Municipal Solid Waste Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

Hey, good evening. Um, I guess we can before Well, welcome back, Mr. Rock. Um, and I I think that before we jump into the agenda, does it just make sense to work through the minutes from the last couple of meetings or meeting and a half? That'd be most appreciated. Okay. Um, taking a look at the um October 22nd, 2025 meeting minutes. Uh, I'd move to have these me these minutes approved as written.

Second. Thank you. Any any discussion that we need? Okay. So, I would say that those minutes are approved and then all those in favor Yeah. do all those in favor by roll call because you're remote. So, all those in favor by roll call. Apologies. Bully. I rock. I think and I Okay. Mhm. Okay. And I can go ahead. That's okay. I move that we accept the minutes from November 5th, 2025 as written. Second.

I agree. Peric I Malloy. I rock. Brousard. Although November 5th, that was just postponing till today, correct? Yes, that's all that is. To check it, probably should have done that before I asented.

Okay. And then, excuse me, taking a look at our agenda for uh this evening's meeting. Um, we have uh designs on discussing the creation of our own waste management program and what that might look like. Um, as a I guess as a potential third option. Yes. Bear with me one second here. Take your time.

Yep. Um, so I've been working on backing into this um because like I said, we had done this a couple of years back and it didn't appear to be um advantageous. And so um one of the So I I I unfortunately in my notes only carried the final number, but I've backed into some of that. um so far. So um um the the entire nut uh in 2023 when I did this original calculation was 1 million $176,89. Um and we arrived by that number. Um that is the rental of three trash trucks. Um and you do three because if one's down, you have to still provide the service. Um that also carries three employees at the going rate, which I believe at the time was $55,000 a piece. um plus your benefits um which depends on what they take and everything, but I would figure you know anywhere from 65 to $75,000 depending, you know, to total all all in per employee. Um and then you have your tipping fees on top of that. Um, so again, that's that's the the rough way we get to that basically $1.2 million, which is in 2023 roughly what we were paying at the time.

Um, and we don't manage any staff, nor do we um have to really worry about that um kind of economy of scale that they have when a truck breaks or an employee calls out sick um or any of those those things. Um you know, they have a bigger pool to to pull from. So, did this budget include both municipal solid waste and recycling? Yes. Okay. Wonderful.

It was essentially trying to create the same program that we have now except doing it on our on our own. Um Okay. So,

so tipping fees um you know not not a binding estimate but um static how do we how do we calculate those? So, generally they're estimated um I I have a uh a spreadsheet that is or an it's actually a spreadsheet and an email because I didn't pull it out yet. But um if you look um in that file that I had had given us um there is a uh an email from Mary Lauria. that's at the bottom called uh trash fun trash enterprise fund analysis and show it actually shows what we're paying for tipping fees. Um it breaks down actually everything that we're paying and I can actually put that up on the screen. Uh if that is helpful.

Yeah, if you could. I'm trying to find it, but

I'm trying to work work my way into it here without uh putting up all my it uh invoices on the screen. Uh let's see see if I can make this bigger. All right. So, if you take a look here, um, this is essentially how we're allocating the current trash program. Um, and you'll see we've got a tipping fee in here. You've got landfill maintenance. Um, we've got our catch basin program as part of this as well. Um, because we do have to dispose of the tra the stuff that comes out of the catch basins. you can't just go and put that in the in the woods like the good old days. Um which of course caused no problems for anybody. Um um and then this this 90,000 is essentially what our contingency is. Um which you can see depending on the year either you know uh works out for us well or or not. Um, so these are kind of the again I I had mentioned before these are the back of the envelope uh calculations that we were using to try to back into kind of estimating what it would cost for us to stand this up um on our own. Um, the only thing that I I don't have a firm grasp on at the current time is is uh insurance and we have a pretty big liability um blanket. Now, I just don't know if there's a specific additional fee that we would or an official additional type of coverage that we would need um to do this type of work. A lot of times with this type of

equipment, I mean, what I see most likely happening um that you might need a claim for besides, you know, accidents and death and dismemberment and those type of things is um they they do have a very frequent failure point with their hydraulic systems and wind up having to have um a cleanup company at their disposal. Um I don't know how many times over the last 10 years I've seen that um scenario play out. Um but it is it is probably something that we would have to consider some kind of a contract with Clean Harbors or or something like that. Um not only the hydraulics but also the contaminants inside the truck because people put stuff in there that's not supposed to be in there and then um you know you wind up on the hook for it. I I guess

uh sorry uh a question that I have as far as the town operating this themselves would be like would we be good at it? Um would would trash pickup move along smoothly were we to do this? I understand we don't have a crystal ball, but my my instinct would be to say like we obviously don't have the same experience and and day-to-day exposure to this as like Harvey for example,

right? So like my my my instinct feels not to shoot the idea down out of hand like I think there's more discussion to be had but um if if we're saving uh maybe maybe little to no money uh you know if the costs are very comparable and you know perhaps perhaps we lose something on the performance side of things um where there's going to be a certain amount of friction already with the town with people moving into some kind of new collection system. Um you know that that might be something difficult to swallow too if if um there are delays or you know missed pickups or the like. You know I'm sure there's any number of things that that can go wrong.

It's just just kind of an early thought I've had about this. I I would um echo those comments. If the savings were substantial, um I don't know that it's worth the risk to get involved because I'm not sure, Evan, if the three employees were what was necessary, um you know, working every day because if so, then if you have, like you said, if you have an employee call out sick or um you know, my experience, the one community I worked for that we had a in-house sanitation department was that there was a lot of workers comps claims coming out of um sanitation. That was at a point in time when guys were riding on the back of the truck, they would jump off the truck and empty trash cans into the truck. So, it's a little bit different if we were going with an automated system. And I don't know if the numbers that you had presented included the cost of totes or bags or anything like that. So, that would be in addition to the um the 1.2 two million, which was three fiscal years ago. And so, um, I mean, if you added, you know, 2% a year to that or 3% a year to that, um, you know, we're going to be right where we're at right now with the, um, vendor that we have that we know, um, not only does a really good job, at least my impression is they do a really good job, but we have a contract with them for the next four or five years in which they're pretty much tied to very small increases. uh probably smaller than what we would see if we brought it in house, especially if the employees are part of a union and you know, however those union settlements go and you know, we've got OPED liabilities and other things with um bringing in additional employees as well. So I I think unless there's a huge savings, it doesn't make sense to

bring it in house. It's there's too much risk. Okay. I Mr. chair. I think Mike has his hand up and and Bri as well. Uh I I think I saw Mike's actual hand first, so I'll go to you, Mr. Rock.

Um hey, thanks. So, uh just some quick thoughts. One, I appreciate the time and effort that went into this. Um you know, I I agree that Harvey is doing a good job that Harvey will have economies of scale and reliability. you know, for them if somebody calls out sick, they can pull in somebody else on their team. They have diesel mechanics, hydraulic mechanics. They have hands-on experience with it. Well, I think that doing the the paper exercise of what could it cost to bring this inhouse is still useful and much appreciated because this sets an upper bound for us I think in a lot of ways where you know if Harvey starts coming back with prices that are in gross excess of this you know that that should trigger some discussions but uh for now knowing where that line is is very helpful but Thanks for putting the time in for this.

Thank you. Yeah, I I'd like to echo what what Mr. Rock shared. Thank you very much, Evan, for for putting this together and doing the leg work here. Um, and I I wish I had led with that. Oh, no. So, I want to be 100% transparent. I did very little leg work on this. Um, because it's not my my a direction I think that we are going to go in. I think um we need to do our due diligence and we need to explore the avenues. Um but like I had said when I had originally put these numbers together a couple years back to do that same exercise, it became pretty apparent that

you know for the savings whatever they would be they would be minor. um and our ability to do this in-house and do it well with the learning curve, with employee issues, with inclement weather, with everything else that goes along with this. You know, I I I don't I didn't see it bearing bearing fruit. Um I think Mr. Shem and Marie still has her hand up. Yeah. And Marie, please.

Yeah. I just I I think that this is I requested that this be put on the agenda. Um and I just wanted to do it for exactly this reason so that we have this information and now it'll be in our minutes and we can say even though I know Evan you had stated that you looked into this but now we have the you know concrete numbers even if they're just a little bit dated um so that we can actually save it. We all agree this makes sense and that the the dollars didn't just add up. So I appreciate it.

Absolutely. Okay, then I I think we're the we're in agreement here as a committee that um we we've given this the due diligence and time that it deserves. Uh and I'd suggest at this point that we move on in the agenda. Um item number two for this evening was to determine the research needed for our next meeting. Um it would probably also be useful to discuss timing of the next meeting with the holidays coming up. Sure, Mr. Mr. Chair, if I could hijack just for a second, please.

Um, and show you what we've what I've put together in that folder for um some research already, and that might help shape the committee's uh discussion points on. So again, this is this is an email um from Mary Lauria, who is our finance director, uh to me, which I have put into that shared uh folder, and it has a lot of great information. I've got to pull some of this out into um a more digestible um format. Um, but it talks about um what our enterprise trash budget looks like. Um, historic revenue from bag fees. Um, it also talks a little bit about um what moving to a receptical system might cost us as far as um clerical costs, postage, mailings, uh computer services, which is essentially buying a module in our in our vendor um system, office supplies, uh shifting to a bulky day uh type of of process. Um and then some other indirect costs estimated. So um just from a uh administrative exercise, you're you're looking at about $65,000 in additional costs if we went to that tot system as opposed to staying in a um pay as you throw only um system. Go ahead, Mike. Um, how many households do we have in Grafton?

Uh, I want to say somewhere around 20, but that that's not based on 20,000 people, but there's 5,000. I I have it in that spreadsheet in this folder. Give me one second. I don't I have it in the master plan info, too. Yeah. Number doesn't have to be exact. I think from the previous I think from the one of the previous meetings you showed us um that uh spreadsheet from the D and it showed that we had 4825 or something like that. I kind of remember yes that actually participate in this program because it doesn't multi 562. Yeah, there we go.

I think that might be it. 5. Yes. 5,062 because there's a total number of uh households 6,341 but 5,62 are part of the curbside program currently. Wonderful. Thank you.

Sure. Um all right. So in the folder like I said is that is that uh email that I've shared from Mary. I am losing it here. There it is. Um, and I think there's a lot of useful data in here to pull out what's happened in Grafton and what the potential um, impacts would be of of going to say a tot program basically just on the administrative side. Um, the other thing that I've been kind of working on, and this is I'm going to share it with you anyways, uh, but it's a little rough. Uh, let me open this up real quick. I think this should be where I want to be. No, that's not the PowerPoint. Hold on for one second. I just have too many too many windows here to to share with you all. All right. So, what I've been playing with here as we we progress through this process is taking the community comparison data and just trying to put them into visuals so that uh you know you're not looking at a 50 column spreadsheet and trying to pull out data. Um, and so I've created a a very short slide deck. Um, but just to kind of help us with that that kind of baseline information. So just to run through it quick and we can certainly go back through anything or digest

anything. Um, so I've separated out this is the entirety of the D's database. how many utilize tax um revenue in their program and how many have no tax revenue. Um while important to note uh you know the 56 to 44 um one thing that we don't have a firm grasp on from that spreadsheet um and I am working on this exercise with our sister communities that we usually compare ourselves to is how much tax money are they averaging into this system right so saying that you know 56% of all communities ities have some property tax revenue in their their program. You know, uh are are the majority of those funded at 50% or are they 10%, are they uh covered by some administrative fees that we have in in the system or or an administrative person that happens to be funded by tax revenue. So, we got to drill down on that uh a little bit more. I think if if we find that to be useful information um you can see that 62% of all the programs in Massachusetts um overseen by D regulation is 62% are pay as you throw um which I think is a pretty interesting uh fact in and of itself because I think that if you went back 15 years ago I don't think you would be remotely close I think it would be the the other way around 38% pay as you throw something like Okay. Um, these are programs that have pay you pay as you throw and tax in them. That's 75%. But again, that doesn't really tell you the whole story. Um, and then I started to put together some community comparisons. So, these are the communities that Grafton generally compares itself to when we're doing

community uh well comparisons. Um so whether that is staff salary, whether that is um you know whatever metric we're trying to uh to look at. Um so those are Ashlin, Auburn, Bellingham, Grafton, Holl Grafton's us Holliston, Milbury, Northboro, Oxford, Shrewsbury, Sutton, Oxbridge, and Westboro. Now, Shrewsbury and Westboro are a bigger than us. Um, and aren't always the best direct comparison. Uh, however, they are two neighboring communities that we do share a lot of commonality with and shared resources and we do like to generally see kind of where they they stack up when we're doing these type of exercises. Um so this is the number of households and you can see that um you know Shrewsbury and Westboro are on the high side. Um Auburn is as well and has kind of a different tax base than we normally compare ourselves to. um households served again uh Ashlin, Auburn, Holliston, North um and Westboroough are pretty comparable to the amount of of um customers that they're serving. Um same thing with with recycling. It just separates it out. Um and then I started kind of trying to come up with pull some of that graph data out of out of here with just the communities that we're looking at there. Um, so are they funded by property tax? Here's our yes category. And I need to pull apart Holliston, Shrewsbury, and Westboro's budgets and look at again what's that what's that what's the amount that we're using? What's the delta between what they're they're paying in that? Um, these other communities have uh annual fees, which you can see the annual fees over here.

um are they uh funded by pay as you throw or smart revenue? And almost all of them uh do have some pay as you throw revenue in them. Um whether they're straight pay as you throw or um like an overflow bag system. Um and then only one of them has that transfer station fee which I don't think Grafton's going to head towards. Um I also pulled out some data to look at tonnage and what we are um disposing of. Uh as well as some recycle data here. I think that that is um pretty good to look at. So even though we were talking about Westboro being kind of different there are 4200 tons um and we are at uh you know 3600 tons. So, it's a difference, but I don't think it's a a huge difference. Um, I also think uh don't think, but I know and I I need to reach out to Christie um either the end of this week or or next week. Actually, strike that. I'm seeing her tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. So, I'll ask her then. Um, but they they're they're rolling out a new trash program in Westboro. They just created an enterprise fund uh last year. Um, and so I'm going to chat with her about where they are in their process as well. Um, you can also see what their other communities are paying for tipping fees. Um, which we have a pretty good pretty good rate. Um, oops, I went the wrong way here. And that's all I put together so far. But you can see what I'm doing is I'm I'm just trying to look at the communities we normally compare ourselves to, put that data together in a way that maybe is helpful for us to look at um and maybe spur further further conversation.

That's all I have to share. That is magnificent. Um if you would like assistance, I know you're super busy uh chasing down some of that additional information. Uh, I've got plenty of time right now. So, uh, feel free to reach out, uh, offline and point me in the right direction. Give me a couple days and I'll see what I can get for you. All right. Thank you, Mike. Jamal.

Yeah, I just wanted to say I think that um the information that you're putting together there, Evan, is going to be very useful when we get to the point of having to make some presentation at town meeting, whoever is going to do that because having similar communities um is going to be and be able to show the data plus what we've looked at I think is going to be very helpful for getting people to understand where we eventually end up at. I still um uh a couple of things is I I think it's important even if some of those other communities have private um haulers to find out you know what the annual cost is because whether we go to a tote system or with an annual fee or you know broken out quarterly um or we go to uh an increase in the bag fees to cover the cost. Yeah.

Um, you know, right now if you do the roughly 800,000 divided by the 5,62 households, it works out to $158 a month, which if you look at the two communities that you had the annual fee um on, I think one was 245 and one was 320 or something like that. It it shows that our current cost is pretty low and whatever we increase it to will probably end up being something somewhat comparable to what those other communities have. And the the only the only thing now is it's just showing the two communities. And I think um I think we need to get as much information as we can. And I know you're working on it. And I I agree with Mike. I'm uh I'm relatively uh flexible. If you need somebody to help work on some of this, getting that type of information, um I don't mind helping doing something like that as well. Just reach out and let me know.

Excellent. Uh and and the other thing is when you talk to Christie tomorrow, um I'd ask her about that $40 fee. I think that's the transfer station fee. Okay. not not anything to do with because I think um at least when I was a town manager there um Harvey had the contract and there was Harvey in something town tidy town and they build residents directly um and so that's what we might have to find out is you know how much do they build directly for those kind of services for the communities that have that type of service. Okay,

that's good. That's good uh inside football because I will, like I said, I have a meeting with her at for the regional communication center tomorrow at at nine. So, I'll I'll just hijack some of her time at the end. Yeah. And Marie, I just wanted to clarify because maybe I misheard, but just so we know, uh, when you said the 158 or 153, it's actually like per year. You might have said per month. Um, but yeah, if I did, if I did, it's it's per year. It was the total 800,000 divided by I may have said per month, but I meant per year. Just so that if anyone's listening to this, you're like, "Oh my gosh, it's going to be how much?"

So, the the delta is like about 158 per year when you take that extra 800,000. Yeah.

Yeah. So, what do we think we need to kind of drill down even farther? I if having listened to um some of your your comments, I'm thinking obviously I I got to talk to Christie tomorrow from Westboro and and have that conversation with her. But it may also behoove us to grab um some similar communities that are outside of the ones we normally compare ourselves to because while there is data there um not all of it I think is going to bear fruit and you can see that in our sister communities some of them did not report to D. So there is no data available. Um and so I can widen that catchment um and do that by say number of households and and just you know pick another subset of of data. We can widen it that way. Um and then I think also what what might be useful is to pull in some of their um their contracts. um what each of those communities have for contracts for us to look at and see what might be driving their costs behind the scenes, but also what they what they're looking like for increases in the coming years. Um and that just might help inform us of of kind of the direction to to head. Um and I'm willing to not willing I'd love to hear if anybody has anything else that they think is is useful that we're missing. Um, and we can we can start working on putting that all that together.

I'm still curious. I don't know if this was resolved from our previous meeting. Um, Jim had mentioned an idea of were we to participate in a tote program, differentiz totes with with different um like buyin rates, I guess, for for lack of a better term. So, if you're using a smaller tote, you're you're a home that's producing less trash, you're you're paying less of of a monthly toad fee. Is that is that a possibility? I mean, that if it were, that that's sort of interesting to me.

Yeah. So, I think it's possible. I don't know of another community that's doing it that particular way, which is basically, and I'm not saying that it's that hard. But I I honestly didn't didn't dig too far into it. But yeah, let's say uh you know how you know you you get one rate if you have a 35gallon to

uh one rate if you've got a 64gallon toar. My while it is an interesting concept. My my initial concern is our our ability to monitor and bill a program like that. Um because we're be heavily rellyant on the folks that are actually collecting the refues to recognize what barrel they have and what size it is. Um you know whether we'd still probably have to have an overflow system. I would assume an overflow bag system. Um but it just it just makes the program more complex. So while it's it it certainly shouldn't be the barrier to looking at it, that's that's the first thing that comes to my mind is the complexity of the program.

That's a good point. I I agree that yes, having different sized totes would add complexity that adds some enforcement challenges. I think that it also offers some equitability. You know, larger larger users will pay the more of a fair share. Mhm. Um I think that's worth pursuing. Okay.

Yeah, that was my point was that it kind of kept the concept from our page of throw but moved it into the tote system if that's what we chose to do. But I also understand Evan's point because I I could see, you know, say my wife and I live in a a house that a family of five could live in and um but it's just the two of us. So, we might get the small tote and then we sell this house and some a larger family moves into it and they've got a small tote and then do they give it back to the town and get a larger one and the town's going to have costs associated with providing new totes all the time too or do they just have overflow bags all the time and so I I I I understand the complexity issue of it and um I was just if we went to just the one-size tote system then they lose um

the um incentive to recycle for some people. And um and so I I you know I I sort of like the current system um but I think we um want to take a look at the the totes before we make a decision which way to go.

Absolutely good points. I'll just call on myself. I did have my hand up. Um I was going to say the exact same thing that you know for the tote system for someone like me, well maybe just generally is it incentivizing people to compost and recycle more? And I don't think it necessarily is. Um and then for me to Evan, I think just um you know maybe drilling more down on the numbers. So like looking at okay what if we have our next few years contract with Harvey the numbers that you actually have in hand plus now you you mentioned like the 65,000 or thereabouts um overhead costs that we would have to build into this program right um and then

slowly inching into like what that comes out to with bag fees to give you know a little bit of an idea because you probably have some of those numbers maybe for like we could do the next three years. Yep, we can do that. Okay, we can certainly do that. And PS, I think it's great like all this information relative to other communities is is going to be good and it's it's helpful for me here now and I'm assuming it'll be helpful for, you know, the public as we try to talk to them about a new system or increased cost is basically what it comes down to. Yeah.

Great. from the community, it will probably look like increased cost when a lot of this is just moving cost from the property tax to a bill where it's explicitly named. So, we just have to remind people that this isn't totally new. It might be a little higher. Yeah.

Yeah. I think the the discussion point and I think it's a fair discussion point is that um you know if you're if you're um there is an increased cost because we're shifting this out of the tax rate but people's taxes aren't going to go down by the subsequent amount. We're moving this out of the tax rate to try to keep pace with increased costs elsewhere. Right? Um you know employee health insurance um those types of things. I'm not going to single out that other thing. Um, but so I think that's the that's where most people will have to rub and I think rightfully rightfully so. But I think we have to we did spend a lot of time on in this last budget cycle explaining that. But, you know, until the rubber meets the road, a lot of folks don't don't necessarily watch that process. So, we'll have to make sure we explain it well. If I might, you know, the reminder would be again for me last year with the budget cycle, um, I didn't hear from anyone personally who was for an override. So, in order to avoid that override, this was one solution, right? Was looking at this nut of $6,800,000, taking that out of municipal side of the budget. Um, so I think that, you know, like you said, Evan, that was discussed last year, but it's it'll be important to to note that no matter what's happening with the new budget for FY227 for FY26, this was the plan that we all agreed upon. Great.

Well, Evan, I think the good news is that um you've accumulated enough data that um you're not going to have a whole lot of homework to do other than to I I think the idea of extending the number of communities you're looking at is a good idea because that happens sometimes when you do comparable studies. I mean, every community does it and sometimes you don't get responses. And if you go back to town meeting and say, "Okay, well, here's the communities we generally compared to and we data from three of them, right? that's not going to go over, you know, and then you say, "Well, and our rates are going to be comparable." And they're going to say, "Well, really only to two or three," you know, and it's um

uh I think it'd be helpful to have other communities so that we can have a a good robust comparison so that when we go to town meeting and say, "This is where where we are right now in comparison to other communities, what residents pay, and this is where we're going." I think it'll be really helpful. Yeah,

that's about the only homework I think um we need you to really do. Um it's it it sounds like there was enough concern over the um uh getting differentiz totes. Maybe see if you can get cost on those and try to figure it out. But I I I think you know the the more complex problem with that is going to be do you just do it a as a when you break down the fees for the smaller totes is it you know is it half if they're you know 32 and 64 gallon totes or is it some other number in there to try to make it so that the 64gallon totes aren't um you know paying an extravagant cost like $600 or $700 a year. And so I think that then you get into an overall discussion of fairness and and it becomes even more complex and you have more angry people. So um I don't know if that's really a a great avenue for us to go down. I I just brought it up about the equity and because I I want to and and I think the fact that almost threequarters I think it was of the communities that um participate in the state survey indicate they're using page to throw. I think that sort of gives a really strong message that the current system we're using is a pretty standardized system throughout the state.

I I yes I I agree. I think one one thing I've thought about kind of just as we've been talking about this differentiz to concept is you know perhaps the equity of that isn't really differentized toers. It's that everyone gets the smallest toar and then you pay more through your overflow bags, right? Rather than trying to create a tiered system that we have to both monitor and force and staff. I think that the that the everyone gets say the 35 gall to

if if you don't live within that uh that gallons you know per week um then you have to do the overflow bags and that's that's where the equity comes maybe but it depends on how

I think for for me when I think about like a a fixed income household or something like that you know we don't my concern is raising the the be the the the the lowest bar, right? That entry level tier at 35 gallons is now more than those folks would ever have paid just in a strict pay as you throw program. Um, you know, and I think that's a concern for all of us. We've all mentioned that in some way or another as we've as we've talked about it, but that's one of my concerns with with the toer system is again, you know, Mrs. Smith that uses one bag every 3 weeks and is good about policing her uh you know uh perishable stuff. I know I know some some folks that keep their uh food waste in the freezer until they're ready to put their bag out. Right.

Mrs. Foley, not Mrs. Smith. Yeah, I do some of that myself. I think I think we all do that. Yeah. So, I mean there are folks that are doing that and they're really able to stretch that that dollar that single bag, right? and they're doing that every three weeks, maybe every month. Um, well, when you have the any kind of total system, regardless of the gallons we wind up picking,

their minimum fee is is whatever that minimum fee is, and I would assume it's going to be more than they're paying in for their actual amount that they're that they're throwing away today. So, that's that's what I have kind of rattling around the back of my head. And I know that we need to look at all these programs. And I I'm you know I don't I'm not divining what I think the outcome will be but I think that you know we're pay as you throw is the most equitable option and we're trying to find other options that are that are uh you know cost-effective and similar to it and that I think that's hard to that's hard to do.

Yeah. I and um just real quick, I I think that's a really common sense approach, the idea of just going with the smaller toters and the overflows, but I think you're also right that there will be a lot of residents that will be paying more cuz they're um 35 gallon tote will be if they put it out once a week, it'll be um a quarter full or um it'll take them, you know, they won't put it out every week, it'll put it out every third or fourth week, but they're paying for weekly service. And so I I agree also that the pay as you throw is the most equitable system. Excellent. Thank you.

I think Yeah. Sorry, last thing. And just for me, from like um an environmental sustainability point of view, which is the reason that I what I do, um again, the tote system is not going to be a good incentive, right? I'm I'm recycling and composting, so I'm putting less into our solid waste system, not just to save a buck on the on the bag, but just from a a greater perspective. So, I I like the full pay as you throw system um from kind of that environmental perspective as well.

Yeah, that there are definitely some the full pay as you throw system offers a lot of advantages for true equity. um production of waste is incentivized appropriately. I think um I think it does carry a higher labor cost, a higher, you know, repetitive strain and workman's comp claims and things like that for physically handling the bags. When that's the case, there's more trash blowing around. I think the toers if there's some way that we could yeah downsize you know see what the smallest plausible to option is and look at what the the various charges are to deploy some of those what that would look like and that as Evan suggested the the tar with overflow sounds attractive continue to research and figure out what that would look All right. Um, is there anything else? Any random thoughts floating around or concerns for our next meeting? Uh, hearing none, I would move at this point to Oh, excuse me. We have to we have to discuss timing of the next meeting. Uh because we're coming up on Thanksgiving if we're working two weeks out. Um I can say I could kick off the discussion and say I would not be able to meet on the night of the 26th.

Yeah, I'll be away. And I just don't want to. That's a valid valid explanation. I appreciate that. Um, would we want to move it forward a week, back a week, or possibly to the Monday of that week?

I I would think if we moved it to December 3rd, uh, that would give Evan the time to um try to gather up some additional data data. I think if we were to meet a week from now, it'd be really tough to get that. The other question um I would have Evan and and Marie is uh what how are we doing timing wise? When do we need to have a recommendation to the select board so that they can um you know take take it under consideration and then um it can be incorporated in the budget documents in a certain way so that by the time we get to town meeting everything is um well done. Um because if we're getting up to December 3rd, um is it mid January that we have and until we need to have a recommendation and a presentation to the select board? My my personal opinion on that is um I think because of the direction we're trending in, I think that lends itself to us having some more time for discussion. So, if it really seemed like the only way uh out of forward was going to be a major overhaul of the entire program, then you know, time is of the essence. January one, we really got to be on that and moving. Um, we send we tend to be heading towards and I'm not trying to be presumptuous here, but we are seems like the conversation stems around a lot around pay you throw. Um, and um, if we wind up staying with that program, then we're we're we have plenty of time. Um, because I as long as we're done by say maybe March, I can change the bag fees and do all of those things. Um, so again, not trying to to jump the the shark here. Um, but um, that that's kind of what I think

timing wise looks like. Yes, I agree. I'm sorry. I was just going to say so that if we met on the 3rd, then we could also meet on the 17th. That's before, you know, a full week before people typically travel for uh the holidays. Yeah, that was exactly my next question. It's like if we can get third locked in, let's get 17th. Um I'm assuming New Year's Eve would we'd be uh taking a break for that and yeah, no, probably generating some municipal household waste. Um, and then resume 7th of January. That would be next Wednesday. Placeholders. Just just big picture. Y

I I apologize because I I left for Peru on short notice last time. So, it was fun, but I wasn't here. That's a Yeah, that's a good uh That's a good excuse to get out of the Yeah. meeting. Yeah. Had to had to run off to Peru. Yeah. Good for you. Did you do Machu Picchu? I did. Oh, I did. I did not know that there was an additional hike of about a kilometer vertical. Yeah. After Machu Picchu, that was a fun surprise. Did you do it? Yeah. Good. Yeah, I did it a while ago, too. Oh, very fun. Very fun. Okay, so we're going to go third, 17th, and seventh for now. That's That's all good.

Okay, I move to second. Second. All those in favor? Fully I I Mallaloy I I rock I. Yeah. Evan I. Thank you all.