City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, the Florida City Council Committee on Finance meeting will now be called to order at six o'clock on Tuesday, September 22nd. Madam Clerk, roll call please.

Councilor Skiddeen?

Here.

Camara? Here. Canuel?

Here.

Dion? Here. Hart?

Here.

Peckham?

Here.

Pereira? Here. Raposo? Here. President Ponce?

Here. Pursuant to the open meeting, Laura, any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium. Attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions of being made, whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible. First item on our agenda this evening is citizen's input. One person has signed up to speak. It is Tiberio Sardina of 985 Cherry Street regarding trash. You can come right down. You can sit right there and face the council for three minutes. Good evening.

As the president said, my name is Tiberio Sardina. I live at 985 Cherry Street. I've lived there since 1950, except for my time in the military. I've seen the city go from, I don't know, we are in pretty bad shape right now. We used to have an airport. We don't have any more. It's a bunch of Eustis, okay? We used to have the airport. We used to have an incinerator. We don't have that anymore. And I came before the city council for the incinerator to suggest that it'd be taken over by not taking over, but made a regional, uh, incinerator by Somerset Westport, uh, Swansea, the surrounding towns that could come in and upgrade the, you know, help upgrade the thing. So it can continue to operate.

Right.

Forget it. We don't have it, uh, an incinerator anymore. We used to have a dump. And I guess because of mismanagement, they figured they couldn't operate it. And they ended up selling it, I think it was like for about $250,000. And the individual that bought it kept it for a couple of years, ran it, ran it profitably, and then turned around and sold it to BFI for millions. Quite a big pretty good profit on that deal right now. We used to have We used to have our own trash trucks We don't have them anymore like the City Council decided it was too expensive to be trucking our stuff to I guess out to I don't know that what that town is where that has the incinerator, right? We don't have trucks anymore right now we're down to We're at the mercy of the companies that are hauling trash for us. And I think it was a 10-year deal that somebody signed. Now somebody's talking about, and I saw it on, I was channel surfing and came across an ordinance meeting. And they were talking about five and six family units that should be paying for trash. Now, why should five and six family units be singled out if everybody is producing the excess trash? If you can come up with a formula for five and six, you can come up with a formula for one, two, three, four, five, six, and whatever. Come up with a formula, then, if you have to do it that way. Come up with a formula for one family house is going to pay an extra little bit. A two-family house is going to pay a little bit more. This is sickening. Every time you turn around, the city's picking my pocket. I've had my car parked out in front of my house for too long. I get tagged, and I get towed. It cost me $250 to retrieve my car in the same hour that the thing was towed. Plus, I paid the fine. You leave a piece of something that's pretty good that you put on the sidewalk for somebody to pick up, a free item, right? The city picks it up, you get fined for that. You get fines for everything. I mean, you guys could come up with ingenious ways to pick my pocket. It's a little bit tiring, especially this thing with trash. My family, my house is a five family, and there are five individuals that live in the whole house. I've got two apartments that are empty. One by choice, and one that the tenant moved out. Even then, it was like seven people that were in this house. Right across the street with a two family house is 10 people in that bloody two family house. So how do you equate this? How can you justify singling out five and six family units? If everybody's producing trash, everybody should be paying for it. And that's my spiel. Thank you. I hope you take it into consideration.

Thank you.

And whoever the genius is that came up with a formula for five and six, one, two, three, four, five and six could fit in there too. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Sardino.

You can go right there now. Ryan Duarte, 372, I think that says, what does that say?

Brock Avenue.

Brock Avenue.

New Bedford.

In New Bedford. Is there a motion to waive the rules?

Motion to waive the rules.

Second. Motion to waive the rules has been made by Council of Peckham, seconded by Council of Raposo. Discussion on waiving the rules? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Councilman C4 opposed. The ayes have it.

three minutes hello again council I'm not sure if I'm speaking later today for the agenda that's been put on so I'm just gonna give a brief statement and I got to be careful again Because I do come with a peace offering. I don't want a problem. That's why I'm trying to have reason here, an opportunity to be meaningfully heard. We didn't get that opportunity. And we're going to go back and forth and say this citation and this ordinance, and we're going to go back and forth, and I want to so you can hear it. Because your own corporate counsel has made claims, factual assertions on the record, especially for the pending case going on. Not on the merits of the case. He's attacking my character. He's saying I'm evasive. I missed six hearings. I'm just playing games. Why would I waste my time? Why would I continuously try to reach out to you guys? Why would you agree with what Beta has done and attempted to do with the committee, which has changed the ordinances that cause grievances for those residents, and agreed that the citations were too ambiguous to even understand what the procedure was? And again, your counsel has made a factual assertion, honor for the record. The statute that governs your delegated authorities for the parking department is not chapter 90, subsection 28 and a half. He stated that, honor for the record. He not only misinformed us, he misinformed all of you. And that's the whole argument. You want us to follow the letter of the law, we do it and we try to find clarification. And when it comes to the point of clarifying, not only does he disregard it, he makes a statement on behalf of all of you in the city that the governing procedure you're purporting to is made up by AI. You bunch of kids are just trying to get out of tickets. Again, I beg you, just listen. Not just to what I say, not to what Mr. Fredette says. Look at the record. I implore you, please, just look at it. If you do, I promise you, you will see the flaws. It's not individual. I'm not claiming you guys did it. It's a couple agents, Stephanie McArthur and Mr. Fredette. It's a very easy fix. I don't want to go through litigation and then come here and say, I'm going to put all of you on notice. I'm going to get all your surety bonds and oaths. I have legal credits. I understand how the system works. I ran for mayor in 2023 in New Bedford. You can look up my credentials. I'm clean as a whistle. I'm not an evasive person. I can promise you that. My record shows it. Don't just take my word. I had thousands of people show up to vote for me because they believe I'm a civil rights activist. I advocate for stuff like this. For the ones that feel like they're getting bullied or not heard, I stand up, even if my voice shakes and I seem a little shaky. I'm Portuguese. I come from a household that taught me values and responsibilities. I understand responsibility is nothing more than the ability to respond.

15 seconds.

So I ask you, respond to this, just like I saw you guys do when you wanted to go and investigate Mrs. Furtado, your former chief of police. You guys have it in you to be honorable. I don't think you're bad. I really don't. It's just, I'll call it a miscommunication. So I ask and beg you, look over the record. Let's do this like gentlemen. Let's do good business in good faith. That's all I ask.

Thank you, Mr. Dewar. Just to be clear, I want to make sure you understand, you started your deliberations tonight by saying you haven't been heard. This council will continue to hear you. We will continue to get your communication. We'll continue to add it to the agenda as long as the proper process is followed. And you were heard because I believe the person that isn't here had a whole meeting before the ordinance committee. after sending me an email. So there's been plenty of opportunity for you to be heard.

And that's why I told Veda, I said, don't be discouraged because you guys did do what you were supposed to when she asked. When she went to the committee, you guys did change the ordinances. You even changed the language on the citations themselves, which is what she was asking.

So just, I just want to understand that the power between the executive branch and the legislative branch, you can continue to come to these meetings, continue to be respectful. We'll continue to do the same thing, but to be clear, you have been heard here. We'll continue to hear you as long as you continue to obviously respect the chamber and the council. That's all.

And just an earlier note from the clerk, there was a misunderstanding of how to properly formally enter my request.

Right. And the exhibit. And we've gone through that.

I had a phone call today with Ines and there was a miscommunication because she had told me just send it through an email through PDF because we can't accept a formal request with just an email.

Yeah, we have a process by adding it to the agenda.

I sent her the PDF before the deadline she requested, Thursday before 4 p.m. She time-stamped and printed it. Chelsea was the one that agreed and also messaged me saying, we've accepted it, we've time-stamped it. And from my understanding, I relied on that to be entered into today's proceeding. But then that changed. And they said, no, it's only the package you brought in on September 8th.

There's no proceeding happening today. It's an agenda item. But anything that the clerk's office did call me, I did advise them of the process by which getting your information to the agenda needs to be followed. I know she communicated that through email. So just follow that we'll continue to adhere to that policy.

And who can I speak out to just get clarification of what exactly it is and how when I'll be heard of, essentially what beta did for the committee to be having it will be up to the city council when we have your agenda item before us if we want to accept it and place it on file or refer it to a subcommittee. So today you'll judge. It's on our agenda. Yes.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next item on our agenda is a loan order of $10 million for their construction and improvement of city streets. It was referred on 9 8, 2026. Is there a need for discussion? Come on down. Mr. Aguiar, members of the administration. Mr. Aguiar, introduce yourself.

Good evening, Dan Aguiar, Director of Engineering and Planning for the City of Fall River.

Emily Arbicke, Director of Finance.

Ian O'Neill, Sousa City Administrator. Ian Shackney, Charger Collector.

Councilman C4, Council Vice President Dion.

Yes, I just have one question. So obviously we're all on board with doing more streets are better. The residents yell for more streets to be done. We're trying to accomplish that goal. I guess my only question is, so if this money, if this transfer is approved and this money is approved, Will there be a list of streets that are gonna be done? Are there gonna be streets that are identified? How is it gonna work so people understand what this process is and what we're actually trying to accomplish?

So yes, there is a list of streets. There is currently a list of streets scheduled for the next three or four years utilizing Chapter 90 funding. we had discussed that with this new funding mechanism that we'll have the ability to work on some streets that don't meet the criteria necessarily for Chapter 90. So I do have a preliminary list specifically for this year and for next year that would, the streets that would be handled with that funding. It may come to a time where we have a big enough project that we need to utilize the entire Chapter 90 allotment and the additional funds that you've appropriated to take on a larger project of, say, $5 million in toll. But for the current, the way I look at it is we will be utilizing it for locations that would not or don't need to meet Chapter 90 requirements for reconstruction.

So for example, and for edification for the public, so we're not talking about new developments. We're not talking about Route 79. We're talking about streets that are too short, too small to qualify for the Chapter 90s, or they're not within a certain dollar amount. How does this work exactly?

So Chapter 90 dollars, when you utilize those funds, there are a set of rules that you need to follow. So we often find ourselves dealing with resetting granite curb, replacing sidewalks completely, addressing some handicap accessibility issues, new ramps. If we have a street, for instance, so for an example, Copacabana Road, it's a paved roadway, has no curbing, has no berms, has no sidewalks. It's really just asphalt. very long road. If we were to utilize chapter 90 funding there, so there are sections of that road, there may be a 600 foot section that needs replacement. Then there may be a 300 foot section that is okay. Then we may find another 500 foot section. So, through that entire, I don't know, mile-long section of roadway, we might need to replace 2,500 linear feet of asphalt. If we were utilizing Chapter 90 funding, we could not break it up that way. We would have to spend the money and replace locations that don't necessarily need replacing. So, this would be an efficient way to be able to respond to situations that are lodge repairs that DCM can't take on in-house. And also, if we needed the funding to reconstruct a road in the same fashion that Chapter 90 would allow us to. So currently on this list, if you remember, we accepted a number of little dead-end streets off of North Main, Glendale, Wayland, streets that don't have a lot of infrastructure. It's really just a milling and a paving of exactly what's there. projects like that and Copica would be on this. Trust me, I have a list. I can't produce it until I know I have the money because as soon as I produce that list, people call my office every day and ask when it's going to happen. So I've been hesitant to provide that list of where will these new funds be spent on immediately. Martine Street is another one. where we have a section up at the top of eastern avenue brain avenue intersection where granite curb and sidewalks had been installed once we get to the flat portion and heading off into the direction of westport a road is horrendous we were able to get dcm to go out there and do some temporary patches in it That's just a mill and an overlay. There's no sidewalks that need to be replaced there. There's no curbing. So that would be another location where we don't need to do a whole street. We need to go in and make major pavement restoration so we could utilize things like that.

I appreciate that arm because I have had some home calls and people asking those questions because they you know they're concerned where these dollars going so I think the clarification is helpful. And I is one will be supporting it. Thank you with that I yield.

And for anything further.

Since he won constantly the last meeting when we were for this to week we have a test right we have a test the bonds.

Madam Clerk, did we advertise the bond? Yes.

We did. Okay. So we still need to, so it's been approved? Have we approved the authorization? No, you're doing it tonight. So we only advertised last week. Okay. All right. Again, listen, I filed a resolution. I think we need to do more than just the Chapter 90. I think we've got enough roadways when we start talking about the pavement management report and the millions and millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars of roadway improvement. I do, I guess, want to take an opportunity besides to say that you've got a wonderful jacket on with some elbow patches, that you are doing a phenomenal job. I think I bought it in 1988. I can tell. You've done a phenomenal job with the road projects at Columbia Street and Bedford Street, as we start to see. So I think we're starting to see a significant difference, especially with some of the work that the gas company is coming in, making sure that you're holding them accountable. uh for the uh restoration of the road so i think even more so i'm happy to be able to give you even more money because i know you're going to stretch that money as much as far as you can with the chapter 90 but i think clearly i i would think that my com my colleagues on the council uh support the fact that we need to do more than just the chapter 90 and and i know the 10 million dollars is not going to get you a whole lot but it's going to get you more than what we have so With that, I want to say thank you, and then I support this moving forward. So with that, I yield.

Thank you. Councilman C2, Councilman Kamara.

Will you be able to do sidewalk repair with this as well?

Yes. I was going to bring that up. So maybe you know, I don't know, but over the past, at least the five years that I've been here, Community Development Agency has always put forth a sidewalk project funding has become minimized for that department i want to say two years ago we put out a 400 000 cda sidewalk contract now that's in specific cda areas this year we were able to only do a much smaller project and they only had 128 000 for funding having this money will allow us to put out larger contracts that are just for sidewalks. So right now, if I want to use Chapter 90 funding to do a sidewalk, I also have to do the street. So I have to take on more baggage than what I need to. So this will allow not only my department, but dcm for locations where and they do an incredible job of concrete work that's that's one thing i must say when they do their sidewalk repairs but it does get to a point where if it's a whole stretch of a street it's really not something for us to maybe be doing in-house when we need 100 singular locations for them to be at so working with with the director we'll be able to encourage you know larger sidewalk implementation projects like that

What about like on Eastern Avenue, if you're past Locust Street and you're heading south past the parish and the other Jehovah Witness Church, there's guardrails there that are pretty much dilapidated and non-existent anymore. Will you be able to repair those?

So we've had this discussion almost indirectly before. So we currently have in design a portion of Eastern Avenue that gets us up to Bedford, I think it is, where we're spending some significant dollars on design and that MassDOT will take this on as a TIP project.

When you say get to Bedford, which direction are you coming from? South to Bedford.

We had approached the state and the TIP board with all of Eastern Avenue. They said they can only approve projects in five signals, five light signals at a time. So they recommended let's start from Martine and get to Bedford. Okay. However, we will concurrently be moving forward with Bedford to the Rotary as well. That doesn't mean that we can't take on a sidewalk project like that. Don't like to go spend money on something that in three years or five years from now we're going to rip it out and build something entirely new. But I do know that's been a concern.

What about the guardrails on Easton Avenue next to the Jehovah Witness?

So that would be a DCM matter. I rebuild streets. DCM maintains the existing streets. Can you have them look at that, please? I can absolutely do that.

Thanks.

Good day to you.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor in seat six, Councillor Peckham.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Mr. Agia, roadway usage may be a better question for traffic, but increase in roadway usage over the last, let's say, eight to 10 years, have you seen a dramatic increase in the, I guess, the wear and tear on our roads? Absolutely, yes. Over the last maybe eight to 10 years? Because I've had conversations with you about roads.

You can see a difference in five years. So we had a... a call today. We're in the process of a corridor study for Pleasant Street from Troy to Eastern Avenue. I think you may have seen some traffic counters out there. They've been at different events. This is all through Sherpa. And they look at the entire corridor, what kind of improvements need to have made. Part of that was coming up with traffic count numbers. And yes, they increased dramatically. Plymouth Avenue and Rodman Street, for instance, we just had a roadway safety audit done. although it seems like forever ago, but when Plymouth Avenue got reconstructed, maybe 15 years ago, I'm guessing, 10 years ago, all those signals were redone, timing was redone, everything was reconstructed. The problem is at that time of reconstruction, they're working off numbers that were 10 years prior to that. So once that project gets built, Those numbers are now inflated dramatically. So we had just done another safety audit with some additional traffic counts. And, yes, I can provide those numbers to you just so that you can see at some of our most significant intersections how many vehicles go through this area in comparison to what they were five, ten years ago. And it is dramatic.

Thank you. I think I had had a conversation with Councilor Kadeem prior to the meeting. Obviously, I agree roads need to be done. It's something I bring up in every meeting. We have no idea how many people are using our roadways. So to put a number on something, and we're saying this 5 million or this 10 million is going to be adequate to service our people or benefit our people, we can't say that because we have no idea how many cars are traveling the roadways in Fall River.

No, and I think we'll all admit that it's not adequate. It's a number that we agreed to that what in-house with staff that we have, that's the amount of construction work that we would be able to take on and manage. If the council wanted to spend 100 million in the next two years and we were able to bring on staff of three or four, we can spend it. You won't be able to get from one end of the city to the other during construction, but five million is a comfortable number. So you see what we've been doing recently with just three million. Look at the inconvenience that Columbia Street was for the last year and a half. It got paved last night, thank goodness, overnight. Striping, I think, is being done tonight. So if you do that, that's a $2.5 million project. If you do that 10 to 20 times in a year, how could you drive anywhere in this city? So we also have to think about that. Will we ever catch up? No, we won't. That's just inevitable. We won't.

Understandable.

I just think at some point, the city in general, the administration's going to have to sit down, look at what we have, let's use the best hypothesis, I guess, for a population, And write it all down like we've got Stafford Plaza. We've got the roads What is it gonna cost us over the next let's say ten years to fix all the roads in the city? Like everything should be on a checklist It's just my opinion Miss our key over the next four years. What's the plan for the levy? Are we increasing two and a half? Is that your plan over the next five years? I

At this point, it is because everything is increasing at a far greater rate than the 2.5%. So if we don't keep up with that, we'll never have a chance of keeping up with anything.

Unfortunately, we kept the same taxpayers that we've had for decades. We added a bunch more people on top of that, and we're gonna keep going back to those same taxpayers every year now out of their pockets, like Mr. Sardina, to have him fix his street. The guy's lived in the same house since 1950, but we're gonna go to him next year and the year after and the year after. It doesn't make any sense to me. None of this makes sense. I'm a no vote on everything for the rest of this tenure until we find out how many people live in this city and we go from there. You can't tell me we're going to spend $10 million on roads. I have no frigging idea how many people are using them. That makes no sense. With that, I yield. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor. In seat seven, Councilor Pereira.

There's a lot more cars in the city. There's a lot more people. You can't go down a street that's a two-way street with cars parked on both sides. It's tough to get back and forth. So I got to tell you, I know we're using the streets more because there's more cars. When I was growing up, your family had one car. My own household, I had a car, my husband's got a car, my two daughters had a car. There's four cars. Of course, now there's more. more usage on the street and we've got to keep the streets safe for all of our emergency vehicles as well. Question I have is some of this money you said will be used for sidewalks too. Correct. Diamond just built a beautiful new school. additional children are attending the school but from bedford street just one side even just i don't care pick a side i would say the side to the north is probably better because we did stonehaven road in front of the water department building so that kids can cross they can walk up these kids are walking in the street and because there's a lot of cars in that area now more people are parking on the side which there's plenty of room but then kids walk on the opposite side of that lots of kids are young drivers new drivers that attend the school just getting their license feeling cool scary Locust Street is the same thing. I mean, there's spots on Denver Street that do have sidewalk, and there's some that have blacktop or whatever. But Locust Street, there's nothing. And you know we cannot put a stop sign on Locust Street and Eastern Avenue? You know why? Because there's no sidewalk. You cannot erect a stop sign unless it's on a sidewalk. I never heard of such a thing. but I was told that we can't do that.

I'll look into that, Papa. What I will offer is two years ago, you brought up the Bedford Street project.

Yeah, two years, I know. Dan, I bring it up all the time.

Wait, it was part of the last contract. It was awarded, and the work will begin within the next 30 days. It's added to the south side. We're actually narrowing up the street. On that street, because the grade in people's yards is too steep. We would have had to cut into people's yards in their front yards, which everybody was opposed to. So on the south side where the utility poles are, we're actually bringing that curb lines in away from the polls to provide a new sidewalk on that south side. So there will be a new crosswalk along the top. We're going to get rid of the crosswalk that currently brings you across the street to Mr. Drawing a blank of his name. That was right on the corner. What was it? Krakowski or whatever it is. Yes. And I've had, he was elated that we were going to be having the kids cross and go down the Sutherland side.

Right. He doesn't want it in front of his house. He wants it next door because he had his shrubs right to the corner. I get it. But I'm glad that he's happy about that because he does keep a very neat piece of property.

He does. That is being done. We try to get Diamond to include it in this project.

So then if it's on the south side, they're going to cross Stonehaven.

At the top.

And then they're going to cross Bedford to get to that side.

Well, no, they're going to cross, yes. Well, no, they're going to be on Stonehaven. They're going to cross Bedford while they're walking on Stonehaven. And then come down on the opposite side. And then come back across Stonehaven onto Bedford and then continue out to Eastern Avenue.

I mean, the water department, we don't have a lot of trucks that go in and out of there.

no but i did coordinate this with the water department because they actually have three water lines in that street some rather the large ones so that's what kind of dictated how far in that crib we could bump and we wanted to make sure we weren't removing any parking as well so but that is contracted i just i'm always afraid that i know an animal got hit by a car and died or whatever but i'm worried about kids coming out of there understood and getting her and a lot of kids today too they ride their bikes to school

And it's safety is all I'm concerned about. And the other side is the same thing. But thank you, Mr. Agia. I'm very happy to hear that. And I don't mind the... Intrusion or that we have to wait a while because this construction going on. I haven't been able to drive down that the street a long time because they're always doing work, but I know the work is for the better met. So you learn how to maneuver.

Sunday October 3rd overnight that the street is scheduled so it be the 3rd and the 4th so that will be done. Very good. Got put off because of the police station.

You know what's difficult though, Mr. Aguiar? You go and fix a street. Stafford Road looks beautiful, other street, nice. Then you have cars flying down. They think they're at Seekonk Speedway. That's concerning. It's like the whole city needs to slow down. 25 miles an hour is 25 miles an hour. Leave your house 10 minutes earlier, 15 minutes earlier. don't understand everybody's racing around it drives me crazy but that'll be for another day but thank you so much for the work you do i appreciate it with that i yield thank you counselor in c5 council heart

Thank you, Mr. President. Dan, just make sure I got this right. The $10 million that's going toward streets like similar to Martine, patches of streets where it needs a lot of work, and we're going to take care of those particular streets. That's correct. Not the whole entire streets. We saved that for Chapter 90.

so martine luckily curbing is in good enough shape the westerly end of martine as you come up the hill when they had reconstructed that during the meditech time that section of it's fine when we get through the lepages section into the westport line that that's pretty rough but that's an easy that's just a mill and and throw two inches of pavement down done that gets done in you know I live in Dartmouth. When I drive through Dartmouth and Westport, and I see how quickly they can redo a street, literally within a month, because all they're doing is sending through a milling machine one day, sending in the pavement machine the next day, and then they've moved on. Here, sidewalk and curb. Sidewalk and curb cost more than the street, the pavement itself. probably more than double, and the time that it takes to do all the sidewalking curb is really what makes the project go on a long time.

Yeah, and that's why I'm excited to vote for this, because I think too, you know, when we're talking about not entire streets, but areas where, and I get a lot of calls about my street from here to there is horrible, and there's not much we can do about it right away. But now there's some, hopefully those people that have called me are on that list. I know there's one on Albany Street between Ray and Redding has been talking to me about that particular street.

So the discussions we've had is looking at the pot of money that we can now draw off of. There will be specific contracts that go out with dictated work, like the list of streets that I just told you. That's probably going to be the first year. Then we're also working towards creating or splitting that money so that we have, I don't know, half of it available for on-call pavement services in coordination with DCM. So if someone calls and says, hey, we need 300 feet of this street done, we don't have to add it to a specific bid we'll have an on-call contractor who has already been vetted and brought on that we can just call and say hey we need this done they can go out as quickly as they can it doesn't have to go to but the bid process will be done for procuring their services period with a minimal amount every year whether it's 500 000 or a million a year that we dedicate towards that that procurement so that we can just draw off of that in a similar way that we're asking to borrow $10 million is so that it's available when we need it. If we if we're getting through the air and we see we haven't used enough of the on call paving contractor, then we can put together a group for them to address all at once.

And you said that you were gonna you're gonna start on Bedford Sunday.

Bedford is October 3rd.

So when are we going to exhaust the $10 million in funds? It can't be all this year, right?

It'll be approximately $2 million a year. This way we can plan and schedule $5 million a year. The first three plus or minus comes from Chapter 90 every year. God willing that the powers that be continue to fund that. the remaining balance to get us to the five will be drawn out of this. We're not taking 10 million and putting it in a bank. Emily's always instructed this to me. Just because I see it on a balance sheet that says it's been approved doesn't mean it's been borrowed. So it will limp out. So this will get us through five years of increased funding to get us to the five.

Okay, that's fine. Okay, all right.

Thank you very much. A.U.? Thank you, Counselor. Counselor in seat three, Counselor Canual.

Thank you. I do want to say I support this. There's not a week that goes by that I get calls concerning a condition of a specific road or a sidewalk. So people want safe sidewalks. People want streets that they don't blow out their tires on. And so I'm excited to support this as well.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. In seat one, Councillor Kadeem.

Thank you. So I appreciate my colleague in seat six with his remarks in terms of, you know, the number of individuals that live in the city. And I don't disagree with you. I think we've got to get a better handle on the census. I mean, obviously, the census goes out. But the biggest piece is the fact that not not getting the true um I guess count of our population impacts our funding so chapter 90 is is one of them so when you look at the chapter 90 formula uh it's going to be your local road mileage it's going to be your population and that's going to be unemployment so two things unemployment and population which we would get from the census could potentially impact how much money we get for chapter 90 right so that being said um you know we can't I hate to see a project like this get voted down because we don't have a potential or a good grasp of what the population looks like. Just like 90% of the individuals traveling on our roads could potentially not live in the city of Fall River. We don't know that. We can get traffic counts and you typically do have those traffic counts. I guess if you could share the traffic counts that you have for the local projects to the council so the council can kind of see what those traffic counts look like. In terms of the cost for these projects, we had a pavement management report that I think probably goes back to 15 years with Plymouth Ave. But I think it gave like $100 million to do if we were going to do all the roads in the city would probably cost us $100 million to do. So you could see what roads needed to be done. Obviously, that's not the most up-to-date, but it'd give you a good... indication of what the roads look like, which ones were in bad shape.

can also go through see which ones we've done but then you'd have to put an inflation factor on you know those projects and i'm sure we're well north of 100 million dollars for for some of these projects but i do use it um and actually counselor reposo would ask for and i was able to send him some usable portion it's not the most user friendly right but it is at least it's in the counting of the streets the conditions they were in at the time whether it's curb and everything else so um

Just the reason I bring it up is I don't want folks thinking that we're just going shooting from the hip. There's a report and a study that was done to show all our roads.

So what really dictates which streets get chosen now, it's streets that the gas company has just been through. And them coming in to do their permanent patch, which is usually about 10 feet wide. So first they do their little two-foot patch for a year, and that sits. Then when it comes time for them to do their 10, if the remainder of the street is nothing left to it and that 10-foot patch is now the best part of the street those are normally the streets that i know water's done gas is done if i pave it we're pretty comfortable with the utilities that are underneath it it happens trust me right bedford street pop the water line uh and that had to be redone but That's at least a good qualifying factor for when we do select a street. So we look at all of the variables, but the gas company being done, I just came by, I had to go out to Bedford and the area of walls, Stinziano, I know I always pronounce it incorrectly, but they were set to do their temporary patch on Stinziano. Again, if I'm pronouncing it correctly. The rest of the street is rubble. so what i'm able to do in a situation like that is the gas company will say okay the next street over also needs repair we'll take on stenziano and go curb to curb if i take on their patch responsibility and that was kind of done in the past before but it was never immediate so when i take it on like that i immediately take on that street and and get it done right away or as soon as we possibly can that's why you'll see some streets that have gas patches that are 10 years old it's because they were taken on and agreed to oh yeah don't worry about that one give us the money we're going to put it on another street but nobody ever went back to finish that other street that had the temporary patch so there's there were a few factors that go into deciding which streets get done

Speaking of the utilities, have they given us an update on how far along they are with replacing all those pipes? Is it another 10 years, 15 years? Gas? Yeah.

Probably another five to 10 years. About 10 years. And what happens is that every year, they start with what their funding is. Like this year, for instance, it was supposed to be a slow year. That's how we entered the year. And then a month or two into the year, oh, we have increased funding. And wherever their funding comes from, I'm not sure. And then it's okay, we wanna bang these all out. There are many locations that I will ask them to make a priority, like Central Street that I wanted to get done so that we could continue on the work from Bedford to get us down to the waterfront. Pleasant Street, it's a corridor that we really want. We have some grant money. We've got a three or four year plan to get all of Pleasant Street done. Well, I really can't go spend $10 million on Pleasant Street knowing that the gas is coming in five more years, right? So they were able to make Pleasant Street a priority. So Pleasant wasn't supposed to be done at all this year. They listened to what we had asked them to make a priority and they took on Pleasant Street to get moving through that.

Well, I appreciate it. The only reason I asked to speak again was just, one, make sure that folks understood that we do have some information, maybe not the most up-to-date information, but you are utilizing the information that we have. Yes. And I would say that, again, from the census standpoint, we absolutely need to push that and try to get people to understand the impacts of not submitting the census. Chapter 90 is just one, right? And when you start talking about a formula and all that, but when we're dealing with competitive grants, you know, population always comes into effect. And if you've got a certain number of, you know, 100,000 or 120,000, that triggers you into a more competitive advantage for certain grants. It's definitely impacting us, so I don't disagree with the argument that he's trying to make, but I just want to make sure that for this discussion, I know we have the information that's needed. So, again, thank you, and great job with all the work that you're doing.

I yield. Thank you. Counselor in seat six, Counselor Peckham. I yield. You yield. Anything further? Motion to refer to full counsel. Counselor in seat seven, Counselor Perry.

Just one question. Columbia Street, is that going to stay a one-way street? No.

School committee voted to have it two-way.

I wanted to keep it a one-way, but I was overruled. But general consensus from the public was they wanted to go back two-way.

Yeah, I just got a text and figured I'd ask.

I thought it was going back, but... See, all my ideas aren't the best ideas, apparently.

With that, I yield. Thank you. That kills me to say that.

Thank you. There's a motion. Refer to full council. Motion to refer to full council made by Councillor Raposo, seconded by Councillor Cagnuol. Discussion on the referral? Hearing none, all those in favor? Opposed? The ayes have it. Thank you all. Thank you, Mr. Aguiar. Item number three is a resolution to convene to develop a comprehensive plan for accurate financial analysis of the cost and distribution of solid waste and recycling carts. I'm going to be holding a discussion. Mr. Thomas?

Hathaway, come on down.

Mr. Thomas, introduce yourself. Mr. Hathaway.

Sure. Matthew Thomas, special counsel.

Chris Hathaway, director of community maintenance.

Uh, any overview we'd like to give this council before we start questions, Mr. Thomas, please.

Thank you. So, um, tonight we're here to talk about a comprehensive plan on cards. I'm here to tell you that we've been working on a comprehensive plan since December 14th of 2022. And I'm here to tell you a little bit about what we've done. And then Emily's going to talk a little bit about some financial numbers in doing this. We were looking to address three basic issues. First was to address the practice of prior administrations of freely giving out cards. Now some of that practice came out of pay as you throw. Because the thought at that time was that if you had pay as you throw, people were buying bags. So it didn't make a difference how many cards they had, they were paying for the bags they were using. When the career administration went away from pay as you throw, that decision was not revisited. Okay. And so what happened was, all the cats that were out there remained out there, and they continued to give out cards. Now, each one of these cards turns into solid waste disposal. And so for the purposes of tonight's conversation, this is not about reducing collection costs, this is about reducing disposal costs.

Point of clarification.

Yeah. Counselor, your point of clarification.

Can you just repeat, did you say that the carts were given out first and we had no idea?

No, what happened was initially there were carts given out by a formula. A single family got one and one. A two family got two and one.

Right.

A three and so on. There wasn't as much, but people could ask for extra carts. They could request extra carts. Yes. And there wasn't so much of a concern given to it because the idea was that they were buying purple bags.

Did the city know how many people, who was getting the extra cards or not know?

At that point, they really didn't have the information because they were not that concerned about it.

I was under the impression that they always knew how many cards were given out to who.

We originally did. From what I've been able to find. So we didn't know. Originally. Okay, so this is long before pay as you throw.

Yeah.

The cards were numbered. They were put out. There was a system. And they were never, you're getting to my second point. What happened is when they were being repaired, and maintained the old carts weren't being brought back sometimes instances they were leaving them there and so what happened over the course of maybe four administrations is cats got left out there and the system was not it was broken there was no way to know when I first started working on this on December 14th of 2022 I asked how many cats we had And we didn't know. And the decision was made. We had to find that out before we could do anything. Now, we did it through something called cart maintenance. It was a euphemism. We were going out to repair carts, and as we were going out to repair carts, we were taking inventory at the time. And it was a matter of going place by place, and we tried to do it in-house. But the city at one point definitely knew because they bought the cards. I think this was under Bob Correa's administration when they went to cards. So at that point, they knew. During Flanagan's administration, I believe they knew. After that, after pay as you throw came in, it was not something that was being, from what I've been able to find out from looking at the files. because I wasn't involved with it at the time. But it doesn't seem like it was something that was being maintained. And so when we went to go look at it to start this process, the numbers were not, you could look at them and you knew they weren't right. So that was the first thing we were looking to do. The second thing we were looking to do was to address the practice of not maintaining the lists. Each cart has a number on it. It should be scannable. The scan should be assigned to a property, and that is for a number of reasons. One, it's to make sure that if there's a violation, you know who to cite for the violation. Now, windy days will affect that when the carts go all over the place, but that was the purpose of it. It was to know if somebody's garbage hadn't been collected. Because, well, the idea was when the numbers came out, they would be scanned as they were being disposed of. So it was to cut down on missed collections. That's why places do this. The third thing we were looking to do was, as I mentioned, old bins were not being brought back in. So if you had a 65 and you requested an additional 95, instead of taking the 65 and leaving you the 95, you ended up with a 65 and a 95. So consequently, there were more cats out on the street than there should have been. Now for context, the city has about 22,000 parcels, about 981 of those 22,000 parcels are exempt parcels. So about 21,000 of the 21,000 parcels. There were 9,494 single-family homes. This is as of three days ago. The LA-4, which is what we're preparing to submit as part of the tax recap. Can you say that number again, please? Sure. 9,494. Thank you. We have 1,867 condos. But as you know, we don't collect trash from the condos. So that doesn't affect this conversation. Two families. We have 2,241 families in the city. Three families, we have 3,217. I'm going to jump a bit. The five families, we have 300, which I've kind of reported to you in other instances. Six families, we have 700. We have a number of 109s. 109s are two buildings on the same property. Of those 109s, I've identified to you in the past that four of them have more than five units in them. And we're looking at the parcel. So you'd have the assessor's parcel. It develops in cities. You have a three family, maybe a two family, a three family, and a three, one in the front, one in the back.

700 for the six families, is that what you said?

700 for the six families. And then we have mixed use properties. So one of the things that came out of the audits that we've been doing every year is we identified commercial, how much was coming in from commercial. And that's what led us to come to you and we all to decide to not collect commercial anymore. But a number of these commercial or in mixed use properties. So we're still collecting from those properties. We're just not collecting the commercial piece. So for example, in mixed use properties, we have 72 in the city that have one family, one family unit above it. We have 105 that have a two family unit above it. We have 63 that have a three family unit above it. We have 64 that have a four family unit above it. We have 35 that have a five family unit above it. We have 38 that have a six family unit above it. And there's actually 40 of them that have seven or more residential units above it. So looking at that context, we then came up with an assumption. And that assumption is a 65 gallon barrel While it can hold 150 pounds, on average, national averages are that a 65 gallon barrel will typically hold about 50 pounds of trash. Now that will change from time to time. If you have a lot more food waste in there, it's heavier. If you have a lot more non-food waste in there, things that you can't recycle, it's a little bit lighter. But on average, it's about 50 pounds. And that's what we've used in our assumptions and our discussions. A 95 gallon barrel will hold about 75 pounds. And that's what we're using as these are conservative numbers, but we figured it's better to be conservative. So back in December of 2022, we started the process. The enforcement division went out and they were looking at parcels. We were working at replacing carts at the same time and starting to come up with lists. The first real list came up in September of September 14th of 2023. And those first figures were predominantly talking about single families, three families and the commercials. And it's from that, that we decided to come to you and not collect commercials anymore. In 2024, the period between May 15th and May 21st, we looked at 264 parcels specifically, these were one to six families, 264 of them, to see in this sampling, what did we see for extra carts? And in that sampling, we found 52 extra 65 gallon carts, 138 extra 95 gallon cats, so 190 of them. Now, my conversation this far hasn't included the recyclables because it's usually two for one and whatever, but those are included in the mix and that affects our recycling. When we all first started this process, all of us years ago, you wanted more recycling because recycling made you money back then. Then China Sword came in. And when China Sword came in and they stopped taking all the paper products and everything else, everybody started to try to change the contracts because it was now costing us. So we're paying about $125 a ton for trash disposal right now, about $115 a ton this year for single-stream recyclable. So it's not making us money anymore. And that's because Massachusetts doesn't have the recycling markets. Other states do. Matt, with all due respect, Massachusetts' zero waste policy is put it on a truck or a train and send it to Ohio. And that's what they do, so there's costs. But we also found out at that time that while we had 190 extra carts in there, we also found 65 extra 65-gallon recycling carts. We also found 108 extra 95-gallon carts, so there's 171. So that led us to start looking at strategies. We have to get control of these extra cards. And so we've looked at different ways. We tried to do it in-house. We haven't been able to do it in-house. We can do it by bringing in RERIG, which is the company we originally worked with on this. They have a scannable capability. We can also add on the workers' cell phones the ability to scan the codes and take pictures of enforcement issues. And we would have the ability to maintain a list by parcel. I mean, I have one here, but it's limited, of how many carts are there and what's extra. Now, most municipalities allow you to get extra cards. You have to pay for them. In New Bedford, to get an extra card, it costs you 300 bucks. Okay, under certain circumstances only, when it's lost, or when something else has happened, when you've moved, and when the house you moved to doesn't have an extra car.

Just a point of clarification. Sure. Is that $300 for one car? One car.

Or annual fee? One car, one car.

And that's it?

That's it. Okay. Thank you. The ability, but municipalities also understand that solid waste contracts are going out of control. Mr. Sardana was right. There were years ago when it was all done very well in house. Those days are long gone. So for example, municipalities that are negotiating new contracts are cutting back on yard waste pickup. For example, in New Bedford this week, this is no longer yard waste pickup day this week. Neither was last week. The next one will be two weeks from now. And they're cutting back wherever they can on these things because there's extra costs associated with it. For our purposes, our way of trying to address a reduction on the solid waste disposal side was to present back to you a conversation we've had with you a number of times, and that's the fives and the sixes, which has led to a lot of discussion. And I know that it's a lightning rod. I understand that. the reason we brought that back to you at that point in time was and maybe it was a misunderstanding on our part and i'll take part of the blame for misunderstanding it but i thought that there was actual strength in the belief that we should cut back on the fives and sixes now i understand that there's some people that are exceptions some people that are running rooming houses basically and they have a lot less i get that but the fact remains that by reducing the fives and sixes We cut down on 53% of our enforcement problems, which we have statistics on, and we cut down somewhere in the three to $500,000 range on disposal, depending on what you're looking at being put in there. But for tonight, that's not about tonight. Tonight was talking about this comprehensive policy. and method, which I'm here to suggest to you that we have been trying to do. But we've hit a stone wall and we kinda need help. The help that we're looking at is re-rig. Re-rig can come into the city and in 90 days can do a full audit of the city, of all the carts that are in the city, creating up-to-date lists that we would then move forward from. To do that's gonna cost $202,500. to have re-rig do it. We've tried to avoid this cost by doing it in-house, but we can't do it in-house. We don't have enough people in-house to do it. We don't because the people that we have doing counting are also doing enforcement. So that's why in 2005 we went closer to enforcement instead of the accounting. We can only juggle a certain number of things with the staffing they have. RERIG would come in, 90 days, do it. Now, that cost has a cost benefit analysis to it. that you're well worth asking. And so Emily's gonna talk right now about what that cost is, what it gets us, and what the savings would be over a certain period of time.

So we are taking it based on the current tonnage and again, staying on the idea of just talking about solid waste. Obviously there could be savings within recycling as well, but just talking about solid waste for this point in time. So there's a hundred and it's $125 per ton right now. When you take that 65 gallon tote and average 50 pounds per week, the 52 weeks, it's about 1.3 tons, 1.3 tons annually per tote. For the 95-gallon tote, it's 1.95 tons annually per tote.

So remember, in a single family, you've got one tote. A two-family, you've got two. Three, you've got three. Four, five, you've got three.

so if we take those numbers and assume that there's excess out there in these totes so just i mean this is a very probably low-balled number but if we're saying that there's 250 extra 65 gallon totes so we're not discussing anything with pulling fives and sixes on this right now you could apply the math the same way but that's not what this is so just assuming there's 250 extra 65 gallon solid waste totes in the city city-wide right now If we pulled those, we would potentially be saving $40,000 to $45,000 per year for the next three years.

Can I just make a point here? Sure. So you just talked about a sampling. How many properties were in that sampling?

In 2024, there were 264 parcels spread between ones and sixes.

So 264 parcels had 195 trash carts, extra trash carts, 65 and 95. And you're going to sit in front of me and tell me there's only 250 extra parts in the city? No, no, no.

We're being conservative here. The numbers could be higher.

No, and I was going to get to the 95-gallon totes. And I'm not saying that's how many extra there are. I'm giving you numbers of what it could save by just pulling that number of them. You can then take that and multiply it however much you want. Exponentially, correct. But to be safe and to be... I'm going to say as realistically low as possible. I just wanted to give a number so that I didn't want to inflate this and have it look like something you shouldn't be.

I would call it as low as possible. I wouldn't call it realistic.

So for the 95-gallon totes, estimating if we pulled 500 of them, it's about 121,000 to $135,000 per year for the next three years that we would save. So you're looking at 160 to $182,000 each year that we would no longer have to pay in disposal costs by pulling those totes. So if we're talking about paying 200,000 one time today, and then it's saving upwards of 160 plus thousand a year for the next however many years, infinite number of years, it's more than worth the cost of the 200,000 now.

There is no doubt there were extra cats out there.

Right.

There's no doubt that we're underestimating the extra cats that are out there because in spite of our best efforts, we haven't been able to count them. By bringing in re-rig, we will do a one-time deal over the 90 days, count it and start from scratch, and then enforce it.

It's also, I think the idea with lowballing this number too is as much as yes, we're pulling totes, in theory, it should reduce the amount of trash we're picking up, but they could also just be adding more into the existing totes. So now those 50 pounds per week tote may be closer to the 100. So that's why the number lowballing it is a safer bet for us to work off of because it could reduce the amount of trash they're disposing of they could be more thoughtful because they don't have a place to put it they we could be using this as an education tool when they're losing the tote but it also may not work out that way so council in a nutshell if you're disposable if you're filling two totes right now and we suddenly take one away you're not going to stop disposing two totes worth initially

But you're not going to fit two totes in one tote.

No, but you might put one and a half in it. And so that's why we're trying to be very conservative in our numbers so that you might have that. Maybe you get the recycling, you get the reuse on half of it.

So it could be a lot more, but to say that by pulling 1,000 cards means we're going to save $1 million, that's probably not going to be the way this outcome works out, especially not in the first year with just pulling the access totes. So that's why we want to be safe on saying don't expect a dramatic shift, but it should be enough that it's saving the cost more than the cost of this.

So if we can.

It's a truck? I'm going to track the trail. Let's go underneath if you can.

Yeah, if we if we can. I know counselors have questions. Sure. I'm sorry. Is there because I do have everything I just read printed out in terms of very quick information to the city council. Madam city administrator, what do you have?

I just wanted to say that the other thing is to that some of these bins could have already been taken offline. Because when RERIG sends them to us, they scan them in. But if they were damaged and then they're picked up and removed, a lot of them have not been scanned out. So we want to be conservative because some of those might not be being used right now for disposal. They could have actually been damaged and taken offline, and we don't know that.

very good Mister Hathaway anything that constantly to notice this everybody has a question I think the consulency for the sponsor of the resolution consular vice president the on pages point of consular use one information so we're all on the same page I think you talked about the savings of the savings for the 5 and the 6 family was how much it well when we met in an ordinance and talked about you calculated 500,000 I think.

If you calculate based on these numbers we just shared, it would be $670,000. Yeah.

I thought we were at $800,000, but I thought you had presented it was like $1.4 million.

Right. We're reducing it. We're trying to be conservative in the numbers because we believe the trash is going to go somewhere.

Okay, so we don't want to sell something that we can't the fives and sixes would be different because they would be completely removed But that's that that 670 is just solid waste so you'd have to run the math the same way on recycling But I just we weren't talking about that today, but I could get that I just went back to the

I guess I'm going to give a shout out to the far of our MA civic report or whatever it was. I just pulled it because you had mentioned the savings, but the savings we had when we were told was 1.4 and then when we dialed down. It could be that high. Right. So then when we dialed down, we had said it was about 800,000. So I guess when we're having the conversations for an apples to apples comparison just to to make sure whether or not what was being proposed by Councilor Deon. The target needs to be, we need to figure out where we need to get, if we wanna eliminate five and six or we're going with that, we need to know where we're trying to save, how much we're trying to save.

I think it's the tonnage difference that we were talking about. It's the tonnage difference is what it is. Yeah, we talked about the fact that the fives and sixes.

Could hold more.

Right, and they probably are filling them more than that 75 pounds because they're only getting three totes for five and six families. So in theory, that same size tote that's for a two family, essentially one household is filling it. It's just a different fill level, most likely. So that's why it could be higher based on that. But based on that 75 pounds, it would be the 670. So again, probably the lowest end of that.

But I want to caution everybody. These are estimates. There is no way to know this right now. These are as we have to weigh every single kind of picking it up.

I'm trying to you go with your point of it from and I'm sorry went long no worries you know what I just think from the conversation you know very good said that constancy for you have the floor.

What do you have how many cards to say they were for 4 families you skipped over that. Yeah.

It's I know I didn't say how many cuts they were I said how many you know because I didn't give you cuts per units.

Well, you said single, oh, I'm not cards. I'm sorry. I, I, that was how many parcels, how many parcels? Oh, I believe one second. I'm sorry.

Counselor.

Um, I believe I had a cart on the brain.

I had it in there. I think it's like 295 with 300 parcels, maybe 295, I believe.

All right. So we'll put it at 295.

Sorry about that.

Okay. So let, let, let's, so let's back this up. So. Yes, everything is an estimate right now. In part, it's an estimate because we don't know. We don't have accurate numbers. The reality of the situation is, and I think even when the carts originally went out, we thought we knew how many carts were out there because we supposedly were going by a formula so you were able to come up with a number. But that quickly changed. But at that time, we did not have the capacity or the technology to scan barcodes, not with readers on a truck, not with handheld. So.

With all due respect, I disagree. You did. We just, it was very expensive, but it was there.

But we didn't, okay.

You didn't use it.

All right, so we didn't use it. So the reality was, I could take 5 neighbors trash carts, put them in my yard and you would never know where those came from.

Right.

Which is part of my argument as to we and the reality is we have no idea how many extra carts are out there.

We have an estimate council. I don't think we know exactly. I think you're right.

i'm not even sure we're close to an estimate um you know when you're saying 195 came out out of a small sample and we're talking 250 across the city that that that's like completely illogical to me i wasn't estimating the actual number i'm sorry yeah i was just trying to run math on whatever i i i understand that's the argument why we think we need to bring reread in Right, so you know what? I don't know if my estimate is accurate, if your estimate is accurate. I could be way under. I could be close to the target number. Same thing on your side. That's the problem. We have all kinds of variables, all kinds of unknowns, and we have no solid numbers. And the only thing we can do is estimate everything.

Unless we bring Riva again.

Correct. And I think that's my problem. That's where I'm coming from. We need to know. Will we save 40,000 a year by pulling in the extra parts? Will we save 400,000? I don't know. You don't know. Nobody knows, and everybody has to admit, they do not know. But I will tell you this. If we can save 900,000 pulling in five and six families and another 400,000 pulling in trash carts, do you want to save $1.3 million a year? Sure. Or do you only want to save 900? Or do you only want to save 400? That's why, yes, a comprehensive plan. We need to address all aspects of this. I agree. And I do have... Another question. You know me, I have a lot of questions, especially on trash. Just so people know, I met with you last Tuesday. I gave you my concerns then, so you all know where I'm coming from. Are we going to send down an ordinance for a three-strike rule?

Yes.

Yes. When?

I have held off doing that because I wanted to have a conversation with the ordinance committee rather than send you something and have you pull it apart.

Right, well, when I ask are you gonna send out an ordinance, I don't mean to the full council, I mean two ordinance, because obviously it goes there first, then it comes here.

I was going to send an outline down to them for their next week, for their next meeting. He's been waiting for it, I know that.

Excellent, we've been waiting for a long, long time.

I know, I get it, but councilor, the important thing about this is, I've said all along, I said we were gonna do it in August. All along I said that. Then I held off when we were going through this five and six issue. And this is me. I was the one who recommended this. I said, rather than write something, we have ideas of what we want. Let's go down to ordinance, have a conversation with ordinance, see what they're willing to do, see what we're willing to agree to, and come up with an ordinance. that is actually a collaborative effort rather than us sending you something and you pulling it apart or you sending us something and us pulling it apart and that is fine and i think we're attempting that tonight to have a discussion see what both sides stand it will have three strikes and we'll have three strikes in it though um

that we also address the privates are you going to allow them to come in on a day on one day as opposed to five days to make it cost effective they would have their own schedule excuse me they would have their own schedule they're not going to be about what we would propose is to not make them abide by the street pickup for that day Right, so again, when are we going to create that?

All part of the same thing. This ordinance is going to address all of that.

Okay, very good. So we didn't know that before. Have the unpaid fees been added to tax bills yet? And if not, when are they going to be so people know they actually have to pay these fees?

instances where the property ID has been put when the possible code has been put on it they will be going on this September this October as part of an assessment what happens is when you do a municipal charge from that prior fiscal year the municipal charges don't come on until the third quarter tax bill for the following year the same way that water charges come on sewer charges and so we're looking at those to come on this year for the ones that we can identify property IDs on

OK. Another question I have. Are we still, because I don't think we should, are we still picking up trash and recycle for non-profits?

We still are.

Why?

Because we haven't stopped.

Why not?

We haven't stopped. That's the reason.

So I know some people aren't going to like this, but you know me. I shoot from the hip. OK? They don't pay taxes. They don't do pilots. They don't pay for services. They own more than 50% of the property in the city of Fall River, so we lose taxes, tax money, on more than 50% of the property. And we're still picking up their trash for free. Let me address that.

I agree they should be doing pilots. But out of 22,000, the facts are the facts. Out of 22,000 parcels, only 981 are tax exempt.

OK. OK. How many trash carts? What size do those parcels have? And multiply it by the money.

I've looked at this, and I agree. They should be making a payment in lower tax. However, of those 981, a huge piece of it is the buyer reserve out by Copacab. It's owned by the state. That's included in that number. When you look at what the hospitals own and what the churches own and things like that, yes, I agree they should be making a pilot payment. They should be paying 25% of what they would otherwise pay to cover some essential services. The argument back, which I don't necessarily buy, but it's the argument back, is that the reason that they are non-profits are they provide services to the municipality that could not otherwise be provided, whether it's dealing with homelessness, whether it's dealing with other types, social services, or anything. That is what makes you a non-profit. Now, to willy-nilly stop them, I gotta tell you, I proposed that, and the decision was made to not follow that proposal, to try to continue to collect them for now, and to go from there until we could really address it better.

Okay, so I will say that I don't consider it willy-nilly, A, and B, I get they provide services, and I appreciate their services. But any nonprofit that can pay their CEO $250,000 a year to be the CEO of their nonprofit well can afford to get dumpsters and take care of their own trash. I'm sorry.

This could be a debate we could have for a long time, and I would welcome the conversation.

Another component.

But my point is we have to be careful to not paint with a broad brush. Every nonprofit doesn't pay their CEOs that. Some of them do. When you think about it, there are health providers that are nonprofits only because of their structure and are making more in surplus revenue than any for-profit company can make. So I understand that. But there are some nonprofits that are also mom-and-pop nonprofits, smaller ones, that actually do a lot, and they don't have that money. But you're right. It's something that has to be looked at.

So, and I agree, and you know what, and I probably shouldn't throw this out there, but can anybody, Emily, perhaps, can you tell me how many properties in the city of Fall River that People Incorporated owns?

Oh, I can get it for you.

I don't have it right now, but I can get it. Can you throw out a roundabout number? I know it's more than two, more than five, probably more than 10. That's not the type of data that stays in my head, unfortunately.

Less than 900, right?

It's less than 981, I can tell you that. Yeah, yeah. So you know what? I feel like this conversation is kind of like the business trash. Everybody was up in arms. People couldn't agree. People didn't know if we should stop it, not stop it. Guess what? We stopped it. And guess what? Everybody lived.

And we didn't get many complaints.

And you didn't get many complaints. Well, I think this is the same thing.

I agree, but I also agree we need to have a better idea of what the cards are.

Okay, so let's get a better idea of what the cards are, how many cards they have, and what that translates into, and add that to the excess cards that are out there. And maybe we will be talking $500,000 or $600,000.

I think all of us would like to see that number of the savings be as high as possible.

I agree. I agree. And I'm not trying to be, I know I'm a little bit crazy, and I'm getting a little bit excited here because this is what's going on. It's an exciting topic.

It's an exciting topic.

When you talk about the property, though, Counsel, are you talking about the residential homes that they have for the adults with disabilities, or are you talking about their actual business properties?

They're business properties. So we're not collecting the business properties.

Yeah, we're not collecting there anymore. The only properties that we're collecting are residential homes for that particular business. Or for churches.

But don't they get paid for the people that live in those homes?

Yes. Well, I mean, it would be a charge to a person's insurance because it's more. Okay.

So I hadn't even thought about that. Now you got me on another roll. I hadn't even thought about that. Oh, 15 properties. 15 properties we get no real estate tax on.

Are those 15 residentials?

I don't know. It's both.

OK.

But I guess the point is, OK, the residential, OK. But they're not running them for free. They're not allowing the people to live there for free. They get paid for that. It's still a business of sorts. I don't know. All right. I'm going to try to stay on track. I know other people have questions. And I know I get a little crazy. And I don't want to be too overboard. Let me see, anything else? What about, what do we charge on a citation? What's the fee?

100, 200, 300.

Yeah, one, two, 300.

And you feel that has enough of an impact? No. No, okay.

That's gonna change too.

So send it down, send it down. And this is what I mean. We've been talking and talking and talking for years and years and years, and you're not all at fault. We're not all at fault. This has been going on for years and years and years. So I guess that was part of the point of my resolution. Stop. Stop spinning our wheels. Stop talking about what we're gonna do. and get it done and make it as comprehensive and as equitable and save as much money as we can so we can move the city forward and have something right. And with that, for now, I will yield. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. Just so you're aware, Councillor in Seat 8 is going to talk next. Then I'm going to acknowledge Councillor in Seat 2, Councillor in Seat 3, Councillor in Seat 7, Councillor in Seat 6, and then Councillor in Seat 1. Consulate C-Date, Consulate over Pozo.

Bring on the fun, shall we? So I'm confused. We know that trash collection is a problem. We know people continue to violate it. Chairman of Ordinance is sitting here saying, should already be in front of us.

Why didn't we come down already? Yeah. Because we were waiting to try to get a better handle on the cats.

Sure, that's a moot point.

No, that's not. That's what drives the whole conversation. We can't say we were trying to get a handle on two things. The enforcement, which we now have, and on the cats. Because we were looking to see what we were producing. And we haven't been able to do that. So we had said all along we were coming down with a comprehensive number. We didn't want to do it mid-year.

But it doesn't change the fact that violations are happening.

And they're being addressed.

Correct.

So they are being addressed. It's just not being addressed as aggressively as we can address them.

Oh, absolutely. And to Council Deon's point, I said this last year, that why aren't we leaning properties for violations that are not paid?

We weren't putting parcel IDs on the tickets for a while, but we have since changed that. So when we started this conversation last year is when we stopped right there and started putting the parcel IDs in. at that point in time, and even took the time to backtrack as much as we could, and go back and put them in at that point. But the timing of that just didn't make that lean process, because we had done it probably about this time last year, and so when that happened, it just was too late to catch it.

Well, because I asked the question last year, and I saw Lovera. I said, how many citations have been issued, and how many have been paid?

Right.

And there was an ambiguous number there that said, these are the amount that have not been paid. And then the question was, so what's the status on them? And nobody really had an answer for me.

Because we didn't have parcel IDs, counselor.

Right.

OK. So the parcel ID is like the property's social security number. We need that in order to put it on the taxpayer.

OK. Can you commit to me to get me that ordinance in the next two weeks? Yes. For three strikes?

Yes. The whole ordinance.

Absolutely. The whole enchilada.

Two weeks.

Great. I have a question and I don't know, I don't know if I completely agree with the statement that while we're out enforcing why we can't count them.

Okay. So counselor, I'm not going to disagree with you on that. I kind of have the same question, but I didn't go out and actually try to count them while we were trying to enforce what I've been told consistently and not by Mr. Hathaway, but by predecessors of his is that as they were out there, they were starting to count and then they got pulled off to do other types of enforcement. Okay, or they got pulled off to do other stuff. We had the enforcers doing the counting. So what would happen is, we basically said, walk down the street right before, pick a street, walk down the street right before the truck does. And walk back up another street. And if you really look at it, there's 20,000 parcels, let's say. If we had taken four years to do it, we could have done 15 parcels a day and we would have been done. That's not what happened. I can't speak to how. I wasn't the one trying to do it. But we were meeting monthly at that point in time. And I think if you talk to anybody that was in that meeting, I was not very nice to them in a lot of ways because we weren't getting numbers back. And then it became clear that they couldn't do the enforcement and the counting at the same time.

think it's the coordination organization that it takes to do all of that too the system that you would have to map out these are the exact streets either the houses we went by this day they had carts out at all this day they didn't which ones are we going back to then while trying to do all of those other things so it's a large project to figure out management of which you could do but on top of everything else i think that's where it started to lose organization i guess to me emily's being kinder about it than i am sure because i can't believe that there's a reason

I mean, I guess, you know, can the IT director make a database and we start building a database to build all this information? We have it.

We do have that. We have it. But then to map that to what they were standing, it just... We were using assessor's maps.

We have the database. Yeah. Okay? It's a matter of actually doing it. And then we were hearing people were hiding cards. People were, it was, because you can't go on the property to look for them.

Sure.

Okay? Which may be something that we may be addressing in the next ordinance. There may be a way for us to do that.

So there's questions I'm not gonna even go into, because I know you don't have the answers for. The pink bins that are still looming around the city.

Those will be coming back.

I heard the same thing last year.

Councilor, I can only tell you what the intention is.

I can't tell you. But answer me this question. The pink bin goes out, the pink bin gets picked up. Nobody says a word that a pink bin got picked up. That's that's my issue. Okay, so The truck drives picks it up Nobody says all right. This is on doesn't belong here anymore. It should be removed. Why isn't it just removed?

I don't know They paid for it See for those pink bins, so they go to sit up anymore for those pink bins to go somewhere.

I They paid for them. And by paying for them, they, in essence, paid for the service to pick them up. That was implied in paying for them.

So it just continues and continues and continues.

No, it's not going to continue. They're going to come back. We just have to jump through some hoops to do that. It's not that simple. It's not like us giving out a blue or a green.

Those are mixed-use properties, though. They are. Right. Those are mixed-use where we're still picking up residential, not commercial. We're not picking them up at commercial businesses. Well, if you see them, let us know. I would disagree with you on that statement. We shouldn't be.

Yeah, yeah. We're not going to go into that right this moment. Mr. Hathaway, as far as the policy that is how many carts go out to a particular parcel, is there a written policy at DCM?

Yeah, we have...

Chris, speak into the mic.

We have a list that sits in the office.

And this is the list. And as capital is out there, if they see more in a particular household, they call us right away. And since I've been on, Joe has been actively going out and pulling cots. as they have excessive amounts.

Fair. The pilot program for cardboard, last time we talked about it, Mr. Olivera said that it was not happening anymore, and then obviously Chris took over. So the pilot program is done? It's done.

And they're pulling those cards back? We're pulling those cards actively.

Pulling?

They have not been pulled yet? Yeah, any card that was out there for the last two weeks have been pulled. Do you know how many part of the pilot were issued? I'm sorry, what was that?

Do you know how many carts were put out for the pilot program? I believe that it was around 350. And how many have you received? I think we got about 300-ish.

So you're still in this about 50? Yeah. OK. I can get an accurate count tomorrow.

Yeah, please. So I'm going to request two things, if we could, to the president, through the clerk. Can we get an update on what I just asked for? So how many of the cardboard pilot carts were issued? How many have been returned to this point as of today? Also, can I get an update on how many fines have been issued in the beginning of the calendar year to today and how many have been paid and what the status of the unpaid ones are, please?

You said calendar year?

Yes. Or if you want to split it up into fiscal years, that's also fine.

Counselor, it might be easy if you did last fiscal year and to date. These are on a fiscal year basis.

Yeah, so let's do that. Last fiscal year in total and then this fiscal year to date. From day to day. That would be fair.

That would be a better number. Yep. Okay. More accurate number.

I'll consulate and see to come tomorrow.

Thank you. So I'm just when we should understand this right. We're trying to put cuts and take cuts off the street that don't belong there correct.

Yes, Council.

I was happy, you know how many cuts a single-family residents should have duplex 3 families on. So as we drive we're going down the street and picking up the trash. Can we move the cards want to empty out and another cop behind us just eliminate them.

We are doing that currently, but there's not enough staff to do that. Right. So it'll take time. It'll take time.

Yeah, I don't think we're doing that for something to happen overnight. But I mean, we've been trying to do something for four and a half years, I guess. And we don't even have the numbers.

There's a lot more going on right now, counselor than there was before.

So okay, that's great. So why don't we just take baby steps and pull the cuts as we go. So then we'll have that all set apart from beyond what else is going on, whatever.

That's what's happening, counsel.

So why are we hiring this company that I don't want to mention the name again, three rig 15 time.

The reason we're doing that is because in order to get a full count of what's out there.

Why do we need a full count?

Because that's how you know how much you're disposing per car, how you monitor it. THE HOUSE IS COUNSELOR BECAUSE WHAT'S HAPPENING IS, ALTHOUGH THEY'RE PULLING CARTS, WHAT I'M GOING TO TELL YOU IS WHAT I'VE BEEN TOLD IS THAT PEOPLE... ARE YOU GOING TO TELL ME WHAT YOU'VE BEEN TOLD OR WHAT'S HAPPENING? I HAVE NOT GONE OUT THERE, COUNSELOR, TO ACTUALLY DO IT MYSELF. SO I CAN ONLY GO OFF OF WHAT I'VE BEEN TOLD.

OKAY. WHO'S TELLING YOU THIS STUFF? JUST CURIOUS.

THE DEPARTMENT.

MR. HATWOOD IS BRAND NEW. I'M SURE HE CAN TELL YOU WHAT'S GOING ON.

SO MR. KENNEDY, PRIOR TO MR. KENNEDY, CHARLIE, OKAY. WHAT WE HAD BEEN TOLD, OKAY, THIS IS GOING BACK THAT FAR. So not that you're going to tell me that what so what what's happening is we're being told because I asked the same question you're asking. Why can't we pull them and why can't we know we can and what I've been told counts. I'm only telling what I've been told is that the employees tell me this. What I've been told, councillor, is that they can pull them, but people are hiding cards, which I don't know if that's true or not. And they can't pull them out fast enough because they don't have enough people to do it. And they can't count them.

I'm just telling you what I've been told, councillor. So let's think about this. I agree they probably can't pull them out fast because they don't have the people to do it. But I'm not asking for this to happen overnight. So this week we do trash collection, and we pull the cards, if they're extra. if they're hiding them i don't know how many they're going to have to hide but if we go back three weeks from now or six months into this program and they got six cuts or two more cuts show up we pull those two as we go along right so i mean how many do you think these people haven't hidden out there i don't know i think that's a great idea but if there's supposed to be single family resident has one cart and one recycling and they have more than one and we pull them and four two months later we go down there now there's two carts there and and we know that they didn't request an extra card because they haven't paid for it that's what the plan is in the audience that you want more costs you have to pay for monthly and we know that on that they're not on that monthly list to have extra cuts we pulled that one too i understand you're going to make mistakes no matter how you go about this we're going to pull cuts we should have pulled put cuts we shouldn't have so it's not going to be like we do this one time and now it's resolved and fixed you're going to have to monitor this as we go along every time we're picking up trash

Councilor, we've been doing this for four years that way, and we're no closer.

No, we haven't pulled any carts in four years. That's not true, Councilor. Yeah, we have.

We've been pulling carts for four years.

Yeah.

Okay. And more carts keep shutting up? Not enough of them, but we've been pulling carts. Once we started, once we got to 2023 and we saw what was there, remember we started this in 22, we've started pulling carts. Not as many as we should have, not as fast as we should have, and not as consistently as we should have.

Okay, and point of information. And four years later, Everybody thinks I'm overestimating numbers, but we still don't have enough people to pull in cards. How many cards can be out there and not have enough people in four years to pull in cards? I don't get it. I don't disagree with you.

Thank you for your point of information. Counsel, you have the floor.

I mean, I don't think we have to hire, what's the name of the company again? ReRig. Oh, thank you. I don't think we have to hire those people to tell us how many cards we have. That's your opinion. We're going to have to pull, are they going to pull them for us? Are they going to pull the cards for us or just give us an analysis?

They're going to give us an analysis. They're going to take an inventory of all of the barcodes that are on them, and they'll be associated with that policy.

And then we have to go and pick them up.

We will, yeah.

So we're going to pay them to tell them how the customer.

I think that's so not only not only do the compliance officers where they picking up cards, but they also drive through the city every day and find the bulky items that are left behind dumpings illegal dumping.

So that's, that's also what I'm not saying the compliance was not doing a job. What I'm saying is that it's very simple. We should just be pulling cards as we go about picking up the trash.

We should, but we don't have, with the four guys in compliance, with them doing the entire city for the illegal dumps and the bulky items, they don't have the time to do compliance, pull cots, inventory cots, as well as... Well, then shame on us.

We should hire more people and give you the manpower you need to pull those cots and get it done once and for all, and we should just take care of that. We're going to pay a company $250,000 to tell us how many cots are out there. We're going to go pull them. We're still going to need the manpower to go pull those cots. And if we don't have the manpower now, how are we going to get it later on? We just spent $250,000 for someone to tell us how many cots we need to pull.

It's $200,000, to be clear. How much? $200,000, not $250,000. Sorry, I thought you were going to say $250,000. $202,000.

So I just, what is it?

I think while they're doing that inventory, that company, while they're doing the inventory, we could follow behind to get the excessive amount of carts, but they're inputting it into the system to give us an idea and a database of what each resident has.

All right. And I mean, if someone initially, when they got the carts, felt that they were producing more trash or needed more carts, and also we pull a cart from them, They are going to have the same amount of trash, I'm assuming, because they felt they needed that trash back then. That's why they had the additional cut. So the trash isn't going to go away. For us to know how much trash we're producing, can't we just go back and look at the tonnage from the month prior?

28,000 tons last year, Councillor.

So you think that's going to eliminate because you get rid of some cuts?

I think if we do the enforcement, we can probably reduce that by maybe 10%, 15%. 28,000 is a lot of tonnage.

Part of it comes with the education piece and people being and not knowing what shouldn't be in it and knowing how to manage that better. Once they don't have a choice but to manage it better, they will start to figure that out.

Yeah, once they were told they didn't have to recycle anymore because now they don't have to pay for bags, that changed everything.

Right. So it's the same idea with the totes in general, too. It's an education piece that will come with it.

I don't think it's that complicated, and maybe I'm wrong, and I appreciate the fact that we've been pulling cards. I think we just continue down that path and pull as many. If we need more manpower, let us know, and we'll try to get some people to do it.

It's just unorganized and ineffective. It is unorganized. Right.

But I think by this company telling us how many we have and where they are, we're still not going to have the manpower to go do it, and maybe, I don't know, maybe...

It's a much more targeted approach at that point, you know exactly where you're going and have a schedule and a plan and you're not just driving around looking for.

We're not going to go down to picking up trash right so we don't have trash but we're doing so as we pick it up if there's 2 to 3 things we take a good access ones. The trash trucks can pick up the bins and stand up if there's a big call them they can.

I will we with all due respect comes that we could have the truck go out with re rig and they would follow them and they would pick up the carts at that point. The problem that we have is with the limited number of individuals we have in litter enforcement, like they said, they're constantly being pulled for other things while they're doing that audit. And a 90-day audit is going to turn into, with all due respect, four years because they haven't been able to do it to this point and the work is only getting greater and greater now that we've tightened up illegal dumping situations. We're finding where the info we've been like forcing a lot more than ever was done before. Now they have to look up partial IDs. They're getting all that information.

So not to interrupt you. I'm sorry, but will we be picking up these carts on days that we're not collecting trash?

No, we have to do it on trash. Empty them out and take them.

So that's my point. If we do it while we're picking up. Yeah.

because we can't go into their properties right now without an administrative one.

I didn't think it was that complicated and I'm not sure we need to pay someone to tell us what it is, but maybe I'm wrong. I've been wrong before. With that I yield. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor.

And seat three, Councillor Cagnuol.

Thank you. So this $202,500 re-rig, you mentioned that people hide bins. Will they be able to tell us who's hiding bins for that money?

i mean not unless on the curbside yeah they can't but they would have the capacity to go back they're not going to do this in one one swoop week this is going to be a 90 day it's going to be multiple trips on the same um trash and because they're tracking the barcodes they would know if it's a different bin at that property than the one that they saw previously so even if there's only one out they would know if it's a different numbered one so it would so if somebody was just a point of clarification please counselor

They won't see any barcodes on my trash bins. They're wiped out.

How are they going to track the barcodes? So at that point, they're going to be relabeled. They've done it in the past. They'll be relabeled with a new bin with a new barcode. Thank you.

Council, can you?

I don't know.

I'm just not hiding my bin.

Attorney Thomas. Yes. You worked on the most current contract with Capital, correct? Were there new trucks that were coming that had better technology, smart technology?

Yes. The new trucks have to be seven years or younger, and the idea behind that is that they have the ability to have readers on them.

Okay, so if they have readers on them, why wouldn't we engage with capital to see what potential they have to tell us how many stops how many times they're lifting at a particular stop, because the readers are typically on sidearm trucks, which we can't use on the Tuesday, Thursday pickups, those would have to be handheld type situations.

And that's a little bit more difficult to do. From what we've been told.

I mean, I just feel like for a company like Capital, they have to know how many times they're raising that lever at a particular stop. And if Mr. Hathaway says, I know how many bins we're supposed to have at a single family, how many bins we're supposed to have at a two family, you can just do the math and say, single family times this many bins. And then if capital just tells us how many bins they picked up in a particular week, we should be able to see from that data how many bins in excess we have. And if we did that over a multi-week period, obviously one week's not a sample size, but if we did it over a three-month period, I think we'd have all the data we need. And is this something we could just ask capital rather than dropping $200,000 for? Because I feel like a company like that probably already has this. We can work with capital.

I'll talk to him and see where we can go.

I think that's a starting point before we ever talk about spending $202,000 just to get data. With that, I yield.

Councilman C7, Councilor Pereira. Thank you, Councilor.

Okay. Welcome.

Thank you.

First of all, we had no idea that the cardboard pilot was shut down. I got calls from people about they terminated it. And they're told now to put the cardboard in trash. Is that what they're doing? But isn't cardboard a commodity?

Not as much as it used to be.

Not as much as it used to be. But do we get paid for cardboard?

No.

No, we don't get paid.

Well, we're getting something but nothing like what we were. It's not even carrying its cost. But they're constantly telling them to put them in the trash or in the recycling.

In the trash.

No, they're supposed to be telling them to put them in the recycling.

Well, okay. So now I have one recycle. Single family have one recycle. You know how much shopping I do online?

Councilor, I understand.

You don't have a clue.

No, my wife is not that far off.

I have a map that says if you're from Amazon, deliver next door. So my husband doesn't see as much. But, I mean, you're going to remove somebody's cart. But if they're using it and they're putting two carts, you have to think that due to the price of housing, et cetera, there are numbers of people living together. Like Mr. Sardina said across the street, in that house there's 10 people. He's got five. So maybe they do need two cards. What is the total amount that we are paying capital right now? Because we haven't seen that. What is the total amount, Emily? I don't have that with me.

We were under an amendment with the capital because of the fact that we didn't have a budget for the year. So that amendment ends next week.

I can send it to you. I just don't have it. Give me a ballpark. $12 million? $16 million? I have way too many numbers in my head. I'm so sorry.

Well, I think that's the bottom line. What does it cost us to get rid of trash?

And you know. Well, Councillor, it's not capital. It's the disposal cost.

Exactly.

So figure 28,000 tons times $125 a ton.

I understand that. But you're worried about, it's not the pickup. The pickup, we're going to pay what we pay for pickup. But then when we go dispose of the trash is what we're paying.

We want to try to reduce that. That's the one thing we can address.

How much trash, when we got rid of bags, how much trash did we pick up more in the north end and the south end? Because Tividen has bags. Freetown, Somerset, Swansea, they all have bags. They bring their trash here.

I don't have exact numbers, but what I'll tell you is.

How are we going to stop that?

that typically when a community goes to purple bags there's a 30 reduction this is statistically there's a 30 reduction in the disposal that's right i would argue here that when you get rid of bags you probably picked up about 45 to 50 percent more garbage

We did because I was at DCM. We looked at those numbers. That was years ago when Jaisal pulled the trash bags back.

But that's what I think happened after you got rid of the purple bags.

But we still are having that issue.

Because the COTS is still out there, Counselor.

You still have people bringing trash to Fall River. And to me, when you're saying that you don't want the four and five and six families, they're going to pay for their own trash. They pay taxes, too, like we all pay taxes.

That's a different conversation than this.

Well, I'm going to converse on everything that's in my head, Mr. Thomas. So indulge me. Sure. But now, the other thing is, I had a woman call me. I think she might have even come to the council. I'm not sure. But she's got a six family. Six people live there. They're one bedroom units, one person in each unit. She called around. Do you know that there's not a lot of companies that are picking up bins?

There are three of them for Fall River.

Which three? Harvey is one.

Harvey Waste Management and US Bins.

And how many are they picking up? Because they're limiting. They're limiting how much they're picking up.

I think they're limited because of our schedule.

They're limited, and they're charging people more than we would even charge them for a bin, if you wanted to charge people for a bin.

Counselor, to be very frank with you, let me address that, because that's a point you brought up. If we were going to charge, because I know there's been talk about charging the fives and the sixes for extra whatever. If we were to charge for a bin, it's not just the charge for the bin, it's the charge for the disposal. And at the end of the day,

what it would cost for all of that is probably going to be equal to or more than what they're paying the private sector to do it but here's the thing a few people a few companies will pick up some of them are limited on what they're going to pick up like waste energy or something they had a few more bins here after that they're not picking up more Republic is not picking up any bins. They're not picking up the carts, but they are picking up the bins.

Not the bins, the containers.

But then we end up with a problem with that, too, because there's not enough room on a lot of these properties to put a car like that definitely use cards so but they said it's not feasible and it's not cost effective for them to go around and pick up the bins that they can't do that so it's just the big yard race things and that's going to be a problem too and i think like counselor in seat number i don't even know two said it's true that If you're going to pick up bins, why are we spending over $200,000? Have somebody follow the truck now. If you need more people, then I say hire more people for DCM.

Council, I've heard this now seven times. We were doing that. Forgive me for my frustration, but what you're saying we should do is what we have been doing for four years, and we're no closer to knowing the number.

You're not doing it for four years consistently. You're not doing it consistently because he doesn't have the manpower. Oh, I'm not disagreeing with you.

Okay, so because he doesn't have the manpower. I'm not going to argue with you about this, but you're right. That could work. We've tried to do that, Counselor, and it hasn't gotten us to where we need to be.

It's also a temporary project. And I'll tell you, as far as going by and scanning, you know what that was put for initially, what bill of goods was sold here? When we first did the carts with Bob Correa, and we did the carts because there was a rat infestation, et cetera, we thought carts would be better. And what they did that for was for recyclables. That when they went by and picked up those carts with recyclables, they would be able to scan it, and they would know how much tonnage was in the recyclables, and the homeowner would get a gift certificate for some place, as an incentive really to keep as an incentive to keep recycling and if it was a multi-family house the owner could give a gift certificate to somebody one of his tenants to get people to recycle that's that's what was sold to us on why they were doing that okay i just think that we need to look at resolving the trash issue and unfortunately somebody's got to pay for it because the tonnage is out of control so let's not kid one another and let's not take a specific group well you're gonna pay and you're gonna be on your own but you're not gonna pay you're gonna get it for free but you can only have two barrels or this one can have one barrel Do you want to charge by the barrel? Do you want to go back to bags? Something's got to give because our people are taking it on the chin with disposal from Tividen and Somerset and Swansea and Freetown dumping here. Especially if they own a house here, they're dumping here.

If I may, Councillor, that's what our litter enforcement officers do. That's what they've been concentrating on is going around to the parks when there's been illegal dumps, when we find bins that are bathrooms that are overflowing, going there, ripping bags, trying to find out who is dumping. When we've done a very good job of it, we heard from the court that they've had a number now of criminal complaints that are filed by the city of Fall River addressing illegal dumping in not just bulky items, but just trash. So that's where if we take our enforcement officers and we put them... away from that, that's only gonna get worse.

And I understand that some people are doing that in our parks because you go and the barrels are full.

Downtown.

I get it. However, they're also putting it at private homes. If they own a home here but they live in another community or they have a relative that lives here, they're coming here too. What I do like is the police putting on their website people that they're picking up who are dumping illegal tires or mattresses or whatever and they should be fined and they should also pay for the cleanup that has to come along with it. And I think Chris's department and the guys there are doing a really good job with that. I'm just looking at the fact, let's not kid ourselves. Every other community is paying. Somerset is, Swansea is, Dartmouth is. And we can't take a tough vote. It's better that we all share in how we're gonna dispose of trash and not just selective people that are gonna have to pay. And I think if you have a certain quota of bins you're supposed to have, if you want an additional one, you should get it if the circumstance is that you have family members living there or a larger family. Because if I'm using two trash barrels a week and all of a sudden you're gonna take one, but I've got six people living in the house, or seven people, where am I gonna put that trash? Am I gonna go put it in a barrel at the park? Because you took my barrel, or am I gonna pay?

I mean, we're gonna run into the same problem, Counselor, if we go with a bag fee or a trash fee, and then those who don't want it go to privates, and it's gonna be the same situation.

Fine, let them go to privates, but they can't put dumpsters in their yard. They have to get bins.

Yeah.

They don't want to get bins.

That's the only thing we're trying to be creative with options for waste diversion right now with what we have. We hear a lot that there's too many fees and things that are being put on the homeowners in the residence. So this was one idea that we had until the waste diversion and three to four years expands that we can regionally that we can participate in it was just to try to remove what we're told by the company that's our vendor Our litter enforcement tells us those are the biggest offenders and they also tell us that that is the most trash being disposed of. It's the heaviest that those bins there where Matt was using an estimate of 75, they're telling us through capital it's anywhere from 125 to 200 pounds in those bins. that they're dumping because a lot of those apartments have food waste, which weighs the most, and they don't have the ability to do something with the food waste. So it's just a kind of way to be creative right now until other alternatives can come up.

And that program that I believe it was, who was here that wanted that mulching thing or whatever? Trotley put in. How many people are doing that? Composting. not many no that was one of the ideas there is pilots that we can look into to do composting and and emily spoke about you know we need an education piece we're going to do an education i've been talking about and hearing about that education piece how many how many meetings we go to that they talked about that is it done are we doing an educational piece now we're going to start working with the green team in the schools not your fault chris because you just got here but they've been wanting to do that for the last five years and i just think we need to bite the bullet yeah i don't like to pay either but if i'm going to say to the city i don't want you picking up the trash i'll hire my own company it's going to cost me anyway so you want everybody to just get their own company I don't like being selective, and I think my colleague in seat number two was right. If it's gonna take time, take time. I hate spending $200,000, $202,000 for somebody to go around and scan cards that they're not gonna pick up. They're just gonna scan them. I mean, a couple of us are retired here. Give us a thing, we'll go around and scan them for you. Come on. I just, I can't. Is that a full volunteer option? I'd volunteer to do something. We've been on committees. We volunteered. You know, to do things, and I'm sure you'd get some people to help out with volunteering. I don't know. Trash is something that needs to be addressed. And Republic, they're shipping all their stuff to the train we talked about. That's all going to Ohio, you're right. So, not gonna cost, it's not gonna save you a whole lot of money. Your CREPO's already full. They used us for a little while. They're not taking any more at CREPO, right?

14 more years.

But are they taking outside?

No. No. Well, very little. I don't blame them.

I don't blame them for not taking outside, because then Dartmouth has it, New Bedford, they have FAPO, so they're not gonna have to worry about it. It's longevity for that community. Smart thinking on their part. With that, I frustratedly yield. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman C1, Councilor Lickety.

Thank you. I'm in a silence to pause.

He's crazy.

So I don't know that we're any closer to any solution. And quite frankly, I don't even know what the purpose of the conversation is anymore. Is the goal savings, reducing tonnage? I guess what is the purpose of tonight?

Tonight's purpose was to respond to the thing, to the question of the resolution about a comprehensive method to look at the financial impacts of the cats and everything. And so what we were trying to do is explain what we've done for the last four years on that.

Let's not rehash that.

I know that's what we tried to do. But the bottom line is, In order to really cut back on, to create savings, the only place we can create savings is on disposal. You have to drive the city no matter what. So by reducing the number of bins, it reduces the number of disposal. Maybe not one-to-one, maybe one-to-a-half or something like that.

All right, so can we just, okay, so it's savings and we think it's tonnage. So first we were talking about five to six families, then Councilor Dionne brought in, you know, if we've got extra bins, if we start charging that potentially that... There's enough of those extra bins out there that we start charging a fee then we can actually see the savings and not eliminate the 5 to 6. So at the end of the day, I think what we're talking about a savings and trying to reduce that we need to talk about a fee that's that's the real issue so we talked about page to throw we had pays you throw we eliminated a tonnage goes up one of the only communities that doesn't have page to throw. I don't see us going back to pay as you throw, quite frankly. I mean, we can continue to talk about it, but why we're not having a conversation about a, and maybe this is not popular, but whatever, why we're not having a conversation about just a trash fee. I mean, we have roughly 10,000 residential properties. If you're looking to save $800,000 from five to six families, that's, $80 per property.

I'm not here to recommend a trash fee. That's not my purpose tonight, but the fact of the matter is most communities that have trash fees, not bags, but a trash fee, do cover a substantial amount of their disposal costs and collection costs.

That's part of the conversation. The $80, we were just talking about eliminating five to six families. That wasn't bringing in significant savings. It's some savings, right? So we've had this conversation before. So if we want to create an enterprise fund and we want to start charging a fee so that we're fully self-sufficient in terms of that and that there's a rate fee then that's that's one conversation but i think i think we need to know what the goal is so we can have these conversations as opposed to these back and forths and and having companies i i don't disagree with my colleagues i think and maybe i don't understand re-rig or whatever it is but two hundred thousand dollars that's a third of you know a year savings of eliminating five to six family right so if we've got eight hundred thousand dollars you're paying a third of your savings from that to have a company come out i make an argument that It costs us probably $50 to $75 per cart. You could get almost half the city with brand new carts and say, OK, this is the color. This is the only cart that we're picking up. Leave all the other carts. We collect it. $250,000, you throw in all the $250,000, $500,000, the entire city has brand new carts. I'm sure some of the carts need to be fixed, so we don't even have to worry about it. I'm sure there's an additional cost to rolling them out, but that, to me, is the easiest way to do it.

If I can respond to that, if you're looking at a fee, you're probably looking at about $100 to $125 a unit fee. something like that if carried out through the whole thing and done in a situation where a single family pays a certain fee or two phases something a three pay something so on and so forth could get you enough revenue to zero out the general fund impact right and listen maybe the conversation is we're not looking to zero out the entire service itself maybe it's half of it so maybe it doesn't have to be 100 right so i i think part of the conversations that we had heard

I don't know how many years ago when we're talking about pay as you throw, the biggest part of the pay as you throw was the fact that buying the bags was a pain having to do that. I think if we had a flat fee, we would probably have less of any type of issue moving forward. Now that doesn't, that doesn't translate into people recycling more, but let's, let's be honest. I mean, I know we're supposed to be pushing recycling. Recycling is costing us more than solid waste.

So I would defer to the Mr. President about this, but is it the sense of the council that you'd like us to come back to you with a fee?

I would say the council asking us to come up with a trend proposal for trash I can tell you what I'm asking for I'm asking for if we're looking at an analysis if it's saving if it's saving money for the city give us options of what it is and a fee should absolutely be on that because to me all this other stuff and going back it's gonna cost us more money more manpower and at the end of the day the cost is still gonna go up we can't burn trash Right. We don't have that ability to do it. I know you can't do that anymore. That's right. And so I know there was a discussion about us that we can't do that. Right. We have a transfer station that's still in the works of being built and all this other stuff. Yeah. So from my standpoint, I think I forgot which one of my colleagues said it like we've we've got to take tough votes. Right.

So I understand that you and Council Pereira saying that, but I guess my question continues to be

is it the sense of the full council that you would like us to come back to you with an analysis on a trash rate if that's what you're asking to be clear mr thomas mr thomas if i can because we're going around in a circle counselor and c1 clearly articulated it's the purpose of the resolution is for the administration to provide an accurate financial analysis related to the cost and distribution of solid waste that should be an option as part of the analysis or options for analysis that you give the city council I don't think the council is prepared to make a vote right now on if we want to do a fee because there's a lot of unanswered questions.

I'm not suggesting that.

So let's make sure we get a financial analysis done with options that we could debate on. I think that's what we're talking about. That's a fair request then.

That was not something that we actually thought was going to be part of the conversation.

Well, that was the purpose of the resolution.

The resolution said the cost of the carts, not necessarily of the disposal.

So we were just... We can definitely do that.

Thank you.

Okay. It also said comprehensive plan. We can definitely do that.

That's what it says. That's what I read. Councilman C1, you have the floor. Sorry to interrupt. Thank you.

No, and I listen, I don't think we shouldn't be working on this in a silo, right? So it's the I agree, it's a totality of the financial picture, right? So we've got some significant cost increase coming in, whether we're talking about pension, healthcare, whatever that cost may be, right. So we're trying to minimize in right now, there's a way to minimize the cost for trash, right? So I get it. People don't like fees. We're in government, though. We don't create products. We provide services. And the only thing we do is taxes and fees. Those are our two options to generate money, right? So we need to figure out how to reduce tonnage. And the best way to reduce tonnage is a pay-as-you-throw program, which is going to force people to buy bags and start recycling more and putting less in the waste, right, in the trash bins. So if that's not an option, if we're looking at from saving money, then let's just do a fee. It's an easier, probably more palatable.

I don't disagree with you.

Stands from anybody. But I think we need to know what it is that the administration is looking for, how much we're looking to try to save that would be beneficial. is it a hundred percent is it eighty percent it's a fifty percent of the cost and then we can finally have some some discussion as to what it is because i i think i listen i would support removing five and six families i've said that before but there are my colleagues that don't feel that way and i can understand it so if there's a different way to go about it so that we're not impacting individuals in the five and the six families then let's address it all this other stuff about you know four years ago five years ago okay no it's fine i just we wasted an hour and a half and from my standpoint let's Let's bite the bullet because in 2 years we're going to come back and we're going to say we don't have enough money we need a fee so let's let's just do it now right so that but let's make sure it's reasonable right okay so. And we know we won't get it next year because of this election and we won't want to take fees and all this other stuff so let's you know I've said before if you don't want to vote for me don't vote for me so I'm one Council that says you don't want to let me don't like but. At the end of the day, I think there's a reality to the situation. We should have never eliminated the page to throw, but we did. We have an opportunity to get fees in here, a flat fee across the board.

I would tend to think that we could probably have a proposal to you in about two weeks.

And then I would say instead of this re-rig or whatever it is, what's the status of these carts? I mean, I'm sure a lot of these carts are broken and people had them since they were first rolled out.

Well, actually, those carts have been repaired. That was what came out of cart maintenance.

We repaired, I'd say, probably 90% of them. Yeah, we're at a good level right now. And capital has taken over a lot of that since July.

So the cats are in much better shape than they were that has been same thing with replacements.

Yeah. All right. So maybe we, what do we got for storage? How much do we have an inventory for cars? Do we have a lot?

Um, just about a hundred of everything except for 95 trash, 95 trash. I think we're down to the last couple.

So we might just want to consider. We're looking at change of color, change of top color, whatever, whatever the case may be.

Well, we're looking at changing the top covers on what we can get. We're looking at that.

Right. So that, that would be the easiest play instead of buying it probably cheaper. Right. So that's just, that's just my standpoint. Um, so I I'd support if you, if you folks want to just identify like how much you feel like we need to save us about again, a hundred percent, 80%.

They give us two weeks. We can get something back in two weeks. Yeah. Okay.

Just a quick point of order. Constancy five, Matt, where where's re rigged the company that you're talking about? We know where have they worked on what the manufacturer of the totes?

All right, but what they're gonna do the order that we pay them monthly right now, for their software for their software. And that was the point for this was trying to get a handle on the the carts and where we stand because if you go to a cart fee and someone still has extra carts that we're not aware of, and they put them out when they're picking them up. They're not really sure whether you paid for one car or two cars.

As part of that software, we can we can implement there's a work audit system as part of it.

And they're going to come in and do that audit if we approve it.

We would have to pay the additional.

Where have they done it before? What other municipalities?

I haven't got that information from them.

Can you get me that information? I'd just be curious. Thank you. I yield.

Constance, you still have a floor. No, I'm good. I yield. All right. Out of curiosity, if I may, what's the point of the software if we're not monitoring?

What does that do? At one point, they were keeping track of it. Up to a certain point, they... is it doing anything right now out of curiosity uh currently we're looking into utilizing it for the work order for the cop maintenance repairs the replacements so on and so forth there's a work order system built into it so that way when a resident calls in it goes to that parcel and then that work order is sent to the person who does the actual repairs yeah and then they can put the repairs on it and now we have record of it it is interesting

Counselor in C3, Counselor Canual.

Thank you. I'll be brief. Just on that, you said we were using the software for a period of time? At one point, it was being used, yeah. Can we find out when we stopped and why we stopped? Absolutely. Okay. I'd say about four years ago. Okay, and then just, I'll be brief, I just wanna speak to the purpose of this, because I do wanna remind my colleagues that there's potentially an ordinance in full council related to eliminating the fives and the sixes. So this resolution by my colleague in C4 was, there's a hypothesis, and based on the conversation, I think it's becoming more of a probability, that if we understood how many excess carts we had out there we could get to that level of savings you were seeking to achieve by implementing this ordinance eliminating fives and sixes so I think you know this continues to come up I think we should be potentially killing this ordinance tonight till rather than tabling it till we we come up with this comprehensive review because I think Um, just based on the discussion, if you have, uh, capital calling all the time, you know, we have an excess card here or there, but we still have some work to do. And I think, uh, this resolution that we've been discussing a great length, uh, demonstrates that, um, we need to do this first, do that analysis before we proceed without you.

Thank you. Counselor and see for council vice president Dion.

Yeah, just as a point of reference, so while everybody was talking, $120 a year per household is $2.30 a week, less than the price of one big purple bag, times 22,000 properties will generate $2,640,000. Just a note, just a thought, which is way more, I know that's bad English, way more than taking the five and six families off. Right?

Yes.

No. But it's okay, I'm not going to debate it with you.

I thought you said earlier, taking the five and six families is only going to be six.

No, because by paying for it isn't going to reduce the traction.

Then reduce the trash to reduce the cost and.

Cost is going to go it's it's a it's a lot we get to watch the number has to be a little bit higher, but I'm still using. Cost reduction was part of trash it is but having people pay doesn't make them dispose less trash.

I get that part. And waste reduction is something we're going to work on.

We have to work on that. That has to be part of it.