ZWAC October 13th, 2021, Regular Meeting minutes — original pdf

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Zero Waste Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes October 13th, 2021 The Monthly Meeting of the Zero Waste Advisory Commission convened through Video Conference on Wednesday, October 13th, 2021, due to COVID-19 Disaster Declaration for all Texas Counties. The following are the meeting highlights. For detailed information please visit: https://austintx.new.swagit.com/videos/141646 CALL TO ORDER Chair Acuna called the Commission Meeting to order at 6:28 pm Board Members in Attendance: Gerry Acuna, Cathy Gattuso, Amanda Masino, Jonathan Barona, Ian Steyaert, Melissa Rothrock and Kaiba White Board Members not in Attendance: none Staff in attendance via WebEx: Ken Snipes, Tammie Williamson, Richard McHale, Amy Slagle, Gena McKinley, Andy Dawson, Donald Hardee, Dwight Scales, Jason McCombs, Brent Paige, Mike Lewis, Natalie Betts, Young Park, Blanche Quarterman, Victoria Rieger, Amy Schillerstrom, Memi Cardenas, Myra Rios, Lori Scott, Selene Castillo, Claudia Nava, Liz Jambor, Brian Kennedy, Shana Riviello and William Purcell Chair Acuna opened with comments, 1. APPROVAL of the August 19th, 2021 Meeting Minutes Chair Acuna entertained a motion to approve the August 19th, 2021 Meeting minutes. Commissioner Cathy Gattuso made the first motion for approval of the minutes. A second motion was provided by Commissioner Ian Steyaert Item passed Unanimously 2a. Discussion and Action: Electrical Recycling RCA This is Andy Dawson from Austin Resource Recovery (ARR) resource recovery. This item was originally scheduled for the last month, but due to operational needs, it will be on the council agenda tomorrow. We would like to ask for a favorable recommendation for award on its contract with Universal Recycling Technologies to provide electronics recycling for up to fifty-five months for an amount not to exceed $720,000. This contract will provide for the pickup transportation and recycling of electronics recycling use drop-off center contractor must recycle the materials in an environmentally sound manner in accordance with the eastern standard or responsible cycling of electronic equipment of the Basil Action Network, you know, work as well as clients with all federal state and local laws. I'm available to answer any questions that anyone may have. Commissioner White replied, I know, I think we had maybe some discussion about this in the past but is this, can you, can you describe this? is, is this for vehicles, or is this for the services? Chair Acuna replied, it’s the Andy it's for the actual, technology recycling, right? Andy Replied this is so, both city departments and residents can drop off electronics at the drop-off center, or to be recycled. Commissioner White replied okay. thanks, so it's still for, drop-off not for collection. yes okay. Commissioner Barona replied, thank you and this is just a continuation of services, correct? yes, Andy replied, that's correct. we are currently, where we've been doing it for a couple of years now it's just a continuation. Commissioner Steyaert replied, I guess this is just my general question when it comes to these, if we can start to see what this was like in the past, right? whenever we're continuing a service, I’d love to get some context for how much we're growing the expenditure and the extent of any of these contracts, because it's hard without that context to understand we're going, whether we're improving the services or pricing is going up or down or what oh, Andy replied, well, a lot of that can depend on, the market, the recycling market, there is ultimately a cost to these services, as far as tonnage goes, if that's kind of, that's one of the metrics that we gauge our success by, at the end of FY19, we had accepted and recycled 600, tons of electronic materials. and we expect that number to grow, ultimately to exceed a thousand tons a year or the end of this contract. Commissioner Steyaert replied, and so how does the cost for this authorization compare with previous years? Andy replied it is the same vendor that we've had for several years now. so, with universal recycling technologies and their costs have stayed the same for the last several years. Commissioner Steyaert replied okay. and we do that on a per ton basis, or it is per pound and it does vary depending on the commodity that is recycled a CRT, a catholic ray, two TVs are, for instance, you know, x cents per pound of mixed, electronics that are kind of the ancillary items are a little more, pricey per pound because there are fewer valuable materials to be recycled the questions. all right. commissioner's hearing no other questions. Chair Gerard Acuna entertained a motion to recommend to approve the Electronics RCA. Commissioner Melissa Rothrock the first motion for approval, A second motion was provided by Commissioner Cathy Gattuso Recommend unanimously by the Zero Waste Advisory Commission on a 7-0 vote  2d. Discussion and Action: C & D Committee meeting review- Commissioner Ian Steyaert stated, and we're going to blow through this quickly. I’ve we've got the materials here, so this was, this was the meeting we had in August. This was our second meeting of this, subcommittee. We've had some challenges, I’ll say getting the group together due to problems with, scheduling with conferencing, et cetera. so, we'll bring that up towards the end. but in this case, we had Cathy, Amanda, and I were attending. we had several citizen speakers again., again, folks from local recycling businesses and the industry, just continuing to express opinions about the reporting process that's going on and the discussion about the rules about, burning wood and using as cover and in light of that, well, we approved the minutes, but then in light of that, we had a briefing by the, by Steven Bentillo who was, or Bentillo who was representing the RCI, who explained what they do and that's his presentation is the bulk of what we've got here. you can feel free to review that. there's lots of good information in there, but if I may just, in summary, say that what they do is do auditing, as well as just keeping track, helping the companies do their own self-reporting, of the types of things they're recycling, their recycling rates across different materials and then they report that out. they try to make it as transparent as possible, which is great. It doesn't pass any judgment on except for the quality I guess, of the numbers. but whether we think that the percentages are acceptable, as a city and the, whether trash is burned or not, it doesn't seem like they really have an opinion on that, which is fine. they're more about the reporting side of things. so, as we look to future agenda items for our group, we need to make some decisions as to what our recommendations would be as to how to change if we want to make any changes to, whether we allow burning recycled wood, for instance, or using it as cover, is, is still up for discussion. so, considering that, and the fact that we've had so many challenges, really getting the meat of it in terms of meeting and starting to discuss this, what we'd like to do is recommend that we have a, a, working group as well. and sorry, I was going to pull up what the recommended, task or purpose for this working group would be. we got a recommendation for that. just one second. Commissioner White replied, can you tell me what EDC means? Commissioner Steyaert replied, it is so it's an alternative daily cover. I knew it was a daily cover, but I couldn't remember its alternative daily cover. so it's basically, instead of recycling the wood, you can basically throw it over and use it as a rain shield for, other garbage basically and so does that count as reusing it, is it would be a question, right? so the proposed working outcome would be through research and discussion, develop an understanding of the current status and performance of this c and d recycling ordinance and develop a report that identifies areas of focus for future policy changes and I can repeat that or whatever, but generally allow us without the formality of necessarily having all the video conferencing and everything set up, be able to meet, we would still need, we wouldn't be able to make any decisions or take any actions from that group, but we'd be able to do the research and discussions through that for and then bring it back to the C and D, subcommittee. and then eventually back to this group, using that working group so that would be the proposal I’d like to put in, or that we would like to put it in front of the group here today. Chair Acuna replied, that’s why this is a discussion action item so that we can, hopefully at least address that this evening and either decide or put that to rest whether we need to create another working group environment. Commissioner Steyaert replied Yes, okay so any questions I can repeat the purpose? it's strict what's that I support. okay. so, I will entertain a motion then to support this working group creation yes. I’d like to propose that we have a working group at this commissioner, commissioner good to so moves approval of a working group, is being established and a commissioner Barona seconds at any discussion, further discussion hearing none, all those in favor raise your hand. Chair Gerard Acuna entertained a motion to recommend approving of a working group being established for the C & D committee. Commissioner Cathy Gattuso the first motion for approval, A second motion was provided by Commissioner Jonathan Barona Recommend unanimously by the Zero Waste Advisory Commission on a 7-0 vote  2b. Discussion and Action: (ARR) Comprehensive Plan Update- Scott Pasternak, Burns & McDonnell How are y'all doing well as a, as a point of order, given that you have a hard stop at seven 30, any preference on what you'd like to see as far as the length of the presentation I had planned for it to be roughly 25 minutes if that's still okay or I could shorten it up, whatever the commission's preference would be. Chair Acuna replied, I personally would love to get as comprehensive as possible commissioners. Scott replied, okay, all right. well, thank you. Thank you all so much for the opportunity for providing us with this, this for this evening, to provide our second update, it will not be the last, this is the, I think the second of three or four planned updates with this ZWAC. , again, my name is Scott Pasternak and I’m with Burns and McDonald where the lead firm and in completing the ARR Comprehensive Plan update also joined by Jonathan Geisels, who's here in person, and I believe Eric Weiss with our firm is also participating remotely. and the three of us will also be happy to answer any questions for you this evening in terms of what we wanted to communicate, with the last time that we spoke with you all was in June of 2020. so we've been, very busy collaborating with, City of Austin staff, as well as a number of stakeholders who want to give you an update on our progress, and then where we want to spend most of the time in the discussion this evening is to give you an update on what some of the, select strategies and tactics are that are being considered as part of the planning process and then I’ll give you some context as far as where we are in that effort and then from there, I’d be happy to answer any questions that you may have for us, so to jump in thing into things, as far as a progress update, again, I know it was more than a year ago, so you may not specifically remember this slide, but it is one that we communicated, back in, in June of last year, just to give you a sense of what our planning process looks like to collaborate with the city to develop this, this plan and so it, it started with a pretty extensive research and analysis of a variety of important zero-waste, solid-waste and other diversion types of topics and then from there, and the second box from the left, have collaborated extensively with the City, to look, to develop a number of, of strategies and options. I will emphasize that we have also worked to establish the plan goals and objectives. if you look back at, when this item came before the City Council is very clear, as far as the request or the direction for the city to continue on its path, to, to zero waste and to maintain the long-term goals of 90% diversion by, by 2040, that is, is still very much, the case, I will talk to you tonight about some interim metrics and other goals that we're also, working on and then we have collaborated with ARR on multiple strategy workshops and again, several of those preferred strategies will be what we talk with you all tonight about and then the last box on the right is the one that we are presently working on right now. and that's just where we have started the drafting of the plan and I want to emphasize there, we're just at the beginning stages of that so the timing of tonight's meeting is, is really, very well-placed in terms of we're far enough along to where we can give you some, some very meaningful updates, but we're not so far along, that the plan is, is written and then across the bottom of the page that communicates the city and stakeholder engagement in public outreach, that has happened during the course of the project that's been a combination of efforts by our team, as well as other staff within the city, through a combination of, focus group meetings, as well as surveys. that's an effort that has been impacted because of Covid-19, but I think we still have been able to achieve some very meaningful, engagement in public outreach. so, this next slide just gives you a sense of, the project schedule and on a task-by-task basis communicates, the efforts that have been undertaken. and so, what we've completed so far in, in, in task one, two, and three, again, here are the analysis, a lot of the stakeholder engagement efforts. and so what I would ask to draw your attention to now, or our tasks numbers five and six, with task number four, being our drafting of the plan, and then task number five, being various meetings and workshops, so ZWAC is, is the diamond, icon on, on that pink line and so what you'll see there is, if you look at, at October of 2021, that's the meeting at that we're at this evening, and we do have, two more meetings, to update you all on, on the effort to update the plan in those are going to sync up with our efforts to provide, various iterations of the draft plan to ARR. so again, the timing is good as far as to provide you all with an update and you'll be seeing us, hopefully for the next couple of meetings. so, I’d like to now turn our attention to give you an update on some of the select  strategies and tactics. I mean, we, we have developed literally dozens of, various strategies and tactics so, you know, given the time constraints that you're under this evening, we just wanted to focus on those that we thought would be of most importance to you all, on the commission, as well as, members of the public and other interested parties within the City of Austin, as, as I go through on, on the next slide, you'll see that some of them will have a star next to them and a star just simply communicates that this is a tactic that was not included in the previous plan and so I’ll go through this, this information, starting with, the residential sector and then to cover some of the other key aspects and so we're using in the planning process, the terms, strategies, and tactics so what, what are those? , so strategies are those specific recommendations, that need to be put in place to help the city, its goals, and objectives. and so on each of these slides, they're formatted in the same manner so the strategies are numbered and in blue, and then tactics are the specific actions that need to occur to help achieve those strategies, and those are communicated, in via the bulleted items in the black font and so I mentioned earlier that, the goal of, of the 90% by the year 2040 is definitely still in place, but on the residential side, we thought that it was important for the city to look, to implement several alternative metrics and the first one of those is to, also track per capita disposal, to, to better determine strategies for reaching the city's zero-waste goal, and a lot of this really focuses on, continuing to change from a consumption based society to one that values, source reduction and reuse, more importantly, and the way to, to measure that is, is from a disposal perspective, but then there's also a strong recognition of the importance to capture, as, as much of the material that either goes into the blue recycling carts or the green organics carts, as much of that material as, as possible and so that, that has gotten a lot of interest over the last several years as to be defined as, as a capture rate so as many bottles cans, paper, that are a part of the program to specifically measure what percentage of those are going into the recycling stream, as opposed to going into the Landfill, and then to also really have a significant focus on what are the materials that have the highest economic value, to make sure that those aluminum cans and milk jugs that are worth, you know, between a thousand and $2,000 per ton are going into the, the right places and so number two is, is to capture residential material with the greatest future diversion potential. Austin has one of the, one of the best contamination rates of cities here in Texas, when you look at the big cities, but the contamination rate, like in so many communities is starting to creep up and so, we've worked pretty extensively with ARR to look at, to determine some strategies that would still focus on the positives of, of education and outreach, so leading, more so on that front, but to recognize that at some point, if somebody is not participating in the program, appropriately, that, that you should have the opportunity to incorporate fees associated with excess contamination, but at the same time, the intent of this is really focused on behavior change and to provide the opportunity for those fees to be waived through continued education, this is modeled after a program that the city of San Antonio has implemented that they've found to be very successful and then the last bullet here talks about the importance of multifamily and in the context of the pilot program, that's ongoing for composting and do assess opportunities, for multi-family composting to continue so then the last strategy that we want to talk about on the residential sector, focuses on the management of, of hard, to hard to recycle materials and, and household hazardous waste so this map communicates where the recycling and reuse drop-off center, is located and how frequently, that site is, is used by city residents and the red dots represent anybody who lives south of the river and then the blue are those that are located north of the river. so understandably just, just have a lot more participation by those folks that live closer to the facility, which, which makes sense, you know, if we, and so the, the strategy here is that there's a real need to increase access to proper management of the hard to recycle materials, and if there's one silver lining out of what we've gone through with, with Covid, I think it's been the really creative and effective approach that ARR has taken to, expand the door to door household, hazardous waste collection services during Covid, and we've worked really closely with them to pencil out what would it cost to, to expand that program, to do door to door on, on a continued basis and so, they're going to do that on a, on a pilot, just to make sure that what they're thinking and what we agreed with, make sense, and to evaluate the long-term feasibility of that, nevertheless, we, we do think that, and I think this map tells the, tells the picture and with the growth in Austin, we think it is also important to start planning for north Austin facility, to manage these, these materials as well so the next topic that we  want to discuss focuses on a transition to the commercial sector and so I do want to emphasize here that, what we're talking about this evening is, is really just an idea in terms of what could be done to increase commercial recycling, when you look at what's happening, from a commercial perspective, that recycling rate for both recyclables and organics is about 30%. and so at the City of Austin looking to reach a 90% goal, there is a need to look at more innovative, progressive actions to be taken, to further increase, what's happening to virgin wise on, on the commercial sector side of things and so, as we look at what's happening on the commercial sector now, it is, an open market where you have more than a hundred permitted haulers and while it's mentioned here, I want to emphasize that the idea of an exclusive or a zone franchise system is something that we think ought to be considered but at this point, we're not specifically recommending that, but we just wanted to come before ZWAC and to, to talk about that with you all, because, there are some benefits to going to a, a franchise system as far as a, a much greater opportunity to regulate, hauler activity, as well as to, make sure that requirements that really can drive diversion are occurring and part of the reason why we say this is, is to look to the two largest cities in the country, in both LA and New York, that in the case of Los Angeles has already implemented this type of a system in New York is in the process of, of doing so and one of the key reasons why they're doing that is to help them achieve their zero waste goals, but there's also a number of other associated benefits. I mean, just think from a traffic perspective, especially in, in a place like New York where there's just so much congestion, that being able to, figure out, better ways to, to route trucks and to not have so many trucks in overlapping areas, so that that's more coordinated, it can be a very effective approach and also has a lot of benefits, for another important issue in Austin in terms of helping the city to achieve its climate goals and to reduce air pollution and then a franchise system would, would also increase routing efficiency, hopefully provide opportunities for more competitive costs for services to be provided, and then also to improve, AAR's ability to ensure consistent data tracking, provision of services, as well as, messaging and what we mean by messaging is just if the city would have, greater involvement on the commercial sector, to be able to ensure that that information is being communicated in a clear, consistent manner, across various areas within the city so I, I do want to emphasize that we're introducing this idea of a franchise system, but it is very much early in, in the discussion to say specifically what would be recommended and so the purpose of this slide is to communicate, what we are putting forth as, as a, as a strategy and that's the plan and I really want to emphasize that word plan, but to plan, to try to transition to a franchise system, to expand, enhance the URO and so we're recommending that this occur in, in three steps, so that in, and that this would occur over a five-year period. and so right off the bat, I want to emphasize there, but that, by doing that over a five-year period, we are strongly recommending that City of Austin and stakeholders really think through what's going to be the best way for this type of a program to potentially be considered and implemented here in the City of Austin and so that would start with the first step, which would be to develop, citywide, continuous education programs and incentives for generators to improve what they're doing from a diversion perspective and then step two, a does specifically they're start to address the transition to a franchise system and ultimately to complete an RFP, but we are recommending that the city embark on a, on a feasibility study, that would be, would that would include extensive stakeholder engagement efforts with the generators or the businesses, as well as the hauler community and then there's a number of cities, not just LA and New York, but others that, can provide additional key information as a part of this process. and so, we were looking at this to be a, a multi-year process for the city to determine what type of a franchise system, what that would look like and what the city's role may be, and from there, to issue an RFP on the prior slide yes, we did mention the idea of either a zoned system, but as far as how many zones there would be, that is way premature to know at this point, that would be the part of the feasible purpose of the feasibility study, and then in terms of whether it would be even, an exclusive system or a non-exclusive, you know, again, that's all to be determined based on the outcome of that type of a feasibility study, step two b, would also be to, to continue efforts to enhance the existing URO and to expand the generator requirements and then step number three, would only take place after the completion of the RFP process, and there, we, I think we've carefully worded it to say that that's the point at which you consider, implementing a commercial franchise system based on a transition plan that, that the city would then develop and so what this is really communicating is to go through that  process, make sure that whatever's being proposed at that point is going to make sense to the City of Austin and then to move forward with implementation so a few other, strategies that would affect, the facilities and, and the private sector, number two is to monitor and disposal capacity in the region to determine future facility ownership, as a region, there's about twenty-five years left of, of permitted landfill capacity, which in the world of, of solid waste is really not a very, very long time, and it's not, super critical, but it is the case where from a planning perspective that you need to really start to look into those issues presently and so the utilization of a, of a transfer station and, or the development of a regional landfill is, is an important part of this planning process so you may be asking yourself, hey, wait a second if this is a zero-waste plan update, why are you even talking about landfills? , and so this is, an issue that we've given a lot of discussion and consideration to what they ARR, and as well as other communities that have zero-waste plans in place and I think it's important to emphasize that, zero-waste planning, still requires adequate disposal capacity as the focus is definitely on reducing, but you may not ever be able to eliminate disposal and then the third item here is, is to facilitate access to, construction and demolition recycling. I know that's an important topic, for you all, and what we have found is that there actually is a pretty good processing capacity for C & D recycling, but it's not always provided to all of the companies that are engaged in C and D recycling and so the tactic here and accessing privately owned C and D processing facilities, to just take advantage of that, those facilities that are in place to as well as to increase the recycling of, of key materials now, I want to, just for a moment, because this is such an important issue, I do want to come back to the landfill and transfer station issue for just a couple of moments into, remind ZWAC that the city's existing disposal contract does expire now in less than 10 years and while, amendments to expand facilities can always occur, the city's contracted landfill is expected to reach capacity about five years after that and so this really is an important time for the city to, to seriously start to think about, what you may want to do in terms of disposal capacity going forward. and we would recommend, that this, that the utilization of a transfer station is going to be a key component to that. I mean, just, just close your eyes and envision yourself in typical Austin traffic, right? sorry to sorry to do that to you, but, there are, there are, there are a number of routes and is just, the city has continued to expand, especially to the northwest where those hauling distances to the landfill can be 60 road miles and those are not 60 easy roundtrip road miles, right? it's in a lot of stop-and-go traffic. and when you look at, the typical feasibility of a transfer station, it's usually in the range of about 30 to 40 miles round trip and so, Austin for many of its routes is, is on the higher side of that already. and then there's a number of associated environmental benefits with the transfer station, as far as the opportunity to reduce the carbon footprint and while we're not at this point recommending that the city go right now toward electric vehicles, I think we can all see that, you know, that there's definitely a trend in that direction so the last, category that we want to talk about is, , just three different strategies that that would address things on a city-wide perspective one of the really cool things, about working with the City of Austin is that they do so many innovative efforts and, and one of those is looking at what can be done from an economic development perspective in the context of diversion and recycling and so they have a very active, programming in that respect so we help them to evaluate what type of economic development makes the most sense for the City of Austin and this region going forward and so we, we help them to, to evaluate, 25 different zero waste related, facility types in businesses, and then applied evaluation criteria that again, collaborated on with ARR, you know, that's, that's very specific to the City of Austin. so, we wanted to identify businesses that would be in alignment with not only the zero-waste, but also social enterprise goals here in Austin, as well as, businesses that would have proximity to the industries that are, that are here and recognizing that it would be great to take advantage of all the innovation and technology types of businesses that, that are here, so some types of, of recycling businesses that we excluded or things like, like Murph’s, composting facilities, because there are already, extensive numbers of those types of facilities in place and so what we are recommending as part of this process are what's shown in the green boxes on the right hand side, so textile upcycling companies, City of Austin, I don't know what this says about us all, but we generate a lot of glass for recycling, and, and so there's right now that that glass has to go a long distance, the city of San Antonio has to transport their glass even further and so I’m looking at glass identification companies, and then on the, on the technology side,  especially with the recent announcements from, from Tesla, you know, we think there's a potential opportunity there to look at recycling of, of battery and energy storage, types of opportunities. so then the last couple of slides here, again from a city-wide perspective, another strategy is to expand the concept is zero-waste on a community-wide basis, we had the opportunity to have some of our project team members that work on behavior change and communication issues and one of their key tactics was that zero-waste is still just a somewhat unfamiliar term to so many people that don't work in this business, on a day in day out basis and so to recognize that in their messaging and materials, and then also to focus on being more consistent in that community-wide messaging so the way I like to explain it is, you know, wherever you live, wherever you work, wherever you go to socialize that it would be the, the same program, the same messaging, regardless of where you are in the city and then, the third one here is, is to determine a long time long term strategy to transition to a circular city, so again, a lot of this is, is recognizing, hey, recycling is awesome that's great but at the same time, we, if we want to become a more circular economy, we need to also look at long-term behavior change , and so that would be, looking at kind of broader policies so this is going to there's reason why this was long-term is a lot of this is going to be outside of the direct control of say the City of Austin, but still important to look at in terms of, collaboration to drive policies that disincentivize the purchasing of single use products and promote the right to repair, from a reuse perspective, and then to consider alternative rate structures, that are focused on the, on reducing consumption. so, with that, I’ll be happy to, to answer any questions. Chair Acuna replied I think we have two speakers who've signed up yeah, of course, to speak to this item, and then after that, we'll, address the questions exactly a bunch, but none of this first speaker is Adam Gregory with Texas Disposal Systems (TDS). Adam Gregory replied good evening, commissioners Adam Gregory with Texas disposal systems. thanks for the opportunity to speak to you tonight, it's nice to be here in person, there are several things I’d like to address tonight, but I’m limited to three minutes, so I’ll confine my comments to the commercial franchise system. that's now being proposed by staff and their consultants. I was disappointed, but not surprised to see that the centerpiece of the comprehensive plan update as a commercial franchise system and that staffing consultants have chosen to pursue this drastic course of action without any prior public discussion or any prior stakeholder input. I’m dismayed that the staff would also be seeking official action from the commission to bless this drastic policy change at this point, without any details and when you can have no relied real idea of the impacts of such a policy, but first, what is a commercial franchise system? so when the city selects one or just a few haulers, assigns them exclusive service areas and sets rates and collects fees for itself, such a system would abolish the competitive market that businesses and institutions have always relied on to keep costs low and to ensure high levels of quality service, it would confiscate the right of businesses to hire or fire the service provider of their choosing it would force them to pay artificially high prices regardless of needed service levels or service quality such a system would put out a business, many dozens of companies that have built their businesses on hard one service contracts secured in a competitive market because they were able to provide the best services for the best value to particular customers. Those service contracts would be declared null and void by the stroke of a pen and countless businesses and employees would have their livelihood jeopardized the staff and its consultants haven't even told us what crises are so dire as to justify such an extreme solution, why is the staff pursuing this and why are we all just now hearing about it? when you take away a competitive market prices go up drastically. I believe that this may be the desired outcome for the city, the city will certainly charge high percentage fees on much higher rates to secure a major new revenue stream for itself. I assure you it's all about the money It's an excellent way to make Austin even less affordable for every single citizen. City staff has a history of efforts to impose a commercial franchise system efforts in the past were defeated when thousands of business owners and operators, associations, and institutions spoke up loudly and defeated them. it is our sincere hope that such a fight won't again become necessary, but we are certainly willing to fight to defend the rights of businesses and the rights of haulers to continue to exist. the community of private haulers and businesses are eager to work with the staff to develop strategies and solutions to all the issues that the commercial franchise has reports to address. unfortunately, we haven't even been given the opportunity to participate prior to the staff and consultants, apparently making up their mind. I honorably request that the  commission recommend that a commercial franchise system not be included in the comprehensive plan update, or at the very least make it clear that such a policy does not have the blessing of ZWAC. At this point in time, three minutes is not a lot of time. I’m formally requesting the opportunity for TDS to address this topic more thoroughly, by giving a presentation under an agenda item at one of your next two meetings. thank you, commissioners. I’m happy to answer any questions. thank you, Chair Gerry Acuna replied Mike Mnoian central waist thanks you commissioners Michael Mnoian and president Central Waste and Recycling, I’m from Los Angeles. my family's been there for the 1920s owned the trash company in Los Angeles. moved to Texas in 2012. started my company when I moved, Los Angeles was talking about the zoned franchise system. I am very familiar with commercial franchises zoning in Los Angeles, raised their rates. I’m telling you it did 300, 400%. their trash bills went up, big haulers, waste management, republic services, struggled to roll that program out. it was all over the news, that system is five years in. they are being fined still to this day every month because they can't get it right. it's very hard, very, very hard, I would recommend we have more stakeholder meetings with the six haulers in this town that do commercial front-load services there are only six, and, and just, that's the input I have for you guys. so, I wish you luck and yes, we do need a transfer station. we're a major metropolitan area and we have no transfer station, which is shocking. Chair Acuna replied thank you very much. thank you. many questions. I think we have questions for the overall based on the overall presentation. so, don't go too far. you may get addressed here, but all my commissioners we've we have, we had a presentation by, Burns and McDonald, Scott Pasternak. Scott, thank you for that staff, or commissioners first off, I’m going to defer my questions and, I think there was a few questions by some of my fellow commissioners. Commissioner White replied, why do you want to start? they like, should I pick one and then we'll go down and come around all right, were which, which one to go first? first, thank you for the presentation, do you think, there's some, some good ideas in here that hopefully, we'll discuss? I had a question about, the recycling drop-off center. I see that you're proposing another location and, and certainly, do you think that makes sense, but I’m wondering if you did any analysis, looking at, you know, the benefit that could be had by collecting those materials door to door, as opposed to just one more location. and it, it, I don't think the number is on the page though. could you remind us how many unique residents are using the current facility? Scott replied yeah, I’ll, I’ll respond to the first part of the, of your question and then I don't know, Jonathan, if you know that number okay all right so give me a second he'll be able to tell you what the answer to that number is, but I think it's a great, a great question that you pose, and then, the first part of what I talked about as far as the tactic for the household hazardous waste is to really look at providing that service on, on the door to door basis, cause we think that that can be a really, a relatively cost-effective way for that service to be provided and we talked with ARR staff about that a lot and said, hey, what about just really focusing on, on that? do we think that there really is a need for a facility? I think really kind of along the lines of your question, but what we came back to was that there's, there are so many other material types, to be dropped off at the RRDOC that are just not really practical to try to pick up on a door-to-door type basis that we think that there still could be a meaningful benefit to looking at a permanent facility on the north side of the city as well. Commissioner White replied can I have like a follow-up question, but I’m curious about that number if you do have that hi, commissioners, this is Andy Dawson in Austin, Austin resource recovery, in the fiscal year 2019, the household hazardous waste portion of the drop-off center had 35,000 customers come through. Commissioner White replied okay. I hear, I hear what you're saying, that, that there's maybe the best cost-benefit from a monetary perspective and probably from an environmental as well on the hazardous waste side of things, not, not disagreeing with that, but I guess I if you have any data that you used in your analysis to discard collection of any of the other materials, I would definitely be interested in seeing that because I know I live very close. I live in 78741, so Riverside, in Pleasant Valley kind of area and I know that a lot of my neighbors don't use the drop-off center. so to me that says that they're, you know, most people are not using the drop box and Scott replied that, that is pretty typical, even for very well used facilities to, have relatively low participation rates that are in the typical three to 5% per year type number but that's, that's really pretty, pretty standard, you know, across communities and we've looked at that those numbers pretty, pretty hard, so that's not something that I would cite as a reason to dissuade from looking at the need for a  facility, even if it is what you may think is a relatively low percentage, but to your other point. yeah. you know, and I, and I think that's where we're excited about what ARR has started to do on the, on that pilot program for the door to door, because that, that could, you know, kind of even the playing field so that it doesn't matter where you're located in the city, you know, that you could still get the opportunity to, to, have that material collected. Commissioner White replied yeah. yeah. I would agree with that. I think I think we should go further. I think we should be collecting anything that can be recycled, especially when you consider that we for free go door to door to pick up a lot of material and bulk collection that goes into the landfills. so, I feel like we're sending or sending a bad message there that you can put it out at your curb to get picked up and taken to the landfill, but you can't do that with these hard to recycle materials. so, I’ll leave it there. yeah. Scott replied I think it's just striking, trying to find the right balance. thank you, commissioner. Commissioner Barona yeah good evening. Thank you so much for the presentation. It was fantastic, the topic of the hour. I think I have some questions about the franchise system. I’ll limit it to one because I know everybody else has questions, but specifically the second bullet point on the slide that says that the zone franchise system would offer a kind of greater ability to regulate and enforce some of the requirements can you talk a little bit more about, how, why that would be versus kind of just working with some of our private haulers, to create a system of regulations that would work for? Scott replied yeah, I think that's important, like where I talked about that issue of, of having consistency and in the messaging that if you have that as a part of a, of a franchise, it's much easier to make sure that that would, would be followed, and then we talked earlier about the various stakeholder meetings that we had so we talked with, and we had separate meetings with the haulers, but then we also talked with, with businesses here in Austin, and several of them did comment about frustrations that they have with their haulers in terms of various fees, that, that they will have to pay that they think are, pretty expensive, for, for things that are, alleged to be going into their dumpsters on the contamination side that, you know, they say, you know, it's not always the case like that, but, you know, right now, just as, as an individual business, they don't have, you know, really a whole lot of leverage or say so in, in those discussions and so if the city could put that in place, on a city-wide basis, it could allow for a much more equitable, process to, to ensure that that, is provided on a consistent basis. Commissioner Barona replied What would prevent the city from providing or from implementing those regulations without the franchise system? Scott replied well, that could be a, I mean, you could do that either via ordinance, or it could also be a part of either an open and, or an exclusive franchise system so that, in other words, you could say, okay, if you're going to be a hauler in this city, you know, here are more specific requirements that you need to operate by. Commissioner Barona replied Right so, yeah so basically you could still implement the same types of regulations and enforcement without the franchises Scott replied yeah. I mean, there's, yeah you could potentially do that there are just other reasons to consider the franchise. sure. thank you. commissioner. Scott replied yeah. thank you. good to see at different, really important, Commissioner Gattuso replied I’m looking at page 14 with the select strategies and tactics, and you talked about, economic development of certain facilities or businesses, I was wondering if, if you are not able to answer all this because of our time, is, is the city informed? are they going to have a lot of answers on some of this, for instance, how do we even, how does the city go about getting some of these recommended types? do we work with the economic development department here in the city? and did you work with them? Scott replied yeah, we, yeah, I apologize. I didn't get into the detail of mentioning that, but yeah, we, we spoke with them and so I think the, yeah, so it's not like ARR is just going to go off on its own and try to do all this. They, they do collaborate, very extensively with the city's broader economic development group and so I think the whole idea here would be to, approach the economic or continue to collaborate with the economic development team at the city to say, hey, from a recycling and diversion perspective, here's what we have thought of and here's all the analysis that backs that up, hopefully to then build some moment, to target those types of businesses that I described earlier. Commissioner Gattuso replied so they were, they felt positive about this, that they could do help with this? Scott replied I mean, we've then, we've worked very closely with the ARR staff, that are focused on the circularity and economic development issues, who then, in turn, I believe worked extensively with folks on the economic development side of things, but I, I would also defer to ARR staff if either now or  later, if they would want to further discuss, you know, some of that, some of those aspects yeah. Commissioner Gattuso replied that would be wonderful to bring some, I mean, you know, an economic development. Scott replied I mean, there are so many things that have to fall into place to, you know, say, bring in manufacturing facilities or recycling facilities, but, you know, to me that's a pretty exciting and innovative part of the work that we've been doing here Commissioner Gattuso replied it would be nice to see Austin shift in that direction instead of being in all these other places like things here Scott replied and that was part of what we were trying to do as well is to figure out what can be done from an economic development perspective that kind of fits within where Austin as has been going and we'll continue to go. okay, thank you so much, commissioner Steyaert replied. I’m mostly just going to do defer to my fellow commissioners, but just to state the obvious, which is a, you've heard some feedback and questions and so as we, I would presume as we hear further recommendations from you and your group, that they might address that with some further statistics or information that like back your recommendations in resource-specific to some of the concerns that were expressed during the speaking portion. Thanks, Commissioner Rothrock replied hi. I have a question from, I’m looking at slide nine on the commercial franchise system slide and one of the bullets you have talking about LA and New York, how they recently are in process of transitioning, from the open market to the zone franchise system to help reach their zero-waste goals and I was just kind of curious about that, about how and what the status is because Mike was saying he's from LA and he moved here in 2012. so, he said it was starting up back in 2012, I suppose. so, it's been, you know, nine years, are they, are they successful in reaching their zero- waste goals? Scott replied and yeah, so yeah, the city of Los Angeles does have one of the highest recycling rates of any city or especially large city in the united states. I think that their recycling rate was in this maybe a year or two old at this point was I think, around 75 or 76%. Commissioner Rothrock and you said also it is currently at a 30% commercial? Scott replied Yeah and let me just clarify the commercial for Austin is 30%, but then the citywide percentage I think for Austin is closer to 40 and then the number I just mentioned for LA is a city-wide number. so that would be residential as well as commercial. Commissioner Rothrock replied okay. so, what makes the zoned franchise system, easier to reach the zero waste schools than the open market? is it because that the other two gentlemen were saying it's a more expensive service so that they're keener to recycle more? Scott replied Yeah, and it, it doesn't necessarily have to be at a more expensive service, you know, where, you know, there are there because you, you know, and this would be a part of that decision-making process by the city. I mean, some cities will have what is called franchise fees. but it doesn't mean that you necessarily have to put those types of fees in place as a part of a franchise system, one place where I think that you could have higher costs is, is if you do more efforts with generators, to help educate them and train them on how to participate more effectively in a, in a zero-waste program and I think that is a benefit of, of, of some form of a franchise system, to put requirements on the hollers because they are better equipped to cause they're working with their customers on a day in day out a basis for them to be the ones that are, helping their customers on what to do to participate in those programs. another, another key element. and we, we didn't really talk about this, but it is a part of our analysis that we've provided to ARR. and that is, you know, doing, you know, putting in place a, a franchise can certainly be a part of the solution and decision-making process, but another important aspect of that is going to be what are going to be the requirements in terms of, what the city wants to mandate any aspects of, of the services as well, and another point that we have communicated to the city is that cities that have the most, effective or highest recycling rates also have mandatory recycling requirements and they enforce those and a lot of times those are successfully enforced as a part of a franchise system Commissioner Rothrock replied you were saying with having a fee? Scott replied of, contamination fee, it could, it could be that or any number of different types of, either penalties or another. I, you know, because I don't want the hollers to think everything is just, you know, penalty, penalty, penalty, you could also have franchise systems where hollers are, are rewarded, based on what they're able to achieve and working with their customers to increase diversion so to put incentive programs in place can, can also be a part of the decision-making process okay. Commissioner Rothrock replied I appreciate you explaining it a little bit more. Sure. Alright, commissioner, I, I have a quick question from me, Gerry. oh yeah. I’m sorry, Amanda, out of  sorry, the odd person out over here. hello, no worries, commissioner Masino replied I, I just want to, yeah add to the call for more information here that I think you've heard expressed from several commissioners this franchise system, in particular the information at least I’m seeing in front of me, doesn't really paint enough of a picture of why this is a good idea. LA and New York, very different in size. they're very different in resources and budget, LA has had it for many years. New York is barely implementing it and is having struggles so I would appreciate it if there's a way that this group could see what some of that information is about cities, where this has worked, and what some of the practices are that would be much appreciated. I don't know if that means bringing you back or having city staff who've received this information from you shared at the next meeting, but it's very hard to make sense of this without more detail, so that, that's my request of you and of ARR both to, to give us some more information on this topic. Chair Acuna replied absolutely. no, that's a great, great comment and kind of a kind of a segue here too, to my questions and concerns. you know, we've Scott, we've talked about this in the past, and this is not anything new, this topic of franchising has rear his head rear, it's head before we, we have an opportunity here and it's an opportunity to actually get together as, as a community and to figure out what, what are we actually trying to accomplish here? what are we trying to, what, what, what is our goal? and I, it, it appears to me that our goal is a greater diversion, less, less, landfilling less trash, how do we get there? I mean, as a franchise slash the hammer, the answer, I want to believe that, again, there, there is a hybrid out there that we should, at least a visit, you know, to, to some of your comments up here, Scott, as we've discussed in the past, I mean, getting together with, with, some of, some of the haulers to determine, I mean, what, what does it take, what are we looking for here? we're looking for information. we want to know how much is being disposed of in a landfill and how much is making it to the processing facility. when we, when we can identify those accurately, we get a better picture of where we are. we're not there right now and in fact, please staff correct me if I’m wrong or step up and tell me or correct me here. but, you know, here, how do we get to the, to, to answer some of these questions? they want to believe a working group where you perhaps a, as, as mike suggested a working group where you get some of the front load haulers together, you get staff and you get a Burns and McDonald in a room and we sit there and we look at, at opportunities, opportunities that will improve our collection or diversion and, address the overall goal of zero-waste and or 90% diversion by 2040, we're way behind the eight ball today. you know, I, years ago we, we had this discussion and, and there's, again, there are two types of franchising. there is exclusive and non-exclusive, and non-exclusive franchising basically is, is a community, a city setting, rules, and regulations. if you want to pick up trash here, this is what you must do and if you do it, you can, you can operate within city Austin’s, jurisdiction, exclusive franchising obviously is where you literally give a hauler, a zone and that zone is, is primarily where they operate and they're the only guy that can go in there, I’m not a big fan of that at all. I’m a fan of open markets, a fan of, of a, perhaps a non-exclusive agreement where everybody knows what is expected of them and if they perform to those standards, then they can operate in the City of Austin, now we, if we can work towards that goal and, and again, staff, I invite you can, Ken I love to get your thoughts please, I think that we, we do have great opportunities here and, can't play Director Ken Snipes replied good evening. everyone, ken snipes, Austin Resource Recovery, I think there are a number of opportunities to explore here, to get us towards our goal of zero waste or 90% diversion by, 2040 but the one thing we can't do is to continue to do what we've done, as we've heard, we're way behind on those numbers and have a long way to go yet so, what we're talking about right now is an opportunity to look at our system, what we can do differently, we're not necessarily wed to one model or a technique over another, but I do think, what I heard in terms of an opportunity to sit down and meet and talk and work together towards changes that we can make, that would benefit the system is definitely where we want to be, there's a lot of talk about franchising and all of that, but that's, that's one tool there are other tools and we're open to having conversations about, all of them, Chair Acuna replied thank you, ken, thank you very much. Commissioner White replied, okay, sorry, just while you're up here, I think that's great. I personally think that the exclusive franchise kind of makes a lot of sense in terms of efficiency, like less traffic and, you know, can focus on an area and I like the idea of tying, you know, those franchises to, to try to, maybe try to meet certain goals and, and get a reward for that, my request to you is that I’m all for having meetings  that include the haulers, but I do think that those should be open to the public. I don't think that the haulers are the only ones who have an interest in this. I think these goals are important to the community and I know sometimes, you know, the term stakeholder can be used to just mean like who has a financial interest in the outcome or the greatest financial interest. and, and I, I hope it will be broader than that, but that's my request, thank you, Commissioner Gattuso replied so, Ken can Scott won't be able to come to all of our meetings or a lot of the meetings, have some of these recommendations been prioritized on some that can be easier, developed or ones that you're looking at more, and maybe we could talk about that in the future, Ken Snipes replied we’re just starting that process of prioritizing and kind of working through right now, we're kind of working through some of the framework of what we're going to be, including in the plan, so we're not yet at the phase where we have, you know, all of the details worked out yet, but once we do, we, we certainly will come back, you saw some of the check-ins that are built into the work plan going forward. so, we'll have a chance to come in and brief out on any of those items that you have questions about and, and we'll be happy to share. Commissioner Gattuso replied So you'll be able to fill out some of these recommendations or these suggestions you'll be able to fill those out? Ken Snipes replied more yes because some of those things would be really long-range, some of them wouldn't be necessarily things that ARR would drive, we would have to depend on, economic development or other partners in the community to bring about, and so I think, you know, there's, there's a lot of work to be done yet on the plan, and a lot of, a lot of things that will be kind of lining up in terms of developing our vision, and, again, happy to share those things once we have them done. Commissioner Gattuso replied right. and there are some things that we're, we're already doing now, like Scott talked about contamination and Austin's doing well in that regard, as far as, different places in Texas, I’d like to hear what you all are doing. it's so, it's so good, you know, and I think he mentioned something about San Antonio that they're implementing something to get the contamination down if I’m correct. Ken Replied it's basically an accountability system for holding the individuals responsible for a higher level of contamination in their car, so we could investigate something like that, right? Ken Snipes replied Yeah, that could be an option, thank you, Commissioner Rothrock replied. I just have a comment to make, as far as an alternative strategy that we could really make a huge impact in helping reach our goal faster, is that consistent messaging and ongoing education I think would be huge and consistent messaging across the board, not just with residential households and parks, but across multi-families and commercial, and, I think that's something that is sorely needed and that's been a discussion that we've had on this day as well, with multifamily, dumpsters being different colors and being confusing for residents, so, I think the consistent messaging across the board citywide would be a huge improvement and, a less contentious one as well, thank you, Chair Acuna replied that's a great segue into our conversation earlier consistency, right, that's Ken Snipes replied right. Yeah, we've had several conversations about, making a diversion, easier for people to understand and in terms of color coding and things like that, and those are certainly some of the elements that we're talking about as part of this plan as well, how do we make it easier for people to, understand what they're supposed to do, which makes it easier for them to participate, on a regular basis, Chair Acuna replied again, commissioners and, and staff, and in all in this room, just want to reiterate, this is a, a presentation that presents ideas, we, I guess, hit on one-word franchise and, again, understandably, but this is a this is an ideal package that is being presented to us that we will expand on, and, the idea that when the commissioners had mentioned, you know, please better or greater participation by Burns and McDonnell, I would love you guys to at, if not every meeting, every other meeting to present a, you know, updates on where we are. I mean, that to me is vital, especially when you're looking at developing something that's going to be existing for at least 10 years. I mean, that, that is where we want to be a part of developing this and, you know, staff, if we can arrange that, that'd be, that'd be wonderful, and I, again, thank you guys very much, any other questions? this is a discussion action item, and it's a discussion action item in the, and to support the development of these ideas of these concerns, taking all of our thoughts, all our bar ideas and further developing, you know, suggestions, and, that means working with staff with the consultant and with the community, the, a waste community, to help solve some of these, these issues. I mean, who knows more about what the challenges are then the actual guys doing the collections and what technology today, there are many, many ways for us to  acquire the information that we need. I mean, there's, there's RFID technology that is out there that provides opportunities for us to know exactly where a dumpster came from, how much it weighed, and where it went. there's, there are other means, but I would love for us to continue this conversation together as a group and back to the discussion action item. This is something that I would hope that we would, support with a, with a recommendation to continue the process, send me you’re looking at I'm looking for emotion. I should've just said darn it's. Commissioner White replied I would make a motion that, that we indicate our support for this process and request that the next presentation includes additional data and statistics to back up all the things that have been presented in this report, kind of to the, I think too, that some of the questions that you've heard tonight. okay. there's a motion, you were second. yeah. I’m happy to second it with a second to the comment, like I, it goes to staff and, and to all the people who present in general, the more backing information we can have about showing your work, the easier to the easier it is for us to feel confident that the decisions and recommendations we make. Okay, so we have an addition, we have a, in addition to the motion commissioner white, is that okay? Yeah, that's great so wonderful, we have a motion. Do we have a second, any further discussion on this hearing? no further discussion, all those in favor. raise your hand. Amanda. do I see your hand? okay, great, there you go, we’re unanimous on this. commissioners thank you. what’s a how are we doing on time? we have 15 minutes, well, no, is it? oh, we went beyond, oh my god, thank you, god. I thought eight o'clock was our deadline here. I apologize. all right we will defer the survey results, I guess, to our next meeting, future agenda items far as future agenda items, staff, we can set. I mean, Commissioner Barona replied I can, I don't know if you all saw that email, I sent to everybody. I would just want to add that topic to the next meeting, around the multi-family right it was multifamily, dumpsters, and just kind of the challenges that are going on with that. I think if we could get some information from staff about that. great. okay. very helpful and triplexes, I guess the app dumpsters, neither items hearing none. I’ll entertain a motion for adjournment commission. Rothrock moves a motion, do I hear a second sec? everybody's seconds. all those in favor, raise your hands. and thank you guys, good night and god, welcome back guys, this has been fun, thank you, Meeting adjourned at 7:48 pm FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS  Austin Resource Recovery (ARR) Comprehensive Plan Update  SMBR Future Opportunities and Involvement  Keep Austin Beautiful Challenges  Trash/Water Wheel on Lady Bird Lake  ARR Annual Customer Survey Result  Future FM 812 Landfill Potential