAKER_02]: Motion to add a new bullet point A, All permanent haulers that provide solid waste collection must also provide recyclables collection. end quote, and to update the following bullet points accordingly. Thank you.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah.

[Zac Bears]: On the motion of Councilor Collins, seconded. Yeah, on the motions of, yeah. On the motion to join the four motions of Councilor Collins, seconded by Vice President Bears. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion passes. Motion to adjourn? Motion to approve Councilor Collins, approve the joint motions by Councilor Collins, seconded by Vice President Bears. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion passes. Motion to adjourn. On the motion of Councilor Collins to adjourn, seconded by Vice President Bears. All those in favor? Aye. Motion passes and the meeting is adjourned.