Municipal Solid Waste Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

Good evening everyone. Uh, call this meeting to order at 7:02 and I think we can start uh, if I could by making a motion if everyone's had a chance to review the minutes from last week. Uh, I'd move to have those meeting minutes approved from uh, December 3rd. Second, excuse me. January 7th. Second the motion. Do we need a roll call votes or no? Yes, I think so. I wasn't there, but I will

trust your judgment fully. I

I Okay. Sorry, I'm having a issue grabbing the minutes or the the agenda for tonight's meeting. Um I think the second item on tonight's agenda was to discuss and review pricing for bags. Um Mr. Brassard had made really thorough presentation during our last meeting about uh bag pricing and and how we might protect against uh deficit in the event of a bag price change which we're which we're expecting when these changes come. Yeah, I think that there are a few things in play here. Yeah, we want to protect against a deficit. We want to protect against, you know, immediately having to go back to the people that we are serving and ask for a price increase due to changes in consumption. Um, you know, Evan had put out a change in consumption estimate of about 10%. Um I also looked at the historical data when we had a mild increase of price. Consumption actually went up not including the two months before or one month after the price change but we are talking about a price change that I think is significant. We we will be effectively probably a little more than doubling the price of bags. Um, and while the the generation of municipal solid waste is somewhat inelastic, I think that bag utilization will reflect the new, you know, direct to consumer price

since it's not being subsidized from the general fund. I did talk to a fair number of people in my neighborhood and asked them, you know, if bag prices went up 50%. What changes would you anticipate? If bag prices doubled, what changes would you anticipate? This was about six families. Um, most of them estimated that if bag prices went up 100%. Doubled, their bag utilization would be marketkedly more efficient. Most of them said, you know, initially they were like, "Oh, we, you know, we'd get every square inch we could out of those bags. We would anticipate, you know, 25% reduction." Like, okay. But really like after the first month or two of it being you know painful what would you anticipate? Uh and the numbers ranged on that from you know [clears throat] somewhere around 30% to you know somewhere around 15%. But the uh the average number that I got from the people was just a totally nonrepresentative straw poll. There's some intrinsic biases of you know these are people in my neighborhood that I know. Uh most people said around 20%. you know, just make sure the bags are real full, squish them down, you know. Um, so I think that we should take into account the potential increased efficiency of utilization when we build our model. I will open for comments. When when most people came back to you with 20% Mike, this was this is them estimating that they're going to use 20% fewer bags.

Correct. Yeah.

I'm just commenting anecdotally from my own experience. You know, I'm like everybody else. Like when the price goes up, I'm going to try to use fewer bags as well. However, there are only two size bags and you know, I probably cannot get away with skipping a week in my house. Like, like I'm not going to withhold trash one week for the sake of saving bags. I'm probably on the more efficient side, I hope, already, of getting my bang for the buck out of the bags. Um, but but keeping in mind that I I probably cannot get away with not putting out trash on the corner.

Yeah. Uh, in a given week, I would imagine my use is going to be pretty consistent. Yeah, but that's that's only commenting on my very anecdotal interaction with the system. I I agree. You know, we'll probably see a little higher use utilization of recycling. Um, and with a hat tip to member Foley here, we'll probably see some increased composting activity hopefully. Um, that seems like that would be a win for the, you know, the long-term goals. Um, we have a hand raised in Hanoi, Vietnam. [laughter]

Yeah. And so I would uh I would say that uh you know you'll see some of what both Larry and Mike have uh commented on and then Ann and I have indicated that you know we um already uh you know we're a smaller you know person household. U all that we really see in our trash is plastic and it takes us two or three weeks to fill it up. And so there'll be a a lot of residents that are that way too. And I think that there'll be people who are just going to recycle more and compost that they that weren't before. And so I I what I would think is that when we make a recommendation to the select board and the report that we indicate that you know we're doing our best guesstimate because it's really a guesstimate at this point in time about what kind of efficiency we're going to see or what kind of increase in recycling we're going to see um in the coming year and that we're you know we're pegging it at 10%. the first year might be rough and we might see it be 15 or 20%. And if that's the case, then we may have to we may see a small hit on our free cash when it gets certified next year. But it wouldn't be I mean even if it's a 10% variance, we're talking probably 60 to $75,000. So it's not going to be a a you know a budget budget busting sort of situation as far as free cash goes. Um, and then there would have to be an adjustment the following year probably. And I think we should say that right up front so that the select board and the finance committee and everybody at town meeting hears that right from the starting gate.

That makes sense to me to put it on Front Street with our with our best guesstimate of what could happen. Um, Miss Foley, I don't know if you I was just gonna fully agree with what was just said. That's all. Thanks.

You know, I I realize that there is some bias with the the representation. You know, we we are all well educated, high income earners. Um, you know, so we may not be able to speak for everybody in Grafton, but we will do our best to try to serve all of their needs. And I I yeah I fully agree that yeah when we make our recommendations to the select board we should throw in the caveats of you know we are trying to make an accurate model this is based on our uh research andor best guesses we're trying to do the right thing here I have not been able to find any municipalities who have switched to a fully enterprise model in the last few years with a conccomatant you know steep jump in price. Uh Evan, uh you are ultimately ultimately connected compared to many of us. Uh do you know of any comparative data sets that we could look at, you know, where where there has been a huge jump in price, you know, due to shifting to enterprise funds or different contractors? Anything that we could use to help predict the elasticity of the demand?

Um not really unfortunately. Um so we do we do we have seen some changes um but most of them are vendor to vendor and not changing the entire program. Um I I do have two thoughts about about pricing. Um and and that are that is you know I feel pretty comfortable where we are that if you know we we we have some play in the in the number right we would generate if it was a perfect world we would generate about $130,000 of surplus revenue. It's not going to be a perfect world. If it's less than that we have some cushion. If it's more than that we correct uh and that money stays in the enterprise fund. So it's not like we it it evaporates or goes into the general fund or does any of that. I think we need to explain that fully how that how that works. Um, but the other thing and it's it's a it's a a timing not issue but it's it's um so I I did reach out to the folks at Waste Zero um that do our bags to ask them um to look at our um numbers and let me know if they think that they're accurate. they had offered that um when we had we had had a recent conversation and I didn't know that that was something that that they would do, but they've done that for other communities and they're they're willing to take a look. Um I don't think that should slow this group down on I mean we're talking about uh we're going we would move the the estimate by 10 cents or something. It's not going to be I can tell you right now it's not going to be you know a huge a huge uh variance. But the other thing is I I'm interested to um poke around a little bit. I'm I'm going to the MMA conference on Friday. Um I'll see a lot of my peers there. Um it's it's uh easier in my opinion when I'm at an event like that to just do a little

glad handing and uh catch up with people and then just get their take on on some of that. And so what I would say my thinking uh was that you know if if something dynamic or or um highly unexpected comes of those conversations or I learned some new data set uh you know we could certainly reach back out and and get the group together before January 3rd which is that select board meeting the upcoming select board meeting. Um, however, uh, if not, I mean, I think all things remaining equal, I think we're in a pretty I feel we're in a pretty good place, um, as a as a group. So, um,

Evan, did you mean February 3rd? Yes. When did I say January 3rd? Yeah. Yeah. Would it be helpful um if as many of uh the committee members could make that meeting so that if there are questions and um there was a a good reason for there to be a response from the committee so does doesn't fall on Evan and and Ann's shoulders alone. Definitely.

Yes. So yeah 100% and I um you should be receiving um I I thought you might have already received it but I will follow up tomorrow. um an invitation to that meeting from uh Amber uh who's in our office and she will um ensure that you're all have either the Zoom link or the the the time and location so that you can be be in person if you if you wish. Thank you Evan. Yeah.

Uh thanks for your insight into that. Um so February 3rd uh that is running late not not overdue but we are running close to our targeted date of completion. um barring any you know major findings or changes from that MMA meeting and this is a question for the group at large. Uh you know can we commit to having our recommendations locked in shortly after that? I I think you're if I could just jump in. I think we we should have our recommendation loosely hopefully loosely uh built tonight. Um

yeah, that would be ideal. We can work on the or I can work on I'm happy to do it. I've got the bones of of a whole bunch of different presentations that I've given, put that together, send it out to the group, and um you know, then then we can we can go from there. um and uh just meet with the board and and run them through what what we've uh been working on and I

I I you know I don't think the board is going to be surprised. Um I think we've Ian Marie has given a number of updates that you know this is how we're doing things and this is kind of where we're we're leaning. Maybe they will on the the price uh component because we haven't really spoken about that specifically, but um you know I there everyone on the board is aware that this group is coming back and that there's going to be a shift. I mean that's what we've been working towards. So um essentially what we've designed for when we shifted to an enterprise fund,

right? to do something along these lines, whether it's this or, you know, a variation of the program, but the whole point was to move um move the program out of the the general fund. So, uh Larry through you. Yes, Miss Holey.

Sorry. Um so, I'm just I have to still review your minutes from last meeting. I apologize. guys have had kind of a a a rough two weeks. Um so will we also be ready to speak at all or did you guys speak at this at the last meeting about you know some of the things the initiatives we've talked about to try to you know offset like increasing composting throwing some money at that or no we just on is the plan for the third simply to present here's what the bag fee numbers will look like here's why and then will do kind of education as to how we can help consumers after that.

Uh Mike, yeah, it it was my understanding that the charge of this group we set out was to handle municipal solid waste. Um you know, funding things like the Black Earth compost or waste diversion or, you know, increased mailers, that would be something with a budgetary implication. Um and I fully support those motions, but I feel like that that goes to the select board. We don't have budgetary authority in this committee. We can only make recommendations. So yes, we can definitely recommend increased compost to increased recycling, increased waste diversion,

but I feel like that's the limitation. much um looking for the committee to make specific recommendations, but in my opinion um I think it would be helpful to offer some ideas of how folks might

minimize their bag usage and I'm happy to go crazy on that or again just as a committee I'm not looking for us to have select board to you know pay 10,000 bucks to support the composting program, but there are things that we have in place that not everybody knows about and uh they I think that a lot of folks will be more um apt to look for these venues, right, to how do we reduce what we're paying for these bags? So, again, doesn't matter to me. I'm pushing this stuff out myself on my other committee. Um, but I think it it might be helpful if if we're talking about, and again, I didn't look to see what the numbers were for the bags, but I anticipate it's probably, you know, twice as much as they are now or thereabouts. Um, yeah, just kind of throwing it out there. And then just along those lines, Evan, I know this is kind of an aside, but I I emailed you and Paul about the NADT and increasing that amount.

Um, and so I did look into that further. I realize it goes under GPW, but that we don't have to speak to that on the third, but some of those things I think would be handy to have in our back pocket um to to to help offset folks are going to be, you know, rightly so upset about this and at least we can say, hey, we've got plans to up XYZ, right? If they want to partake in that, cool. If not, that's okay, too. But at least we're offering some something to temper the the message. My opinion. Um I think I saw Jim's Jim's hand first.

Yeah. Um and so it's my turn to agree with Ann Marie at this point. Um but I also um I know Evan said that he would be sending out a draft report for us to take a look at. And I think if we lay out all of the financial implications, but at the sort of a summary conclusion towards the end, we say something about, you know, to mediate the cost increase, here are some things that we believe the select board can be looking at um in the fiscal year 27 budget. And and I know that just from reading the local paper that you're already looking at the potential for a two and a half override. So I know the budget's going to be tight. So, we may not be able to financially support something, but that doesn't mean that we can't do something to educate people about what how much, you know, what they can do as far as improving the amount of recycling they do. Um, what they can do to, uh, you know, start either doing, you know, the black earth stuff or backyard composting. Um I don't know if the Evan if the board of health uh is still getting grants to uh through the D to get the backyard composters and if so we can make that as part of our recommendations. This is also another option to get the food waste out of what's going into the recycling or the trash bags. So that's just solid waste. So I'd like to see when you do the report and we get to take a look at it. Um I would like to see some sort of a statement about that in towards the end of the report so that we stick to the financials because that's really what our charge basically was really take a look at this and look at the options but also say look we recognize that this is going to have a a big impact on a lot of families and that uh you know improved recycling and improved composting would be a way to mate mitigate some of the cost.

I'm leaning that way also. Uh I think uh Evan had his hand up next and then we'll go to Mike.

Yeah. So um nothing uh much outside of the vein of what was just said. I I think that um you know while the charge of this group is is somewhat narrow um in in pricing around municipal solid waste. I don't think that any of that is independent uh of of anything else. Right. So all of it's going to feed into the same uh you know tipping fees and diversion and all those things. So um I think that you know we'll we'll have a presentation I think we should have a couple slides in there about the other programs we offer and maybe some um you know space for us to talk about future programs. Um we do have quite a bit of not quite a quite a bit. I think we have well it's quite a bit. It's $30,000 in an $85 million budget. It's not a crazy amount of money, but uh we do have about 30 grand in RDP money and I would recommend um that you know part of our our discussion uh is how we will supplement some of the programs with with some of that. And I don't think that's uh necessarily exactly the scope of this group, but I think that there there are already things that we we have precedent for. Um and so we'll just be building upon that. Um, and that is within the scope of my regular job. So, um, I think it all blends together. And again, I don't I don't think the board is going to discuss our charge. So, I think we're I think we're good to I think we're good to go. I think we should try to capture as much of it as possible and start getting that message out to folks.

Mike, uh, Evan, thank you for offering to lead on this. I've noticed that your schedule looks pretty busy and you are a very in demand person. Um, if there is anything I can do to help write, edit, you know, craft the the draft of this, um, you know, we can definitely include, you know, some messaging on programs that are already available. Um, possibly making some recommendations for that. when it comes to the actual lift of writing this report, please let me know what I can do to help. Um, great. Thank you for that. I appreciate it.

So, does I just have a question. Does everybody think that um we should I mean are we comfortable um moving ahead where the way we are or do we want a motion to make a recommendation based on the numbers that Evan presented at the last meeting uh to be incorporated into the report. That way we because I think we can all take a look at the report and say, "Okay, thumbs up. I'm good with this report. This is what we talked about." Um because if we want to have a recommendation good Evans sharing his screen so that we actually have the numbers up. That's great. Thank you. Um because if we want a motion, I'd be happy to make that motion based on what we talked about at the last meeting. I'll turn it over to Evan so he can explain the the numbers.

Yep. So, just to review, um, [snorts] we were looking at for fiscal 27, small bags, uh, being sold for $15 a roll, large bags being $24 a roll. Um, if you base our previous sales on those updated pricing, um, it makes the program solvent to the tune of about $130,825, um, positive. So, we discussed uh, a little bit of, you know, that number being slightly less than than 10% of the program cost. Um, and that being a little bit of what we project as a sweet spot for not over billing people for the bags, but not uh, you know, under undercutting either. Um, so we, you know, try to avoid any kind of deficit in year one of the enterprise fund, which is, you know, a little bit of a a moving target. Um, and I'm I'm happy to back up if anyone, you know, wants to see some of the data before this particular slide. This is just the pricing slide

and Marie. Yeah, thanks Lori and I'm sorry I wasn't here last time but uh just don't apologize. So I understand I see the revenue I see the cost of the bags and I'm not seeing how the delta is 130. Like that's the cost of the bags, right? [snorts] Um is the same as what you're coming up with that the bottom line balance there. No, I don't think so. Hold on one second. So, well, that's what is being shown, but I'm assuming that you guys talked about 14883 1 million blah blah blah minus the 130 which is 1352976.

Um, I guess that would be the balance. And then you guys have you well I shouldn't say you guys. I just happen to be wasn't here, but we um feel that that 1,300 and whatever Oh, you're right. I got an error on this. It's okay. No, it's not though because that was what we based our whole thing on. Yeah. This one beating and what the h What happens with you guys? I know. Well, I know. I fell right off the rails. Hold on. I got to No, but I've looked at it. So, I mean, the delta, it's 1352976. And yeah, I believe we thought this program cost about 12ish, probably going up each year. So,

yeah, 1285, right? It's it's uh I got to stop linking these presentations out to the PowerPoint because every time I touch anything it breaks. I was just over at the minutes and you popped this up here so I switched back but I can maybe in the minutes it's it's it's correct. Um please give me one second. [sighs] H12 sorry just bear with me one second. A no worries. Minus A B12.

Yeah, it's not really I think in the minutes it's

No, there's a there's a there's a broken link here. Just let me uh so many Yep. Hold on one second. Evan, I think I think the the number is pretty close. I think you if you look at the fiscal year 27 projected deficit

Yep. at the you've got a program cost of 1,285675 and then I think if you were to take the um projected revenues from the other page and just compare those two numbers I believe that comes out to like it's not 130 825 it's 134 something and change.

Yep. That's what I'm I'm seeing too. Um just trying I'm in the Excel sheet. I'm going to back out to the [sighs] [gasps] 1382516 is because of that. Okay, one second. All right. So, doing backing up in the math and I'm having trouble getting to be able to show you the the screen. Hold on one sec. Um the the program would be 134875 uh in that ballpark.

That's what I came up with. Okay. Sorry about that. That's that's uh could catch Amory. Um yeah, it was linking to the wrong part of the spreadsheet, so I apologize for that. So, I'll I'll uh I'll make sure I clean that up for the presentation. Make sure that doesn't match. So, those numbers were $24 for the large set of bags and 15 for the small set of bags.

Correct. um given everything we've talked about because I I do think the $134,000 is a good um comfort zone so that if we people recycle more hopefully we don't have to get a hit to free cash and I think that's that's a point that we just need to drive home every time we have an opportunity to talk about this publicly. Um, [clears throat] so I will just to move things along, I will make a motion that um our recommendation include increasing staying with the current program and increasing the bag fees to $15 for the small bags and $24 for the large bags. Second.

And then we Larry, we could just see if there's any discussion. The the one thought that I had was um if if this gets tossed around a little bit by Evans attending the MMA meeting, like if you get some revelatory information that that throws off what we're planning.

Um so I I think sorry I I think that's highly unlikely. I just wanted to put that put that out there that I'm going to vet this with some of my peers uh and some of the other groups I come across. Um you know, Way Zero, the vendor is usually there. I'll chat with those folks a little bit and drive kind of where we're we're thinking home. Um you know, if that were the case, I would ask the board to push us to the end of second meeting in February and we could get back together again. Um I just wanted to put it out there. I didn't want u to necessarily throw a wrench in anything. I just wanted to know that

um those are other avenues that I think are are worth having uh discussion um with Evan Black Earth will probably be there too. You ought to push them a little bit and see if they'll make some sort of a deal to help encourage people to do curbside uh composting. Yeah. I I think I normally see the outdoor compost vendor there as well. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. Push them all. Yeah. Tell them we're doing this and that we want to really encourage people to compost and recycle. Yeah,

I've reached out to them separately because Sustainable Grafton is doing an Earth Day event again this year and so I've asked them for a coupon code um which they gave us last year for new me people. So in addition to what the town's doing with giving out the free bins and bags for a year to ask them for like a 20% off do coupon or something of that sort. So hopefully I'll have a bunch of those coupons come the end of April. And Evan, if you see people giving out free bags, take them all. I I'll tell you know I'll tell that to is Mary Lauria because that lady gets more swag than anybody I've ever seen. She she'll get socks off people that are you know she just doesn't matter what it is there she just scooping stuff into the bag. So

I came back last year from that conference with about six um electric toothbrushes. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. It's a fun one.

So um I do have one brief question here. uh you know as we go to the enterprise system with the new bag pricing we will probably see hopefully some increase in recycling concatenant with this uh for the contract with E Harvey says we paid depending on the years 120 130 bucks a ton um versus the you know income that we get from bag sales if that number shifts a lot Do we anticipate that that would, you know, it's not going to we're not going to suddenly recycle everything. Uh would that impact our model just that un I I I don't know from our cost analysis because the email from Mary.

Yeah. Uh it doesn't break out the per ton or maybe it does and I I'm not I'm not reading it correctly. The perton fee for recycling,

right? Um, yeah, I'd have to back back into that, Mike. I would say that when we were doing our initial conversation with Mary and myself and and running some of these numbers, um, you know, again, that that 134 uh number [snorts] does take into account that we we could possibly see more on the tipping fee side for our recycling than um we're seeing currently. But um you know I I think what we tried to bake into that and and it is somewhat of guesswork is uh you know are we going to see uh higher amounts of recycling and are we going to see uh a run on bag purchases before the price change? I think both of those hopefully the recycling is yes. Like I think that's a good problem for us to have. Um and then the bag fee thing, you know, we just got to feel that out. Yeah, Larry, I had just so you don't have to unmute, I'll go ahead because I could tell you were just about to call on me.

I really wanted to call on you. [laughter] The uh the other thing that we need to be aware of too is that while we'll see some increased cost for um recycling uh through EL carve Harvey or we might we'll also see a reduction in tipping fees um for the material that actually goes to the wheel blade wheelbraider facility and that's that's a reality because I could tell you when I was in Lexington and we really started pushing um curbside composting we were giving away like a thousand buckets a year using our uh ARPA money. Uh we saw a dramatic decrease in our tipping fee there. And so I think that when we increase the U bag fees, we're going to see more recycling and more composting and we're going to see uh the actual solid waste that goes to Wheeler go down and we pay on a per ton basis for that and so we'll see a drop in cost there and we haven't calculated that in anywhere and I would just keep that in your back pocket Evan because that might help mitigate any

uh unforeseen things that we're we're not anticipating you know that maybe maybe you know people are going to recycle 50% more or something. So, it would be good and which which would be good because then our tipping fee will go that down that much more. But, um our tipping fee should go down and that that should also help um provide a little bit of a buffer on what with the differences between revenues and expenditures in the enterprise. It's very helpful. Yep. I hit the nail right on the head. Mike

Evan, uh I couldn't find any information. What is our current tipping fee for solid waste per ton? If it's within throwing distance of what we pay for recycling, then this kind of comes out as a wash. Yes, it is in throwing distance of the I'm trying to pull up the I want to say it was $130 a ton, but Oh, that's that's almost identical. Okay. Then then I I apologize for

No, and one of the things I I when I was talking to uh the folks at Harvey um a few weeks back, they were talking about how um you know, we're we're driving up recycling fees, but recycling fees are starting to outpace uh tipping fees for for solid waste, which is you know, just a such a bizarre world to live in um compared to where we were. So, um, yeah, they're they're within a close enough proximity that they'll they'll be a wash. I can include that into the next, uh, the conversation. I just can't get it to come up right this second.

That's That's fantastic. Thank you. I I didn't know the numbers, so I If they're that close, then they they are close. I I'm I'm sure. I just want to uh double check. Okay. Um, so that was I think we're still in the discussion part of that motion. Yeah. Do we want to return to the motion? Yeah. Okay. So, the motion has already been seconded. Seconded. Uh, should we take a role and see who's in support? Yep. Fully I

Rock I Malloy I. Brisard. Yeah. I guess [gasps] um right. So weird voting in a meeting. Welcome to the other side. Useless just sitting there. Yeah.

Um okay. Um so here's kind of what I I will begin working on that. I will go clean up that mathematical error. Make those numbers tie out the way that they're they're supposed to. Um, if you go looking, I did pull the Excel sheet and that PowerPoint out of the shared file. I will fix it, put it back in. Um, so I will do that uh probably to tomorrow, I would say. Um, and then we'll we'll build a I'm thinking that we should present the board kind of a a couple sheet uh memo, not a hugely long uh winded document, but just kind of wraps up what we've what we've been doing. and then a PowerPoint of no more than 10 slides um to just kind of walk them through and I can share those with the group and um you know any feedback you may have is is welcome of course um and then and any support if you think we need a paragraph and you want to write a paragraph absolutely we can we can have at it

that sounds great um then I think all that we have left on tonight's agenda uh that we've jumped out of order a little bit which is fine. Uh we're left with discussing the change over bag color.

Yeah, this this was something that I wanted to bring to the group's attention just as a potential discussion point. Um on the shared file or the SharePoint drive, I did put in a little map with the the map of uh local municipalities and what bad colors they have. But the thought process of a change in bag color is as follows. First, I don't want to renegotiate or change anything with our existing contract with waste zero. Um, I did call waste zero to see what sort of bag colors are stock and, you know, not a premium charge. They they don't they don't know me and they didn't call me bag. They don't know me like they know Evan. Um [clears throat] but the the rationale for changing the bag color is that you know there could be significant anticipatory buying of bags before a changeover. Um this becomes somewhat of a equity issue. you know, where if the people that are wealthy can stock up for, you know, buy a two-year supply, whereas people who are a little tighter living paycheck to paycheck, they can't sink, you know, hundreds of dollars into bag fees or thousands of dollars into bags. Um and then this becomes a a regressive pricing schema that you know the rich get a discount and the people that are living paycheck to paycheck don't get that discount essentially. So what I was thinking and I would love to hear some discussion [clears throat] and thoughts on this. Um you know when we move to the enterprise fund say you know you have you have six months to use up your old bags after that we go to a new bag color or some some period of time it switch over to a

new bag color at which point um only the new bag color will be available. Um this is logistically kind of a hassle. Um, it also means that our trash bags would not be the same color as our high school mascot, which seems to be the dominating pattern of bag cho bag color choice. Um, but would be a potential for us to make sure that, you know, this transition is equitable. I will open up the floor for thought.

Maybe I'm misunders Oh, I'm sorry, Any, please.

No, go. I [snorts] was going to say maybe maybe I'm misunderstanding but just to push back a bit on the idea Mike if if there's a date certain by which we stop using the previous set of bags the green bags that we have now I is that like that seems to me it would be unfair to people who bought those bags and perhaps stocked up on those for one reason or another whether they know about the change in price or not. You know, maybe somebody just likes to buy a bunch of trash bags at a time and have it so they're not running to the store every month or at whatever interval. Are those folks not getting left in the lurch if we transition color and say you can no longer use use the bags that we've been using?

That's a that's a fair concern. Um, you know, with this potential, I would want to build in a fair amount of grace period. You know, I I don't know the bag holding data. You know, less than a month is downright cruel. Uh, you know, 3 to 6 months seems about right and more than six months. Uh yeah, I I think choose choosing the interval for the changeover would be the key to to making sure that's reasonable. I I just I wonder Evan to that point, is there a way to find out?

You can't you can't ask like how many bags have been sold versus collected. Yeah, not really because it's all it's not it's not the the pickup data isn't by bag, it's by tonnage. So, uh it's just not going to equate. Now, um Got it. Yeah, my my I I see you. No, sorry. Go ahead, Amory. I was going to yield to you. Um

I think that the complaints that I've had over the years are that bags are not available. I don't think that there's any vendor that carries these bags that has $1,000 worth of bags on their shelves. I could be wrong and I'm happy to go and check, but um the complaints that I have heard over the years, not so much recently, but that there are times where the bags are not available. Um so I guess for me, I don't see this as a a problem. I don't think that people who have the means are the ones that are going to be going out there and snagging the bags to be quite frank. Um I think it'll be folks like me who live on a tight budget. Um and that yeah, I'll take a couple extra. So I [snorts] I I guess if that's your argument in terms of folks who have means scooping up $1,000 worth of bags, again, my opinion would be that that that wouldn't be the case. And in fact, I would argue the exact opposite. But I do I do feel um and I will go and check you know that stop and shop and and True Value and what have you or Coupeman sorry I don't think that they stock a ton of these bags at any given time so that such that people would go out and have 6 months worth of bags on hand and that's just my opinion and I would prefer to stick with the color that we have and keep the program seamless not have a reason why folks will be will be able to say that, "Oh my goodness, I have 12 bags cuz I bought however many and now I can't use them and that stinks." So that's that that would be my thought on that. [snorts]

There's a beauty and simplicity of staying with what we have. Yeah, I'm I'm good with staying with the color bag that we have now. I understand what Mike's point was, but I'm good with the green bags. I'm also okay with green bags. I just wanted to throw it out there, see what everybody thought. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much, Mike. Well, anything else? Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. I was just gonna say I'm going to have to run in a minute anyway, but it sounds like we might be wrapping up. I'm doing a bike tour of of Hanoi this morning, so I need to go eat breakfast before I go do that. I was going to say the reality is you're not going to go run. You're going to go bike. [laughter]

You know what? I I brought running stuff, but I'm not going running this morning. I'm going biking around Hanoi. And then we're going to do a street food tour. And then we're going to a jazz club tonight. So, we've got a full day planned today. Oh, man. And it started off with a meeting. Yeah. [laughter] The highlight of your day. Yeah.

It's a You know what? It was a The only reason I really made it was because it was a 21-hour flight with a 4-hour layover in Hong Kong. And last night I was totally dead and went to bed at about 8:15. And uh because the time is, you know, it just has totally messed me up. And uh so I woke up at like six o'clock this morning and I thought, "Hey, I can actually make that meeting. That's great." [laughter] Well, we're glad we're glad to see you. Yeah. Uh other than discussing how jealous we are of Jim's plans, is there anything to touch on for this meeting tonight? Okay. Uh in that event, I'll move to adjourn. Second. Second.

Any discussion? Question of that motion? No. No. I favor. I Great.