All right, I'd like to go ahead and call to order this meeting of the Waste Reduction District Board
of Directors. Are we on Teams live? Has that been activated? Okay, great. So the Waste Reduction District
Board of Directors meeting for Thursday, February 12th, 2026. Mr. McClassen, will you please call the
roll? Yvonne Smith. Here. Wilkes.
Thomas? Here. Madeira? Here. Thompson? Here. Jones? Do we know who will be appointed from Ellisville?
It was on the Ellisville town council had the appointment on their agenda at their meeting on the second,
I believe. And they tabled that appointment to their next meeting. So I think the roll call is complete.
Thank you. We have a quorum. All right. So the next order of business is election of officers for 2026.
Are there any nominations?
if we're doing them all at once, I would at least like to put on the table, Jody Madeira as vice chair.
I'll second that. Commissioner Thomas, were you thinking we would do a slate? So if people could add
names to your combination. Yes, please.
and I will put forward as a bill Piedmont Smith as. And I will put forward counselor Kate Wilkes as
the secretary. So does anybody want to make a an overall motion please? I'm I move approval of the officers
for 2026 as
Isabel Piedmont Smith, Chair, Jody Madeira, Vice Chair, and Kate Welch, Secretary. I will second that.
All right, we have a motion and a second. Any further comments or questions? Sorry, who was the second?
Commissioner Madeira. Any other comments? All right, can we do a roll call vote?
Edmund Smith. Yes. Thomas. Yes. Thompson. Yes. Madera. Yes. Wilts. Yes. Motion passes unanimous.
Thank you. We will, I think we'll have to schedule our executive committee meeting
later via email, since we do have a member who is new to that committee, Commissioner Madeira, so we
can discuss that via email perhaps. I will get an email out in short order and we'll work to get a schedule
together for the Executive Committee. Thank you. All right, speaking of which, for your information,
we have in the packet the draft Executive Committee meeting minutes of December 30th. Did that raise
any questions for anyone?
We'll have to approve that at the first executive committee meeting of this year. Okay, and then our
next action item is approving the board of director meeting minutes from January 8th. Move approval.
Second. All right, it's been moved and seconded to approve the board of director meeting minutes from
January 8th. Mr. McClassen, will you please call the roll? Thomas. Yes.
Wilkes? Yes. Thompson? Yes. Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Madera? Yes. Motion passes unanimously. All right,
thank you. Moving right along, we have a controller's report. Ms. Goins, are you available on? Yes.
Yes, I see you on Teams.
The year in 2025 updated cash flow summary is on page nine of your board packet. Individual cash flow
statements for 2025 are on pages 10 through 15. The balances as of December 31st were operating
$5,076,110.75. Debt service, $149,236.46.
Capital was $46,148.34. Landfill post-closure was $8,222.873.48. The 2026 year-to-date cash flow summary
is on page 16 of your board packet. Here are the balances as of January 31st for the following accounts.
Operating $4,984,000
$404.29. Debt service is $101.46. Capital is $46,161.62. Land sale post closure is $825,415.57. The
individual cash flow statements are on pages 17 through 22.
Are there any questions on the account? Any questions for our controller from board members?
Seeing none, we can go on to the payroll and claims. On page 23 of packet. A summary of the pre approved
payroll claims since our last meeting.
and the amount of $195,298.96. The backup for those numbers are on pages 24 through 56. The payroll
and claims for approval this week were sent in email on Wednesday and are an amount of $4,111.17.
Documentation was included in the Wednesday email.
This brings the total of all payroll and claims that we are recommending for approval to $199,410.13.
Are there any questions regarding these claims? Any questions on the payroll and claims? I just have
one small question. When we pay for the copier slash printer rental for Canon,
Does that include toner cartridges? Okay, it's 323.40 per month. Is that a monthly? That is a monthly
fee. And it does include, and off the top of my head, I don't recall the number, but a set number of
pages for both black and white and color. And it will occasionally be higher than that if we go over
those page counts.
And if we need service or toner, that's all covered under this surprise. Is it just one machine?
All right. Thanks for those details. That is quite a lot when you add it up over the years. All right.
Well, let's get a motion on the table in regard to payroll and claims, please. We have approval of payroll
and claims as presented.
I'll second that. Okay, do we go to public comment on this item? I don't remember. Yes, I should know
that by now. Is there any member of the public who would like to comment before we vote on payroll and
claims? I do not see any. All right, could you do a roll call vote, please, Mr. McClassen?
Thompson? Yes. Wilts? Yes. Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Madera? Yes. Thomas? Yes. Motion passes unanimously.
Thank you. And thank you to our controller goings for those reports. Next we have a request for appointment
to the Citizens Advisory Committee. Mr. McClassen?
Yeah, refer to the memo on page 57 of your packet. See, this is a request from Joe Sears, who some may
remember a longtime owner operator of Sears and Sons Waste Removal Services, and is currently an employee
of Republic Services. Okay, if we could get a motion on the table to approve this appointment. I move
approval of Joe Sears.
to the advisory committee. I second. It's been moved and seconded. Any discussion? I just want to thank
him for being willing to step up and do this. It's good to get somebody in there. Anyone else? Yes.
Yes, for any member of the public who may be watching this, we need additional members of our citizens
advisory committee. So if you're interested in helping us try to reduce waste, please contact the district.
Any other comments? Is there any member of the public who would like to comment on this appointment?
I would just say that I believe Joe's son Lazarus is the Director of the City of Bloomington Sanitation
Department. So the legacy continues in various ways. Mr. McClassen, if you could please call the roll.
Thomas? Yes. Wilts? Yes. Madera? Yes. Thompson? Yes. Piedmont-Smith?
Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. And then we are ready for department reports, starting with the
administration department and Mr. McClassen. I will just refer you to the memo on page, the beginning
on page 59 of the packet, and do have updates on a handful of the bills that are mentioned in that packet.
House Bill 1003 did have its first reading in the Senate on February 5th and was referred to the Senate
Rules and Legislative Procedure Committee. As of today, that committee has no hearing scheduled, so
not sure what the plan or the schedule is for that committee. House Bill 1231,
which was a battery bill that we were, you know, solid waste districts, waste haulers, there were a
number of organizations that were very interested in that bill and in support of that bill. And you'll
note in the memo in the packet that because the bill created a fund, it had to be referred to the Ways
and Means Committee. And unfortunately in the short session,
By the time that happened, there was not time to get it scheduled. There were some efforts made by some
lobbyists to work with the author of some other bills that were moving to try to get that battery bill
language amended into those bills. And unfortunately, no agreements were reached to get that to happen.
So unfortunately,
The battery bill as proposed, although from district perspectives, not perfect was certainly a good
start and something we were in support of is dead for this session. But the association of solid waste
districts, as well as some of the other industry groups that were in support of this bill, I have pledged
to work to get a similar bill moving for next year's legislative session,
Hopefully, given that it'll be a longer session, we'll have a little more success and hopefully get
some of the language added that we were working to get added to for. And the Senate Bill 91, which is
for the syringe exchange programs, on February the 10th,
that did pass out of the Public Health Committee. The vote was a do pass to amend a nine to four vote
on that. The proposed amendments that the committee was looking for was to limit exchanges to one sterile
syringe for one use syringe. It did change the expiration date from July 1st of 36 to July 1st of 28.
meaning that the program would again have to be reviewed in two years. And also a requirement
for participants to be residents of Indiana and provide a valid ID. So what that committee was looking
for as that bill moved through the House for passage.
Senate Bill 163 is scheduled to be heard in the House Ways and Means Committee on February the 16th.
And then I guess the big one from our perspective, Senate Bill 277, which we affectionately refer to
as the item bill, did pass out of the House Environmental Affairs Committee yesterday.
and- do pass a man on a six five vote- it was- I was able to- to watch most of that hearing- and- it
was- it was a battle- Mr obviously- a slim margin on a vote- would note that there were two members
of that committee- that were absent- and did not
has a lot of support from industrial groups and associations, manufacturers predominantly, and I probably
ought to bite my tongue on what it's doing. So not necessarily in favor of all the changes that are
being proposed here. So we will watch and see what happens with that.
as it says in the memo, we will continue to watch all of those bills. And at this point, I don't know
that there's much chance for inactive bills to be amended into bills that are moving since it's a short
session, but we always watch for those things to happen as well. So before I get onto some general things,
any questions on any of the legislation that we've been tracking?
Mr. McClassen, so the SB 277, the IDEM bill, is it still in the environmental affairs committee? If
we wanna give feedback to it, would we contact that committee? That's the meeting you were talking about.
It passed out of that committee yesterday on that 65 vote. So it goes to the full house next? Yeah,
there was no reassignment or referral to any other committees that I'm aware of, so it should go back
to the floor.
Thank you. Any other questions on the bills tracking? All right, Mr. McClassen, you want to go ahead
with some other announcements? Yeah, and then I would note under the general updates, we received one
application for our community grant program.
It has been provided to the members of the Citizen Advisory Committee and we'll get a copy of it to
Mr. Sears as well and ask that they discuss and review that at their meeting next Thursday and be prepared
to provide a recommendation so that that application can be brought to the board at the board's March
meeting to consider making an award on that.
And the website waste reduction district orders.com is live so people can place orders for rain barrels
and compost bins that we are planning to have. Scheduled to be picked up or for district distribution
of those to begin on April the 24th. And then lastly, we did apply for another waste tire grant.
for this year and we do still have some funds from last year's grant available. That grant term is still
active. We are planning to do another tire amnesty event this spring and then hopefully we get that
grant and we can do additional events later this year and possibly into spring of 27 as well.
Thank you. I would like to note that you have been elected chairperson of the Association of Waste Reduction
District. Congratulations. Thank you. I hope that comes with some compensation. Double what they paid
me before. All right. That's an optimistic way of looking at it, yes.
I have a question about our website. I just went to it right now to check the link for the rain barrels.
And I noticed right on the home page, it has click here to learn about the Citizens Advisory Committee.
And it has that in red over turquoise. And I'm fearful that somebody with visual impairment would not
be able to read that.
routinely when you update things on the website, is there an accessibility check list that you go through
because we want to maintain it as accessible as possible? And that is a discussion we had a meeting
or two ago, and we're familiarizing ourselves with Google, the county tech services gave us a quick
tutorial on Google has a number of tools
to do that with, and we are running those and familiarizing ourselves with those, and that may be one
that we didn't catch, but we can certainly change that color contrast. That's an easy fix. Great,
thank you. Yeah, I'm glad that you're learning more about those requirements and ways to check our documents
and website.
Are there any other questions or comments about the administration department report? None, we can go
on to recycling reuse, hazardous material to rural recycling centers, Joey Long. Mr. Long, you're up.
Hi, everyone. With the recycling reuse, we have received back almost all of our GBN green business network
contracts for the year 2026.
With that being said, we're always looking to expand. So if anybody knows any small businesses that
would like some recycling, we would love to meet with them, talk to them, or see how we could help them.
The materials for the arts, we've got some thank you letters back. I've included one. It's always nice
to get thank you letters back of how we're helping the community in different ways. So it's nice for
the staff to give. The hazardous materials,
Every year it's something we do, we reach out to all the vendors and see about new packing requirements,
shipping requirements, if anything's changed for the new year. So, you know, we've been reaching out
to all of them, make sure we're up to date on all that stuff. And the rural recycling centers, the extreme
cold weather has caused us some problems with the compactors that's sitting outside, the metal, hydraulics,
it just freezing up.
But time we get stuff unthawed, it's been so cold that stuff's just freezing right back up on us. So
we appreciate the community working with us as we get through the problems. That's all I have. If you
have any questions, I will do my best to answer them. Thank you. And I see in our packet is included
a very nice letter from Kelly DeBecchi at Wander Lab.
about material for the arts, so I'm glad to see it continues to be very useful for our community. Are
there any questions or comments from directors? Looks like Julie has one. I do. Thank you. Have you
been able to make any progress on looking at the potential for beginning the hefty program for
plastic bags and other plastic materials that we don't accept right now? We have reached out.
Right now, it's not offered in our area. The other problem is they use the orange bags, so it would
conflict with our orange bag trash. But as of right now, it's not offered in our area, but we have reached
out to Remke about it.
I would just encourage you all to talk to Rumpke because I think this is a really great community service
and really important. I think even though the bags are orange, they do say hefty on them when you buy
them and it would be very clear where those go. I'm not as worried about that as I initially was. I
just feel like
This is a shout out to Rumpke. Please, please, please help us out. I know the stuff has to get to Cincinnati,
but let's figure out a way to do it because this stuff is just sitting in landfills right now. Yeah,
we agree. That's why we did reach out. Hopefully sooner versus later it is offered in our areas. That
way we could take advantage of that. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it would be wonderful if we could get
that program going in the county.
Any other questions or comments? All right, thank you, Mr. Long. We will move on to Mr. Paulson and
Environment and Landfill. Good afternoon. Pretty much what you see there in the report is what I've
got for you today. Looks like I spent the morning out there with the technician to get
our valve situation hopefully be taken care of and should be up and running with the treatment plant
next week. I was able to find a temporary replacement valve until the one that I'm waiting for is completed
and shipped. Unfortunately, that area that it's coming from is the Minneapolis, Minnesota area, so I
don't know if
whatever's happening up there had anything to do with the production of this, but we should at least
be up and running next week to at least start treating water instead of hauling. But past that, we're
hoping that as the warmer weather gets a little more mild that we can get out and
Start to clean up some roads have been able to do that for a little bit with the weather and snow at
least and Unless it's something dumped directly in the middle of the road. Just not been safe So but
other than that if you guys have any questions, I'm happy to answer Thank you any questions for mr.
Paulson Yes, counselor wealth Why are some of them why are some of the numbers on the table?
Red. Oh, I think that was Joey Long's data that had some red numbers. I was curious about that too.
Sorry. I think Mr. Long is still on there. Yeah, I can answer that. So it's the red numbers is when
we switched to Rumpke versus when we was using Republic. It's just an easier way for me to track what
I'm doing. Makes sense. Thank you. Thank you. I had a question for Mr. Paulson.
When I see the environmental compliance cases for January of this year, there were 17 new cases. And
then when I look at the total for 2026, there were 17 total cases. So I'm a little surprised at that,
that the number of cases for one month would be the same as for a whole year. Well, that would be the
year to date is,
We've only had one month of 2026. Oh, my goodness. Okay. I'm sorry. I was looking at that as for 2025.
Well, that does make total sense. Yeah. Yeah. That total by the end of the year, hopefully, will be
a lot larger than that. So, yeah. So, last month at the end of this, like in January's budget or board
meeting, I would have had the total for 2025 on that one. I can try to look that up real quick if you want.
I think we're in the real real close to the 300 number 300 cases for the year, but not not exactly.
Okay, thank you. Sorry, I was just misreading that. All right. Any other questions or comments on this
report? Seeing none. We will go to open public comments.
Any member of the public want to make any comments about the waste reduction district business?
And none. Are there any comments from directors? I also see none. Okay. Well, I'll just give a shout
out to staff.
who braved the cold and the snow at our rural sites and at our main site. And it's been a tough few
weeks. So thank you for hanging in there. If there's no other business, I think we can adjourn. Thank you.