City Council - workshop

All right, good afternoon. It is Thursday, August 20th. We're gonna kick off our study session here, and we're pleased to be joined by our friends from the county and Public Works. I'm gonna have Ryan take it from here, but this is gonna be a presentation on solid waste treatment.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Tonight we have two members of Clark County Solid Waste Division here. Joelle Loescher and Sarah Kearns and then we're also joined by Carl Hefnagel with Parametrics who is a consultant for Clark County Solid Waste. So I'm gonna turn this over to Joelle now.

Make sure I have my track record for microphones, okay. Hi, I'm Joelle Loescher. I'm the division manager for Clark County Public Works, their solid waste and recycling division. So we have a jam-packed study session today. Sarah and I are gonna do our best to just give you the high-level updates of all the things the division is working on. We're gonna roll through this pretty fast, but if we have any questions at the end, know we can always come back for a future study session on any of the topics. We are doing the annual update, so I think it's SWR.

And we gave you four separate presentations too. And just before we get started, is this kind of piggybacking off of the last study session we did when we had that big, thick?

You got it. I know, that's memorable, right? That was our solid waste management plan. It's like our big, huge document. Everything that we do is in that plan, and that's available online on our county website. We're also happy to bring more copies back if anybody else wants an additional one.

Okay.

Yeah. It is the one at the bottom that says solid waste. Oh, sorry, that one. Should be that one. Yes, that's the one.

All right, so go ahead and go to the next slide, please.

I wanted to just bring some attention to our organizational chart because this changed from the last time we were here. We used to be housed, our team and our division used to be housed in the public health department. So in March of last year, we moved from public health to Clark County public works, which is where we just exactly where we were supposed to be. And we're very happy. It's been a wonderful transition. Last November we were officially designated as a division and formed, um, by approval of the Clark County Council. So I wanted to point out our organizational chart also so that you can see the acronym RSWSSC, and that refers to the Regional Solid Waste System Steering Committee, and your Public Works Director, Ryan, is on that committee. So he represents that, and you can see where that lands in our org chart. So we are also taking recommendations from all of the participants on that committee, especially with all the topics related to solid waste.

And next slide.

Perfect. Um, I wanted to just highlight, we already talked about the solid waste management plan. That was our major accomplishment last year. And of course you all contributed to getting that done. So the work that our division does is on behalf of the whole county and we lead solid waste planning with input from all of you. Um, this annual update, we try to come at least once a year to let you all know what we're up to and kind of focus on what the issues are that are going on up here in Ridgefield. Next slide. something I wanted to make sure that you're aware of. In October of 2024, we got a new disposal contract in place with Columbia Resource Company. It's a really unique three-party agreement with the City of Vancouver, Clark County, and also Columbia Resource Company, a subsidiary of Waste Connections. So with that three-party agreement, we negotiated an opportunity for special funds that are dedicated to capital improvements at the site. So we're going to be talking about the North County recycling transfer station siting study today, but I wanted to highlight that part of this capital improvement work, that those funds is we really want to make sure that we're investing in the right place to really provide the best resiliency in our regional solid waste system. So those funds might go to the new transfer station or investments in our current facilities. One of the, Really exciting things that happened recently with our capital improvement work is that we did an improvement at the central transfer station to improve the lighting. That's been an issue in there for a long time, but we replaced all of those lighting panels. It really improved safety, and that was our first project kickoff that this team got together. Our second one, it just launched, and that's gonna be a traffic improvement project at that same transfer station location. That's been obviously an issue that everyone's aware of.

Next slide.

We're gonna skip this slide for the North County. I'm gonna let Carl speak to this because he is much more wise than I am and he is gonna give you a lot more detail. So next slide, please. And this is where I'm gonna pass it to Sarah. I know it's heavy. It is.

Okay, so to provide a quick update on some of our education outreach programming, we have an updated Recycle Right app coming for residents in Clark County. In addition to viewing pickup schedules, requesting special item pickups, and searching for disposal and recycling instructions, residents will be able to have access to games and quizzes with the hope that it will help inform their recycling practices. And we're also really excited about launching an A to Z directory for business waste. So we hope that that benefits our business community. Next one. And recently we completed our waste characterization study, which we will use to inform our programming and future planning. And we hope that we'll be able to identify trends in the waste system. It's currently available on our website in its entirety and elements of it will be incorporated into our future solid waste planning. Yes. Just because this is not a realm that I'm super well-versed in, what would be a trend you're looking for in waste management? So over time, the overall composition of waste changes. Our last waste characterization study was completed in 2012. And if you think back, even at your own household, to what types of food packaging, for example, maybe not as much cardboard because you weren't ordering online as frequently. There are trends in household waste as well as in the business community as things change over time. Another element that we might look for is changes in state policy that might influence whether certain materials have a flow so that they can be recycled or recovered in another way instead of being landfilled. And we would use that waste characterization study to determine effectiveness on some of those programs. And then, like I mentioned, to inform sort of next steps if those programs aren't working and we're seeing materials we know are recoverable, we can sort of plan targeted efforts to address that. Next up is our We Compost Community Hub Program. And the goal of the program is to increase access to households to be able to compost their food scraps. And we partner with community organizations and churches. And through those partner sites, we have 18 food drop-off hubs throughout the county. And in addition to our curbside option for batteries, beginning in July 2027, residents will have expanded access to safe, free battery drop off sites throughout the county operating under Washington's battery stewardship law. The battery network will be adding new locations for disposing of small household batteries, and that would be including those lithium ion batteries that need to be disposed of properly. And for any more information, we do have that recycling A-Z directory to find out more.

That's great. Quick question. Are all these drop-off locations, are they listed within the app?

They will be. Currently, this is a program that is set to launch next July.

Oh, great.

And you can search on the A to Z app today for the existing drop-off sites. We do have a number of them listed, in addition to some retailers that accept batteries for recycling.

Okay, cool. And just as a sidebar, I love the app. It's the only app I have, one of the only apps I have notifications on, so thank you for having it up.

Thank you so much for the endorsement. And so, yeah, so apologies. So to continue with that update is just, Stay tuned for more information. And then regarding the Recycling Reform Act or RRA, there will be changes to recycling statewide. So after 2030, recycling services will be offered to all households with curbside garbage service and drop off access will be improved. This will hopefully expand recycling options for people in rural communities as well as those living in apartments or multifamily housing. Um, and we hope that, um, residents across Washington state will be able to recycle the same materials all at a lower cost. The reduced costs will roll out in phases with a 50% reduction in 2030, 75% by 2031 and 90% by 2032.

We're going to skip this slide. We're going to go a little bit deeper into that one with Carl shortly. Finally, the last thing we wanted to just bring up as an annual update is in 2016 when this group moved from the Department of Environmental Services to the Public Health Department, there was a loss of some grant funding through the state, and then there was a desire to create this $1.43 tip fee. At the time, all the cities agreed to it, and over time, their grant revenue came back, and there was a desire to eliminate this fee. I just wanted to bring you the update, celebrate. We are going to be removing that. Public Health stopped taking that money in January 1st of this year. So that's when we moved over, right away we're doing an assessment on the needs. And we have a separate financial consultant that's helping us build out some financial toolkits so that we can better track and kind of respond to any changes that we might need down the road. But for this year, this is sort of an administrative cleanup that we're doing to eliminate the $1.43 tip fee, This wasn't a fee that was visible when you go to the transfer station. It was just sort of a separate fee that was lumped in. But there's not gonna be any, there's no impact to residents. It's just sort of, we're updating the county code next month and so you'll see that change and we're getting that accomplished this year. So that is all for our updates. And again, we're happy to answer any questions about any of those programs or activities that we have going on. But at this moment, I know the biggest topic that we wanted to talk about is the North County Recycling Transfer Station Siting Study. Here with us today is Carl Huffnagle from Parametrics. Carl's worked on several projects with us. He's a valuable asset to our team and has a wide range of expertise that we're really grateful that he was able to be here in person and kind of share information with you all.

Hey, good afternoon. It's good to be here. Thanks for the introduction. It is on. Yeah, sorry. So just a little background on me. I'm a civil engineer, and I've been working, doing solid waste work for the last 40 years, and have cited a number of transfer stations here in Washington State, gone through all the permitting process, the environmental review, the siting, as I mentioned, and then designed and oversaw construction. So this is a pretty familiar ground to me, and it's a very challenging ground to site one of these types of facilities. And we really recognize how challenging that can be, particularly from the public's perspective, because they sometimes have a hard time understanding what a transfer station is, why do you need it, and what does it do. And they often see it as a threat. We were just talking about the aquifer here. And we've had sightings in the past in other jurisdictions where transfer stations were thought of as being threats to the groundwater, where groundwater is your source, similar to a landfill. And that's not the case. So with that, if we can go to the next slide, please. We started the siting process in February of last year. So we've been at it literally about a year and a half. We've just now completed what we call phase one. The objective of this siting study is to site a 1,500 ton a day recycling and transfer station on a site that has at least 20 usable acres, which is a little bit more than you need just for the transfer station because we'd like to be able to have the county and the stakeholders have an opportunity to site perhaps other public works type activities there, like a decant facility, a vector decant facility. So we've landed on 20 acres, usable acres, as our desired site. So that's the objective of this siting. It has nothing to do with ownership. It's simply siting a facility. We are just now wrapping up what we call phase one. The objective of phase one is to resolve a wide number of sites down to two most promising sites that can then be carried forth into an environmental impact statement or assessment. And that's quite a lengthy process. In addition to those two sites, there would be a no-action alternative evaluated in the EIS. So that's phase one, and we're just now wrapping it up. We've narrowed a very wide range of sites, which I'm going to talk about, If we go to the next slide, to get to this point, we had to do a lot of information gathering and create a very detailed GIS base map for the search area. And you may or may not know that the search area is everything north of SR 502. Everything was on the table north of SR 502 with the hope that we would find enough sites north of there. Doesn't mean you couldn't go south of there, but then you start to get closer the central station, which isn't such a good idea. So we've been doing a lot of information gathering from day one. That work will still go on in the future when we go to the EIS, but a lot of that's done. And then the next step was to do a facility program, which just says, what does this station need to have? What are all the functions? What are all the hard facilities that need to be there? And most importantly, what, How big should it be? And for these types of facilities, maybe unlike a sewer system or something, it doesn't grow over time. You really have to build it to its full size on day one, even if the size is determined by the needs many, many decades out. So when we site these, we use at least a 60-year planning horizon. So for this facility, we have targeted a 60-year period from 2030 to 2090 and we tell everybody transfer stations are here to stay they're forever facilities they're not going to go away we're pretty certain they're not going to go away in a few cases they've been replaced by waste to energy facilities but we don't see that happening here in washington so we've done all that programming and created a very detailed and you saw a non-site-specific map on the previous slide, which just helped us understand how big that facility footprint should be, and that's really how we got to the 20 acres. So the last task we did prior to getting into the detailed search was to develop a site screening and evaluation protocol. And from that, we identified 35 key siting criteria that we need to screen these sites through. And they fall into three main areas, sort of an engineering site characteristics, a environmental sort of area, and then in a land use area. And those 35 criteria are spread across those areas. All that is a precursor to what we're calling Task 5, which is the next slide. And that's the work that we've been doing here for the last, I'd say, 10 months. We've gotten through this to take us to the end of Phase 1. Using our GIS map, we screened that entire large search area. We identified potentially 158 sites that could possibly be used. We quickly were able to go through that based on some some criteria and narrow the field down by almost 90% to 15 sites. Many of the sites fell away because they're located so far away from the main highway and system, SR 502 and I-5, which are the corridors the waste has to get to and customers have to come from. So we were able to reduce that very quickly to 15 sites. We then did a somewhat more detailed evaluation using these criteria that are listed on this slide, in addition to the good road access that I mentioned. So we were able to go through those sites, look at them in some detail, and assess wetland issues and what have you. So that, if we go to the next slide. Yeah, go ahead.

I'm just looking. So that was... sort of the parameters, so not residentially zoned. What were they zoned? Were any of them zoned like ag or anything?

We did not rule out ag. The RCWs, this is an essential public facility. The RCWs allows entities to site in any jurisdiction they want, including residential. But we agreed that for this siting, we would exclude residential. So ag land was not taken off the table. All right, thanks.

I have one question. Yes. What's compliant with FAA rules, regulations?

Yeah, there are rules that if you're near a commercial airport or a smaller airport, depending on whether it's prop or jet, you have to be a certain distance away for landfills, solid waste landfills, because they attract birds. Mm-hmm. The rules don't say transfer stations can't be located much closer. In fact, we cited a transfer station in Snohomish County right next to Payne Field. Literally on the Payne Field grounds, we have cited a very large 1500 ton a day station. But to do that, we had to jump through a number of hoops with the FAA, even though their rules don't specifically say mentioned transfer stations, we still have to do a number of things to convince them that we weren't going to attract birds. Older style transfer stations often had open areas, big open doors or even open sides. Those do attract birds. The aircraft industry is really concerned about waterfowl more than anything. So one thing we have to do when we do get to one of these airport locations is to avoid having surface water where birds can collect So if we go to the next slide. So then we got into a much more detailed look at these 15 sites. I can mention that five of them were in the city of Richfield. You have some very nice sites here. And we did desktop studies looking at wetlands, looking at traffic, looking at cultural historic resources, looking at the site geotechnical, the soils. and then looking at things again like proximity to utilities, because we need sewer, water, and three-phase electrical power, and significant amounts, not insignificant. So we were able to do a much more deep dive on those 15 sites and reduce it to seven sites. And then we continued to look at those seven sites to further evaluate them, and this is where the scoring came in. I'm seeing if I should jump to the next slide quickly here. Yeah, before I do that, this is where our 35 criteria came in. And we gather a lot of information specifically about these sites and then subjected them to an evaluation using our weighted scoring criteria. And if we go to the next slide, sorry, this is a slide showing the search area where those seven sites are located, just an outline of the area. Obviously, you can see some of it cuts through the city of Richfield. When we got to this level, we reduced the number of sites in Richfield to two, both of them east of I-5. So there are two sites sort of hidden inside this outline, along with the other five sites, which are all outside the city of Richfield. and are only in the county jurisdiction. So then if we go to the next slide, maybe.

Real quick before you move to the next slide, I'm just curious on this boundary that you've drawn here, this area, why this specific area, if you're looking for something to service all of North County, why not further east as well? We did.

Our 158 sites were almost beyond the city of Battleground. They were everywhere. They were up the north right to the boundary of the county, up very close to the next county college. So we were all over.

These were just for the final seven were in this area? Yeah. Okay.

And not surprisingly, when you think about the availability of utilities and the access to SR 502 and I-5, that pushes you in this direction. So... That's why sites wound up within this boundary. This was not a boundary we used and said, look in there. We drew the boundary after we found the sites just to show you where they are. And to be honest, we're trying to avoid showing specific sites at this point until we get a little further along. So this is sort of masking which real sites are. But there are real sites. And in doing that sighting, I should mention that we did not limit ourselves to a single owned parcel. We went up to as many as five contiguous parcels, which could be owned by different owners. So we had to find something that was big enough. Okay, so here is the results using our criteria, our weighted criteria and scoring system, which I won't belabor you with. We were able to score these seven sites out of a total of 1,000 points. So the 1,000 points, and you can see the three categories that they're in, the site characteristic engineering, natural environment, and land use. And you can see the maximum possible score in the second column for those three that add up to 1,000. And then we went through, a number of us did the scoring, people like myself who really understand these things. And then we had other senior people review our scores weighted criteria assignments. And to be honest, all these sites would work. Even the site that has the lowest score, the 117, that could be made to work. It definitely has a lower score because it was lower in, particularly in the engineering area, it's a lot more challenging engineering-wise. These scores don't show any great difference, to be honest, even though they might look that way to you. They're really all workable sites. So in parallel with this, and I don't know if you have questions about any of the scoring. I could definitely go into more detail on that.

I guess I'd love to know a little bit more about the definitions of each one, like what does land use mean? How do you get 204 out of 300 for land use? Like, what is that even quantifying?

You're looking at a specific one up there?

Yeah, I mean, I just pulled one, but I'm just curious, like, what factors fall into land use? What factors fall in the natural environment?

To explain that, you would have to look, and it's a detailed memo, which we've shared with the Regional Solid Waste Steering Committee and a siting review committee within the county, that explain in great detail what each criteria is looking at, its weight, and how it is to be scored. It's actually a very disciplined system. So you would have to look at those. I think there are eight criteria within the land use. Of the 35, eight are in land use. And it's very specific about what each of those eight criteria mean. what they're weighted and how they should be scored.

And so I guess that's what I'm curious about. What are those eight or some of them?

Um, well, it has things to do like with, with residential. Does it, it does it, um, have residential, uh, does it have, um, uh, adjacent land uses, which are probably inappropriate for a transfer station to be located next to.

Okay.

Um, and that, uh, that scoring system is all available to you. It's not hidden, sort of. No, that's fine, yeah. You could look at that, and hopefully it's detailed enough that it would satisfy not only yourselves, but the general public, because it's available to the public as well. Okay, all right, thanks. If we go to the next slide.

I have a question really quick, sorry. Am I understanding you correctly that the only last plausible sites are only located in Ridgefield?

No. In fact, if you wait until the next slide, which has a bold highlighted. So having done that scoring, the other thing we did in parallel with that is start reaching out to the site owners and trying to determine if they were willing sellers because the county does not want to have to use eminent domain for acquisition of property. We need a willing seller. So we reached out to seven property owners We were only able to contact or reach and make contact with five. There was interest on part of all five that they would consider that. I wouldn't say it was enthusiastic response. Yeah, we'll think about it. And we won't say no at this point. So that's pretty important, as we'll get to in a minute. Based on our scoring and our good judgment, And the conversations that the county has had with the city of Ridgefield, we are proposing to eliminate the two remaining sites in Ridgefield, even though they're probably two of the best sites, because those sites are zoned commercial and employment. And we understand what your goals are for those. And a transfer station produces about one employee per acre, and I think your employment is 22. employees per acre. So we recognize that. So two of the seven went away. And then the site that scored lowest, site 117, that really has some engineering challenges. We could make it work. It's more costly. But we are recommending that site be dropped. So we're down to four sites. We want to get down to two to complete phase one and to get into phase two. To do that, we think the most prudent thing to do is to ascertain who are the most willing sellers of those four sites. All four sites can work. They're all, as you saw on the map, close to the city of Richfield. And so one of our next steps is to have more detailed discussions with the owners and land on the two sites where the owners are most seem to be most positive about willingness to sell and to sell within the time frame that this sort of siting process requires. Because the EIS may take eight months. And then there's other things that have to happen. So we're really talking about an acquisition that's maybe two years out from now at best. So a seller needs to be willing to hold on for that sort of length of time. That takes us to this slide. I think I have one more slide. Based on the depth of research we did on the sites, we don't think that a more detailed look into the sites would change the overall scoring, that all those four sites would come out similarly scored. So we're recommending that we go directly into the EIS with the two most promising sites. And those are the sites that I've listed up there that we're recommending. And again, we're recommending that the county move into the EIS as soon as they can complete the assessment of willing owner. That's the end of my presentation.

Are there any of those remaining four sites that are, like, what are the zoning of those four sites? Can you?

All AG20.

They're all AG20. So they'd have to be designated by the county in order to be?

Conditional use. Yeah, they need to be.

Interesting.

Yep. When you think about it, we need 20 usable acres. All these sites are bigger than that. None of them are just 20 acres because all of them have some wetland areas and so forth and steeper slopes and places that you can't use. So really, some of these sites are as much as 35 acres. Where can you find 35 acres of anything today in the county, in your region? It's ag land. So if we ruled ag land out, there wouldn't be any sites. So really, if this was a small three or four acre parcel, you might be able to find something that isn't currently ag land. Other questions?

Come on. This is your jam.

I'm trying to bite my tongue.

Okay.

Same. Here we fight for growth on a comprehensive plan, and ag land, the county is fighting it. You can't turn around and use it. You can't get it, is what I'm trying to say. And they're deciding they're going to use ag land for one of their projects.

There it is. And we understand that. I mean, we do. I'm sure the county does. Again, the only defense I can put up is these are essential public facilities. You need these facilities. These should not just be nice to have. All three transfer stations in the county right now are near max or at max. And again, you need these stations far into the future. So those stations cannot be modified to pick up the slack. You really need a new one, and where's all the population growth coming in the future? It's up here.

Yeah.

Yeah. You're center of it.

Yeah. Oh, we know. We know. Other questions, counsel? What are what our next steps and so if you go back to that last side?

Next steps are for the county to digest what we've recommended because they have not made any decisions to understand and and hopefully endorse that yes, the next step is to determine a willing sellers the most most strongest willing seller and then move on to the EIS I

And I'm sure you said this, but do you have an anticipated timeline for these next steps? And at what point are we moving dirt to build a new transfer station?

Well, it's a little bit fluid, but I would say an EIS, given what these sites are, is at least eight months in duration. Yeah. We've got a little bit of time to get to the point we're starting the EIS. I'd say we're probably three to four months at least, assuming. county endorses moving ahead so there's there's a year uh done and then you're at the end of the is you have a single site that comes forward the county then has to say yes we will do that then they need to go into negotiation with the owner that could take a number of months so i would say we're probably looking at two years before a site is actually owned then you have to design design Typically for this size project would take 18 months.

Yeah.

Then construction bidding, another couple, three months, then construction.

What is the approximate cost of construction for a new station?

This station is probably on the order of, not including land, probably $60 million.

Okay.

I would say.

Yeah.

I mean, we have some precedents that we could look at for a $1,500 ton a day. construction costs rapidly going up, as you all know. So the sooner it did get built, the better.

And I know that you were all in like, this is part of like the whole feasibility study. And then you're going to different cities and given this presentation, has there been any presentations on this specific, on your findings? Like you've given us to the County council yet along the way, or have they heard this yet? Or is it, um, is it still, is that forthcoming?

So we did, um, we did our first work session with the County council, June 17th. So you can watch that recording. Okay. We have our additional, Carl and I will be presenting to the county council next Wednesday on the 26th. Okay. So just given where this was landed, I definitely spoke with Ryan and we wanted to make sure to get this in front of you all. And then we're going to be talking to the county council. Obviously we're aware of everything going on with the comp plan and all of the discussions. And so this, just getting the siting study accomplished has taken a few years. So this is a long-term and, Thankfully, we've had Carl helping us along the way.

Have you given this presentation to Le Center or Battleground yet? Or Amboy?

We have been giving, so in 2023, we published a regional solid waste system study. And I went around to all the cities and spoke on that.

Was that the big book?

That was the solid waste management plan. But inside the big book is an appendix with the regional solid waste. I still have it. So one of the appendices is the regional solid waste system study that we did. if you don't have the big book anymore, it's also online. But that study was what really drove us to do this study. It was like, well, that regional solid waste system study looked at 30-year-old aging infrastructure, looked at population growth, looked at the need, and also looked at the facilities themselves, which really indicate that we can't expand these much, especially the central transfer station, which is really what's served by most of the county residents. And with all of the residential growth that's happened around that transfer station, it's made it just more and more difficult, the traffic issues. And so the regional solid waste system study, that was the data that drove us to say, okay, we need to explore finding a new site. We need to build resiliency in our system. We need to prepare for population growth. We need to prepare for the fact that it's going to take a while to get something new in place. This was attempted, I think, back in 2011 to find a new site, and nothing came of it. It didn't work out. Washougal is the newest transfer station. It was, I think, sited and built in, or I think it opened in 2008, 2009. So it's been a while since we've done one of these. But we have been using data and guidance and doing studies along the way. So we're trying to do our due diligence to make sure that we're looking at data that's reflecting the needs. So before we spend a lot of investment, like at the central transfer station, we want to see is there a way to build a new station because that's not an ideal site to try to expand on.

Yeah, and I would agree with you. I think that we, as North County residents, feel the need for a new transfer station someplace in North County, so I appreciate the effort to do that. Could we go back to the slide really quick, Ms. Julie, the one that had the seven finalist sites and the boundary that was drawn? And at what point do you anticipate that those sites that you're reviewing will become public? I'm a little shocked that it's not public yet. I would have figured that would have been kind of a part of the public process.

We're very sensitive to the importance of the public process on this. And that's why Sarah is joining us. She is our public affairs and public engagement and outreach specialist. And we also have a sub-consultant with Parametrics. Point North is going to be working on all of the public engagement. And I know you all know that they work on several projects and do wonderful work. So we absolutely appreciate that. We're being very sensitive to the property owners as well. So we do have a public hearing scheduled at the county council for October 20th. And that's really where I expect that's going to be the date where we really start launching a lot of outreach. We really intentionally didn't want to do a lot of outreach until we got down to the two sites because we didn't want to spend extra money or have to do extra work for things that wouldn't result in a feasible site anyway.

Yeah, I appreciate that. So in looking at this boundary that you have here, and knowing that you said two of the final sites were inside our city limits, and so I can see where our city limits are. I know where they're at. And then the areas around it, and some of it touches Le Centre. But all of those are going to be relatively close to Le Centre and the city of Ridgefield. I'm just curious, like, where those end up landing, and are you anticipating that your finalist sites, your preferred sites, are those in the county, or are they going to be inside the city of La Center?

No, none of them are in the city of La Center. Okay. They're all in the county. There's one site at the north where that northern lobe, just to the west and south of the tribal area there, and then the other three sites are You know, over to the right-hand side of that large vertical lobe.

They're still going to technically feel like they're in Ridgefield, I'm assuming, right? Yeah. OK.

They will be very convenient for the citizens of Ridgefield. Yeah.

Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. OK. Any other questions, counselors?

So we had one more topic that we wanted to discuss, and I know we're short on time. So we've got about 15 minutes. I think for this I'm just gonna have Carl also present on the cost-benefit analysis. So just to preface this with, Our current disposal contract, that three-party contract, we refer to it as the MSA, which stands for the Master Services Agreement. So that three-party contract with the county, the city of Vancouver, Columbia Resource Company, allows us the option to purchase the transfer stations for a dollar. So not Washougal, but Central Transfer Station, and then also the West Vancouver Transfer Station. In evaluating that, when I came around to all the cities and talked about the regional solid waste system study, which included evaluating some high-level options for ownership, almost all the cities said, well, can you tell me what the cost impact's going to be? I don't want to make any decisions until I see money in cost impact. So we did an RFP. We selected FCS group to help with some of our financial pieces. One of the tasks in their contract was related to cost-benefit analysis. Parametrics was selected as a sub-consultant, so Carl helped us with this. So I think we'll probably just go through Carl's presentation. This was also given to the council in a work session in June. So we wanted to make sure you all had awareness that this was going on. At a high level, the cost-benefit analysis is just sort of like an initial look, and we know that we have to dive deeper.

Yep. So I'll go through this quickly. Next slide, please. So this study, we looked at three ownership options. The status quo, which is stations that are privately owned, operated, and maintained on behalf of the county through a a non-competitive negotiated process. That's the contract that we talked about, the MSA. And it's important to note that it was non-competitive. Second is to own the stations publicly, but to continue to have them privately operated and maintained under a competitively procured contract. The third option is just to go complete public ownership, operation, and maintenance. There's no contractor involved. So next slide. So to do this and to get a study that we could get done reasonably, we focused on only those costs associated with these transfer stations, and talking about operation and maintenance here, that varied across the three options, because there are many costs that don't really vary. So we focused in on those costs that vary, which are staffing levels for both operation and maintenance, the public administration, which there will be, regardless of the option, there is some public oversight, So the labor costs associated with that. For two of them, there's contractor administration, which is not the people working at the station, but their admin and so forth. And then for two of them, the two that involve a contractor, there are contractor profit issues to be evaluated. Next slide. So what didn't we include? First of all, again, this had nothing to do with the form of public ownership for those two options where there is public ownership. This was just looking at the financials. We did not look at this fourth transfer station that we're trying to cite. The costs associated with that were not part of the study. And then there's a list of costs that are seen not to really vary from option to option. So those are listed here. And you can see those for yourself. So we excluded those because they're going to be the same, and it's not going to help the comparison to have those, because everybody will get the same cost. Then this does not include the cost of downstream transport and disposal of the waste that goes through your transportation. That's going to be the same regardless. Next slide. Okay, so we use a 30-year net present value analysis tool. I'm not a financial wizard. Some of you may recognize that, but it's a reasonable way of trying to assess these costs. And you're really just looking out over a 30-year period, and you don't want to just look over a couple years. So we use the 30-year, and then you bring it back to the present in 2025 dollars. And this study, again, was completed in 2025. So any numbers you see up here will be in 2025 dollars. So we used a 30 year net present value. We had to develop the cost of the facility, the value of the facilities. And they're all three built facilities, and the original cost data was not available. So we basically conceptualized those three stations, did independent cost estimates for each, took into account the years they were built, We discounted the cost back to those years when they were built. Two of them in the early 90s, one in 2009. And then we came up with what the cost would have been back when they were built. Then there are two ways to look at those costs. And we're going to talk about that in a way. There's the depreciated value. So you go back and then you depreciate it over some reasonable period of time. as a business would do with their capital assets. But the public doesn't usually do that. That's a tax strategy. But we included that just as a comparison. And then there is the replacement value. What would it cost in 2025 to build these three stations as they are now? Not as you would want them to be, but just replicate what's there now. That's the replacement value. Next slide. Again, we used a 30-year life cycle for the study. We assumed a 50-year useful life for the facilities for depreciation purposes. Again, we're not in favor of depreciation as a way to look at this. And then we treat the capital value of the stations as The benefit, that's the benefit under options two and three because the county or its successor will get those facilities for a dollar each. So that's just money in the door. That's the financial benefit of ownership. And there are many other non-financial benefits we're gonna talk about. And we used a 2% real discount rate that was adjusted for inflation. that kind of methodology. Here's the end result. Let me try to explain it. So there's the three options up at the top, options one, two, and three, and then the three basic lines is basically what the numbers told us. These 30-year net present value would be cost less benefits. So first of all, for option one, there are no benefits The facilities still are maintained and retained by the private owner. So only options two and three get a financial benefit. For these scenarios, we're showing 20% profit levels for options one and two, where there's a contractor involved who is making a profit. We actually did a sensitivity analysis. We looked at 15%, 20%, 25% profit levels. The first major line is the depreciated value approach. Again, that's an approach a business might use, but a public entity doesn't depreciate things. And then the second line is the replacement value. What would it cost to replace those facilities, which to us is the true value of those. So that's why the numbers in column two and three suddenly become so different than they were for the depreciated, because suddenly you're factoring in the fact you just got for a buck each You just got facilities that are worth a heck of a lot of money and the actual value of that was over 100 million. And then there's some number fiddling that reason it's not quite 100 million compared to lines one and two for options two and three. The bottom line I would almost ignore, we just say well what if you just didn't have any benefits in any case and That's the numbers there, but it's really the first two lines that you want to think about. So what did we conclude from this? Should we go to the next slide? Our takeaways. First of all, private ownership, operation and maintenance, the status quo is probably generally a little more costly than public ownership. That might be surprising to some, but that's what the numbers are really telling us. Certainly, where there is a contractor involved, those numbers are very sensitive to the profit level, you assume. If you go to 15%, it gets better. If you go to 25%, it gets worse. The private sector profit rate is likely to be higher for option one, because remember, that's the non-negotiated, and we went through that with the MSA, and we actually negotiated money prices with them and you no longer have the competitive incentive for the contractor to give up all of their, to reduce their profit margin. Option two, you now have a competitive situation for operation and maintenance. You're getting contractor bids and they're competitive. So we think that drives down the profit level. The net present values between option two and three are pretty tight. We say within a 5% margin of each other. So they don't seem to distinguish option two from option three. Next one. Again, just pointing out that it's private industries that uses depreciated value. Public entities don't do that. So we think it's better to use the actual replacement cost. And again, the net present values that we put up there don't include all those costs that vary. So if you look at those numbers again and say, well, 30-year net present value, it's $215 million. No, it's not. The true cost is going to be much more than that, because there are costs we included. We actually did a rough order magnitude estimate of what those costs would be, and that was another $130 million net present value. So 214 suddenly became... whatever that is, 374 million over 30 years as the true cost. Next slide, perhaps. So this was just strictly a study about financial comparisons. But in the course of doing that, we identified many non-financial considerations that, in our opinion, loom much larger than the financial, particularly because the cost differences aren't that great. and those are customer satisfaction, system stakeholder, you and others, your satisfaction and expectations, the planning and control of the system, the flexibility and responsiveness of your solid waste system, the requirements for enterprise management. If the public is going to manage this facility and operate it, there's a much higher need there for experience doing that. They're all the risks and liabilities that go with ownership. So we go to the next slide, please. There's also opportunity for, and again, these are non-financial, for improved system maintenance, improved system reporting, documentation, and communications. And these are all very relevant to what the county's experienced under the current private operating contract. stabilized rates, improved services, and shared public works equipment and labor is a possibility. So with that, we go to the next slide. So we did a qualitative assessment. This is our professional judgment. This is not something you put numbers to. And we used a five-level system, starting with red as being basically a failure, down to the dark green, which is excellent. And we tried to score each of these options across that range of non-financial considerations. Because sometimes that pictorial look tells you something. And assuming our judgment is reasonably good, green, you can see the third column seems to have the preponderance of the green and the dark green, and less so as you move to the left. Again, that's qualitative, professional judgment. It's not a quantitative analysis you can look at. critique very closely. That, I think, is the last slide. Yes?

Okay, thank you very much. Council, following this, any remaining questions for county or staff?

The question I have, you're locked and loaded just on those seven sites.

Well, those are the seven sites that rose to the top of the list. It doesn't mean we couldn't go back and look at other sites, either ones that were already identified or even if somehow there was a site we missed.

That was the question I had, was the site you missed. That's where my mind is working. Outside of Ridgefield, the urban growth area, outside of Ridgefield, but still in the Ridgefield area, And if ag lands are included, I think we need to have some internal conversations and then go from there and go through Steve and let Steve bring it back to you or something that way. Thank you.

Thank you, counselor.

I've got a question. So is it going to be county council that ultimately decides that? And when do they, what part of the like acquisition process are they going to make this call?

just want to make sure I understand the question. So is it the county council that's going to decide on the public ownership? Sorry. Yeah.

The ownership component.

Um, it's a really great question. I think we brought this to county work session and the request that we had at the county work session was we didn't feel like this was enough to make a decision. We felt like this was a good high level. We got to drill down deeper. And so, um, In fact, on Tuesday I was at the county council, and we have another consultant contract for HDR Engineering to assist the county and all of the cities and their representatives, so Ryan's going to be participating in this, to facilitate discussions on what governance would look like. And what we're talking about is a model similar to the Discovery Clean Water Alliance, so that every city would have representation and be able to kind of speak to the issues throughout ownership. We have in the solid waste management plan, the big book, we have as one of the appendices, the interlocal agreements that we did with each city. In that interlocal agreement, there's a clause for public ownership preferences. And in there, we state that the county and the city of Vancouver of a preference for shared ownership, not for the county or the city of Vancouver to own independently. And so moving towards those governance discussions really is gonna have a greater, I think, I'm hopeful that that will lead to a decision on what this looks like. But what we did on its face was, hey, all the city said we wanna see this. We said, no problem. When we got it, we said, this is good to have. It wasn't a waste of time. It's a good starting place.

we feel the governance discussion is going to be the driver that makes the decision okay great okay that's really helpful any remaining questions council okay well we thank you for coming out today thank you for the wealth of information you provided us and uh we look forward to hearing more updates as we go and if not we'll probably see you next year yeah thank you thank you um Council does have an executive session now we're going to go into. This is pursuant to RCW 42.30.110 to discuss personnel matters. The study session will take. So the executive session. I'm sorry, executive session, yes.

Executive session, we're anticipating, let's start with 30 minutes.

OK.

And then we can always extend it out. We'd like to use this room. There is no action being requested. So we would ask to kind of just clear this room and use this one if that's okay.

Okay, so we'll give a couple minutes for this room to clear out. So the council will return at 5.35 p.m. 5.45, council is returning from this executive session. There is no action being taken today. So with that, we're going to conclude our study session for the evening. Thank you very much.