City Council - Regular Meeting

Yes, I heard you have, like, people standing in the hallway.

It's like fire department. Yes. But Janice did say that the one lady that came that got her app set up, got the kiosk, went away saying, I don't think this is an issue. She said, Janice said that definitely there were other stuff.

Yeah, well, she learned that she could use her handicap placards and not have to pay the family and not have to be in the vehicle either.

Oh, there it was. Yeah, Janice didn't mention that. She was all excited about that.

It was funny. They said something like, half an hour with her. She's going to grab everything and she finds out she don't even need it.

All right. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's one way. Oh, I am going to WebEx you in case we need a copy of your ordinance. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Hello.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, you can sit up here. Yeah, it'll be nice. Yeah.

Yeah, very good. Yeah. Good morning, Brandon, Scott, Chris.

um um It's going past. Yeah, I mean, my grandpa always said that.

The years are like the sheets on a roll. It's going to be very close. It's going to come off. Yeah, that's true. When I went to, when I was in middle school, four years, it was, oh, and it seemed like, well, you're thinking, you need to get through four years. And it's, it's, uh.

Yeah, it really is. I don't think there are still a lot of work. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh yeah, and then we'll be. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think so. This is Andrew. OK. Yeah. Yeah, we're both on.

Yes. There we go.

Good morning, Andrew. Morning, everyone.

We'll look to get started in another minute or two. It looks like people are rolling in. With the majority of people looking like they're joining online, if you'd like to join the table, feel free to sit at the table if you'd like as well, if you're going to be writing or taking notes and stuff.

All are welcome. All right. Popular meeting today.

We'll see. With all the meetings we've had with trash, and now this is kind of related to trash with composting, I used to think sidewalks were the most interesting. Parking was a close second, but parking and trash and refuse are by far a couple of the the hottest topics that we have here. It's good to get the word out. I was at a League of Wisconsin Municipalities meeting yesterday with Councilmember Greger and a lot of our peer communities were talking about lack of involvement of the community in different issues where they have meetings and nobody shows up. And one person from a neighboring community to the east of us, they traditionally have one person that comes to every council meeting and that's about it. And that person part of the hearing. So there are other communities that were asking if they could trade at times because they do have a few issues that pop up. All right, well, we'll get started. Thank you, everybody, for attending online and in person. I'll go around. I kind of set what we were hoping to accomplish with the meeting today and do some quick... Oh, I don't... Do some quick introductions if you're not here from the public, if you're here with the industry or the city staff, introduce yourselves. And then otherwise, if you're a member of the public attending, don't worry about introducing yourselves. We have a couple of council members that are sponsoring an ordinance change to help bring composting in Eau Claire up to modern standards. We haven't really changed anything with our trash or composting codes for a number of years. So council members Worthman and Miller and council member Worthman is online. We have a proposed compost ordinance that has been, they've been working on and legal has been reviewing. It's been to our sustainability advisory committee. It's starting to go through some of the public process. It's scheduled to go to the city council for full consideration. As soon as we feel it's ready, this meeting is one of those steps to make sure that we feel that it's ready and there's enough feedback for that, but likely it will be going towards the end of July, early August, or all in August. I think that it will be before Council. When it goes to City Council, there's a two-step process for our ordinances. The first set of meetings are what's called the first reading, and it's read at the end of our Tuesday meeting, but you have an opportunity to comment on it in our public comment period the Monday night before. So that would be the first publicly available comment period in the official legislative process for that. But then two weeks later, there'll be two more meetings and on Monday, there'll be a officially noticed public hearing and you'll be able to speak publicly at the public hearing on Monday and then the city council will consider it for a post the following Tuesday. So that'll be coming up in the near future. This meeting is typically a meeting that we've had through the process between haulers, health departments and city staff as we're looking at trash and compost hasn't been publicly noticed before, but since we're starting to get close to the vote, I wanted to be able to include the City Council, all of the City Council members to be able to hear what the discussion is in advance of them considering the vote on it. So it's publicly noticed, so it is a public meeting, but it isn't technically an official public hearing for that. So what I'm hoping for the meeting to accomplish today is Council Member Werthmann to speak on the composting ordinance that they will be introducing, what they're attempting to accomplish with it, some of the key points that the ordinance contains, and then allow for comments, sometimes concerns, discussion, questions from industry groups, if there's stuff that just hasn't been thought of, or we're looking to get feedback of potential issues that could be solved now instead of being solved at the 11th hour when it's before the City Council. If we have time, we would like to have allow for some moderate amount of questions or comments by residents and members that are here, and then I'll try to wrap the meeting up. The meeting is being recorded, so it will be available posted on the website if anybody would like to watch the meeting afterwards. And above all else, I really stress a And we've had this in all of our meetings, a meeting of civility, professionalism, politeness. Everybody speaks one at a time. We're all in this together, even if we disagree. So we're in an education and trying to make things better. mindset instead of an adversarial one with this. So with that, I'll start at least in the physical room with quick introductions, and then we can go online. People raise your hand with their part of the industry through that. I'm Dave Sloberg. I'm the city manager for the city of Eau Claire.

Sure. My name is Brandon. I work for neighborhood services, you know, code enforcement, and I'm also project manager of the trash studies. And my name is Blake Herbison.

I'm the Assistant City Attorney.

Hi, I'm Casey Muller. I'm the Partners and Expert Dispensable.

Sarah Figueroa. I'm the Vice-Minister.

I'm the City Counsel, District 2. I'm Ruth Hollinger. I'm the Finney's Dispensable and Attorney for the City.

I'm the Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce.

I'm the Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce.

I'm Nicole Berry. I'm the Civil Health Department.

And if everybody else is our residents, we'll switch to online. And Julie, I don't know if we'll start with Julie?

Yes, Julie Ketchum, WM Waste Management. I'm the Area Director of Government Affairs covering the six-state area.

Okay, Tess Morgan.

I am Tess Morgan. I'm the Media and Communication Specialist for the City.

Scott Stensel? Yeah, Scott Stensel from WM.

Chris Sattler. I'm Chris Sattler.

I'm with Arter's Expert Disposal. I'm the general manager for our Eau Claire hauling operation.

I think that's JC. Okay, Earthbound. JC?

Hi, this is Jamie Pappas. I'm with Earthbound Environmental Solutions.

And Jason? Yes, Jason.

Yeah, Jason Jones with John's law office. I am the chapter lobbyists for Wisconsin chapter.

Thank you. Everyone with the point 1.

Hey, associate editor here with volume 1 as you said, Dave. Great to be here.

I'm not sure who and I is nobody. Okay. Um, Andrew.

Everyone Andrew workman city council, one of the authors of the. Compost ordinance.

Diana.

Diana sepals with WM.

Uh, Katie white, uh. With WM help on the lobbying side of things.

Micah Hamstra, I'm in-house legal counsel for WM.

Okay, we have a good showing for WM. Antwi.

Hi, this is Antwi from WEAU.

President Greger.

I'm Jeremy Greger, Eau Claire City Council President.

Oh, okay. John Culbertson.

Yeah. Hi, everybody. John Culbertson with MSW Consultants. We are the management consultant that is working with the city on trash study. Happy to be here to observe.

Thanks, John. G Hub?

Greg Hubbard. Sorry. Waste management.

Okay. Mike?

Ah, this is Mike Stege from GFL.

Okay, Avery.

Hi, this is Avery. I'm just a community member wanting to learn more.

Okay, alright, thank you. And then David. Hello, David Pelletier, President of Pelletier Waste Systems.

Okay. Thank you for joining us.

Wisconsin NWA, thanks.

All right, Council Member Werthmann, I think we'll turn the floor over to you.

Thanks, Dave. Thanks everyone so much for joining. I thank all the different folks here from the waste hauling industry. And I think first and foremost, just to share my appreciation for continuing this conversation that has already been happening over Pretty intensely over the past year, if not more as we, as a city council had been thinking about how to improve. A trash system in our city and how it delivers for residents. And so this comes out of the compost ordinance that we've been discussing has a history that I will keep brief, but. Starts. probably about a decade ago in conversation. It has been a part of the sustainability advisory committee of our city's work plan, probably about a decade long now on their agendas. In the past couple of years, we've started as city council to identify ways we would like to think about cash hauling and how to improve it and compost has been a central part of pretty much every discussion that we've had at city council then on top of that we have built this idea of composting into our sustainability plan the the um renewable energy action plan of 2018 into our comprehensive plan as a city numerous other plans and then For this specific ordinance, the conversation started out in fall, winter of 2025 and has continued progressively until this point. I think we've had four or five publicly noticed meetings at the Sustainability Advisory Committee as we've begun to hash out. And I think the way I'd like to frame this is the fact we right now send roughly By DNR, Wisconsin DNR estimates, roughly 20 to 25% of ash that ends up in the landfill is organics. That is something we'd like to work on avoiding. I think one of the biggest pieces of that is because we've seen regularly here um the more that goes in our landfill the more often we have to expand it and the entire process of expansion is costly it's costly on residents it's costly on on haulers and so we're trying to think about what are the different ways that we can divert organics from the waste stream so this composting ordinance comes out of out of that field um it does a number of primary things. One is it sets up standards for different sized composts to happen in our city. Everything from backyard composting to medium scale community composting that you might see at a church or community garden. A larger scale that you could imagine at maybe a university or other institution. And then in the past couple weeks we've added a tier, what we call tier four, which is essentially 50 cubic yards and larger. upon request and recognition that larger compost piles likely to be created over the coming years and we wanna give space for that. It then also looks at the prospect how to include composting at our city brush slate at some point in the future with all of the safety and regulations in place to make that happen. And then lastly, it expands an option for residents to have composting with whichever waste hauling company that that they are that they choose um so you know when i think of this it's i think it's important to point out that we kind of saw three in in looking at how to bring or how to address the composting issue so one path was what we've had for the last 15-20 years which is the city staying or the city council and the city staying hands-off and seeing if industry would do composting on their own and I would say over 15 years there's been some success in Earthbound having brought that into their model. But, you know, that's less probably less than 10% of overall household. So, so, you know, uptake has not been. Incredibly strong, but, you know, it's not nothing either. So, I think from a policy point, it's. The 1st option is probably that we do nothing as a city council. On the far other end of the spectrum is to look at what other communities across Wisconsin and across Minnesota. I'm actually in Minneapolis right now. What other communities have started to do, which is to mandate. Compost as part of. Average for household, so everyone who gets their compost. I'm sorry that that happened. Recycling also has the option of compost. And it's mandated. We decided to. take a more middle track, and that is to look at this as an option that people can opt into with their hauler, not that they're mandated to. And the reason we thought that is a better track is because it takes a smaller bite of this apple. It allows a phase-in period. It selects people who are interested in doing it versus mandating that. everyone do it. We think there's going to be a better product if people are selecting to go in that direction. And so we sort of chose that middle route. And so after a good 15 years of seeing where the marketplace was going, discussions after many, many plans and meetings, we've chosen a pretty reasonable middle ground. And we wanted to have this meeting to kind of build on to build on what is in the ordinance and some of the finer points of it. I think the last thing I'd like to do before handing it over is to recognize the incredible work. And I actually had a chance to look at GFL and waste management record on composting, which is actually pretty incredible. not only across the Midwest, but across the nation. Both companies, which are major haulers, the largest haulers in Eau Claire, have already broken serious ground on thinking about composting services for residents and really lean into composting. is a key feature of something that they provide. And so that gives me hope that we're not trying anything new. And by us taking this middle ground, we're trying to meet what is already in the missions of These larger institutions that that that do trash and and and recycling for our community. So that's all I have for now. Happy to answer questions or to hand it back over, but I wanted to provide just a little bit of a text of all of the history that got us to this point and appreciate. This conversation to hear more from from all of us as we go forward.

Thank you, Councilmember Rickman. Jason, do you want to start with any questions you have or any input you have from an industry standpoint? Assuming you're kind of speaking for them to start with.

Yeah, that's correct. Just want to clarify, I don't have any questions for the councilman at this time. I don't know if the councilman Miller was going to speak. Otherwise, I will provide comments on behalf of the chapter, if that's what you'd like me to do. Yes. All right. Very good. So, as mentioned, my name is Jason Johns. I am the Wisconsin chapter lobbyist for the National Waste and Recycling Association. We do appreciate the opportunity to provide these comments on behalf of the members of the chapter regarding this proposed ordinance and the comprehensive organics management and composting. Bottom line up front is, you know, we want organics diverted from landfills as much as Everyone here does, and we share the same desire to lower emissions and encourage broad participation by the Eau Claire community. However, this proposal is not the way to get there. With that said, sharing the same goal is a great place to start and finding the right path forward, and we hope to be able to do so with the Council and not against it. To do so, though, it's important to share our concerns today so that you have the perspective of the haulers who will be responsible for assuring a successful organics management and composting program is rightfully and well implemented. We didn't have the opportunity to do so in front of the Sustainable Advisory Committee, and we've not been able to participate in necessary formal analyses, which we normally would as conducted by municipalities when moving forward with ordinances such as this. But my goal today is to provide you with this information so that the end outcome is the best and most economically sound one for the residents and businesses of Eau Claire. So I'm gonna just kind of go through some top item concerns we have, and if you'll allow me to do that. This is a mandate, and it could potentially double or even triple the collection costs for the residents and businesses of Eau Claire. The ordinance forces haulers to provide organics collection to all residents and businesses, and forces all residents and businesses to pay for the service whether they use it or not. No opt-out, no choice. All residents will pay for a cart, whether they have a backyard compost bin or self-haul to a compost site. And regardless of whether they ever put a single organic item in their cart, they will pay for that cart. Requiring separate organics collection for each customer will mean they will need an additional cart, another truck to empty the cart, another route and driver for the additional truck, another set of equipment at collection sites to accept the organics, and another back office admin to oversee the transfer from the collection site to a processing facility. The same everything that is necessary for garbage and recyclable collection. This would require rate averaging rules. The proposed ordinance prohibits us from charging separately for organics and must spread the cost of collection and processing across every customer. even those who never utilize the service. This would effectively result in rate setting for private companies that aren't utilities. Without the participatory process, actual rate regulation comes with, and without assurance, we will recover our costs. If this issue is not addressed, legal implications will arise. State preemption. Wisconsin deliberately does not regulate private waste haulers like it does utilities. This is done to allow pricing to be dictated by the market. We encourage the city's legal counsel to review this issue in depth, as dictating our internal cost allocation pricing may very well go beyond what the city's licensing power allows. This, too, will likely have legal implications. Sorting and source separations. The proposed ordinance places responsibility on the hauler to assure the purity of the organic stream. However, it is the customer who decides what goes in the bin. The hauler has no control over this. Intamination is unavoidable in curbside collection, yet the proposed ordinance, excuse me, provides no right to reject or tag a bad container, no tolerance level, and no safe harbor for the haulers. And please do understand, industry will not put our employees at risk by asking them to manually sort through a cart at the curb, looking for items that should not be there. Clear education to residents and businesses will need to be developed by the city, and it will need to pursue diligent follow-up and, when necessary, specific enforcement measures. Infrastructure gaps. The proposed ordinance requires haulers to collect the entire broad spectrum of organics, including, without limitation, meat, fish, and dairy. Organics that require specialized facilities for proper disposal. Although Earthbound Environmental Solutions does operate a specialized facility in the area, they have informed me that they would need adequate lead time provided to accept, they would need adequate lead time provided in order to accept the exponential increase in collection of organics. Lead time to assure necessary staffing, acquire additional equipment, and time to get that equipment online. This all should be predetermined by the city through conducting a formal analysis prior to moving forward with this proposed ordinance. Discretionary approval standards. Schedules, container methods, service plans, notices. They all need city approval. Yet the proposed ordinance provides no criteria, no timelines, and no mechanism to appeal a denial. Our industry will be fearful to make the significant capital investment necessary to provide adequate organics collection services when these rules could change at any time for any reason at the city's sole discretion. Our members are private for-profit businesses, and this would not be a good business decision. If the choice between providing organics collection services under these circumstances, coupled with a high likelihood of not recovering the upfront costs of adding trucks, hiring more labor, expanding operations, meeting maintenance needs, versus ceasing operations in the city of Eau Claire, the choice will be clear for most, if not all haulers. Privacy and trade secret concerns. Enforcement of the proposed ordinance will require the city to collect customer names, addresses, and billing information. However, nothing in the proposed ordinance sets forth how this customer data will be protected. Customer lists are recognized as trade secrets, and Wisconsin's public record laws could potentially expose these lists. Before I could proceed, it is vitally necessary for the proposed ordinance to contain a data governance framework. As I know in the beginning of my comments, we share the same goals and want to be on the same team to successfully achieve them. So how do we proceed from here? Slow down. We respectfully request you withdraw the proposed ordinance from the City Council's July 14th agenda, or it is to receive its first reading. Do it right. As soon as schedules allow, schedule an informal working session with our members who provide services to the City of Eau Claire, or may do so in the future. Our members have real-world operational experience with residential and commercial organics. We are confident we can amply work together to develop an ordinance that meets and ideally exceeds the city's diversion and participation goals without a potential possibility of doubling and tripling the cost. And as important, an ordinance which resolves and or avoids the extensive list of concerns I set forth to you today. Thank you for the time to hear from me and provide the opportunity to be heard. My members and I stand ready to answer any questions you may have. I look forward to working with you to develop a truly impactful and successful comprehensive organics management and composting program for the City of Eau Claire.

Thank you. Thank you, Jason. For the, I don't know, Council Member Werthmann, did you have any questions at all of Jason? Otherwise, the next step, I would solicit some feedback and comments or questions from local industry and residents that are in attendance.

I think one question to get more clarity on is right now in Eau Claire, we have three or four different companies that provide provide waste service, waste management services to residents. Earthbound is only one within that group who currently provides composting services as well as the normal recycle. But their business model, and granted they're a small business, but their business model, their price to stay within the range of reasonably other while still providing that additional service. And so when you share that it would double or triple, you know, I'm just curious about that because right now in the marketplace, there's virtually no difference between different haulers, including one that already provides coverage.

Yeah, I can address that kind of in general. And the fact of the matter is you're adding an additional completely new collection service. And as I mentioned in my comments, your additional trucks to meet the demand, you have to hit that same route another time. You have to make sure you have another driver to cover that route or additional labor time of an existing driver for the additional route. You have to talk about the admin of it all, the equipment, the time to lead up, to invest in the proper way to collect this and to get it done. So that's where, when you look at that from a cost perspective, and we don't have an exact number, right? Not knowing the exact numbers in Eau Claire. So I don't want to say that's an exact, but we are confident in saying that it possibly could be double or triple the cost. It's certainly, if nothing else, it will be a significant increase to the cost for customers in Claret.

Great. Thank you for that. Any of the local attendees here from the local industry have any comments or anything they would like to say before opening up to residents? Anybody else?

Yeah.

Hi, I'm and I've been doing the garbage thing here in Eau Claire for quite some time. I originally started and then I worked with GFL for a brief moment and then out of rage and spite started . It's very hard to run a garbage company and have an open market and Eau Claire is rare in that case. it's a gem in this instance. You have a free market, you have an open market. Small little people, little nobodies like me can start a business and pick up your trash and do it within reason. And it is incredibly hard, and I'm a single mother, so I have a son and decided to prioritize my family over growing and scaling, because there are some things that matter and it's here at home. And with The outlook of, okay, I want to champion the local trash, obviously. And everybody here, all these haulers are my friends, which is rare too. Sarah, Sean, I don't know where he is, Peggy, Sadler, everybody, we all get along, which is a rare thing. And I think what is happening is in this trash conversation with the composting, the city does have a pretty big deficit and we do have some pretty big other problems that I feel are a priority over What's in the, I mean, not necessarily more than anything, but like what's in the landfill and taking care of that. And you're right, 25% of food ends up in the landfill and 20% of it is just plastic.

So are we going to ban plastic?

Are we going to do that? And then there's like 5% of it that ends up being the furniture. And we've had some really great conversations about trying to keep bulk items out of the landfills and these kinds of things. But the point is the free market is here. The open market is here and capital looping isn't bad if you keep it local. Once you determine that one big person can do it better than everybody else, you are eliminating smaller players from the game. You're eliminating us from being able to gain customers because we are good at it. And you're kind of saying, well, you have to do this because the city is doing this ordinance, everybody needs to pay for it. And it doesn't seem, it seems like there's a lot of people that already do it. We already have a garbage company here that does composting wonderfully. Their Facebook page is insane. EarthBound is phenomenal. They work with all kinds of people and we love them. People call us at Harvest and they want to compost, we send them to Harvest, or I'm sorry, we send them to EarthBound happily. There are things that they can do that we can't, and we all have a really good working relationship in that aspect. And if this was a water company, I feel like I'd be doing the same thing. Like, why you just gotta have one water company. Why do you got one tire company? You only got one place to get your cheeseburgers and one place to get your haircut. And I know these trucks are big and it's a big deal, but sometimes these gold bars are heavy. We're getting garbage off the curb. We're keeping critters and rodents and all these, you know, we're doing a gross job and 30 bucks a month isn't that much really, is it? Would you pay me $7? I have to pay one of you seven bucks a week to come and get all my garbage off my curb and then I don't have to think about it again? It's not an easy job, but it is a special thing. We all kind of get in our flow. We all know how the game works. When you introduce something like organics and composting to some of these players, I don't know who all has inside the earthbound because the composting truck's getting around ready to go. We don't, um, it is a huge expense and I've talked to the city council and asked members privately about how.

What one door will have to scale.

Okay. Um, we've spoken in the past about kind of what happens when. you eliminate the choice because the majority of the issues that the city council originally had were primarily because certain haulers, you know, there was a big change, big shake up in the market. There were certain haulers and the main complaint then was my garbage is getting picked up, something on the curb, something, whatever, all this stuff is happening. But when you kind of force this ordinance or it sounds like a great idea, but when you're mandating this and saying you have to do this, There are only going to be a few people left who can actually do that. And as I'm here with partners now, because I'm very, you know, like they came in and they saved my little tail with trash on trucks. But if it was me and trash on trucks, this would put me out of business. I would have to say, sorry, residential customers. I can't afford to buy these composting bins. I don't compost. I don't know how much they are, but a garbage can is about 57 bucks a piece. And there's a lot of homes in this city. And you can't just drive. Anybody who runs with a garbage company knows that all these trucks do is break down. That is it. So that truck will break down. You're going to send another truck out. And then what happens if we have another conversation in a year with the city and now everybody wants to talk about the single hauler again, but we all just went and bought composting trucks. What do we do with that? And it feels like I was certainly surprised to hear that Composting has been a big issue over the last year. I'm surprised to hear it's been a hot topic since 2025. Because I have my nose deep in the trash, unfortunately. And I haven't heard anything about it. I have no neighbors that whine about composting. I don't. And no offense to anybody whining. I'm the biggest whiner you'll ever meet. But I don't have a lot. People are trying to keep their lights on. People are getting off work and they're hopping in a Uber to vote. make more money so they can have a life and do things. And I sincerely appreciate that we have someone like Earthbound around that happily does this stuff that some of these bigger haulers, like we are really good at streamlining, getting your trash and your recycling picked up. And I don't want to like say anybody's better than the other, but Earthbound's got the organics. They've got it. It's an open market. They have wonderful reviews. They're killing it. And kind of, I'm curious where the conversation continues to keep getting regurgitated about the trash when really we have now four friendly haulers in town that will kind of bend over backwards for the whole community. We work here, we live here. We'll see you in, most of us do, but we'll see you in church for the bar, for the park. or somewhere, but, you know, like, Eau Claire is a special market, and I just really hope the community understands that while we have this free and open market here, you have, that's your choice, that's your power, you get to choose, and when you don't have that, that is just being pushed up to a line, what's next? Because we keep slowly getting pushed to, okay, well, we're going to talk about single hauler, we're going to talk about this, And we keep getting scooted up to this line. Eventually, we're going to be standing at the line, but we don't have anywhere to back up. And we're going to be forced to do things that we can't do and pull residential parts off the street and only offer commercial services or however anybody needs to shape this out. There's a lot more thought than winter of 2025 till now. And I don't know if there's a lot of other haulers in here that can speak to an ongoing compost conversation that we weren't privy to. But that's kind of right. I get a little fired up, so I'm sorry about that. But honestly, I just want everybody to have a choice. You don't have to choose me. You can choose whoever you want to choose. Your brother might be working for the competitor or my arch nemesis or something like that. But they're getting paid, and they're getting benefits, and they can take care of their family. When you eliminate that choice, whether you realize it or not, you are eliminating a job, eliminating somebody's ability to feed their family. Is that so?

Thank you, JC. Anybody else want to chime in for this reading? Any residents that are active in our Sustainability Advisory Committee, just anybody in generally, welcome any comments. Some members also if they have additional comments.

Sure, yeah. I have heard nothing from anyone about Trombose.

I don't know where it's coming from.

I'm aware that EarthBound offers it. If I want it, I will call them. I don't want it. I don't want the city involved in this leave the market alone, let people pick what they want. I've been involved in other conversations and been to other meetings and heard people complain about the number of trucks driving around Eau Claire, the environmental impact of said trucks, the damage to the roads. Where are those people now? We're gonna add more trucks, we're gonna add more this, we're gonna add more that. Is there any thought to the hypothetical environmental damage that will come from that? Does it outweigh the composting impact? I don't see an answer to that. I don't even see anybody discussing that. At the most, I think the best we should do here is maybe increase the education a little bit. Let folks know that there is an option to do this. There is another service that provides, or another company that provides that service. Let us choose. Let us do our thing. Let these companies do their thing. Stay out of their way. Leave them alone. Leave us alone. I guess that's all I got. Thank you for your time.

Yeah. Thank you, Scott. Yes, sir.

I'm Ralph Edwards. I'm a private citizen and I'm concerned about the environmental impact of garbage in the Eau Claire area. I've looked at the landfill here in Eau Claire. My daughter runs the landfill in Dane County, so I have some knowledge. In Dane County, they harvest the venting and settle that thing, which we do not do here. And that's the value of having private commerce out of the game. Everybody says capitalism, capitalism, capitalism. but the landfill in the main county is owned by the county, so they're able to make an educated choice of what's best for the environment, which is to require composting, one hauler, harvest the methane, sell the methane. That's what it is if you have a one hauler and you have a government organization for the right thing. When you have private industry, all their motivated by is profit, profit, profit, profit, profit, profit, and the environment. but that's all they care about is profit. And so I'm much in favor of having one hauler. I'm also in favor of Mr. Worthen's ordinance requiring composting. And even though I personally do not compost yet, and I should, I know that I should, but I do not. But if composting was required by my hauler, I would begin composting. So that would be a positive impact on the environment. And that money, for the compost and should be spread out through the entire community, because we're all contributing organic garbage to the landfill. So we're all contributing organic garbage to the landfill, which will increase the cost of replacing the landfill, then we should all contribute the cost of reducing that by paying for compost.

Thank you, Ralph. And I just want to point out the ordinance that is being introduced by Council Member Werthmann Miller doesn't address whether we're a single hauler or multiple haulers in the city on the trash side. So that'll be, there is a study that's ongoing, a consultant that the city has entertained is actually listening in on this call right now. And we'll incorporate some of the comments here made in their studies that will be forthcoming in August. And then the ordinance also wouldn't require you It's my understanding wouldn't require you to participate in composting. It would just require the haulers to give you that option. I just wanted to clarify those two things.

And I would also respond to that, you know, paying for a study that we already know what the result is seems like a waste of city resources. We already know that having multiple haulers It's just obvious that having more call has been increased the environment advantage. I don't understand you telling me that.

Yeah, and the discussion around that setting, we had a different meeting than this one, but thank you for your comments. Anybody else like to participate? Yes.

Hi, I'm Kathy Campbell. I live within a half mile of the landfill, so I feel the impact of the landfill daily. And that is a big reason that urged me to get more involved and to learn more about options and the environmental impact. And I realize those are just beliefs and ideas, and they have to be grounded in fact. We need to do something differently for people like myself and my neighbors within a mile, and probably that mile will expand. I know people further than a mile are very much impacted by that landfill. And I know that within probably three years, we'll be here talking about an expansion of the landfill. It doesn't end. Waste has been a problem since humans came to this earth, or even creatures. I mean, it is a problem. And we're glad that we have the services to deal with it. Most people want to side out in line. They don't want to think about the garbage, and we're glad that somebody thinks about it, earns money from it, and removes it. But it's also a waste when it goes to the landfill. That's another waste. Even if it's composted, excuse me, even if all of this goes to the landfill, and the landfill does the composting, it would simply be used then, our food waste, organic waste would be used for cover. That's not replenishing the earth. That's not completing the cycle. That would be of greater benefit to us. To respond to something this gentleman said about, and also the haulers. I see the load on the hauler. I also understand that a more balanced approach would be requiring enough residents. I realize that would be, hard on the residents to do. It would take a process. It would take much, much education and information. We need to look at this from a really comprehensive viewpoint, and that means involving the householders. It means involving the legislative people that are more knowledgeable nationwide. It means involving experts. It means involving our city staff who are experts in waste disposal, wastewater treatment. It's a huge undertaking. I'm glad that Dave has this in mind as he goes through this process. I thank Andrew and John for being involved in trying to make a start. But it takes a community to create this problem and it's going to take the community to change it. And it's going to take time. And it would take time. We can't do this overnight. I know in Woodbury where my sister lived, one truck comes and picks up all the garbage. It's not three trucks or two trucks. It's not one for recycling and one for compost and one for other landfill waste. They figured out a system. It would be costly and it would take time to implement, but it's time to start. And I guess I really, I was encouraged when I talked to people at the waste treatment plant about ways that we could do this instead of it and replenishing the earth through anaerobic digestion and land spreading. There are techniques, there are ways, but it's going to take people and time to do that. And I recognize that and respect it. And I'm glad that you're seeing that also as we go through this process. Yeah, there's a lot of education going to be needed. And yes, some might just jump right on board. But studies have found that the only way, the best way to do this, to be effective in this, is for everyone to be a partner, callers and residents, not just callers, to make it financially feasible and also accepted and utilize a system. Thank you.

Thank you, Kathy.

Can I just echo off of that and tell everyone, we are embracing the compost. We want to keep moving forward with that here. Like Jason said, though, we can just slow this down a little bit. I think to her point, too, the more we can communicate collectively and get all sides heard, we can do this effectively and do it very well for the city of Eau Claire. Right now, we have an option with EarthBound. EarthBound is doing a fantastic job, and they'll continue to do that. So people that want it right now have that lip. If we can continue just to keep talking through this as a whole community, how we can best implement this, it'll be done well and done right the first time instead of rushing into it and then finding out we missed some things, we made some mistakes, and then it gets really bumpy along the road. So that's our take. Let's do it. Let's do it together, but a little bit slower than we're moving at this point right now.

Sir? Anybody else?

Anybody online, if you would like to comment online, if you want to raise your hand, give an opportunity. I'll wrap the meeting up. Eight minutes early. Usually trash meetings and councils don't end early, but I think, oh, yes.

Yeah, I just want to do a, to address a couple things that deal would would be maybe it would be helpful to have a little more context one of those is that i think it's important that people understand that this ordinance would not it doesn't it doesn't require a certain kind of delivery like say that you know um companies could provide the service in-house as they may in other communities already, but they could also contract hosting service that is with a different company. So that's one option. And there's probably other options as well. The other piece of this is I'm really encouraged to hear from different representatives of the industry that they've been to want to work on how to get there. I think one of the things that's frustrating for me is I think I sent my first email to city staff about composting in 2012 and asked about how do we get this going. And then there have been so many different touch points over Those 14 years from our comprehensive plan and sustainability plan and our Sustainability Action Committee and our City Council having multiple work sessions on trash where this has come up has been a part of those discussions and our Sustainability Action Plan. I honestly I'm hard pressed to think of. This much background and foundation built. The then we have on on. composting uh in terms of in terms of of wanting to orient policy around a very long time horizon we we usually act much faster in local government than we are on this so i think the idea that this is fast moving and that people didn't know like yeah i think that that may be possible that some folks didn't know but I can send you multiple meeting links that share composting discussions that were publicly noticed and many of them have industry folks in those meetings as well. So I just want to be clear that this isn't completely coming out of left field. I think I think lastly is, you know. We want to do this right and so. one of the things is that the city council is going to be looking at this trash i don't think it's predetermined at all what direction the council is going to go in and you know it could look a lot of different ways i think there's a very high likelihood that it looks similar to how it does right now are but the the idea of having compost be a part of the service regardless of what it looks like is something that we think is supported not only by the council, but by the community. And we've received a lot of input over the years for people saying, hey, it'd be nice if along with fashion recycling, composting was a part of the service, however that looks. We've received so many comments that people would like that additional option. And so we're knowing that that would be something we would like as a city council, and we've talked about many times, that it's something residents have talked to us about um we felt that there's enough there's enough support that this should be a part of whatever discussion happens on the larger trash decision that the council is going to be making over the next few months so that's i think just a little bit of the background why you know why this is a part of it and but i think ultimately you know your we want to do this right and so that's where i am uh incredibly thankful you all have have continued to kind of share your perspective and your voices and and you know i think this conversation will continue and we did i want to make sure you know that we did postpone the ordinance introduction so it will not be on the meeting agenda for next week We wanted to be sure to, at the very least, have this meeting and gather input and make final tweaks to the language if needed. And so Councilmember Miller and I requested that we hold off on introduction. So that's all I have. I just want to thank you all again for being a positive part of an ongoing 14-year discussion about how do we bring compost to a greater lot of our communities.

Thank you, Council Member Workman.

I have a comment. Sure. We've been talking about this for 14 years, and the gentleman isn't quite sure how many track providers we have out there. Three or four? I don't need an answer. Just point it out. And we don't have a comprehensive plan to do this after 14 years. We're just now Trying to figure it out after 14 years.

14 years, I wouldn't I wouldn't remind you to have a nice day.

Thank you all for your time to be respectful.

So.

Thank you for being respectful.

All right, so we'll wrap this up.

I had 1 last comment if I may. Yeah, Jason Johns again, if I may. Yes. Okay, thank you. First, Councilman Werthmann, thank you. I wasn't aware that you and Councilman Miller had decided to postpone so that we can continue to have this discussion. So thank you for that. I truly, truly appreciate that. I did just have a question for you then on the process that the Council is looking at now as to what collection may or may not look like in the future. whether or not it remain open market or go to RFP and whether it stays open market RFP, if organics will be included in either of those options, depending on which way that goes. If that's the case, and this is genuinely a sincere question, then why have this discussion now and propose this ordinance on the mandate if it very well could become a moot point based on where the council goes with this bigger question of what's trash and recyclable and or organics collection going to look like in the future?

Oh, that's a great question. And if I could take the answer on that is when we started the conversation about trash, I think it was in the summer of 24, the beginnings of the pandemic, the trash study. There was a number of work sessions and in all of those composting was a key item. There was a number of other things like we wanted to allow people to go to two-week pickup if that was an option or we wanted to allow companies to provide a two-week pickup instead of what our ordinance had before which was a weekly pickup. There were certain were certain items that we had kind of agreed on that were important some bigger questions that we were clear on council member miller and i had started working on this over the winter on this ordinance and we we we had the sense that there's support among the council regardless of the outcome their support on the council who want to have composting if If our trash system goes to a single hauler or stays the way it is or goes to districts or is a city operated or a city contracted or whatever it is, we still want to have compost. And so knowing that, it made sense to us to essentially bring that piece into this. And if minor tweaks needed to be made, through the ordinance in the long run, we would we would obviously do that if there was a change. But the fact of the matter is, is that we would like composting to be a part of whatever, you know, whatever the final outcome is. And we wanted to provide enough time for it to get off the ground. That's part of the reason that, you know, I've wanted to move this quicker is at the very least a half year to implementation. would provide more time. If we wait until after the trash study and make a decision, then we're talking August, September for a new contract year 27, you know, January 1st, 27. And I think the other option would be that we wait until January 1st of 28. And, you know, that's, I guess that's another thought is we would, you know, make a longer lead time on adding composting. But, you know, at a certain point, for many, many years are starting to pass since we even started this conversation. We just want to keep it moving. And so that's why we're having this conversation now. And the timing is what it is. There's always another year. There's always another reason not to do it, but we want to do it. And so we want to bring forward something that we can actually get done.

Yeah. And I don't disagree with that. You know, with the language here in this proposed ordinance, things that happened in the past, not sure what input there was from members on the ground there or other haulers on the ground. I can say from an overall chapter perspective, this is the first kind of we've seen the language. And so really our first chance to provide the input. And that's where, again, appreciate you slowing this down just a little bit and maybe looking at, having this discussion as part of the bigger what's the next step and working into that, which, of course, we'd be happy to involve in. So either way, the mandate, we really want to stress one thing today, too, is it really should be an opt-in. I just want to leave you with that because of the fact, again, the cost. If we have to plan for the potential that every resident in the city, we have to then build up for that. infrastructure for that.

That's not what this ordinance does. This ordinance would treat composting like we have the bulk item pickup, which is that it's a service provided for many years, a service provided through every hauler that was not additionally charged to people. But meant that if they had a large item, they could put it out on the curb. Now we have gone away from. That large item picked up, but that was something that the city ran for many years. And we would see composting in a similar in a similar way that it's an opt in not not mandate on every resident.

Okay, that was that's good to know on the clarification there then double check that, but we understand it to be a mandate. If I could ask Council, and I'm not questioning it necessarily, it's just our understanding that it is a mandate. And if Council can maybe help clarify that for us.

It's a mandate for the haulers to provide the service, but it's not a mandate for the individual residents to take advantage of that service provided by the haulers.

Right. So our interpretation of that is if we are mandated to provide the service to all residents, We have to plan accordingly to provide the service to all residents. We don't know who's going to necessarily use it, right? And so we have to plan as if everybody's going to use it. And that's where you get the potential could be double, triple cost, which then we have to spread around every single resident and business. It's not just individual direct opt-in contract directly with the hauler. And arrange the pricing that way, and so we do see that as a definite. Mandate requiring service pickup for potentially everybody in the city.

I think I think we all understand each other on that point. Okay.

Okay. We do have an office service right now.

So, so I don't know if people online heard that, but the harder is. Yeah, if you want it.

Oh, no, I'm saying there is an opt in already existing. It's called. They're already here. Public already has the option to opt in if they want to use it.

And then I promise I'm done after this last question is just about next steps. Um, we talked about, you know, a councilman's pension postponement again. Thank you for that. And for the chance to continue to talk about this and genuinely. are ready to sit down talk about it provide the input and hopefully get to the great outcome but what would that might be do we have any dates um idea ballpark what we're looking at well i well i don't know yeah go ahead handle that but like i said typically the procedure that we have is it's a it's a two-week process for um once the ordinance is introduced

And then two weeks later, it's typically voted on. Whether or not it'll be introduced in two weeks from now at the July 28th meeting for the first reading, that'll be something that I'll have to touch base with the ordinance sponsors to see what their level of comfort is. That would be the soonest that it would be introduced would be on July 28th, and then it would be voted on by city council two weeks after that. Um, but yeah, I don't, I can't see for sure without sitting down and having a discussion with our council members. Are we, are we looking at going to 2 weeks? Are we looking at a month? Um, that'll be something that. We'll have to work on with them and our legal review. So.

All right, well, we respectfully request constant worth and then that. We perhaps go a little more than 2 weeks to allow us the opportunity to sit down and have that hopefully put a very productive beginning of discussions. So.

Do we have one last comment?

I don't have a comment, but can I ask a question? Sure. When the council members were drafted with ordinance, did they have a meeting with the current, with all of the current callers to discuss how the ordinance will be written? Is that something that happened or was that even possible? I don't understand the logistics of all this. I was asking my name to write this ordinance up. Did they was involved in that conversation?

That's a great question. So the way that we work this is through a committee of the council. And that was a sustainability advisory committee, which has had this on its work plan for the last decade. And as we worked through draft after draft, I think we had at least four a minimum four hearings of the committee. And at least I would say, well, for sure every hauler in this community the the main haulers work have attended different meetings of that committee to provide feedback some of it positive some of it concerned uh but over the half year that we've been drafting it so that's an excellent question and the answer is yes we've had multiple different opportunities to hash this out in a public setting with the local representatives at various meetings

in those meetings or public meetings also so residents are able to attend those as well as council members so but their callers were about actually we didn't actually reach out to us and say come check out this committee meeting it is i think that's what that is asking in full in full transparency we don't want to send individual invites out to all planning commissions, waterways and parks, the same ability. We rely on the public notice process for word to get over that.

And I do understand. I just, it probably would. And I get it, it's hard. You guys are dealing with a lot. I get it. Trust me. I just am on the, it would have been nice to actually reach out to the haulers that are servicing the city and go, let's be a part of this conversation instead of just relying on Public notices are great, but we all lead really busy lives. I feel it maybe would have been beneficial maybe to just reach out to the haulers and say, we are going to start discussing this. You are a hauler and a single player. Please attend these meetings if you can.

Well, it makes sense that that's what today is to have all the haulers engaged on the call today. So it's in advance of an ordinance meeting, as you saw. you know, plus we've got an industry, you know, national industry representation on here. So in a sense with the public process with sustainability advisory, that's an opportunity for public input as well as a more personalized meeting like we've had. These, we've had several of these with around the trash issue. They just haven't been publicly noticed because it was more of an industry and staff meeting without, you know, without a larger group. All right, well, I lost the eight minutes under for this, but I think it was a good last discussion. But I just want to thank everybody for their politeness and professionalism. I think my takeaway, if I were to talk to somebody that didn't attend that, I think everybody shared the same concern that we want to keep organics out of the landfills. We want to work together for the environment. We're all seeking the same goal. And how you get there and what the underlying role of government is probably where the details have to be worked out for this. And I would stress that when these are scheduled with city council, even though council member Werthmann and Miller are sponsoring the ordinance, we have 11 council members. They all have equal weights. They all have 9% of the pull with this. And I know they are very interested in hearing all sides and making and having as much information to make an educated decision. So and they do rely on feedback from the public. So I would encourage people, you know, in advance of those meetings, or public hearings to make sure that your your thoughts and questions and opinions are known for this because it does. It does matter. And I will stress that in public hearing meetings, the decorum is also very important, you know, so just Remember to be polite and share your opinions with counsel, even if you disagree with some of your other comments. Comments are always more productive if people are civil with this. And I will work with Tess Morgan to get this recapped. And I'm assuming that there's probably some rudimentary AI notes that can be generated from this. but we'll have whatever information we can have out of this meeting posted online. So people want to review it in advance of the council meetings. And then I would anticipate, even though it's a council member introduced, if possible, we can include a link to this in the introduction materials that go into the packets. So if people are reading the packets, they can click on a meeting and get additional backstory on that. So thank you everybody for sharing some time on a beautiful day.

Thank you.

Take care. Thank you.