I'd like to call to order this meeting of the Board of Directors of the Waste Reduction District of
Monroe County for July 9th, 2026. Mr. Glasson, would you please call the roll? Piedmont Smith? Thomas?
Here. Wilkes? Here. Jones? Ellis? Here. Thompson? Here. Madhu? You have a quorum. Excellent. No members
present online currently.
First order of business is approving the minutes for May 14th. Can I get a motion for that? I move approval
of the minutes as presented. Can I have a second? Second. Excellent. So we have a motion and a second
to approve the minutes. Any comments or questions? All right. Can we do a roll call vote on that? Thomas?
Yes. Elvis? Yes. Madeira? Yes. Thompson? Yes.
Yes. Motion passes unanimously. Excellent. It should be okay. Just move it closer to you, Tom, and you
should be fine. Awesome. Let me know if that doesn't improve. Yeah. Yeah. TSC can change out the mic
or something if we need to.
All right, so the next item of business is we're going to ratify the hiring of our new controller.
So Mr. Glasson, I'd like to shoot that one to you. Yeah, that's not working. So maybe you take this
one here, this short one, or switch it out with the one. Well, that's not ideal because we've got to
hurry through this meeting.
Okay. We've got another mic here. Is that one working better? There we go. There we go. We're good.
Page seven of the packet. If you recall the May board meeting due to some time constraints with Ms.
Gowin's departure date, the board did delegate the authority to make an offer of the controller position
to Chairperson Piedmont-Smith.
Interviews, you know, were conducted with the full executive committee. And after those rounds, two
rounds of interviews, Ms. Piedmont-Smith did offer the position to Mr. John Arnold, who is sitting here
with me. He did accept the position and has been with us for a few weeks now, working under Ms. Goin's
tutelage. And we are asking the board as a whole to ratify that hiring decision.
I make a motion to ratify the decision to hire the new controller, John Arnold. Second. And before we
vote, I would just like to say I've worked with John before, so I'm pleasantly surprised to see him
as part of this. Wonderful. So we need a roll call vote on that, I would guess. With all members present
in the room, I do not believe a roll call vote is necessary. A voice vote would suffice.
And that's, we can do, we can vote aye or nay. So all in favor of ratifying the hiring of the new controller,
say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed say nay. That ratification is unanimously approved. Congratulations,
welcome aboard. Next item in the business is the controller's report.
First of all, I want to thank you all for offering the position to me, and I'm excited to be here. For
the May 2026 cash bounces, see the June 26 board packet. The May meeting was canceled. The cash flow
summary memo is on page eight of your board packet. The cash flow summaries were emailed on Wednesday.
So here are the balances as of June 30th. Operating $5,452,474.37, debt service $153,301.76,
capital $46,228.50, and the landfill post closure was
$831,755.99. And the cash flow summaries are in the Wednesday email. Does anyone have any questions
about this? I do not. Does anyone else? Excellent. Can we get a motion on the table for the approval
of payroll and claims? Excellent.
Since there are no questions here, we can go to the public. Is there any member? He didn't go over payroll
and claims yet. I'm sorry. I'm jumping ahead of myself. We need to get out of here, so I'm jumping ahead
of on the agenda as well. Nail, the next item on the agenda is moving forward to payroll and claims.
So back to you.
On page 11 of the packet, you have a summary of the pre-approved payroll and claims since our last meeting
in the amount of $422,205.16. And the backup for those are on pages 12 through 81. The payroll
was $206,735.29. Documentation was included in the Wednesday email.
That brings a total of all payroll and claims that we are recommending for approval at $628,940.45.
And are there any questions regarding these claims? Any questions? All right. Looks like the board members
have no questions about payroll and claims. Now, I believe we shoot this to the public as well.
There are no members of the public present in the NatU Hill Room that I can see. Online have any questions?
Seeing no hands, we can come back. Since there's no comments or questions, Mr. Blassen, can you call
a roll call vote to approve payroll and claims? Ellis? Yes. Thompson? Yes.
Thomas? Yes. Wilts? Yes. Motion passes unanimously. Excellent. Thank you so much. The next item on our
agenda is item five, resolution 2026-07 to amend the district fee resolution.
Yeah, this is strictly on for introductory purposes. By rule, we have to introduce a resolution to adjust
fees and allow, I think, a minimum of 14 days for public review before we hold a public hearing before the board
board votes on it. Historically, when we have done this, we presented at one meeting and then hold the
public hearing followed by the vote at the following meeting. So that would be the plan again for this
one and bring it back in August for a vote. Just to summarize, what you see in there is specific to
our household hazardous waste department.
has to do really with two items that we're seeing more of that have a substantial cost to the district.
That would be lithium ion batteries, those that are in excess of 300 watt hours, as well as damaged,
defective, and recalled lithium ion batteries. And part of this has to do with I think where
The system hasn't really caught up with where we are. With the prevalence of scooters and e-bikes and
so forth, those batteries in excess of 300 watt hours are more prevalent now and more accessible to
the average consumer. We are beginning to see some of those come through our facilities.
And then when it comes to the damaged, defective, and recalled ones, size really doesn't matter. The
damaged ones are the ones that present a hazard. That's the cause when you see about a semi-truck catching
on fire on I-70 east of Indianapolis. So there's a safety concern for our employees as well as our vendors
and the drivers that are transporting those. Because of that, there's some additional
requirements for packaging those materials that are costly. And on the back end, the cost for us to
get those properly managed by the vendor can be substantial. Mr. Long can correct me if I am wrong,
but we currently have
two EV batteries at our facility that were delivered by the fire department from vehicle accidents that
we are still trying to find somebody that will take off of our hands. We are probably looking at $2,000
apiece for those. You will note in the fee resolution for even the next material I am going to describe,
what we are asking for is that
The resident bringing that material to us pay for 50% of the district's cost up to a maximum of $500.
So for those really expensive items, we're still willing to bear the brunt of the cost, but we're seeing
enough of them now that it is impacting our HHW costs and having a budgetary impact. So you might recall,
I think at the last meeting we had a
HHW disposal bill that was about $81,000 I think so it does make an impact and So then the third item
in there that excuse me that we're seeing are spray foam insulation canisters those are now available
at some of the do-it-yourself box stores that For people do their own insulation projects But they're
classified as a compressed cylinder
by our vendors. They are not an aerosol can, and because of the material that is in them and some of
the hazards that it can present, that bears a substantial cost to us, I think Mr. Long said. And that
was a big part of that $81,000 bill. I think we had about 34 of them at $1,400 apiece. So again, we
are willing to bear the bulk of that cost, but it is getting to the point that
You know, we would like the public to assist with that if they're going to bring those to us. So that's
the gist of what's in the requested and the amended fee resolution. Excellent. For T to weigh in on
that in the August meeting.
a public hearing held at the August meeting before the board were to vote on the resolution. Yes. Yes.
Any comments from directors? Questions? I just have a quick question. I'm supportive of recouping costs.
I am curious if there's any thought that residents may attempt to
Dispose of these inappropriately given the fees and do we have any data or any ideas for how to encourage
them to continue to dispose of them through the waste reduction district?
Well, I mean, for the batteries, the data's out there. The experience is out there. We see on the news
all the time where these damaged lithium ion batteries are causing fires and, in some cases, explosions.
So that evidence is definitely out there. The spray foam canisters, for us at least, is a newer commodity
that we're seeing. There's certainly, I don't know that we have,
any data or specific events to point to, but I think we can all imagine what happens if a compressed
cylinder winds up in a packer truck that is collecting garbage. So I think the potential hazard is obvious
that is there, certainly a concern. And if
You know, if we can always, you know, reassess, you know, what we're charging, if we start to, you know,
if our compliance department starts finding these things along the side of the road, which would,
you know, indicate people aren't willing to pay the expense. And granted, that's, you know, those canisters
are going to be $500 through us under this, you know, fee resolution. I get it. That's a substantial fee.
but that's part of the cost of doing a project yourself. You're doing it yourself to save money because
the contractor, that's the type of cost the contractor is looking at when they need to dispose of materials.
But if we put this in place and we start to see issues, we can certainly reassess that and consider
changes to encourage people to bring it to us so that it's managed properly.
Any other comments, questions? So we will hold the vote on this after public comment in August. Yeah,
it would be up to the board to decide whether to take it up for a vote after the public hearing at the
August meeting. Okay, excellent. Thank you very much. Then moving on, we have the 2026 Community Grant
Program Awards.
I'm trying to get there. All right. Yeah, so if I guess starting with the memo on page 93 of the packet,
if you recall at the March meeting,
I believe the CAC actually recommended that the board reopen the grant program for bids as we'd only
received one application at the beginning of the year. So staff did do that. And those second round
of grant applications, I believe, were due May 15th. We received four. They're all in your packet. They've
been reviewed by the CAC as well as the executive committee.
They are here for the board's, I guess, consideration. I believe they all all four of them have to do
with food waste and efforts to remove food waste from the waste stream. And and with that, I would be
happy to let the board discuss or answer any other questions that I have. I believe
Uh, we have at least one grant applicant, uh, in attendance online. So that's your questions. Yes. Um,
okay. So, um, it would be useful to have the remaining fun total and then to have a list of each of
the four funding amounts that are requested.
Okay, yeah, I apologize to not put that together and I don't have the numbers off the top of my head,
but we did review that with the executive committee and the combined total of the four applications
before you plus the one awarded earlier this year, it came out to right around $17,000 and we had $20,000
appropriated. I just want to say I'm concerned because really this is one organization.
for the funding, in essence, but in four different programs. So it's a little different. Any other comments,
questions? Yeah. Well, I noted that as well, that each of these programs is utilizing in various
maybe differing ways, the services from one program. That said, the four different applications are
applying it in different ways in different environments with different audiences and do offer the kind
of impact I think we are looking to make with these grants.
Being that it's the first year, I'm hopeful that we will have more diverse applicants perhaps in the
future. One of the questions I'd be interested in exploring in the future too is distributing information
about this program out in the community so that we do have more
Any other comments, questions? Right. Seeing none, do we do a roll call vote on this? We need a motion.
We need a motion and then I believe it would be permissible, acceptable. The board could take all four
applications as a group.
or could vote on them one by one? Excellent. I can see it makes sense to vote on them as a group. I
have no objections to that. Yes, Councilor Wilt. I have no objections to that. I do have a question
about the Wonderlab application and the application requesting funds for a student intern.
I think that the executive committee had asked about perhaps looking more closely into how much of that
intern's responsibilities relate to this grant project and considering a partial funding of that position.
Mr. McGlasson, was there an update on that?
Well, unfortunately, due to lack of forum, the executive committee meeting last week was canceled.
I did, prior to that, have some individual conversations with some of the members of the executive committee
and similar concerns were expressed.
make an attempt to kind of quantify the amount of time and, you know, looked into and the way that the
program and the applications are worded, you know, the board would have the discretion to award a lesser
amount than what was requested. I believe in the application, Wonder Lab did indicate that if a lesser
amount were awarded that they would
continue the project, just perhaps at a reduced scope. And, you know, I would offer, you know, in my
review of the description for the intern position, and I'm trying to pull it up, I think they asked
for $1,250 for the intern. Does that sound right?
but, you know, would say that probably, you know, 25% of those duties would not be directly related
to the project outlined in the grant application and perhaps it would be reasonable for the board to
make, you know, a similar reduction in the dollar amount of the award. I'm curious because what I see
from Wonder Lab is a $4,500 request for an actual system.
1250 is the intern seat. I'm sorry. On page 127 of the packet, they do have an itemized outline. Okay.
And I guess it was, actually it was 1250 per semester and requesting two semesters. I see it now, thanks.
So $2,500, so.
but that would be the board's decision, the board's discretion as to whether or not to make any changes
to that amount. And you said that it's 80% of what they do is related to this project? It's 75, maybe
80% at most, based on my review of the job description. Well, I got my calculator out. That's 1875 for
the two, instead of 2500.
be like a $625 reduction in the total amount. I would like to move the award amount by $625 for the
Wonder Lab application. So that would give us a total of $3,875? Yes, for that application.
Second. Right. So all in favor of reducing the amount of the wonder lab grant to thirty eight seventy
five. Say aye. Aye. All opposed. Motion passes unanimously. And I believe other than that we can take
is there any opposition to taking these grants together with that modification.
Okay, so we need a motion to approve the Community 2026 Community Grant Program Awards. How about I
just make a motion to approve the Community Grant Awards for 2026 with the amended amount for Wonderlab
noted as it appears in our packet.
Lasset, would you call the roll? Do you have to take public comment on this? I would. Excellent. So
is there anyone in the NatU Hill Room who would like to offer public comment on the 2026 Community Grant
Program Awards? Is there anyone online who would like to offer public comment on the 2026 Community
Grant Program Awards?
Seeing no public comment, Mr. Glesson, would you call the roll? Wills? Yes. Thompson? Yes. Thomas? Yes.
Ellis? Yes. Madhu? Motion passes unanimously. Excellent. Thank you so much for that. The next item on
the agenda is the request for a new appointment to the CAC. Yeah.
I apologize as I try to get there in the packet. But you'll note included in the packet, you do have
two different requests for appointment to the CAC. The memo on page 139 summarizing, or I guess identifying
the applicants. The first is Allison Sears, who is an employee from Rumpke Waste and Recycling, actually
is present in the room with us today.
The second is Elizabeth Liz Carter, who is the MS4 coordinator for City of Bloomington utilities.
And then, you know, would note additionally to that in the memo, with Mr. Arnold being ratified as the
controller for the district,
He has indicated he does plan to resign from the CAC. He does not feel it's appropriate for him to hold
such a position with the district and also serve on the CAC, which would bring the number of members,
I believe, to four with two being representatives of the waste industry.
which is the maximum allowable under statute. 50% of the membership is the maximum waste industry
representation they could have. So just to make the board aware that if Ms. Sears appointed by herself
would exceed the statutory threshold for waste industry representation. Any questions or comments from
directors?
I move that we approve the two appointments together, as indicated, so appointing Alison Sears and Liz
Carter to the CAC. Do I have a second? Second. With a motion and a second, I would like to take public
comment on this matter. Anyone in the U-Hill room have any
comments on these appointments? Seeing none, would anyone online like to offer comments on
these appointments? With no public comment on these appointments, Mr. Glassen, would you like to call
the roll? Madera? Yes. Thomas? Yes. Ellis? Yes. Wilts? Yes. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you.
I believe the next item is department reports. I would just call to the board's attention that we do
have the joint meeting with the CAC that was scheduled, advertised at 430 to immediately follow this
meeting. I think it's okay that we're a little past that, but we have concluded the action items on
the agenda.
It would be you know up to the board if they wish to table any of the Subsequent agenda items in order
to start the joint meeting and before I I guess allow the board to make such a decision I at least do
want to announce for public information that the district has begun piloting the hefty renew program
at our south walnut facility and
That is a program that recycles or accepts for recycling hard-to-recycle plastics, like straws,
plastic bags, styrofoam egg containers, food containers, things to that effect. In the packet, there
is a flyer from HEFTE regarding the acceptable materials. Certainly that information is available on
their website.
Unfortunately, because it is not an established program in this area, not aware of any local retailers
that have those bags in the store. So those materials would have to be delivered to the South Walnut
facility in an actual hefty renew bag. I do know that they are available online through Amazon, the
Walmart website, and the Target website.
We are looking if we find other options. We will certainly get those posted to our website, but all
of that information as well as a link to the Hefty Renew page is on the home page of our website. We're
certainly excited to pilot this and hope it goes well and appreciate Romkey's cooperation and support
in letting us do this. Thanks for pursuing this.
I will just note Amazon does not have the bags right now, but Target Walmart does online. And they also
have a line of trash bags called Renew that are not orange. So don't get those. It has to be the hefty
Renew. So confusing. It is an orange bag, unfortunately, like our orange bag and household trash program.
If this is something that works and we are able to expand it, we will certainly work through the issues
with the similarity in the bags. But the official bags are an orange bag with white lettering that says
hefty renew on it. And these go in with the plastic? They will go in with our regular plastics in the
same container. And we need the bag to survive intact to the sorting facility.
Great, thank you, thank you, thank you. Please tie them well, secure them tightly so that the tops don't
come open. They will be compacted in our machine, transported and dumped a couple times before they
get pulled out of the line to be sent to Hefty for recycling. Okay, awesome, got it. Do we anticipate
local retailers selling these at some point soon?
Immediately, I would not suspect so. If this is something that works and Rumpke agrees to let us to
expand the program to the other sites, at that point, we could probably pursue getting local stores
to stock the bags. Great. Thank you. I think we also, I mean, if I'm understanding this correctly, that
people need to specify not just the name we knew, but if someone comes out with a
you know, a generic brand or a different company that's doing a program that does similar, this is just
for the hefty brand.
The hefty renew bags are not currently available on Amazon, but I do know Amazon just does have generic
orange trash bags that are available to purchase through them. So yes, and staff will be watching to
make sure that the bags that are brought are the hefty bags with the white lettering that say hefty
renew on them. Excellent. Thank you so much for that information. It sounds like that project is in the bag.
Yes, yes, I'll try to trash it. So my fellow directors, are you comfortable tabling the rest of those
to proceed with the joint meeting? Yes, please. All right. Then I think we're. Yes, we do need we need
to adjourn this meeting, probably take four to five minute break for TSD to queue up. The joint meeting
is under a separate team's link, so.
Well, then to facilitate that, consider this meeting adjourned and then we can proceed with the joint
meeting. Thank you.