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[Nicole Morell]: 032 committee the whole meeting Tuesday, July 25 2023 at 6pm is called to order Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[George Scarpelli]: Present.
[Nicole Morell]: Present.
[George Scarpelli]: Present.
[Nicole Morell]: Present six present one. He is called to order there will be a meeting of the metric City Council Committee the whole on Tuesday, July 25 2023. at 6 p.m. in the Medford City Council Chamber on the second floor of Medford City Hall and via Zoom. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss citywide collection, disposal, and processing of solid waste, reusables, organics, and recyclables awarded pursuant to a request for proposal number 23-0067, paper 23-032. The committee has invited DPW Commissioner Tim McGivern, Alicia Hunt, Director of Planning, Development, and Sustainability, and any additional representatives of the Office 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, Nicole Morell, Council President. We have Commissioner McGibbon and Director Hunt here to give us a presentation. Before we get started, are there any questions from councilors? Seeing none, I will turn it over to you both. Can you tap the mic just to turn it on? There you go, sorry. It literally changes every week, so.
[Tim McGivern]: Thank you very much. We have a relatively short presentation to give, and I'll turn it over to Alicia to start the presentation, and I'll take over at some point in the middle.
[Alicia Hunt]: Good evening, councilors. So we just, obviously you know about waste and recycling today in Medford. We're gonna recap RFP process that we went through, the RFP goals, the results and recommendations and what's ahead. And to be clear, I think that everybody is aware that the mayor needs the city council's approval to sign a 10-year contract. And that is on your city council agenda tonight, is the request to allow the signing of a 10-year contract. What our goal was was to provide you some information about what's in there, what's going on, what's the process here. so that you would feel more comfortable at that meeting and for us to have a little bit of time to actually discuss that now at this meeting. So I included this here just for completeness. I'm sorry. You all know what we do for waste and recycling in Medford. We have weekly trash, every other week recycling. Yard waste is 15 weeks plus one week of Christmas tree. Currently, white goods are $26 for a curbside fee for pickup. Residents can have up to three bulky items picked up, collected every other week. And that costs the city about $25 an item. We actually have a very high rate of people calling and their item not being there when the waste management truck gets there. And the city still pays $25 an item. when that happens, there's about, we pay about $400,000 a year on that line. And currently residents can subscribe for the city recommended composting service. It's $99 a year. One of the things that I just wanted to flag, this is a slide. We do not actually have this data for Medford or for the state. This is an EPA slide about the breakdown about what households are discarding annually. And as you can see, 48% of what gets discarded is recyclable. There's 15%, the orange, that's potentially reusable or recyclable. 12% is yard waste, yard trimmings, and 22% is food scraps, which really only leaves a small amount that truly, truly has to go in the garbage. Now things vary from area to area about what can actually be recycled, but this is the, in a big picture. So you're also aware that we've been working on hauler regulations that we've had mandatory separation of recyclables since 1992. This meant the hauler regulation that we worked on will require permitted trash holders to provide recycling service so that they can't just pick up trash from say apartment buildings without also basically providing recycling at for one bundled rate. I do understand from our director of board at our last meeting about that, there was some question about our board of health regulations and that there were definitions that were different. I understand from our director of public health that the board of health has actually voted and adjusted their regulations to be in line with what is proposed in front of the city council. And I know councilor Kit was there at that meeting and I was not, so I couldn't speak to it any more than to say I know that that is in process. That is actually, we feel like an important step as part of this process. So for the RFP, last summer and fall, we had our Solid Waste Task Force and we did community outreach. I'd like to thank the number of members of the task force who are actually on the Zoom tonight. Saw a couple of them before I started sharing my screen, We drafted and released an RFP over the winter. We received proposals this spring, and this summer we have been doing contract negotiations. So the goal of the RFP, controlling costs was number one, creating fairness and transparency regarding our service recipients, expanding our recycling and composting options, and providing services comparable to neighboring communities streamlining the transition of continuity of service without interruptions. We wanted to move Medford towards zero waste and decrease the multiple haulers in the business districts. So I think I'm turning it over to you here.
[Tim McGivern]: Thank you, Aisha. So we're doing a great job in meeting our goals. So I think that's really important. Up until we started evaluating the RFP, some of those goals, we weren't 100% sure if we were going to be able to reach them, but we're on track. So that's great news. The results of the RFP are They're summarized here but, and this is, you know, these are three important bullet points that I think are we think that are quite important to share. If, for example, if we were to go to weekly recycling we discovered that it would cost an approximate about a million dollars extra per year. The weekly food composting that we're heading towards is gonna cost us about a million dollars per year. And if we move to every other week trash, we're gonna save about a million dollars per year. And we're proposing to start that in year three to have a transition period. So just so everybody's clear, we're not recommending weekly recycling at this point, but we did wanna understand what that would cost. The reason is because that minimal increases in materials recycled based off of analysis is that MassDT has done and others in national research. So the weekly food scraps composting piece, you know, another thing that we've discussed in the past with you is trash has a lot of, today has a lot of food scraps in it. Food scraps are heavy. So when you remove the food scraps out of your trash, then your trash is lighter, you have less of it. it doesn't fester as quickly, it doesn't become a nuisance as quickly. So that's one of the directions that we're headed here, and that's what we've heard from the community, and that's where we're headed. And then the transition piece I mentioned is important too, since we are realistic in the idea that we can't wave a magic wand and have the entire city start composting their food scraps all at once.
[Nicole Morell]: question.
[Richard Caraviello]: I have a question on number three about the every other week trash. Yes. If when we get to that third year and we realize it's not working, are we able to change it to go to a weekly thing? If, if, if we realize that when we start to maybe after six, seven months, it's not working out, are we able to
[Tim McGivern]: Well, we'll be entering a contract with waste management, and I think, you know, we'd have to have that discussion if it's not working and it's just had itself and you know no one's picking up composting and it's not.
[Richard Caraviello]: I'm talking about the every other week. Well, that would start in year three. Yeah, so yeah if we if we realize that. Maybe, you know, three or four or five months into it, it's not working. The answer is yes. Are we going to be able to opt back into a weekly trash pickup?
[Tim McGivern]: Yes, we would be able to do that. We wouldn't be able to do that and the composting. So we would have to make some hard decisions at that time.
[Alicia Hunt]: It would have a significant budget impact. Yes. We literally could do composting and every week trash, but that would have a million dollar budget impact. That would be a barrier. We don't recommend
[Nicole Morell]: I have a question that same vein just as we started. So, if it going to every other we trash, would there be an option like right now if folks have a ton of recyclables they can go to the DPW yard, is there an option there I'm like literally being very specific. I have a one year old I have lots of diapers, like, Food, great, we can get the food out, that has saved us a ton, we already do composting, but something like that, not necessarily want around.
[Tim McGivern]: The overflow bags wouldn't go away, and also an extra bin that you'd have to pay for wouldn't go away, so there would be options if you are generating more trash, but it would be a cost to the resident.
[Nicole Morell]: Right, but there would be no other way to remove the trash in that in-between week. Like I'm just saying, because right now, if I have a ton of recycling, I can go to the DPW yard and drop off that recycling before the next pickup.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, I would say we have not discussed an option that would... So we had actually conceptualized, could there be a way to do it? The difficulty would be the truck would run this route this week and that route that week. So to have a truck hit one person's house, would be really expensive. We have not currently contemplated a drop-off location. We have contemplated overflow bags that people could choose to purchase. an extra bin if you had, so I actually had a neighbor with two in diapers and he ordered an overflow bin that he used for the year that he had two children in diapers. Okay, yeah. Okay, thank you.
[George Scarpelli]: Madam President, if I can.
[Nicole Morell]: Oh, Councilor Scarpella and then we'll go to Vice Mayor Beers.
[George Scarpelli]: Right, so is the, thank you, through the Chair, is the food scrap pickup program, is that a weekly program?
[Tim McGivern]: Yes, that would be a weekly program.
[George Scarpelli]: Okay. One thing that I'm really nervous about, especially this past week, I think that we've gotten so many phone calls, and I'm sure that the Board of Health has gotten a lot of phone calls. We're seeing a huge uptick on the rat populations and what's happening with the rat problem in the community. And I think that A couple of things that as we're moving forward with this RFP and what the asks are, I find a few difficult concessions here and looking at not everybody, although we want everybody to recycle more, but every two weeks having a pickup of trash. I don't think that's a real big problem considering right now when we're being asked to vote on this issue without really getting the true input from the whole community. I think this is what we had an issue years ago when Mayor McGlynn put this program out. So I think that, You really have to try to sell me on this because I, you know, the every other week trash in three years, unless we have a grasp on what's going on with the rat population and what we're doing here in the city with the rats. Uh, I think that's, that's a dangerous situation. Um, so, uh, and that's brings another question I had from a lot of people that did contact me about the food scrap and going with the composting that way. is one resident put it as, we're now having drive-through separate containers for our rats for their consumption. So I know the reason why we're doing this, but I think that a million dollars, if you look at the big picture, The problems that are going to arise because of pickup once a week, I think that we're not really thinking it through of what the process would be if there were, or there needed to be drop-offs per se. I don't know, this is a good meeting, this is a great meeting to get things rolling, but I can't see us voting on this tonight for the fact that here we are in end of July, and for the most part, most of the community hasn't heard about the process or what the RFP states. So again, I'll have more later, but thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Madam President.
[Zac Bears]: Just to be clear operation about the procedure. Essentially, this is a 10 year contract and there's an option in the contract to move from weekly trash to every other week trash, and that reduces the annual payment by about a million dollars, plus or minus whatever the annual adjustments are. And we're choosing, we're making a plan to exercise that option in year three or in the contract that says we are going to exercise the option in year three.
[Alicia Hunt]: So let me answer that first and then I'll go back to the rats. So actually what is literally written in the contract and I had the, so our consultants are also on the line in case there's questions and we actually also have a representative from MassDEP on the line. So what is literally written in the contract is that there is an option to go to every other week trash that can be decided six months before July 1st, 2026. So six months before that, we have to decide if we're ready to move to every other week trash and it would have a budget impact. And so that's where we would, that would need to be part of that. But no, it is not locked in stone that we have to. And if we said we are moving that way and we can see, so actually I was also gonna talk to sort of this phase in that we were talking about, but we're not ready. We don't have enough adoption, we could say, let's push that back a year, let's stick one more year with weekly trash, we'll take the budget hit and then switch to every other week trash the year after that. Or we could say people aren't, so I think I would also be helpful to speak to the composting, but I do wanna actually just address the rats first, and then let's go back to the money, because Councilor Scarpelli asked about the rats first. We, the Board of Health has found that the toters, they're smaller with locks on them that are used for the composting, have been more successful in keeping out rats and raccoons than the large things that we have trash in. Where a raccoon can climb up, and we've had photos of it, I've seen it out my own window, and literally the raccoon can open a trash can, one of our waste management trash cans, and go in there and pull the trash out The toters for the compost have very simple locking lids in them. And actually I could have, we have the one up in the hallway upstairs. We could have David go get that. Do you mind, do you know what I'm talking about? Sorry, David's one of the interns in our office who's been helping us with this. It has a very easy for a human to use lock, but the rats and the raccoons have not figured out how to get that open. plastic on the composting bins is thick enough that we do not have examples of rats eating through the composting toters that have been in use in the city of Medford. There are buckets in some communities. Our board of health said no to the buckets because they did find that rats were eating through the lids of those buckets. So that's why in Medford, if you were to subscribe to one of these companies, you're only allowed to get the toter that's per our board of health. So we believe that moving, or we have found that moving the trash out of the garbage cans and into these toters actually helps with the rat problem. The other issue with rats is business, and we'll talk about that a little bit later as well. But some of the way we wanted to address composting. So right now we have 1200 households in Medford paying for weekly composting. We had, I'm gonna say, oh, I printed it.
[Zac Bears]: Oh, no one can see it because we're sharing.
[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, yeah, I'm gonna have to turn off screen share for a minute. And then you can see this, like, this is a really easy. So like, anybody can When you push on this, you don't have to have good hand strength or anything to push. So even elderly, it's easy to push. And if we turn it, let's just say, cause you can see there.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Shane.
[Alicia Hunt]: You can't quite see, but there's a little lip on there. So this is what, and we do have this, it's actually up in the hallway upstairs. We don't mean to be advertising for any one company. Both the companies that do provide this service in Medford right now, use the exact same toter from the same company. It's just one is, this one is branded by one of the companies. So the idea is that we believe, hold on, when we did the survey, does it say the survey? I thought it did. 20% said they would definitely, oh, well, that was actually the moving to every other week trash. So we actually had a lot of people say they were interested, I could call it up if I wanted, in composting, and a lot of people, only 25% of the population said they were not interested in composting, and that was with no outreach, no education, it was just the survey.
[George Scarpelli]: So- How many people were in that, Alicia, if you're interested to know?
[Alicia Hunt]: The survey was about 850 people responded to it. Thank you. Yes. Um, so actually, I realized I should go back to screen sharing. There we go. So when we did the RFP, we heard from several composting companies, and they felt strongly that what we should do is an opt-in program for the first couple of years. and have people sign up. This is based on the model that Boston did. So they have an opt-in program where they have a cap on how many people can opt in in the first year, in the second year, and then in the third year. So this idea would be, we believe that we could have 8,000 households sign up in year one, and then 12,000 in year two. We have 19,770 households on our waste program right now. so that then at that point in year three, we think we could roll in the rest of the households. If we found in year two that we were not at 12,000 households, that we were at 6,000 households composting, the compost companies would charge us a weekly rate per household rather than a rate for the whole city. So will we ramp up our costs by only paying for the number of subscribers in year one and year two? And there's like a critical mass point at which it's cheaper to pay for the whole city than per person because of the way math works. So that's where we would switch. So this is what our, we would have real metrics to be able to have a good understanding if we were ready to switch to universal in year three. Oh, thank you. So would you be interested in moving to every other week trash collection if you had food scraps collection? And the online survey said 21% said yes and 20% said maybe. And then after we talked about it at the workshop, the numbers changed. So we had 60% saying yes and 15% maybe, and at that point only 25 no. And that was actually just discussing the program during a workshop for the evening, that many changed their minds. Thank you. All right, let me go back to you. I was letting you.
[Tim McGivern]: Yeah, that's fine. All right, so I think Alicia went over this pretty well, and we also went over how this isn't set in stone. So if it's not panning out with this plan, then we do have the option of changing how we do it. I think that's important for everybody to know, right? Let's see if we have anything else on this slide that we need to talk about. So one of the things that we want to bring to your attention is a piece of resident-like businesses and residents. So, you know, if you're a resident-like business, like a small business out there that generates enough trash that it's almost like a resident or even less, you'd be included in the program. And then if you are a building with four or fewer units, you would be eligible for the weekly food scraps composting collection service as part of that collect the city's collection services. And that three-year approach is just a recommendation for now, like we said. I think we go to the next slide. So currently our budget is $7.6 million approximately. Years one through five, we're looking at 7.7 per year average and years six through 10, 8.7 per year average. So those are some numbers that we're working hard on to fit what we wanna do in a reasonable escalation based off of our current budget. So we're not trying to, in other words, we're trying not to have the annual budget for waste collection increase, which is part of the cost goals. So some of the things that we've achieved, we believe that the new system will be fair and transparent. The process thus far, fair and transparent. Food waste composting services is included, and as Alicia mentioned, it builds off of experiences of other municipalities in the area, such as Boston. We're targeting yard trimming compostings, April through December. One thing we heard loud and clear is folks want more yard trimmings pickup. So, you know, the reality of it is that particular service is getting more expensive. So we are currently working with waste management to get those costs reasonable. And one of the, The ways we're doing that is contracting directly with a contractor and not having waste management sub it out. So we do have some significant savings that way. So there very well may be a third contract associated with this. So one for trash and recyclables, one for food scraps composting, and one for yard waste composting. The fact that we're going with waste management, insurance continuity, I think, you know, I know in my office, we're very used to working with waste management, the folks there and the processes that they have. So that's a nice perk. One of the other goals that we have is bringing the city towards zero waste. So we believe that this set of contracts would be taking a big giant step over the next decade towards zero waste. And one of the things we haven't really mentioned quite yet is, you know, some of the, for example, the business districts and there are other situations in the city where we wanna provide a way to get from having many, many toters out in the street to containerized situations that are better for things like rats, better at making the squares look nicer, Things like that. So we're working on a preferred hauler system, where there are rates that are pre negotiated that that businesses can take advantage of. So we're working very closely with Waste Management to work those rates out. So basically provide a discount.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Madam President, Tim, how many cities and towns actually do commercial trash for free? It's not the norm. That's not the norm. I mean, at some point, are we going to get up with making the commercial people pay?
[Tim McGivern]: That's what this is about. Yes, that is what exactly what this is about. But we don't want to pull the rug out from under him, so to speak. So we're trying to provide a soft landing. We're trying to work a transition and the preferred holiday program is a critical piece of that.
[Richard Caraviello]: So we have pre negotiated rates that we can offer businesses that need to transition off a city system, would they would they be able to pick up the commercial crash in the evening, the commercial district so they don't have to leave it out all night.
[Tim McGivern]: Things like that we can certainly work out.
[Richard Caraviello]: I'm sure, you know, we've all driven through the square and we've seen trash thrown all over the place in boxes and stuff. Correct. It's very unsightly.
[Tim McGivern]: Correct. And that is something that we're, through this process and through this contract, we're trying to solve. It's not going to happen immediately. There is some work to do there, and an example of some work to do is space. Space for dumpsters, space for collection. Not all businesses have enough space, so there will be some sharing, there will be potentially some city-owned space set aside, like a parking space or two in a targeted area with a dumpster, as opposed to having the bagged mess that you see today. All right, I think we can go to the next slide. So what's next? So right now, as Alicia mentioned, we're negotiating, which is taking some serious amount of time between Alicia and myself, our consultants and waste management. So we've already 12 hours or something of negotiations, and we're continuing to do that. We're well on our way and things are looking great. The scope B contract that's mentioned here would be the food waste contract. Now that's coming next because that negotiation is going to hinge upon where exactly we land with our scope A or trash and recycling contract. So they impact each other, it's all the same budget. So we would execute that in July, August 2023, fall, winter 2023 with starting outreach. And that's going to be a big part of this as Alicia showed you or discussed once you educate people on how this will actually work and, What it actually means, people start turning over to the side of food scrap composting. So we believe that will continue. It is the trend that in general we're headed as I think a larger community, not just Medford. July 1st, 2024, new contract begins, including food composting. And at the same time, the hauler ordinance goes into effect. And that's important for the Preferred Hauler Program. July 1st, 2026, that is the target for every other week trash begins. So hopefully by that point, we have enough folks on the composting and we've done our job with education and outreach where folks are a lot more comfortable with the idea of their dry trash goods getting picked up. every other week and the heavy food scraps and compostables getting picked up every week. So that's the plan. And then I think we can move on to the last slide. So thank you very much. We're open to questions and we, like Alicia said, we have our consultants on board and we have an SDEP here too. So answer whatever questions you have, try to.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Councilor Caraviello.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you. So just a couple of my opinions. You talked about the bulk items that we pick up for free. Yes. Why don't we cut that down to maybe to one?
[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, so honestly, I apologize. I thought that was one of the slides in here. It was in the memo that we sent out to councilors. So part of the plan, what we have strong recommendation from the haulers, they have found that when we charge residents for the bulk items, even a portion of the cost, that there is a dramatic drop in one, the number of items that they asked to have picked up, and two, the number of times they call, make an appointment, and then don't put their item out. We believe that a number of those that we're being charged for are actually people not putting it out, calling a second time and putting it out then. They see a dramatic drop off. And so the recommendation is that we split the cost. We've gotten them to keep the cost. Right now, the city gets charged $25 an item. They are willing to go up to just $26 an item. And the recommendation is that we share the cost with the residents and waste management would do the billing. So they would actually, a resident calls, tries to schedule it. Waste management would take their credit card number for A number we choose, I think we're recommending somewhere between 13 and $15 an item. And then they put that item out and they'll find that, they think that can actually drop our $400,000 down much lower under $100,000 for bulk items.
[Richard Caraviello]: So maybe if you give them one for free and in charge for the other two, you know, the 13 nominal fee, I think that's more than, well, it's something that people put it all, then people come by at night and pick it up. And that's what happens a lot of times too.
[Alicia Hunt]: It does happen that they get picked up by other people.
[Richard Caraviello]: If you cut that down to maybe one for free and the nominal fee for everything else after that, I think we can live with that.
[Alicia Hunt]: We also find that people are dramatically incentivized to try putting it out on everything is free or to giving it away or donating it if there's a small charge associated with it.
[Zac Bears]: Just to be clear, this would be every single, there'd be no free one, it would be everything's 13 bucks a resident?
[Alicia Hunt]: That's what our recommendation is from this- this is to recommend for everything. And white goods is staying at, it's been $26 an item, it stays at $26 an item.
[Richard Caraviello]: Now that's for the white goods?
[Alicia Hunt]: That's white goods. I'm talking about the bulk items. For the bulk items, yes.
[Richard Caraviello]: Yeah, maybe if you give just one bulk item per year. They're saying none, they're saying all the bulk items would be 13. Don't give any bulk items?
[Alicia Hunt]: So that's the recommendation, particularly in best practice from DEP. It's also simpler for people to include a nominal fee.
[Richard Caraviello]: So when we go on to the every other week pickup, I'd like to see something at the DBW, similar to like we have with the cardboard. Because I know myself, there's probably times, maybe around the holidays and stuff like that where people have a lot of trash, have a receptacle down there that people could buy the bag, and bring it down there. So for the few times a year that your barrel does get full, I think that'd be, that'd probably save a lot of heartache for a lot of people rather than, you know, let the stuff pile up all over the place and, you know, just drop the bag down. And I have it open on a Saturday or so, a Monday to Friday, just to make sure there's someone there. So non-residents don't put stuff there, but everything that goes in there must be in the bag that we provide.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes, we'll have to, and actually, Sorry, because that also reminded me something that we didn't put into our slides but something else that we've negotiated in this contract with waste management. Sorry for interrupting your list is a twice a year drop off day where they would organize it, they would have all the vendors there. And if you normally have to pay $25 for a white good, you would still have to pay $25 for a white good and why you would bring it, I don't know, but we would have all the hard to recycle items, all the fabric, all the, so we'll continue to have textile part pickup, but for them to organize like a hazardous waste and paint and electronics recycling and textile and have everything there in one place, but not organized by our staff. Our staff would be there to keep an eye on things but we wouldn't have to set all of that up, that they would set it up and run it for us twice a year.
[Richard Caraviello]: And the same thing with the yard waste. I know we pick it up certain times of the year, but the leaves continue to come after those couple of weeks. So if maybe at some point they could provide a dumpster or some type of compactor where people can bring the yard waste down to the DBW yard. on their own.
[Alicia Hunt]: So what we're looking at with this contract is approximately April through December. Right now we end in November and that's a problem for people, but to have more pickups into December and then in January. And one of the things that I'm very interested in is they're interested in doing it every other week. So your yard waste would be picked up on the opposite week of your recycling so that you would know the schedule they would do half the city each week. So that'll also cut down on the times that there's totally overwhelmed and don't get to your house for two more days by subcontracting to another company we're hoping. And in fact, they've said they would like, they're happy for us to contract directly with Save That Stuff for that pickup. But the idea being that it could be, if we did 20 weeks, it would be every other week from April through late December plus one, two week window in January where half the city one week and half the city the other for the Christmas trees. We need to negotiate with Save That Stuff if that January pickup could be more than Christmas trees. So if you had another bag of yard waste, could you put that with your Christmas tree? We still have to meet with them and discuss that with them. But this way would be a lot easier for people to remember when their pickup is. 20 weeks is recommended by DEP as the best practice, we're looking at potentially 16 weeks for a couple of years, simply because of the cost difference between 16 weeks and 20 weeks for the city. But that's currently part of the negotiation we're doing.
[Richard Caraviello]: Well, if that's what the case, I think it would be better would it be beneficial to have a compactor at the city yet, so people can bring this stuff down there.
[Tim McGivern]: Potentially, I think that's on the table. I mean, the way I think I want to approach this is if we change the program schedule and number of times, push it later in the year, increase the number of times, see how many problems that solves and what problems are left, and then explore things like that. Keep it on the table, you know, and have really the same response for trash too. Once we're at the cusp of year three, what's the feedback? Are we ready for every other week trash? Once we implement, what are the problems that we're seeing? Do we need to be ready to have another location for situations like diapers, drop off location? So that I think is still all on the table. And in my mind, those are problems that we haven't seen yet. So I'm just reluctant to solve problems that we don't know about, Maybe we can foresee so I want to be prepared for those problems. Um, but I think having this discussion is helpful because, for example, the the diaper situation that President morale brought up. scenario where diapers don't go in food scrap. And when you have a small child, I know this too, you generate a lot of diapers. So maybe there's an option where you can bring them down to the city yard and there's a dumpster for that. So I think those options are still on the table. And like I said, I wanna make sure that we understand what the problems are before we try to solve them.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Brown, thank you so much, both of you for being here, running us through it in advance of our regular meeting tonight. I was a member of the Solid Waste Task Force so I've talked about many of these issues ad nauseum with you before and came into this meeting, you know, predisposed towards the results of this negotiation process. It's really heartening to see, or the pending results of the RFP process. I think it's really heartening to see that so many of the goals that we talked about on the task force are seemingly coming to bear fruit through the negotiations. It's great to see these sort of ordinance revision and your process, talking with various callers and tailoring the RFP I think that it's resulting in a couple scenarios that are really aligned with our short term and long term goals it makes me feel very confident about the 10 year contract scenario. And I think for folks watching, I think like it's, I want to restate that what we're talking about specifically is kind of a top level, top level issue. Just do we, are we comfortable? What are the conditions under which we'd be comfortable entering into? A long contract, a 10 year contract. And then there's a lot of small considerations within that. Composting, bringing in pet issues, diaper issues, kind of contingencies for households and businesses that have different types of needs. I think that what we've seen so far shows that this is a pretty flexible scenario. Lots of opportunities for outreach, lots of points along the way where we could say, are we ready to, for example, scale up for 7,000 more households doing composting? Are we ready to transition to every other week trash pickup? and lots of runway for getting businesses on board and making sure that residents have the information that they need. For example, you know, I think that composting is maybe the best, like clearest example of this saying, you know, food scraps are an issue regardless of the container that they're in and composting actually presents, if we do it right, an opportunity to have rats be less of an issue because the composting buckets are actually more secure against rats than what we're currently working with. I think that's a really powerful thing to have the opportunity to communicate to the city. because this is an issue that, you know, every household cares a lot about and nobody wants rats in their yard. And this is actually an opportunity to make that problem better. Yeah, thank you so much for the months of work leading up to this discussion.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Thank you.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. And thank you for your hard work negotiating on this. I'm really encouraged by what I hear about bulk items, because I do think that we need to start pricing things where at the cost, more close to the cost that we're paying as a city, that each, that all of our taxpayers are paying. I am also encouraged to hear us think about how we're gonna structure the business district trash collection and all of that, and the plan for that as well. very, very much encouraged by how committed we are to weekly recycling and composting, which is not only good for the environment, but I think is a very clear equity issue in the city as well, especially with the composting part, where a lot of families who, they either, they want to be recycling more, composting more, a lot of folks, don't know about the DPW yard, they don't know about the composting programs that we have as a city, and some folks, they maybe don't make, they're in that golden zone where they can't really afford the composting program, but they don't qualify for help. And so I'm very encouraged by this because I think this levels out the playing field for folks. I'm happy that there's been a lot of thought about rodents and about how we're going to deal with rodents. I think Councilor Collins makes a really good point that by shifting, hopefully, our food scraps to composting bins, we can reduce the likelihood of rodents running around opening trash cans because the smaller bins are harder to open. I was wondering if there was a plan to maybe work with the Board of Health to monitor rat presences, like reports, things like that, before and after we, and before, during, and after we make the switch, just to see if our hypotheses are confirmed.
[Alicia Hunt]: So I, we can speak to the Board of Health about that. My main caveat is that there are a lot of things that are impacting the environment that are impacting the rat population. And to say that it was just because of compost bins would be like a very slippery slope. We certainly, I do believe that they monitor a number of locations already, particularly on public property. I don't wanna over speak about what I think they're doing. I do know that they have expressed to me an interest in seeing things even out of dumpsters and into more secure bins like compost bins. We literally had a conversation with waste management today about writing into the contract that any dumpsters that they provide under it would be kept in good condition. And we use the word rat proof as part of our paragraph of description. And they were like, you cannot make a dumpster rat proof. Like we can make sure there are no holes and dents and we'll put some language together that we're comfortable with. We can say there's a lid. They're like, but there is no such thing as a rat proof dumpster. That is literally the conversation we had today with them. So now I'm going to take that back to the board of health and say, is there like, you know, do I push them more on this? What language would you like to have in this for that? So I just sort of share that, that it's, That's an issue. I strongly believe that some of our problem is most of our squares, the way we do trash pickup, are piles of garbage bags. And in at least Haynes Square, I know businesses put them out on Sunday for pickup on Tuesday, or put them out on Sunday. They must be putting them out Saturday night. You know, if I'm there at one o'clock Sunday afternoon and there are trash bags everywhere, that must be for Monday morning pickup, right? And that is not okay. So that is something that we are writing into the contract that they'll work with us to toterize, put them in toters or dumpsters to get them out of plastic bags on the street.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. Yeah, I think that's a great point that even if we collect that information, it might not be, we can't really get for one-to-one on that. So I think that's very helpful. I wanted to ask a quick question about the phasing in program for composting, which I do think is very fiscally sensible, makes sense. And I'm not necessarily opposed to it, but I was wondering if perhaps maybe we get to a point in year two where let's say 10,000 houses have signed up. We have maybe 9,000 who haven't, and we're preparing to switch. is, let's say the 9000 or even if we max it out and we do 12,000 and there's 7000 left. I'm just afraid of a situation where those 7000 haven't had a chance to experience the fact that they don't need that weekly pickup of trash and that perhaps giving them the opportunity to do it would basically help them, like give them the experience of sorting trash a different way. Again, I do think the current plan that you have is fiscally sensible, but I was wondering about that situation and if there was any flexibility there.
[Alicia Hunt]: So I think what we believe so we sat down with three different composting companies and talk through these issues, their thoughts, and to be clear, they all there. Part of the discussion that we're going to have next with the composting companies, but we've had preliminary conversations, the interviewers is aggressive outreach and aggressive getting people to sign up for this. So that is absolutely part of what we're looking for in the composting companies is one that will do this in a very robust manner. But there is a belief that some people will not compost until you literally take away their every other week trash. And they go, dang, I don't like having my trash sit here for an extra week. And you say to them, well, you know, if you put it in that bin, the compost bin, we'd take it away every week. And then it's actually that act that will get people to start composting. that there is a window, a group of people who wouldn't do it unless we took away their every week trash service. And I did say it like a takeaway because my hope is at that point, we'll have three quarters of the community already composting. So now you have peer support for it. Because if three quarters of the people on your street are already doing it, then you have people everywhere who can say, just put it in here. This is how I do it. This works for me. This is not that hard. And that'll make it easier for that last group to sort of get the hang of it.
[Justin Tseng]: I do think it's exciting that, I think what's exciting about this is the grassroots aspect of it, where I can, I imagine neighbors will be telling each other. This will create some community conversations about how they're sorting their trash, which I think will raise public consciousness about what's good for the environment, what's good fiscally for the city as well. And I appreciate that we theoretically have the option to opt back in. I think that's a huge question for the future, but I am pretty happy with what you guys have set out. And I do think it's really important to underscore how much more expensive it would be to have weekly trash pickups. And that's a cost, not just theoretically to the city, that's a real cost to taxpayers and to the budget and the other city services that we would need to reevaluate if we were to keep that. You've already touched on education. I was just wondering what the general plans were. I guess with composting, it sounds like we're expecting the composting company to do a lot of that reach.
[Alicia Hunt]: The companies, so one of the ideas that we heard, so we got ideas from sort of both, sorry, three companies. One of the ideas that one of the companies was very robust about was that they would organize actually grassroots campaigning. And the way they described it to me was a political campaign where they had, this is your neighborhood, here's the list of households, you go door to door and talk to them about composting and that they would solicit their current subscribers to be neighborhood captains and to go out and volunteer to help recruit other people to do it. And in my experience, not everybody has time and interest. But the people who are currently paying for composting it do it for a reason. And they are much more likely to say, yes, I would volunteer to go knock on my neighbor's doors and talk about it. And that was one of the things that they would organize as opposed to our staff organizing it, which was, I liked that a lot.
[Justin Tseng]: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think everyone behind the rail can attest to the power of door-to-door canvassing, and we're going out that way. So I'm encouraged by that. Of course, there's so many other considerations that with different companies that you'll have to choose, or that you have options to choose from, but that does sound encouraging, and I think we'll have more conversations in the future about how to do that outreach, but I am encouraged.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. That's embarrassing.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President. And I do think something to note too is we're talking about year one starting next July one, right? So we have all of this year and year one and year two, and everyone will, you know, there's already mail that goes out every year to everybody. I know we keep our green book handy at all. Yep, right there. Oh, there. He keeps it right in his jacket pocket, the commissioner does. So there'll be lots of opportunity for everybody to have had a chance to take part in this program. And I know in my household, the initial reaction was concern. And then a little bit of discussion and Googling and research was maybe this makes a lot of sense and may actually be better, not just for the environment and for the city or for the city budget, but even for just being at home and not having food waste, in an open, not open, but easy enough for a rat or a raccoon to open container. Just a couple of quick questions around the bins. It's gonna be the same size of bins for trash and recycling for the next contract?
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. And are they planning to keep the same bins that we have now?
[Alicia Hunt]: We had asked them to budget for replacements as bins started to fail.
[Zac Bears]: Okay, but we're expecting like the vehicles will be able to pick up the same bins.
[Alicia Hunt]: There is no plan to mass change out the bins. Vehicles would pick, there's no need to change the bins unless somebody's been as failing. And at that point, if somebody's been as failing now as broken wheels or whatever, they should be contacting waste management or the CPW. I'm gonna look right in here. contact DPW for a replacement then.
[Zac Bears]: Okay, good. I may be in touch.
[Tim McGivern]: It happens all the time.
[Zac Bears]: Couple more things on the budget. So budget impact over the next 10 years, I saw 3.5 to 6% average, depending on the elements within the scope. Is that about the same as it is under the current contract? Is that how much we've been growing every year under the existing contract or is it more?
[Tim McGivern]: I think the last jump we saw was about 5%, a little over 5%. Then there was, I forget exactly which years, but there was a flat year a couple of years ago where we didn't have any growth in that line. But that's one of the things we're working with finance with, what is a reasonable growth from year to year. So, we're looking hard at that. That's a big piece of the negotiations. So, like I said about, I think it was like 5.2 when I calculated it out. The last time we grew, which was from, I wanna say 22 to 23.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, and I saw you gave us in the memo or the strategy zero folks in the memo gave us average over the first five years average over the second five years, if it would be possible to give an estimate for all 10 years, instead of the averages and the like just, you know, 7.67.77.98.18.28.6, just to kind of see it year over year, since that's how we, you know, that's how I'm thinking about the budget anyway.
[Tim McGivern]: Sure, I mean.
[Zac Bears]: You're still figuring that out.
[Tim McGivern]: We're still in the throes of that particular negotiation. We're working, we're pretty far down the road, but I think that's gonna come later.
[Zac Bears]: You have your hands around the big scope, but the specific increments. Year to year to year for the next 10 years, yes, yes.
[Tim McGivern]: Okay.
[Zac Bears]: It's fine. I just want to point out again, and everyone can shoot arrows at me if they want, 3.5 to 6% is more than 2.5%. This is another cost driver that is increasing faster than the state allows us to increase the property tax levy without an override. Do you think there will be an impact on the DPW budget? This is half of the DPW budget, this contract alone. Do you think there'll be an impact on the other half of the DPW budget as this line item increases faster than the tax base increases?
[Tim McGivern]: Not if I can help it. Yeah. And I think, you know, the mayor is aware of this as well. You know, obviously we've been discussing this with the mayor and she's, she's aware of that piece of it, and it's worth mentioning to that some of these are some of the costs are out of our control fuel, for example. So I would say that one of the biggest factors in my budget is fuel. Fuel goes up higher than 2.5%. So every year we receive an effective cut because we buy all the fuel for the whole city. And it's a bigger growth of 2.5%. So your point is well taken. And your point sinks deep in me. So I appreciate it.
[Zac Bears]: Well, you and I hope many others, because it's just, I know, I think the more and more and more we talk about how many pieces of the city budget are increasing at rate faster than the tax levy is increasing, and how that means, you know, less money for maybe sidewalk repairs or less money for the forestry and tree planting and stump removal or less money for all the things that people are really concerned about in the city. It's because we have these large major cost drivers that are increasing faster than two and a half percent and their limits in the city on the city by state law of property proposition two and a half. I can only be overridden by an override. One last question on the budget. Are there any program elements in here that could potentially limit cost growth? And these are just like totally out of the blue. I don't, you know, I don't pretend to be in the weeds the way that you guys have been in these negotiations. But like, if everybody composted a ton, and suddenly the solid waste like trash volume was a lot lower than expected, would that affect the cost to the city? Or another thought was like, if all the recycling came in and it was all like, right, and no one was putting stuff in the recycling that was wrong, would that reduce cost to the city?
[Tim McGivern]: I'd say this, the recycling, yes to both, but the recycling would be a little bit different. So you know, we're paying for the weight of the trash. Yeah, to dispose of that's passed through cost again. Yeah. That's another cost we don't have a lot of control over. And then as far as recyclables go, there's a formula So if we can sell our recyclables on the market, we actually get a credit. So if the market is healthy and folks are buying plastic, then we would actually get a credit. If it happens the other way around, we end up paying more. If it can't be sold, then obviously then that is a cost that we have to pay.
[Zac Bears]: So hopefully that answers your question. Well, I think, yeah, just kind of going to the point of maybe some of the education here. And I know we already tried to do it. And one of the reasons we're going down this road is to try to get a little bit more incentive money from the SDP to maybe do a little bit more education as well. But just letting folks know, right, like, there are ways that our behaviors, either through education or behavior change, whichever way you want to look at it, right, the city doing the education or residents adjusting their behaviors, there are ways that we can all pitch in a little bit to maybe help keep the cost down on this cost driver. which I think we all wanna do.
[Tim McGivern]: Reduce, reuse, recycle. The first one is reduce.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah.
[Tim McGivern]: And they're in that order for a reason.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah.
[Tim McGivern]: So if we all reduce, then we're paying less as a city for the weight of the trash that we're disposing.
[Zac Bears]: Right. And I think too, just the education point of piece of reduce could mean composting and just taking that food waste out of trash where it then, and we can talk about all the waste impacts of how it's unproductive and where if it's composted, maybe it is for productive use, but that's a great way to reduce the stuff that's going into landfill and reduce the cost to the city and the taxpayer of the waste.
[Nicole Morell]: Also, if I could just, will you both you both are staying for the regular meeting? Yes, just because we're we're over time this meeting. But yeah, any final words, then we'll go continue the conversation in the regular meeting.
[Alicia Hunt]: And I just wanted to put on there that we actually built that into financially into the model that we're looking at right now. So we pay per ton for trash. So we pay per household for pickup. but then we pay for the weight of the trash. Please don't throw away water bottles full of water. That is the most wasteful thing you can do and cost the city a bajillion dollars. But that said, the composting model is per household with the weight of it is built in there. So if you compost more or less, we don't pay a different amount for your household. So the more that's heavy wet weight food, if you put that in your compost bin, It literally saves the city money because we're not paying per pound for anything that goes into the compost bin. So anybody who would like to sign up for the composting now, our preferred vendor at the moment is Garbage to Garden, and you can sign up. And if you go to their website and you put in a Medford's address, you will get the Medford rate, which is $99 a year right now, but you can pay monthly.
[Zac Bears]: Great, I'm done, thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Any further questions, we can move it. And Mr. Castagnetti, I see you, if you could join us in the regular meeting, we will get to your question.
[Zac Bears]: Motion to adjourn.
[Nicole Morell]: On the motion of vices and bears to adjourn, seconded by Councilor Tseng, Mr. Clerk. George already dropped off. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes, meeting is adjourned. We will take this up again in the regular meeting.
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