##VIDEO ID:5MF__w8WH1o## good afternoon everyone today is the rate Review Committee this is that is the meeting minutes today is May 28th 2024 this meeting of the air rate Review Committee will be held in person at the location provided on this notice members of the public are welcome to attend this in-person meeting please note that while an option for remote attendance and or participation via Zoom is being provided as a courtesy to the public the meeting hearing will not be suspended or terminated if technological problems interrupt the virtual broadcast unless otherwise required by law members of the public with particular interest in a specific item on this agenda should make plans for in-person versus virtual attendance accordingly this meeting will be live on Zoom the public May access the proceedings by joining Zoom meeting ID number 828 8571 8742 or by calling 92925 6099 for additional information about remote participation please contact Carly antonellis assistant Town manager at ATM a.m. us or 978-772-4864 meeting minutes y yeah I reviewed them okay anyone have any uh changes okay need some verbal responses people no I have none okay all right I'll take a mo motion to approve the minutes as provided I'll second Barbara all right um all those in favor of approving the meeting minutes as submitted I I okay all right and the chair says I okay all right and with that I will turn it over you or to Dan we can turn it over Madam chair okay Dan yeah to for the uh transfer station evaluation yeah so you know I thought it was a good point um where we've gotten in the evaluation to um have the the committee receive um you know the technical memorandum at this point and where it's at um there are probably still some parts to work out but I thought it was good to get it committee before this meeting so you get a chance to review it had a lot of good comments to provide before we uh before we it up type my notes yeah um so with us today Brian huntley's here from um time time B did the uh the study and Tom Mah is also here as well um so I don't know how do you want to review it do you want to go in the in order on the the memo and and just look at each kind of item that was talked about I think I let's go that way that's how my notes are laid out and that probably makes sense okay and for and you know just everybody knows too um this is on the website so it was properly posted for everybody to be able to see on Friday yep yeah so I don't know you want to come up Brian all right yes yeah I would say thank you I mean we we spent quite a bit of time here going through a lot of uh local information here in a as well as a lot of the surrounding communities and I've been in the solid waste business and at time bond for 21 years so I have a lot of background on you know the topics and the subject so you know essentially we just tried to take the the issues that were raised at the feel like it was a January or was it a February meeting that I was at virtually with you um we had a list of 10 items that came out of that meeting and we basically tried to go through those one item at a time and outline what our thoughts what our recommendations were and you'll see in a lot of these it's a it's not a better or worse it's a decision I think that the town is going to have to make on which which direction to go so you know I guess jumping right into it I would say the Enterprise fund versus a general fund it's something that we found that is it happens both ways throughout the Commonwealth and um certainly there are benefits to the Enterprise fund as it relates to it being kind of its own entity um but whether or not that works in the town of air or if it would be better if it was underneath as a general fund within the town is a decision I think that makes sense for for the town of air either of those models work and certainly you know you already have an Enterprise on I'm not sure we have a recommendation in either direction on not so and then this is something I kind of asked uh before too um so according to your summary only only Acton is operating their transfer station with an Enterprise fund uh Bolton gr and Littleton and Harvard all do it through their General funds so I will ask again and of course I know that if if we were to do anything it would CA you know a town meeting vote um but is our Enterprise fund working the way it maybe should in this town for the transfer station and I think that's is a hard discussion we do need to have because if we're still having to subsidize it through the general fund why do we have an Enterprise fund I I I just think this is a real good Deep dive question that we should go into I think to add probably you know finding out why the other towns are doing the subsidy and you know what are the financial impacts if you do it without an Enterprise fund the general fund you know then you're straight on taxes so you're going to be taxing a little more and assume um you're not you know the revenue goes right to the general fund from many permits or Sal you do right well correct me if I'm wording this wrong but wouldn't it at one point that we just said just to roll everything over to the operating expenses and and have it right there on the Omnibus or am I saying this wrong um I think it was brought up any I don't you know well again I mean it's not something that this committee can only do a recommendation I think a couple of things I think one who the chair I like Dan your idea I think if we get some more information from these towns you know as to why they considered it either way secondly I would just offer and I agree I think this is something that the town should look into this committee the fincom ultimately if a change was to be made it would inv all town meeting is to take a real deep dive one of the on one hand one of the positives could be when it was first set up as a sort of a a utility of Senses you have much more detail in the Enterprise account you know in the article by town meeting and so forth on the flip side as discussed you could in many cases just move this to the general operating budget right under say under DPW and then the revenue that comes in from bags permits and so forth would just be part of the and Barbara can correct me if I'm wrong but would be part of the revenue stream for the general um budget so I think I think we should definitely deep dive I think more some more information and sort of bring this issue to at the appropriate time to a conclusion because we sort of discussed it anecdotic over the last few years that I've been here anyhow so I went through a few meeting minutes because I was trying to find something and and it it's a question that gets asked quite often yeah yeah so so I can just uh follow up that yes it would would be general fund the revenue would be general fund Revenue if it was incorporated back into the omnus budget and um we just keep in mind that obviously the first year you do that it would be a significant impact on the omnus budget right what it would look like MH yeah okay okay anything else on item that was item one want to move on yeah just just quick um not again this is the Deep dive should include possibly a five to 10 year history of what the actual allocation from the general fund was applied to the uh enterprise Enterprise F we can get that we'll get that se water break even y y yeah yeah good point yep I do have a document with the history of the subsidy for the transfer station we actually included that on the summary if you go to the the second page or guess actually the third page um starting at fisal year 21 so it doesn't go back probably as far as you want but if you look down uh near the bottom GF subsidy is a general fund subsidy that gives you a summary of you know for f fiscal year 21 through 24 which are behind us um I'm sorry 23 is behind us anyway what the general fund subsidy was in each year based on the information that we that we got so so question number two is the general fund subsidy which kind of will be addressed along with question number one right we all kind of agree on that and and what we found through our reviews is that where communities do not have a uh an Enterprise fund it's not obvious to be able to find that information online easily you'd have to go into each community and dig through all of their uh budgeting and we can do that for this effort under all those other communities we are aware that there there is uh general fund subsidy that's happening in other communities the level of which and how it compares to what you're subsidizing was hard to tell based on this assessment that we did but but that is a discussion I mean it's it's a right money has to come from somewhere and you know we we I think tried to provide a comparison of all of the information on where you're getting your revenue from in in the Enterprise in addition to the general fund subs and Madam chair I would just add and you've brought this up before on the issue of the general fund subsidy all things being equal how things stand now in terms of the town's budget and the town's finances and others they disagree we're in a solid position where this subsidy yes it's a subsidy but at times certain entities have conveyed it like it was a potential budget Buster or so forth it really it really isn't and I think what is brought up is the issue of magnitude for us I mean as a town to discuss is at what point does the subsidy become more of a uh more of an immediate concern if at all because I would argue yes there's a subsidy I mean it maybe you disagree Dan or Barbara or others but it is um it has been sustainable by the town's budget you know what I'm saying it's never gone up a past 1% in fact I found in meeting minutes where um just a couple of years ago we were talking about how it was you know because our our then finance manager was you know like it's 40% of the operating fund and it's like let's word this correctly 05% of the general fund subsidizes 40% of the operating expenses of the transfer station you go out and you're yelling 40% that makes people p faint so if you word it correctly then and you're looking at 0.5% of a what a $20 million budget the needle hasn't even moved not now I know if anybody hears that they're going to be like well now wait a second that's not how I meant it okay um because that does affect my tax dollar too um I don't mean it in a flipp it way even though it did come out that way okay so yeah same I mean of course ideally we don't want any subsidy that's the ultimate goal I guess the echo that the point is just that I think over the years it's been conveyed not necessarily by folks here but in other entities that this is this budget Buster we're not at that point right we're not in that universe my years on the on this committee and whatnot hasn't it hasn't been a drastic change as far as the subsidy go so okay so number three so there's a lot of Graphics that I included in this um the first one is a table that outlines how your or I'm sorry how the the users cost compare uh in the area around us here and and I think I think it's I I would say that in general the permit and the permit costs are very relevant very very comparable to other communities and the bad costs are are significantly higher and that was you know what you're saying was I believe at the first meeting that we got to and that's exactly what we have and what you have in front of you to compare make those comparisons and you know with with that said we went through three different models here that we can get into on the following following pages and essentially um you know the first one was maintaining the existing rate structure and I'll say structure where we assume that there will be a uh general fund subsidy that is maintained at we we maintained it basically at $190,000 which is where we believe that subsidy is going to fall this year and we looked at approximately a 6 to8 increase in all of the rates to be able to maintain that subsidy you know without going up significantly over time in the second model we came up with a way to make the the uh the Enterprise fund self-sufficient which is um probably startling and shocking as the numbers and the increases that are going to be required we're talking about in the first year an 80% raise in the sticker price and then uh after that approximately a 10% raise um and then with bags we we paired that down a little bit so that would be 30% in the first year and then maintain between 8 and 10% going going forward on those um as an increase in the sticker prices uh what we did do just so it wasn't a full shock is we carried or we reduced the general fund subsidy over two years time rather than dropping it out entirely to to to let that kind of even out rather than going cold turkey if you will Tom probably oh you do okay great so I do not like that idea okay and then in I can just hear people um thinking I'm I'm not going to disagree with you on that yeah but I think what's a value of that you did this which I think is a value is to show where folks have always been rhetorically again saying we need to be self-sufficient or we got to get to self-sufficiency so for for what it's worth this alt B on page three at least shows what that means in terms of the numbers exactly oh no I I think I mean I agree with great this report is great and it's great for our residents to be able to see all this and everything like that but I I got a question and I think I think you cover it within here um might be in a different paragraph though it relates also to this paragraph is how much is the the town spends $188,000 on bags that's so right it's the it's it's paragraph five but it kind of relates to this conversation also um because you mentioning the bags in this conversation so so that's the first time I've ever gotten an answer to that question after all these years of how much is the town spending on purchasing the bags I want to thank you very much meeting minutes inform for years where that question has been asked and I have not gotten the answer um but it being black and white too under number three with the current current rate model um the DraStic difference between our prices to even Acton Acton does not use uh an Enterprise fund oh I'm sorry they do have an Enterprise fund and yet there're so much less um so this deep dive I think will also help because you're going to look at other uh towns and how they're doing it might help answer some of this question too because you know what a big difference and I continue the like excuse me I continue the link that there is a uh there's a website that outlines the um the Enterprise funds from the do do I believe it is that it tells you what the what the subsidy is year-over-year as well so you can tell quickly how they're operating and acting as well so I'll send I'll send link along so it's not always clear because there are some weird names on a lot of the Enterprise funds that exist but you can kind of you know Furrow down into it and you can see what their return rate was year-over year and what their uh subsidy is to see how they're functioning and you know where the subsidies are coming in yeah I think that yeah I think that'll be interesting okay so I'll see the third and final assessment that we did was to basically drop the P you throw bags by a dollar bag while trying to maintain the operation um and see what effect that had on where the subsidy was going to be and uh you can see uh in the general fund subsidy you know and we did our best to not blow it out of the park to maintain them year-over-year where we could to give a retained earnings that's somewhere in the same ballpark and what you had currently so that kind of outlines that if it it also included what I would call is maybe a little bit more than uh cost of living but somewhere between a six and eight increase in 6 8% increase in the sticker prices per year but reducing the bag prices for you know through obviously year 20129 and you can see that it basically takes your you know somewhere in the neighborhood of 197,000 it was in 23 and in fiscal year 29 that would be up to about 260,000 as a general fund subsidy so reducing the bags by a dollar a piece will cost the town I mean I think that's that's simp matter so right but I think too it also needs to be remembered and and we always discuss this when we're talking about you know the rates and if if any increases we're going to do when it comes to the transfer station permit that's paid yearly so that amount is spread out over the 12 months so and the other the bags that's depending on the family that's every two weeks or a monthly expense right and that's a pretty hefty expense for trash bags now of course we know it's helping pay for you know getting to wherever it needs to be to be the process the next level and everything like that but if somebody's paying something yearly that's usually a better rate than if something's paying something monthly so if you can get your Netflix for I'm just using easy numbers for example $110 a year versus you know $15 a month you're going to pay it for the year so that's something that we always always have to adjust and we always have to be cognizant about because that is also what's driving people away it's like they're not against the transfer station it's they literally can't afford these bags you know so when when you have to make the difference of you know milk and eggs garbage bags yeah can see I think kind kind of like a perception thing you know you pay low on the end of the stickers as we are compared to the other towns but then you're paying high in the bags and you're getting hit with it every couple weeks right every couple weeks exactly exactly so I mean let's let's put it this way milk and eggs are part of your budget trash bags should not be part of your budget when you're having to figure out your bag oh what did we me oh cancel Disney this month we got to pay for the bags you see what I'm saying I mean those are the decisions that we can laugh at how how I present it that's fine but that is what's kind of going through people's minds it'll be a different scenario but that's some of the decisions that people have to make because you know they could well those bag and those 55 pound bags those are awful they're huge so so just again just something that this committee has to you know keep in mind as as we go forward and stuff so but again this is great having this all in black and white it really lays it out nice I'd like to just throw out a quick off-the-cuff calculation um assuming $15 annual permit divided by 12 that's $9 a month rounded up okay assuming family uses two 33 gallon bags a week that's 10 bucks one two three assing four weeks that's 40 bucks so the total cost per month and again I'm assuming would be $49 uh for the uh person's trash removal so again that's a real rough calculation and I think as we move along that's one thing folks I'm going to pay 49 and again two bags per family could again the big ones can varry and stuff like that um and they buy them in in clumps of five right right yeah so but if I'm a resident and I'm looking at should I use DND or prime how much I going to pay per month right so how much is going to Prime going to cost me per month right so that's just uh maybe we can you know sort of keep those calculations as mov we going along because that's the big tradeoff yeah okay thanks just wanted to throw them no thank you anything else on not for me okay uh the next item was number of days of employees without access from the public excuse me theologies are terrible I don't if people have the same that I had oh yeah so you're not alone throw a cop drop in here to try to my apologize um so essentially what what we came up with in working and looking at the site looking at the facilities working a little bit with Dan is that we recommend that you maintain two days which is 16 hours without the public in place so you manage the safety it gives a lot of options for scheduling for materials or uh containers to be brought and removed um it seems to be a good blend of getting what's needed done getting the tasks that are needed accomplished uh there is I did include on the back of this the memor that outlines the operation in the facility and that was provided by Dan as well that kind of outlines a little bit of what happens and a little bit of the cleanup that needs to happen during those those days and those hours as well just to give a little background on what does happen and what C up happen so I think you know the long story short here our recommendation is that two days without the public present seems reasonable it seems to provide a fair amount of safety and it gets it keeps the facility clean for ISS so has it oh yes Bob you're muted Bob Bob yes thanks um I was a resident of Groton um prior to moving into air and my recollection is that uh trash collection was done by a private company in gron that we pck paid for separate from any bags or um uh stickers for the recycling um portion of the um handling is that are you talking about curbside meaning somebody coming to your house and picking corre that's correct so this this town said no very very big deal um and this study was to only talk about the trans for station um yeah so so there are people in town that they did have made the choice of having a private huler um but the town itself has said no they do not want to give up their transfer station okay thank you just um just a further clarification on Bob's question so in gron you when you had pickup Pro curbside pickup they were Contracting with I assume a private company yeah words just to confirm Gren your choice in Gren is either used in Gren transfer station or private Hall Gren does not have a public trash pickup does that sound correct that's what I correct yally run yeah just just just one y it wasn't part of our review I don't know what the private huler status is in those communities but I believe that that is the case I do know there is trans not a public yeah none of these towns I'm I'm guessing have a um public um trash service available probably yeah yeah so I have a question and I've asked this question numerous times and I'm going to ask it again because I'm still waiting for a good answer um the swap shed why is that such an obsession of cleaning out now I can understand if there's like hazardous or dangerous material in there but why is it such a big deal that if somebody put something in the swap shed on Wednesday that the person coming in on Saturday can't see it I think they don't totally clean it out but just some of the things that that got in there that might not be appropriate okay are probably things that get taken out you know okay so it be like hazardous or dangerous okay so you know they keep the items that seem pretty good still right cuz you know people sometimes things get people have been upset you know you know the rule you've touched the swap shed and this can cause great stress so you know I just want to make sure that we're clear that you know only things that should be being removed are stuff that probably need to be removed okay all right but if somebody puts a Barbie doll house in there on a Wednesday that Barbie doll house still going to be on there Saturday right unless somebody else is come and picked up on a Wednesday but it's not going to be an employee cleaning it out right yeah and then you know if something's there for a long time then it just something that nobody else is wanting so that like that would happen then you take that out all right all right yeah put in reason okay okay all right so number five pays you throw bags versus stickers um it appears that throughout the industry uh a lot of the communities that had stickers are getting away from stickers there's a lot of labor involved with managing and watching the stickers um our our recommendation from a staffing and a cost point of view even though the bags cost more than stickers is to maintain and stay with the bags it allows you to not have to police as much the stickers the partial stickers the what's happening when people aren't using the stickers correctly with the bags they're much more visible they're much more clear even in uh winter weather When there's less you know direct oversight necessarily just because of you know the conditions um it's easier to spot when somebody is incorrectly using the bags as opposed to the stickers so you know all things equal including the cost associated with oversight our recommendation is that bags do make more sense and it's where most of the industry is um I I I mean I agree I I can see it but and and again this is something that committee and even the select board had asked for years and it was about a year ago we finally got an answer um to one of the questions that have been asked constantly is you know we kept getting told and even former selectman Hood used to bring it up at select board meetings is there are black bags being thrown at the transfer station and nobody's doing anything about it and then about a year ago we had a town employee tell us well that's employees bringing the trash so have we done anything about that um as far as the employees bringing the black bags to the transfer station and and you know what are we doing about that to make sure that at least the public knows that that could have been employees that were bringing it down and how are we accounting for that if they're not using a bag but I have to you know I don't I don't know how we um probally address that with the public unless they ask we haven't done anything necessarily to let the public know more that hey the town departments we bring all our town trash up there but it was only about a year ago that it was just announced even though that question had been asked numerous times so you know we we can't we can't have that there there has to be like an employee only drop off you know section say you know Town employees drop your trash here I mean we could make an operation that they can't put it in the areas where the um you know Town users put it and they got bring it all the way back in theing floor or something because I mean why would we think that the town employee was taking their trash to the transfer station you know what I'm saying why would I think that somebody was leaving their workpace and saying I'm going to take the trash my work trash to the transfer station because that's not normally how things are done in a in in departments or buildings or whatnot you know you you have it done a little different so why would I think that you know and how do I know that they haven't so and it has been said not by me but you know by even select board members how do we know that somebody hasn't brought their trash into work so they can get away with using a black p so what I'm saying is is that even though maybe you haven't had it addressed to you you know enough or through your chain it has been brought up on numerous times over the years so how do we address that so how do we tell say the town employees you know are using these black bags but how am I supposed to know I see that town employee with a black bag I'm also seeing somebody who lives in this town it's not just general employe you know it's the custodian does it for town hall for police um we have our Highway division that takes care of that the DPW trash fire has a guy they come up so that's kind of how it's been um you I can look into more and policing that to see if there's any issues going on and I think I can you know make an operational change that any Town trash can't be put where the Brew bags go it's got to go back on the Tipping Flor or even in the the trailer but I well I think I think like I said I mean even former selectman Hood brought this up and you know and he wasn't sure that that was actually um Town trash she thought that the person who was bringing the trash was bringing their own trash in trash back so that's why I'm saying that this has to be you know these are little things that do CA anks and you know it's something that we have to be constant about because you know it's going to upset people and if they're not necessarily seeing the custodian but they're seeing someone who well I'll take it with me and they happen to live in town yeah you know if it's during work hours Andrew and Frank are there to monitor so they shouldn't be allowing any anyone who's not usually there to do their divisions trash trash in there unless they talk whatever this gu today type of thing but um you know I can look at more what I could do there I think what I mentioned a good start and then policing that as a resident who spent a lot of money on these bags in the past I it thought never occurred to me that it could be the the town Zone trash I I just assumed it was the policy Breakers you know I mean my expectation if I'm paying out basically for bags that are worth their weight and gold um that I'm only seeing those blue bags when I'm looking in there um so I I do think an operational change would probably be easier than you know perhaps having to communicate to the town oh you know these are right the town's uh the town's own trash um if it's out of sight I think that might address a lot of the consternation from right folks who are paying lot BS so we spent $118,000 annually just to purchase the bags that we can sell that's correct yes for those to be produced purchased waste zero same number bag so well how much is acon spending I'm I'm just curious I mean are we I I I assume that all the towns go to the same website or whatever to purchase this stuff yeah so typic it's it's on the state bid it's called back 886 I believe and um so there's a state bid price that the various vendors who make these bags produce and then the towns go and use that for their type of bag that they order you know certain thickness bags certain size bags um um and so it's pretty much it's that state bid price that gets used by these communities um so I I think they I'd assume they're paying a similar cost to what the kind of a is so I realize there's some guess work we kind of have to do here because of uh the lack of detail we have on some of their these other towns budgets but like can we assume that Acton has much higher share of subsidy um I just I I can't I don't know I can't quite make sense of how they can charge so little per bag and also for an annual permit sticker and and they have an Enterprise fund too so yeah so I think we definitely kind of want to peek at what how they're doing things um yeah because there does seem to be a huge discrepancy with our bag prices um versus other towns um which all jokes aside could actually be a good thing you know once we do a more Deep dive and we see how the other towns are doing things we we may find out that you know we're doing it better than they are but when you originally you look at these numbers it can be like it's puzzling so maybe I put it must be for this paragraph I had asked um as far as enforcement goes if needed be why couldn't we what about just like a part-time employee now I know also in this in this summary too it talks about you know like weatherproofing for the employees and I that's in different paragraphs um but and and maybe that should be considered too but is a part-time employee just to even take care of the bags a good idea I mean the difference in cost is $13,500 so right You' be looking at try to cut into that I don't know how you get a parttime employee for that you know Andrew and Frank right one of them has to be at each station you saw in the back there an intern operations plan one of them's got to be monitoring bags and one's monitoring the recycling areas um and swap shed area so technically you know maybe one of them could take on the task but they're probably not going to catch everything um I don't I don't see how you can get a part time cost just for conversation yeah with that 13, 500 you could possibly say like going back to tags okay anything else on question number five I'm good right now I just I appreciate the um the recognition of the trend that people are moving away from the stickers I didn't I certainly didn't know that um so that was a helpful for me at least in my consideration of the matter and it seems to be that enforcement is the biggest issue that we' seen throughout the industry is that it's very labor consuming to yeah make sure people are using them correctly now peol has a dedicated person for that and they're trying to get away from people were cutting them in half and this is when they were just a150 and they were cutting him a hat and I was like really no I think it's human nature people are always going to try to find the oh oh yeah I like I'm going save myself [Laughter] 7 that's that's a candy bar or used to be so in looking at the permit Alternatives and there's there's a fair amount of narrative here but basically we went through the the options of um you know not having a a permit um having just a free permit for residents essentially similar to one that use the uh I'm sorry sorry what is it the Sandy Pond Beach yeah something similar to that um and then also the the option for higher non-resident permits um and there's there's a fair amount of discussion basically within those paragraphs that I mean essentially there are upsides and there downsides all of those things and they're all going to come with their own sets of challenges and that's another place where I would say that it's uh it's my recommendation that the you know the community needs to decide are we do you want to subsidize more of the trans for station and not charge the annual sticker fees do you want to you know charge more for sticker fees and you know not subsidize as much and then there's kind of there's the whole world in between there on varying levels and um it's really challenging in today's world to say that the sticker price or not having a sticker fee would relate directly to how much usage you would actually get at the transfer station and what we're seeing in a lot in the world is that people who are you know D dual income with families are less inclined to go to the transfer station than older people were in a community almost regardless of what the costs are just because of a time commitment um so it's it's really difficult to say that if you cut the price or if you made a free from the entire town you'd sell four times as many bags or possibly even fewer bags so it's one of those that based on what the community decides what works for you best that's kind of where it needs to fall what I would say is is that in the comparisons what you're doing now is very similar to these other communities around you and you know you know you got you do not recommend eliminating use of stickers to allow access to our site benefit associated with transfer station so um and we did talking yeah the non resident use right now Devon's actually residents in the air portion of deons are allowed to use to get a sticker at a a higher price which is interesting yeah which we hadn't sold one before well this brings up something very interesting yeah so when Mark was still around it was brought up in this committee that there was some devans residents that were interested who lived in devons in case you don't know some vote in air some vote in Harwood whatever okay so um that some were inquiring as to whether or not they could use the transfer station um we had an employee would was just practically had a heart attack at the idea uh you know that that just you know no they don't live here the employee didn't live here either but anyways had a heart attack about it okay and it just kind of died and I and I went through meeting minutes because you put in here on March 19th of 2019 um the board the select board approved the sticker for $175 and I was like I had no memory of that I was was like cuz I think at one point we talked about you know having a higher price and I swear 125 was mentioned I have no recollection of it ever being 175 I I missed that meeting that night so I had to look and what's funny is that this committee never made the recommendation to the select board Mark and the fin the finance manager at the time they calculated this amount and it's nowhere on the website can I find hey if you're a Devin resident who votes an air or whatever you could get a permit to go to the transfer station so I don't know how anyone knows but the other problem that we have found out is that we do occasionally have people calling the DPW to say hey I live out of town can I use your transfer station and it's immediately no and we in inquiring well did you ever find out where they where they live no because they live out of town so here's a scenario that may be possible a Devin resident calls and says hey I live I don't live in air but can I use your transfer station no okay thank you and no inquiry to find out that maybe that memb lives in De I don't I don't know about that well it was said right here in this meeting that that that you know when those phone calls happen there's no follow-up question to what town do you live in said right in this meeting in a public meeting so I'm just saying if you know that there there's a problem but you know also maybe we should put it on the website to say hey just in case yeah def should get that notice out there yeah and you know we had kind of just talked about and I think this was before you we we even got you involved we had kind of talked about like you know you have some members that live in gron that are like you know half a foot from the transfer station what if they wanted to use it and you know did we want to come up with like you know a special couple streets or something like that so just things to think about um I was in here in that paragraph right about you know if we were to allow it to kind of generate a similar cost like that de generated so but yeah but I mean I think we should at least have it on the website so somebody could see you know but I agree if you know for a non-resident use this they would have to pay much more because they're not paying them to the tax base I agree so um I think for the townwide permit we were also part of the conversation was because we have the Sandy Pond do we want to try to to to increase usage and that's why we were trying to come up with a townwide permit or something I don't know I have nothing else on that question anybody else I'm going on that one seven so seven excuse me selling permits um and bags transfer with or without a chaos um the concern we have on here is with appropriate Staffing for selling the permits management of either the the credit card system if that's required or cash and checks um it's it's certainly it sounds like it was used no it doesn't sound like it was used in the fall of 2020 during covid-19 where there was you know there were extenda circumstances and there was this was done on a a short-term basis and it sounds to me like it was was something that worked but it took staff away from the main office to be able to do this so I think that you know the the the general takeaway is that I I believe that the current staff aren't the ones that are qualified and appropriate for selling the stickers because they already are doing their jobs so it would require additional Staffing whether it's from somewhere else in the community or new hires um it it puts a challenge in for that so you know the as far as selling bags out of a kiosk or something that that's a very complicated thing because you're you're talking about like a a vending machine that's made specifically for the bags and the shapes and the sizes um that's you know that's going to have a cost associated with it in finding that technology to do it and then beyond that now you have material that have value that are stored on site that are you know possible for being stolen or you know any type instruction to that system and it will require communication to be able to communicate back you know through whether it's cellular or whatever to be able to get the data that it needs to be able to do that as well as the requirements certainly for a permit where somebody needs to provide and confirm I believe it's a registration that says that they are resident of the town that requires a manual confirmation for them so excuse me there's a lot of a lot of things in there that I think are very labor intensive it could certainly be done but not in a manner of streamlining costs per se it may be more convenient for the users but it also appears that the majority of times that the facility is open the places that sell bags are also open I'm not sure that they're necessarily as convenient as if it was at the facility itself but with a little bit of planning it's not like you have to drive to another community in next so our recommendation was that uh you know this there there there could be ways online to encourage the sticker sales um however we don't recommend in general that they're done either through a kiosk or on site as the standard of sale yeah I didn't like the idea in Co how it worked out you know none of this is really a money saver for us item financially but think that convenience factor for the people who are coming to the station in December you know yeah and being able to maybe provide a couple days with onsite sales go resales to what about in the case of like a one day pass what if um because I mean I suppose that there are times when you know the one day pass it's like you didn't know you needed a one day pass on a Friday when the DPW was open to go get it but on Saturday you're like oh crap I need a one- day pass um what about if they were able to just go online and just print the receipt and that allows them and then you know you're just handing the receipt that's what you know we'll do nowadays we do a and somebody yeah and so I think having a QR code linking so you can go get it they show I've never used a one day pass I would know if it was working or not so all right I also agree as far as you know um no cash being used um I mean KFCs aren't taking cash anymore you have to use a card um and that's well they say it's because some because some cases they do not know how to count change um but a lot of it has to do with robbery and I would never want any of our employees to even have somebody think as they were handling cash and they was put in their right hand and then they turned and they were yeah yeah I'm coming over here here and somebody thinks that they just did something do not want that um so I absolutely agree no cash um but I do think that um we should just keep our eyes open and ears open for other ideas that can maybe benefit just sort of jumping ahead to page eight through the ending of seven here where you start talking about online sticker sales so maybe that yeah sort of feeds yeah might be a way to to to address some of the things that you're bringing up are very good what about well no never mind I talk to myself than so was operation um we you know cutting right to it if you want we made some recommendations on modifying the hours a little bit to uh eliminate some of the overtime that's uh currently being paid so essentially going with uh rather than 7 to S on Wednesdays doing an 11 to 7 which is an 8 hour shift reduces the amount of hours by a half a day four hours um it provides the same level of you know uh public not present to do the management they need to do um it appears based on some of the the numbers that we were able to come up with that Dan helped us sort through a lot of this information uh that the additional hours that were started a few years ago didn't necessarily increase the amount of usage um so I think that's kind of where it's deriven is that it didn't increase usage but it does increase the cost because of the overtime that's associated with it um so the recommendation that we made was to go back to what the hours were essentially previously or no actually previously I believe it was just uh daytime hours our recommendation is to keep it 11: to 7 so there are evening hours on that one day of the week but it's still an 8 hour shift so it doesn't require the overtime you don't like that well I'll tell you and I and I said this in an SV meeting uh last last year um is regarding this overtime um I don't understand why overtime is ever a regularly scheduled item I I do not understand it I I look at a contract that I signed I agreed to okay and I did not read it in the way that it was entally intended and I read it in more of a if you paragraph 2A is saying so and so has the right of first refusal okay but paragraph 3B says but it has to meet certain criteria I think that those should be together and I don't think that's what's been going on and and I and I made it very clear last year um I when I found out about this um my error my error I signed it my error and I didn't fully understand that never occurred to me but don't understand why overtime is a regularly scheduled item I don't understand why 7 to 11 there can be one employee but from 3 to seven there has to be two and you've told us earlier that you know each one is at a specific station so how is how is this all how does this all work out why why was that four hours needed every week that's I think in general yeah we probably have some issues we do have some issues with the CBA that we can look back at here and try to resolve um you know could you I think that's kind of where we landed during negotiations I don't know exactly why I don't I don't no I don't have a problem with somebody saying hey you know due to the new schedule you know I'd like an opportunity that if if overtime is ever needed that I get the first chance at I have no issues with that what I have issues and I said this last year is why is it a regularly scheduled every week no if sser butts about it because that should not be happening right overtime is supposed to be I was heading out the door the building collapsed and I helped clean up it's not supposed to be regularly scheduled hours which is what it turned into so that should never happened and I think that helped create a piece of the problem now as far as the recommendation I mean I like the recommendation of the 11 to7 on Wednesday but I I'm also I like the idea of the Tuesday 7:00 am. to 11 and a Wednesday 3: to 7 but how would that work for for them right right and that's you know right the collective bargaining agreement has to be well well there's that but but also how does that affect their work schedule if Tuesday has always been a non-public day right how does that upset things it's not it's definitely not helpful i' prefer to just have one day open right I think I think the 11 to 7 on a Wednesday works great they having those two open you know you have the vendors if they can't do it the Monday they come the Tuesday and you kind of you never have an interaction with and you know Wednesdays they don't come right so I think yeah Wednesday 11: to 7 I I would recommend you know over over having two days two half days yeah and that agreement is up this year right coming up yeah so this fall winter or fall will start okay my personal opinion having been NH HR for A decade is that overtime should never be scheduled should be incidental um so I do hope that there's an opportunity to to address that um I realized that this is probably um we're obviously not really having conversation about Sundays but I'm just curious because I do see that we're the only town uh open on Sundays well don't do that no no no and I don't I don't want to and especially because I know it's it's part of the CBA but I I'm just C no other towns I know I Harvard is like open for 10 hours a week I don't even know how that works I know how do they not how are they not open on Sunday like what what are their what I I didn't talk to anybody in Harvard to understand exactly what the what the thought process was behind it but I think that it's I mean to some degree a lot of this is that you put the hours out there everybody knows the hours they work around the hours you know some people it's a convenience factor others it's not that you know I'm not aware of any other communities I didn't look at every community in the state but Sundays are not terribly common but I if I lived in town I could see how incredibly convenient it would be yeah if we tried to take away a weekend no leave the country to a non EXT okay and that's kind of why I bring it up because I I couldn't imagine I know not so I'm I'm just amazed yeah the surrounding communities have all made the choice not to that's just remarkable yeah I I was surprised that you're open on Sundays I had to double check to be sure I didn't read that but wow it's been forever yeah I think it's that's been decades yeah yeah um just as sort of a sidebar to this is that Dan I asked you I think last year look at earlier this year yes um the actual percent of residents that used the transfer station and you threw out like 38% yeah for air and um I'm just curious because this would be I think sort of along this line is I mean that's 38% that's 40% of that's not bad I just would be curious at what percentage of the towns other towns populations are actually using the transfer station you know in other words if only 20% of people are using the transfer station that might right support why that they're only open twice a week because they're you know less demand well you have to mention Acton Acton is open five days 37 and a half hours oh okay I'm sorry I used you're looking at the wrong you looked at the wrong line but isn't but you know that's interesting yeah that's interesting because they they have they have an Enterprise fund so maybe that's why their Enterprise fund works so well now that but where how are they doing their 37 and a half hours and they've got the lowest sticker prices lowest bag prices how was that and how are their employees able to do whatever done at the transfer station you know with trucks coming in and everything how oh that's just it's the old S Sales things how do we do it volum and that's I mean I jokingly say that I mean obviously they're putting cones up going no you go that way we're going over here but but that's kind of interesting yeah do maybe they have the the high percentage of households yeah if not a high percentage but a volume of people using their transfer station so if you have a higher number of people that you know traditional EC economics that drives you call down so on that note may I interject real quick with Acton yes I was curious so I just went out and looked and um so they they didn't I don't see a subsidy being used but I do see that their retained earnings has decreased substantially in the last two years um they're using almost 180,000 for this fiscal year so I'm I'm at in the thought that you might be seeing them make a change oh I bet Co has forced them to make a change yeah Barbara I was just quickly looking at their Town site and annual all I could find was quarterly reports and the two or three that I saw they weren't subsidizing but there was a big as you're saying a big portion earnings we did look actually in October of 22 when we were doing a little bit of a dive at other communities and the percentage of households that are using the transfer station so yeah a was 39 Harvard 64% Littleton 56 Spencer 48 Bron 38 that's percent of households just some of the surrounding town and we looked at this previous we irony is that some people don't want to use the transfer station it's not just because they don't want to put the trash in their car but because the bad crisis Char them right away driv them right away and I think if I can go back to Barbara's comment that um one thing that has happened over the last I'm going to say it's probably a decade now is that the what used to be a value in recyclables is now a cost to get rid of and that has changed significantly how every Community has to deal with it that it used to be you wanted every body to recycle as much as possible and as many people there were a lot there are a lot of communities that were like begging people to recycle and now it's an additional cost as well so having more people recycle isn't necessarily saving you the money that it used to and it makes sense that that's probably coming out of retained earnings on uh you know Community like like Acton as well as that's slowly eroding what they had do have in retain earnings available potentially you know I don't know the details I don't know how long you know quickly that is going to go away I think I heard even Maine who is a big recycling state is starting to back off on on some of the recycling because of the cost in New Hampshire as well yeah Massachusetts there are there are regulatory requirements through D about recycling you can not recycle right but in New Hampshire a lot of the communities even if it's single stream or sorted it's going wherever the cheapest dump rate is so yeah is that is an issue and it's a change in the in the entire industry yeah so there those definitely I mean you're seeing some of that here as well within air right so ready to move yeah um enforcement and monitoring a bag um and I I feel like that this was an issue that was raised and a lot of question discussion around it similar to the black bag concern and the black bag issue that um you know in in general I think that what we saw out there is that uh the operation does have pretty good visibility the The Operators are watching Pretty closely on the colored bags that are going into the facility um you know there was a note that we we put in here that you know grant funding could be considered um for other improvements potentially that would encourage you know better oversight whether it's uh you know additional um you know cameras or anything basically that could provide any more oversight that would be required but we're what we saw based on our you know and it was only one you know quick quick review on the site is that it was pretty well maintained it's pretty well overseen it's pretty you know aside from the concerns of you know the black bags which you know certainly while we were out there we didn't see anybody putting black bags in the facility that shouldn't been so not not a lot of recommendations there for for ises I do have a question though and and I've often wondered this and then when you kind of put it in black and white it kind of forcing the question are our employees adequately covered in the uh bad weather up there so they do have to take you know breaks here and there especially for both the um running the compactor and and you know checking the bags know you know checking the bags you can be inside the Tipping building which is good so that's covered sheltered um there is a shelter near the um uh compactor but it's not heated so you know the guys are dressed up when really cold it could be a little a bear so they're taking a lot of breaks of those so there's some there's more chance at those times where you know improper are there some things that can be done to improve well there's some Capital Improvements you could do like you know a shelter but obviously cost with that so that was mentioned in here um and you have to look at Payback and things like that so that's just more cost um you know I don't know we can look at operations I'm not sure what more you can do to get the guys to be able to stay out there you we got the cameras which they can use use those while they're on their breaks things like that um which you can see people I mean I I know they've done this for a long time but you know and I and I well I don't mean it to be rude but they're getting a little older and our bodies change and you know and and yeah you know and and someone if someone new ever came along you know just something that you know especially since it's been brought up that you know maybe we should look into yeah I think what I just me the cameras and the ability use those in the office trailer to look at that um you know we do have theal oh one thing I want to mention we do have a a senior workout who's going to be starting up there hopefully this weekend maybe after but some more Health with the enforcement excellent finally got excellent be me I wanted to monitor to swap sh talking about it yeah somebody's going to be starting so excellent well that's good that's great wow that's only been out there for a few years I'm glad somebody's decided yeah excellent okay anything else on number nine ni number 10 uh number 10 I mean in and at the end of the day we're not recommending any changes it seems reasonable the way it's working now if the community has a reason to change it then I could see going to something different but I think that with uh with the current calendar year for stickers it seems to work well in being uh you know not rushed at the end of the fiscal year like everything else seems to be with the community it gives you a pretty pretty reliable source of income at that time of year coming into Springtime before the end of the fiscal year again unless there was another reason we don't make any recommendations to change [Music] it just general question overall what was your uh impression of the overall operation is it well run uh clean absolutely I would say that uh you know what what we saw is that it's a very clean facility it's very very well taken care of or very well managed the two days that they spend doing you know with when the residents aren't present do provide for safe clean operation of the facility from an overall operation point of view uh very similar to the other communities I don't see anything where I'd say you should be doing this this would be better if you did this this is different there it's it's in my opinion very well run you know that said I know that there is a concern about the cost of bags and how the prices compare and it's also in a fairly fluidly changing Market as well as a place where we're all running into everything's more expensive than it was for years goo for sure all and there and where air is you as far as the services that we use get take care of the recycling and take care of the trash and we're yeah yeah and I didn't go into a huge Deep dive on all of the contracts by means but you you know you've gone to bid for these Services you've gone out to you know the the industry you're picking the best of the best with the best prices and that you know it's at any given day you might be able to get a better price you also could get a worse so I wouldn't say that you know anything that I saw was a significant deviation and and you know like someone like Harvard they you have to separate your recycle where zero storage so if we were to look at doing something like that then there's a lot of cap changes cost cost money and is it worth a payback I remember when we had to separate it and I'd be standing there going are you a two what do you what number are you and everything oh yeah and every one of those has a different location as opposed to a single container so there there's absolutely costs that are associated with and we're actually doing some some preliminary studies with another Community New Bedford where they're looking into doesn't make sense to do sorting of their own bringing it in a single stream doing their own sorting so they can reduce some of the disposal costs and uh you know I I'll tell you that the the costs of putting a facility together are staggering you know we're looking at you know 20 to $50 million depending on how fancy you want it and I'm not sure in the industry today that there's ever a return on it necessarily so but it's just it's you know a lot of people are running into the same scenario trying to find ways to you know to beat the costs yeah it's a challenge thank you oh thank you well I for one have loved this evaluation um I think it covered a lot of territory and I think it's great to have something in black and white to kind of um as I stated to you months ago it became like a political thing and I think that this will now put that to rest um because now we have it in black and white what's working what needs to be and and what you've brought to us is just things that need to be tweaked um no major changes just things that need to be tweaked so which is good it means that you know we've been kind of on the right path um but this helps us narrow down some of the other stuff that needs to be done so Kimberly yes hi can you hear me y yep okay great thanks um I actually am just following up on what you just said it's it's saying that I I think the report was excellent It's given us some guidance it's let us know that we are generally on the right path we can make a few tweaks here and there but I also wanted to follow up on something that Kurt said earlier about what I would I would like in a final report maybe something about what this the total cost average cost is to the average user of the transfer station how that compares to people who choose to go private because I think that it would be nice if if we could make that comparison if it is so much cheaper to use a transfer station to have that in print and to have something that says you know if you if you're looking for a cheaper option yes the bags might seem expensive but you're still saving so much more than if you were to go private does that make any sense that's what I want that one other time is is we sent out a flyer saying here's what we average so you know we get this finot tally you know I think it would be a good idea to even send out with the next you know uh even the water sewer bill is like hey by the way um we've done a calculation and this is how much we figure it would cost you you know so I agree I agree so yeah this is um very good and if Kimberly if I may piggy back on your comment I think there's an going to throw this out for General consideration with private haulers there is the I don't know how you would say it um abstract cost of if you go to all private hallers you have this is why I was asking earlier five to six companies trucks going through to several days a week oh yeah up and down so a yeah I have a dead end Street they have to back down and I watch them all the time yeah yeah but no I mean there that's to me is a big again I don't know how you would put that abstract cost or benefit of the transfer station is that we don't the uh decrease in trans in private hallers through town he well our next steps um I guess this needs to be looked into a little bit more yeah um and discuss at our next meeting because um it's not nothing's ready to go to the board yet no um I am going to mention under uh new business just hey everybody you know go to the dpw's website and you'll see the report the summary yeah um so that people at least know um but I do think we have a lot of a lot of things that we can review and um figure out what needs to be tweaked and how we go about going forward with any tweaks because town meeting might be you know needed in the case of the Enterprise fund um if if it looks like that maybe that's not working for us we have to go to town meeting to say hey we want to get rid of that or whatever so um but this gives us a great groundwork agreed what I I think Madam chair what we should do um for the next meeting is Dan Barbara and I and of course anybody else not excluding but we take a a further look been taking the notes uh on some of the issues that were brought up today and we have a sort of an update on that at the next meeting and yeah I think at some point we'll want the committee will want to make a presentation recommendation to the select board um on any potential you know recommendations and so forth but I think we can drill down on a few of these um issues to get some more information for the committee for the next meeting yeah yeah so for the next meeting um does anybody want to meet in June or do you think that you won't necessarily have let's say I'm just pulling up the c i because it's at the end of the month I mean or it may be sometime in July and what do you think yeah it's probably better to give us some time go to July yeah because she probably doing like end of year stuff too so okay so you want to do July okay um Tuesday the 9th I'm just throwing it out there was yeah that that's open I'm open I'm on vacation oh well do that Dan um we could do it um does anybody want to do it on the 16th at four o'clock that's open too yeah or you do on the 23rd I just I tend to pick Tuesdays yeah we usually do yeah I mean the 16th is is a select board meeting not that that impacts this committee but it might impact people who are at this committee if they're presenting something to the board board so do you want to do it on a off select board well we'll have our July schedule which I'm thinking well I'm thinking it'll be July 16th you want to do the 23rd yeah I like the 23rd yeah okay let's do the 23rd and that should give everyone a chance to uh yeah okay all right is that's scheduled any other questions for me before I bail out I don't think so we'll be in touch through Dan and I know you're gonna send him that link so we appreciate everything thank you very much a great report great summary thank you all right anybody else on the committee have anything oh okay thank you think we're good good okay I'll second it because I heard him all those in favor of a journey I I I that's the one time you hear everybody yeah yeah yeah so all right good night everyone