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.
 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.
 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.
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