- I'll go ahead and call to order this meeting of the Executive Committee of the Waste Reduction
- District of Monroe County.
- It is Tuesday, April 1, 2025, and we have all three Executive Committee members here.
- Kate Wilts, Julie Thomas, and myself, Isabelle Piedmont-Smith.
- So let's start with the Executive Committee meeting minutes, and we have two sets of minutes,
- one from our regular meeting on March 4th, and one from the meeting with the Rocky Mountain
- Institute about possible solar installation on March 24th.
- Piedmont-Smith did provide the email, some typographical corrections to have those incorporated
- into persons here for signature, did not receive any other comments or corrections.
- Any other questions or comments?
- Okay.
- We can have a motion for approval, and we approve the minutes from March 4th and 24th.
- Second.
- Okay.
- All in favor, say aye.
- Aye.
- Any opposed?
- Those minutes are adopted.
- I have a question.
- Do we need minutes for the meeting with, the first meeting we had was, that was arranged
- by the Environmental Resilience Institute?
- There was not a quorum of the committee or the board present.
- Okay.
- That was not advertised as a public meeting.
- Okay.
- Just making sure.
- So then we have the board of director meeting minutes from March 13th.
- Are there any?
- I'm sorry, Ms. Wilts, was the motion for both sets of minutes?
- It was.
- All right.
- Thank you.
- Are there any comments or questions on these minutes that need to then go to the board?
- You've got my directions, right?
- Yes.
- Good.
- Okay.
- Moving right along.
- We have the lease agreement with Monroe County commissioners for the county extension services.
- Yeah.
- So if you recall, this was in the packet last month with the request to hold it until we
- did get a response from the commissioner's office and input from county legal that that
- has happened.
- And you do have in your packet the version of the lease that was approved by the county
- commissioners at their meeting on March 27th.
- I would note what's one change that I apologize to not make it into the memo.
- There is in your packet on page 15 of the packet, which is actually under section 10,
- which starts on the previous page of the agreement, there in the first paragraph, there's a
- sentence
- added.
- This is regarding the payments for housekeeping, utilities, lawn care and all that, that just
- allows for the amount to be amended at any time during the term of the agreement by mutual
- or inconsiderable parties, and county legal was agreeable to that language.
- And that, I had a question on that, would that be an amendment to this lease document
- then?
- Would that be legally incorporated if both parties said, okay, it's going to be $750
- or something?
- Yeah, it would then become a part of the lease agreement and from that point forward that
- would be, these were your upon amount would be the new amount.
- Okay, so it would be an amendment to this agreement?
- Yeah.
- So it would have to get the commissioners approval?
- Yeah, both parties would have to agree to the new amount.
- So the commissioners lease the space for the extensions?
- Yes.
- Is that part of the county?
- Part of the agreement with Purdue, the hosting county provides all the space for them.
- And I see Purdue has been removed, so it's just called county extension services now
- in the lease agreement.
- I think it used to say Purdue, which is fine, didn't it?
- Well, yeah, there are, it is an affiliate of Purdue, but I believe in each county the
- name is ex-county extension services.
- Are there any questions on this?
- Do we need to, we don't need to vote to forward this to the board, just I'll agree that there's
- no objections to putting it on the board agenda.
- And then we have a resolution to accept assignment of judgments from Monroe County, Indiana.
- This world is probably more familiar with this than I am at this point.
- So as it has been in the middle on page 19, we discussed this during our budget preparation
- last year, because we added a line for court order remediation expenses, and part of the
- reason, purpose for doing that was because the county attorney's office has begun pursuing
- legal action for some cases where we don't get voluntary compliance from the property
- owner to clean up the violations and then in turn get the order to the district to hire
- a contractor and get it brought into compliance and then put a lien on the property.
- The issue we run into with that is with the county attorney's office initiating the action,
- the county is listed as the lien holder or the plaintiff in that case and not the district.
- So the county attorney's office wanted to clean that up and to have some official documentation
- in place to allow for the county to transfer that judgment to the district.
- So you can see on page 22 of the packet is the resolution the county council has previously
- adopted where there is a section in the state code that does allow the assignment of judgments.
- So that's what the county's saying that they'll do in these particular cases where the district
- has incurred the cost to bring a property into compliance, they'll assign that judgment
- to the district.
- So our resolution is just a formality of yes, we'll accept that assignment and recoup whatever
- portion of the cost that we can with the property transfers hands.
- Sounds good.
- Hopefully pretty cut and dry.
- Now that I know what it is.
- Hopefully we'll actually get some judgment.
- Well, we do have some, we just have to wait until the property transfer.
- Yeah, we have two or three, but yeah, unless the property owner elects to pay off the amount
- ahead of time, we won't recoup the money until the property transfers hands and then depending
- on how many liens are against the property and what other debts are owed on it, we may
- or may not recoup the full amount.
- You have a ballpark idea of how much we have incurred that could possibly be.
- Can you tell us?
- It's under 10,000 at this point, and that's three before judgments that we've acted on.
- Okay, thank you, and then we go to the annual Monroe County landfill financials for us.
- Yeah, at this point for us at staff, it's an annual housekeeping measure, but the administrative
- code in Indiana, there's a requirement for landfill owners to provide an annual financial
- assurance demonstration for the closure of an operating landfill and estimated post-closure
- cost of landfills that are in closure, which we are.
- Again, we've done this every year, so beginning on page 27 of the packet are the updated closure
- cost estimates from our engineering firm, and below on page 24, you can see it's down
- a little over 92,000 from what it was last year, which is nice to see.
- I believe last year it actually increased because of the inflationary factors that go
- into producing those cost estimates.
- This is like the backup.
- If the district cannot pay the closure costs, then we count on the county to do it.
- To this point, we have not had any problem absorbing the management, maintenance of cost
- of the landfill under our operating budget, so unless the district were to go away, I
- don't see it being a problem.
- This was very confusing to me when I first joined Catsall.
- We're doing what?
- What are we signing our lives away for?
- We're going to be back in here.
- Again, as it says in the memo, there's seven different mechanisms that are available in
- the rule for an entity to make that demonstration, and then as a government entity, we're allowed
- to do the government financial test option, local government financial test option.
- Basically, that's the county saying as a taxing entity, we will assure that the funds are
- available if the district can't do it.
- Question.
- Does this agreement impact our ability to borrow or bond and-
- The counties?
- Yeah.
- That is a good question, and that's not been posed.
- The amount's not-
- It's a big thing.
- Is it pile-on?
- I imagine it might, but the amount is so small.
- It's an insignificant amount compared to the county's annual revenues and such.
- But if it were larger, I imagine that that would be so, because that would be a debt
- that we may have to pay.
- It doesn't compound year over year.
- Actually, like I said, last year was the first year the amount increased.
- It was a small amount, but that was due to the inflation.
- This year it's down about 92,000.
- I want to say before the increase last year, it was dropping a little over 100,000 a year.
- There is some economic factors that go into producing the cost estimates, and there's
- a formula that is dictated by the state, how those cost estimates are calculated.
- But the commitment from the county government is always just for one year at a time, right?
- No, you have to make the financial assurance demonstration annually.
- And it would only come into play if the district was unable to ... if for some reason the state
- took away our ability to levy appropriate tax, which would be catastrophic for the district
- in a number of ways. But the county, in essence, under this, would be obligated to fund what
- we're currently doing on an annual basis until the district is able to financially take that
- back on, which could be a year. It could be the remainder of the co-exposure period. It
- would all depend on what the situation was that impacted the district and how it recovered
- from that moving forward.
- But the county government makes that commitment for a one-year period and then recommits.
- So I understand if something were to happen in this year period, the commitment of the
- county would be indefinite.
- If something were to happen in the next year and the district dissolved, it no longer existed.
- At that point, then, the county is on the hook for the remainder of the post-closure
- period until or unless some other entity took it over or was created to do that.
- This is a little bit different in that we're on the hook for the rest of it anyway.
- I mean, we're on the hook.
- Let's just say we missed some deadline and didn't sign it next year.
- And then, I'm just catastrophizing, but simply-
- If the council said no, but did it the previous year, what would that mean?
- That would be one way, yeah.
- And I would want to go look that up, but I believe that the county would still be on
- the hook until the district was able to make that demonstration another way.
- But again, we need to do make a distinction between making the demonstration and actually
- incurring the costs of doing the work.
- If the district is still there and still doing it, the county's not expending any money,
- even though they have committed to making the financial assurance demonstration.
- This is a lot like the stopgap funding that's in place whenever the county or the city does
- a barn.
- Where will you get the money if there was an emergency?
- Like co-signing?
- Yeah.
- And this is the annual check to see if we still have a job.
- They want to co-sign our job.
- And again, it only means something if the district is unable to fulfill its responsibilities
- for post-closure monitoring and maintenance.
- Any other questions or concerns about that item?
- And we can move on to any other topics of use appropriate.
- Who's got something?
- I got something.
- So have you had a chance to look into that HEPB program for other plastics?
- I have.
- I actually have not talked with HEPB directly, but I've talked with Runge because they actually
- do that program out of their Cincinnati operations.
- And at this time, I mean, two obstacles.
- Currently HEPB does not sell the bags here.
- The bags are sold through HEPB, so they would have to make them available at local stores.
- Yeah.
- But you can actually buy them online.
- Oh, you can't?
- OK.
- Can you step back a moment and give us an overview of what they're seeing?
- The HEPB Renew program is a program designed for hard-to-recycle plastics.
- And similar to our Orange Bag program, it is an orange bag, but they sell a special
- bag that you put your plastic bags, your straws, your fast food couplets and stuff in, and
- then you have to have a vendor facility that will accept those and then get those shipped
- off to HEPB.
- And I will note to the point about local stores, I know we've had issues with Walmart, but
- Walmart and Target carry those bags online.
- So which tells me we could probably get it into Target stores and maybe find another
- way to locally offer it and figure that out, because I know that's part of it, that you
- have to buy their spanking bags.
- And then the other, and not that they're the only option available, that's who I've talked
- to, because I know they're involved in it, but Brumke's facility here, they're not set
- up to do that at this time.
- I'm not saying that they won't look at doing that in the future, but right now they're
- not.
- I know that Republic, that's the other transfer station in the county, they're not doing it.
- So we have to find, if we're able to make the bags available, and even if the district
- would accept the bags, we still have to find a way to get them to a hefty facility.
- So the question then is to Brumke as to whether or not this could be merged with the Cincinnati
- hefty program.
- And if they were willing to take this on, how much would they have to have volume-wise
- to do it?
- I think there'd probably be, I think that would probably be the issue.
- The other thing that the site says is that if you live in an area where grocery stores
- recycle plastic bags, they prefer that you not put plastic bags in as that or that.
- And so that would limit the volume.
- Right.
- And that was a concern for me.
- But Kroger's the only one I know that takes a range of plastic bags, like the dry cleaner
- kind of bags and, you know, wrap, stuff like that.
- I'm not sure.
- Walmart took their bags back.
- Right.
- And Fresh Time will take, they're called T-shirt bags, right?
- So they know VIA are special, and I know Fresh Time takes those, but they don't take all
- plastic bags.
- Fresh Time takes a range of plastic bags.
- Like bread bags.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- Different types of plastic bags.
- Not freezer bags, so, but bread bag, bubble wrap, you know, that clear plastic bag you
- get when you get something packed and shipped, you know, that kind of stuff will take you.
- But yeah, that worries me that we might not have enough volume, and I don't know how,
- I don't know how we can gauge an interest among people who go to the rural sites.
- Because it seems to me that one of the things we could do is expend a little money and just
- have a bin with bags in it and, you know, and have people leaving their bags.
- Similar to when we were accepting plastic bags.
- Right.
- We just had a tote at the sites for plastic bags to go in and I could set up something
- similar.
- But it'd be like with one of the hefty bags inside and somebody would have to keep replacing
- it.
- And at this time, not something we could immediately consider doing because we'd have to find out
- where they're going to go and how we're going to get them.
- Right.
- But it's something to keep an eye on and particularly if RFI is going to expand to facilities
- beyond
- the Cincinnati area, you know, that certainly becomes a lot more feasible to do.
- Well I think that would be the request I would recommend that we make is to RFI is to look
- seriously at incorporating this and that you're very serious about, because that's a range
- of products that we kind of recycle right now, that it's a bit malicious, you know.
- I think we should look seriously at anybody that can offer that kind of a program.
- And I know that TerraCycle with wax carts, right, something like that.
- Well, RELPE will accept, in the cardboard, juice and milk cartons.
- So when we switch to June, when we switch over to RELPE, it's not a significant number
- of different things, but when we switch in June there are some things that we can't currently
- take.
- So, yeah, that'll be really good.
- So, you were saying that someone else is offering a similar program to what HEPTE is offering?
- No, I said the HEPTE Renew Setup is similar to our own bag program, it's a special bag.
- Got it.
- Okay.
- All right.
- And they're both over in Twitch.
- I think that's okay.
- If you've got a big event that says HEPTE Renew Setup-- Yeah, whether there's always
- ways to make it work, but-- Yeah.
- So TerraCycle doesn't have an equivalent thing.
- Doesn't what?
- Doesn't have an equivalent thing.
- Not like this.
- TerraCycle breaks down what they take into more specific categories or individual items
- and then provides a box for those items that you then ship back to them.
- We're doing that through our Household Hazardous Waste Department.
- I think it's a Gillette program, but they'll take any disposable razors, and I think it's
- a Colgate program, but they'll do any toothpaste, too, and some toothbrushes.
- We are doing that at our Household Hazardous Waste Department, and it's something we probably
- need to promote a little bit more.
- We're not doing a large volume of that right now, but we get about a three-gallon-sized
- box, and when it's full, we ship it back to them, but they don't have to.
- Can you look into other things that TerraCycle recycles, because I think they do an ink pen
- and disposable pencil program.
- I think they have a lot of other things.
- If we can really hit a lot of that all at once, that'd be great, especially if we could
- get little containers set up in rural sites, because they're not heavy to move.
- I mean, it's not big, huge bunches of anything.
- Kayla actually has really done a lot of investigation into TerraCycle and has a lot of information
- from them that we could ... Probably something we need to dig back into.
- We got into it and picked the razors and the toothpaste stuff to run, let's see how this
- works and then how do we expand it out to the rural sites, how do we incorporate other
- materials into the program.
- It's time to start looking at those questions.
- Is there ... Maybe this already exists, but do you work with the schools on the TerraCycle
- program?
- Do you coordinate ... Oh, it's not at this time, but we could certainly reach out to
- them.
- It will probably be some of the things that TerraCycle does, the school system could probably
- do on their own.
- They would have about ... Oh, yes.
- We did it just at Binford Elementary for years with the juice pouches.
- The pouches, yeah, they do those at TerraCycle.
- Yeah.
- That kind of stuff.
- Stuff that was obviously high volume for ... Pencils are huge.
- Yeah.
- Things that sit in the lamp for ... TerraCycle has a program for the fast food ketchup and
- sauce packets.
- Oh, wow.
- Oh, my gosh.
- That's awesome.
- Somebody who never eats fast food, that's awesome.
- That's logical.
- Those things are everywhere.
- Yeah.
- Even when you ask for them not to be included.
- But if we had individual boxes at the sites, they could just be mailed from the site to
- me.
- They wouldn't even have to be moved, really.
- They could just be filled out there, right?
- Just in one place.
- What are our expenses with TerraCycle?
- Do we pay for the shipment?
- It's ...
- I mean, unless you're the owner of TerraCycle, you don't have to pay for the shipping.
- If you're the owner of TerraCycle, you don't have to pay for the shipping.
- Yeah.
- If you're the owner of TerraCycle, you don't have to pay for the shipping.
- But the majority of it is no cost
- to whoever is running the program.
- That's so cool.
- They bring it to the box,
- you fill it up and ship it back.
- Well, I think we do need to get the word out better.
- And signage, I didn't, I mean, it's been a few months,
- but when I brought toothpaste tubes and razors,
- there was, I had, there was no sign.
- Like I had no idea.
- Well, we don't let city council members.
- (laughing)
- They saw me coming in and everything.
- No, so I mean, I had to ask somebody.
- So, I mean, I know the person that I asked said,
- yeah, we need to check the things
- and make sure they're eligible.
- We don't want you to just put it in a container.
- I can understand that.
- Yeah, and that was part of the reason
- of let's start doing it.
- It has the household hazardous waste department
- and see how it goes and what kind of contamination
- or inappropriate items get brought in
- before we just threw it out at the rural sites
- where it wouldn't be able to be policed or monitored.
- We can certainly look at promoting that
- and see what other types of materials
- we can sort of process and improve it.
- (silence)
- Any other items for discussion?
- I hate to do it 'cause we just updated
- the vendor list list and then turned around
- and got one, I think, no, we had two name change notices
- from vendors after they completed that.
- Tressie also discovered that I somehow inadvertently left
- our lab for landfill water samples off the list
- and resolution that you saw last month.
- How can that get added to the agenda for--
- That's basically my question is if I,
- I hate bringing stuff to the board consecutive months
- like that, but I think we need to get this,
- get it done just for the sake of having it.
- Since everything gets brought back to the board
- at every meeting and correctively reviewed and ratified
- if we happen to inadvertently pay something
- that's not on the list, as long as it still gets ratified.
- (indistinct)
- But yes, the preference would be to bring
- the vendor list back to the board again for an update.
- Yeah, I mean, we have several other items,
- but they're all gonna be short, I think.
- So let's add that.
- Okay.
- You can do it.
- I don't think you should hesitate bringing that
- to the board even if it's every month and it's easy.
- It's important that it gets done.
- So one thing I mentioned to Tom via email
- is the city's Earth Day celebration on April 19th.
- It's great to get a table there.
- Well, actually, I either missed or was not informed.
- Elisa already has a table registered for us.
- We will be there.
- Thanks.
- Let's try to get some more CAC members.
- That's what your Instagram post was.
- Yeah. - Nice, I missed that.
- Terrible at social media, but.
- Yeah, and we certainly have literature a flyer
- to promote and recruit people to the CAC,
- so we'll make sure to have some of those
- at the Earth Day event.
- Yeah, I think you'll get a receptive audience there.
- Anything else, anything from CAC, no?
- No, I don't think so.
- We've just been continuing to discuss the Caldwell positions.
- Oh yes, should we follow up on that, Tom, today?
- That's, of course, Kate and Julie didn't cope that visit.
- Well, I mean, I was gonna do a report,
- make a summary of that at the board meeting
- since we didn't have a full contingent at the last meeting
- 'cause I intended to report on the 10th.
- Before we get a couple of things,
- I said we were gonna hold off on the next board meeting
- because we only had four there last time.
- And the solar was the other one?
- Yes.
- Yeah, I think these are really exciting possibilities.
- Of course, the Caldwell quote was quite expensive.
- But hey, we got money.
- Hey.
- It's only two weeks to see.
- It's the biggest thing for the buck.
- And interestingly enough,
- their sister company, Caldwell Environmental,
- it's one of our name changes.
- They just bought one of our HHW vendors.
- (laughing)
- Teresa, anything from the controller's office?
- No, I don't have any questions.
- Okay, well, that is, that's everything.
- I guess we can go ahead and adjourn.
- Good.
- Thank you all.
- Thank you.
- (orchestral music)