- All right. We are connected, and I will call to order this regular meeting of the citizens of the advisory
- committee of the Waste Production District of Monroe County. Today, it's Thursday, October 16th,
- at 5.31 p.m. We'll be vice-chair, please hold roll. John Harlow. Present. Joseph Bonilla. Here. Matthew
- Austin. Present. Bill Gowans. Present. Daniel Dukes. Here.
- All right, thank you. All right, thank you very much. It would be possible for TSD to provide screen
- sharing, or sorry, Accounting Tech Services to provide screen sharing for Joseph Winnian.
- If not, I'll just note that the agenda was distributed by email on Monday the 13th. Are there any objections?
- Oh, is it enabled? Yeah, you should be able to share now. Got it. Thanks. There we go. There's our agenda.
- So is there any objection to adopting the agenda as shown on screen share?
- Seeing none, that's adopted. Thank you. So we will actually, let me see, I'll check the attendance.
- I'll stop sharing. And then, so the first item of business on our agenda, we're gonna put this up at
- the front because we have a guest speaker. It is, thank you, it's Daniel Duncan. There it is, I lost
- my notes from Richland Farms. Daniel, are you able to enable your audio and video?
- If not, TSD, would it be possible to enable it? You'd be able to share now. Should be good to go. So
- I don't know if chat is enabled, but I don't know. Is there any way to confirm if Daniel from Richland
- Farms has video and audio access?
- How about now? Can you hear me now? Success. Thank you, Daniel. Awesome. Hi, everybody. Try and also
- try to share here. Am I sharing anything? Yes. OK. Well, hello.
- And I imagine that looks really tiny, doesn't it? OK, let me see if I can zoom it in. Let's see.
- Hello, and thanks for having me. As introduced, we offer a bespoke composting service for organic collection,
- and we've recently decided to expand our service area. We've been in West Central Indiana and Marion
- County. We've recently expanded into Johnson County, Morgan, and Monroe County. So just wanted to take
- a little time and give you a quick
- overview of what we do and how we do. I thought maybe the easiest thing to do is just be to use some,
- you know, I just realized that our website, you know, really summarizes it about as best as we can.
- So I'm going to use that as my tool here. We're at richlandfarms.net. We're based out of, we're near
- Crawfordsville. Actually, if you want to be real specific, we're
- about a mile south of Newtown, we're in New Fountain County. So that's where we're based out of. And
- really there's three services run off the same truck. So we do have the composting or the curbside compost
- collection or organics collection. We have refillery service, which is really high quality organic soaps,
- household products, pet products,
- and the like. We also offer dry goods for restaurants and food service organizations that are interested
- in offering compostable serviceware, like plates, bowls, knives, forks, and spoons, and to-go types
- of things. We've even been looking at some compostable rings for breweries who can their products.
- And we also have a robotic service as well, too. So robotics is in addition to some automated mowers.
- We also, really the robotics is how things come full circle in the sense of taking compost once it's
- finished, extracting the nutrient dense materials from it and the biota, the good biota, the funguses,
- the bacteria, and
- putting into a liquid form that can then be reapplied either to lawns, athletic fields, golf courses,
- pastures, and any type of crops that are growing or even
- gardens or truck farms. And the great thing about that is that we can do that any time of year. We use
- drones to do the spray. If it's a foliar application, or we can also root inject that good extract right
- into the soil and get it right into the root area as well too. So all of those services run off of the
- same truck. Try to be a little revolutionary in our approach.
- We're always looking for ways to make it more simple, more elegant, and really just as successful as
- possible for our customers as possible in a way so they really don't have to worry about anything other
- than just setting out the waste just like they would their trash or their recycling.
- and we take care of everything else from there. Even return, every year we return finished compost back
- to our customers up to six cubic yards at no cost to our members. So with Zoom, it really makes it difficult
- to try changing the Zooming in here. Here we go.
- Some of our key differentiators. This is going to auto play for me. Let me see here. Try to get here
- to the beginning here. I think it's the next one. Yeah, weekly service. So we provide weekly service,
- weekly pickup all throughout the year.
- Clean cleanliness is really incredibly important to us. We think that's one of the hallmarks of success
- is ensuring that the totes are clean and no one's ever coming out to find a tote that's been serviced
- and finding that it still smells bad or has anything that's potentially offensive. So we rinse and wash
- the totes with each service on a weekly basis, weather permitting, of course.
- Let's see what the next slide is here is around our totes are sized for real life. We've got two sizes,
- the 12 gallon, which is really ideal for residential, a family of four or five typically will can fill
- a 12 gallon tote once a week.
- 21 gallon can also be used to residential, but we see it primarily used in the restaurants, cafes, bakeries,
- hotels, who are using our service. And as you can see through the picture there, is it
- scans by. The 21 gallon is sized, so it fits really well into the industrial kitchen type of setting.
- They fit right underneath the prep tables in the service areas, and they just integrate really nicely
- into sort of their existing infrastructure that's there. And the last slide that's up there is really
- around reporting. We keep real diligent records and report back to our customers.
- the impact that they're making in terms of how much CO2 emissions have been delayed, I guess you could
- say, and how much landfill waste in pounds has been eliminated as well, too, through freezing service.
- So I'm a bit of a process engineer. So this kind of just walks through things in a real stepwise fashion.
- thing that anyone who's interested in using our service would do would be to purchase a plan. We've
- got different ways that you can really create, customize a solution that works really well for you,
- either at the 12-gallon size or the 21-gallon size. We try to keep things as affordable as possible.
- We're really using the New England model of organics. And I think that New England's done a really nice
- job of figuring out that point that folks are comfortable with. And that's really around the $90 to
- $100 a year mark. Start going above that, and folks generally would say no thanks. But in that range
- of $8 or $9 a month, folks are generally very happy.
- you know, using the service and they're also very happy with the $350 value that they're going to see
- in terms of finished compost that's coming back to them. So on the monthly side, you can just go right
- into our service plan area, pick a plan, and everything is automated in terms of billing and charging
- through our website. We can also do annual plans as well too, which many of our
- Restaurants and cafes and bakeries prefer and we do offer a 15% annual prepayment discount using an
- annual plan. Then after everyone signed up and we've gotten all the information we need, we would deliver the tote.
- And you can see here the sort of the difference between the 12 and the 21 gallon size. I often hear
- that the 12 gallon size is is cute and I actually think that's kind of flattering for you know flattering
- thing to say for for an organic waste tote. So it's very complimentary thing. These are really nice
- totes. They're on wheels. They're live locking lids and they we use a lifter or a
- a waste, a hydraulic lifter on our trailer, our truck and trailer, and these integrate real nicely right
- into that. We come by, the lifter lifts it right up and dumps it right into the trailer, we wash it,
- set it back down, put in some pellets into the bottom of the tote, which helps absorb moisture
- and condensation, and
- It also contains some inoculate, some bacterial inoculate that helps sort of start the composting process
- even before, even while it's still in the tote. And in some cases, like with Johnson County, our customers
- are able to pick up their tote at the local recycling center. Love to be able to have that
- type of relationship with Morgan and Moreau counties as well, too, where if you're interested, folks who
- just come by and get that immediate gratification of getting started right away with their home composting.
- Then it's just, you know, you go about your daily routine, you're collecting your organics, putting
- it into the tote, and then setting it out on a weekly basis, typically running roots on Monday or Tuesday,
- and set it out just like your trash or recycling or your yard waste.
- I should also mention that our service does include unlimited yard waste composting, as long as they're
- in brown paper bags. So folks can set out as much as they need to on a weekly basis. Then we have collection
- day, as we said, some Monday or Tuesday. There's a sort of fixture of the rig, 14 yard gooseneck trailer
- and pickup truck.
- We designed it really so we could get into to be fuel efficient and also to be more nimble in some of
- the more narrow residential areas that we may have service areas in. We could give rewards. So every
- time you put your toad out for collection, you earn 100 points and those points can then be redeemed
- in our marketplace for some of the refillery products, dog treats, refuse bags, things along those lines.
- Then we process the waste. We use three methods at our compostery. We use ASP, which is static aerated
- piles. We have turned windrows, and we also use Johnson-Sue bioreactors. We're actually the second facility
- in the nation to be licensed or permitted to use Johnson-Sue on a commercial scale.
- We're first in the first in the state as well on a commercial scale. We're also exploring ways that
- we can use the Johnson Sue bioreactors to create sort of a kiosk approach for some communities that
- may where we may not have a lot of high volume of customers, but you may have demand for where folks
- want to compost so they could come to a central point. And we do use the bioreact. We then collect the
- bioreactor on a regular basis.
- and take it back and finish the compost. We love the bioreactors because there's no odor associated
- with them, and we can also process a pretty large quantity of organic material on a small footprint.
- And obviously, then we've got the redelivery service, which is bringing the finished compost back up
- to six yards a year for each customer. They can also donate it. So if you've got a cause in your community,
- schools, athletic fields, or a church, or a 4-H, or an FFA program, or a nature area. We're happy to
- partner with them on that too. Or Habitat for Humanity is a good one that we've seen quite a bit of
- donation with too. We also do, as I mentioned, we apply to the crop fields and organic corn fields in
- West Central Indiana.
- And we're always looking at or really creating high quality product that's certified by the U.S. Composting
- Council. So we're looking at those key performance indicators just to make sure that we are making a
- positive impact and that we're in the end producing a high quality output on the end. So a couple other
- things I can go through here is we're local. I grew up in Indiana.
- Um, and, uh, we're, we're in it to, to help our communities and our neighbors to make an impact. There's
- a map of our service areas, um, Warren County, uh, typically County, uh, on the North and the West,
- um, and then, uh, Northern Monroe, Northern Johnson and Morgan counties, um, on the South and the East.
- So, um, I did mention the, um, uh, zero waste. So we're very, uh,
- We take a very caring and thoughtful approach to working with our customers. Pots and pans, pie companies,
- sort of one of our success stories as they just opened a few weeks ago in Broad Ripple, this little
- snack shop or concession stand, however you want to call it. It's on the Monon Trail. It's a really
- cute little location. And they're using our products, our plates, our cups, our forks, our spoons,
- So essentially all of the waste that's coming from the little restaurant they call the clubhouse is
- going to our facility to be composted. Packs and figures on solid waste, which you're probably familiar
- with. I like to think that about 50% of everything we throw away could be composted. And there's sort
- of a photo of,
- this is, to me, this is where the magic really is, is that in a 20-minute span of time, I can take a
- truckload of material that looks like this, and 20 minutes later, it looks like this, almost like a
- mulch-like product. It's not finished yet, but I think in the back of my mind, I'm like, gosh, I'd just
- love to just take that out and put it in my
- put it in the garden or put it in some flower pots and start using it. But it's got a little bit of
- processing and cooking to do yet before it's ready. But it's really neat to watch that transformation
- as you process it and grind it and get it into those stages. We're really, as I mentioned, we're following
- sort of the New England model.
- I secretly want my goal would be for urban composting to be as popular in Indiana cities as it is in
- New England. I like to show this picture of the subterranean receptacles that used to be installed in
- the front yards of almost every home in the Boston area. And that was just a collection point where
- folks would take their food waste and their scraps.
- put it into the spit which had a bucket in it. Then weekly, a truck would come around, they'd empty
- out the pails, and then material was typically taken to hog farms to be fed to hogs. But I think that
- because of this technique that was popular in the 1940s and 50s that stuck around to this day and while
- I thought I had a picture of the totes. That must be in my PowerPoint. You know, to this day, when you
- walk around in New England town, you see the trash can, you see the recycling can, and you see the composting
- tote lined up next to each other. And yeah, you get a little judgy at times, and you think, oh, there's
- a house that doesn't compost. I wonder why. But it is definitely the expectation versus
- not the norm. So that's what I have. Happy to answer any questions or go from there. Yeah, thank you
- very much, Daniel. Really appreciate that. Does anybody have any questions? Yeah, so Daniel, this is
- Matthew Austin. Hey, Matt. Hey, bud.
- For, let's say, there was some restaurants that would be interested in signing up. What does that process
- look like? I guess, what is the price point? I saw $8,999 a month, something in. What is the process
- of integrating this into their staff and their staff starting to switch over to this type of action
- instead of throwing it into the trash can? What does that look like? Really pretty simple. I would encourage
- the owner or the manager or whoever's essentially making those decisions to reach out to me. Typically
- what we do is sort of an upfront analysis just to get a sense of what's the potential volume there.
- I generally see that like for a coffee shop or a cafe, they're usually using four or five 21 gallon
- totes on a weekly basis.
- If you're looking at someone who's doing maybe like some breakfast service or lunch service or bakery,
- then it typically goes up to like six to eight 21 gallon totes on a weekly basis. The little shop there,
- the pots and pans shop, it's hard to believe this is 350 square feet, but because they're doing a zero
- waste approach,
- where it's like I said, it's the cups, the bowls and everything else. They are using 200 and their volume
- is 260 gallons a week, which is pretty cool, I think. That comes out to about a quart of waste for every
- transaction. We really aren't counting customers, but we're counting transactions and it's about a quart
- for every time someone runs a ticket.
- or places in order there at their shop. So once we get a sense of that, we know how many totes they
- need. I could work up a proposal, include the just, you know, like the 15% discount. And, you know,
- once the proposal is accepted, then we deliver the totes to them. Happy to provide any
- training or education or consultation that's needed for the staff, like you mentioned, because sometimes
- change is hard. And sometimes, you know, folks need a little, a little assistance or, you know, guidance
- along the way. And we're happy to provide that. I'm also working on some, in my real life, I'm not,
- Composter sort of on a by passion, my real life job is, I'm an instructional instructional designer
- so I do create a lot of training materials for folks I'm also working on some e learning for for staff
- who want to do something more.
- sophisticated, I guess you'd say, and even potentially looking for the certification that we can offer
- for folks sort of like a save surf. I think that's the right name for it, or for your sanitation basically,
- but instead it would be for how to handle organics and how to compost, effectively compost kitchen waste.
- And then from there, it's really just
- you know, taking an approach of taking care of our customers. And, you know, I just, you know, an hour
- ago I had a call with actually this customer, you know, for one of their other locations was saying,
- hey, it's, you know, it's holiday time where we currently have six totes at that location. She's like,
- let's ramp it up to nine. So, you know, based on that on the next service round, I'll bring more totes
- out to her. I would work up a, you know, a level up
- proposal for and take it from there. So that's sort of what it would look like. Gotcha. Any other questions?
- I guess with that, what is she paying for the six and what would she be paying for the nine? I'm just
- trying to, if I'm going to
- Talked to any restaurants in town that were 15 or so restaurants in a program called compost up downtown
- Bloomington. Yeah, so I've got that. I've got that list. And so if I were to contact them, I guess,
- what would the range be for a typical restaurant? The $90 to $150 or. Let me bring that list up as a
- general. Probably I should rather.
- The list is a little overwhelming to put on the screen, but I'd say generally as a general rule of thumb,
- it's based on your number of totes. So if you're looking at two totes, it's generally 29, three totes
- is 39, four totes is 49 a month. And then you'd have the option then to do that on a month to month
- basis where it's charged your credit card or whatnot, or it can be done on an, like I said, an annual
- invoice, an annual plan.
- with a 15% discount on that. That's a better idea. I appreciate that. I actually have one if I may.
- I'm curious, so you said you're entering into the Monroe County market. Is there a particular client
- type or region that you're entering in, or is it just the whole area all at once?
- whole area all at once and yeah I would say it's anyone who has organic waste and either well there's
- there's different scenarios you could look out there it's either you know I have organic waste and I
- want to save money because some of the haulers for for trash and waste charged by the pound
- And organic waste is very heavy. It can be 8 to 10 pounds per gallon. So I think folks would find that
- our rates are significantly more affordable than a typical trash hauler. So that's one scenario is I
- want to save money. Another scenario might be I have organic waste and I want to be better about it.
- I want to do the right thing with it. I want to reduce
- methane gas emissions coming from landfills or I know I want to or just I want to reduce the amount
- of stuff that's going into the landfill and I want it to turn turn back into good healthy soil.
- You know, so that's another scenario. And. So you know, and or it could be I I have organic waste and
- it's a problem for me. Our very first customer actually was was
- a hotel chain and they have, you know, the great big breakfast buffet every morning and it's Indiana.
- So, you know, what two things are going to serve and one of them is going to be waffles. So they're
- going to have waffle batter or it's going to be biscuits and gravy. So they've got the, you know, the
- white gravy, the sticky white sausage gravy. And that's really why this this chain contacted us. In
- addition to the fact that the franchise that they belong to has
- incentives and they have goals around sustainability. So you know they were they were concerned about
- the fact that it's like well we what handling this stuff is really difficult. You know we don't know
- what to do with it and it's you know we put it in our trash bins. We get rodents, we get you know we
- have all kinds of problems that way and we were really able to come in then and give them a complete
- solution where
- they have a cleaner, more sanitary way to handle that type of waste. And ultimately that waste is being
- used in a way that also helps their sustainability goals too. Thank you. Jeremy, just a question with
- IU. I just had a question talking about the weight reduction based off of the
- the waterway and everything that's associated with food. I was going to say, we got a pilot that we're
- doing in one of the dining halls where we're getting a food dehydrator that's for food waste. It's a
- company called Gaia. Anyways, in the longer term, my goal is to figure out a way to mix this into some
- kind of soil amendment
- But in the short term, I don't really have time to mess with it. Once the thing is up and running, I
- want that whole back-end part to kind of just like, you know, be on autopilot and we can figure out
- what we're going to do on the side. And it's a, you know, it's a pretty good size, you know, dining
- hall for students. And like I said, it's back of the house. Also, it's like a buffet style up front,
- so you're going to get that too. Yeah, I'd just be interested in seeing if you wanted
- come down and take a look at it at some point, maybe figure out if this is a good application or not.
- Oh, I would certainly love to check it out. And for sure, would love to be able to haul your output
- and to be able to use it as a feedstock in our process as well, too. Awesome. So I'll be in touch. OK.
- questions. Yeah. Hey, Daniel, this is Tom McClasson. I'm the director down here in Monroe County. I've
- talked with Jesse a little bit, so I have a basic idea of what you're getting involved in up there in
- Johnson County. But I did want to ask, particularly for residential customers, is there, as far as food
- typeways specifically, I mean, I'm thinking meats and stuff, are there any restrictions on what you'll take?
- There are some state restrictions on that. And essentially, it amounts to the meat. And by meats, I'm
- also referring to like fishes and shellfishes and seafoods and things along those lines. They have to
- be cooked. So basically, it's no uncooked.
- And we generally try to steer away from liquids. Yes, they're compostable. But at the end of the day,
- what's going to happen to a liquid as it's being processed is it's just going to drain out of the equipment.
- And it's just sort of a safety hazard.
- One of the nice things about our rig for hauling is that it is water tight, I guess you'd say. So we're
- not really going to be spilling anything onto the roads or the highways. But once it gets to the farm,
- the liquids are kind of a pain. So we would generally recommend drain disposal or a disposal type of
- scenario for that. And then looking on your website,
- The event services, cafe services, makes a reference to a partnership with responsible products. And
- I get all of that, but then coming back to the residential customer, if they go out to Walmart and buy
- compostable flatware, is that something you take or does it have to be responsible products? It has
- to be responsible products the way
- The way the state structured the permits and the licenses for composting facilities is that essentially
- we have a defined list of products that we will accept or can accept. And if you go out and start shopping
- for these things, there's millions of them. Many of them, it's very easy for a company to say that something
- is compostable, although they may have never tested it.
- for that. I'm not going to say anybody's being dishonest, but everybody's looking to game the system
- somehow. So we essentially looked at this and said, OK, well, the easiest thing for us to do is to have
- a direct partnership with the manufacturer. We can offer the direct to manufacturer pricing, which for
- a restaurant accounts to about $20 savings per case.
- versus buying it off of what someone might call like a wholesale site or something along those lines.
- So we're generally about $20 per case under wholesale. And what I've found in just learning about all
- this over the months has been that a lot of this stuff is made in the same place, in the same factory.
- And then it just generally goes through multiple hands of folks
- you know, adding their markup to it, um, to, to call it a different product than, you know, even though
- they're all the same product. Do you provide information to the rest of the customers? I can't, I have
- a family reunion and I want you to, you let the customers know that they want to use the possible flatware
- at a party or something that has to be this brand in order to put it in your, your tote.
- Yeah, sure. We can consult in that way or we can make it real easy and we just provide a full service
- event service where essentially we show up with everything you need. The totes, the flatware, everything
- that you need and then haul it away at the end of the day and it's a done deal. Okay, yeah, so I'm thinking of
- family reunion, fourth of July party for you. That's just an event and you'd service it just like you
- would taste the Bloomington or anything like that. Right. Correct. Yep. Okay. Great. All right. Well,
- um, I think it's worth investigating more. So I will get your contact info from Matt and we'll,
- we'll talk. Yeah, that sounds great. There's a, it's just a world of opportunity. So we're, we're real
- excited to, uh, to be in it. Awesome.
- Daniel, thank you very much for the presentation. Any other questions? Yeah, I have two for you, Daniel.
- First question was, in counties where you're partnered with the Solid Waste Management District to have
- totes at their regional recycling facilities, how does that work? Does a customer call in and sign up
- with you and get like a ticket number and then take it to... Yeah, they would just socially sign up
- through the website and then
- Part of the side up process, there's a form that they'd fill out with all their info. If it's like Johnson
- County, for example, Carla, I just took Carla eight totes, eight 12 gallon totes last week, last Monday.
- And so the customer then will, in their email, they'll essentially say, if you reside in this county,
- you can go here and you can pick up your tote and
- then they would just coordinate that based on the office hours for the center. Or if they want it delivered,
- we're happy to deliver it too. OK, then my second question is kind of piggybacking on what Mr.
- Austin said. So let's say he goes somewhere like downtown Bloomington, which is about a one square mile
- radius of heavily concentrated restaurants. Yeah. Would there be some way for the restaurant organization
- to kind of partner up
- to get a lower price point, since your efficiencies would be so improved being in such a dense area?
- For sure. Yeah, we actually in the very early days of setting this up, we were really centered around
- a co-op model. And I guess in my mind, I'm always wondering, it's like, well, what Carmel's really trying
- to do this a little bit, but really not as successfully as we'd hoped, where it's essentially
- Like you said, there's a real dense spot of 20, 30 restaurants in one area. And just providing a centralized
- service where everybody co-ops the cost, in my mind, that's the dream. That's what I would do as a business
- owner. So we're all for that.
- And even to a point where if we needed to do like we offer, there's a third size I didn't really get
- into in my presentation, but there's a 275 gallon size tote, you know, where, you know, it's really
- for that, for that, you know, either that institutional, like an IU food hall type of type of situation,
- or where you've got a dense set of food service,
- institutions that are, you know, essentially just co-opping the cost. So, yeah. And I would love to
- even get to a point where we're using bioreactors, but we're touching into some, you know, registrate
- or some permitting type of stuff at that point. So that's a down the road type of goal. But yeah, we've
- got the 275-gallon totes available immediately.
- And those are picked up on a weekly basis as well. Yep. Yep. Yep. Picked up or dumped, tipped, and rinsed.
- Gotcha. And that question was from Brad Lucas. Yep. What is the love of the school corporation is limited.
- So definitely something we would love to be part of. It's just,
- finding the right partnership that's able to handle the amount of food waste that we have. I'll definitely
- reach out to you about maybe setting up a pilot school. I don't know that we'd want to tackle 24 schools
- at one time. I would like to tackle 24 schools at one time. That would be great. Put an order in for
- some totes.
- Yeah, I want to reach out to you about maybe getting down here at some point and taking a look at what
- we've got. Yeah, that'd be great. A statistic you can use in the back of your, you know, if you're doing
- napkin calculations or whatever would be for every 400 students, you're going to produce 50 gallons
- of organic waste a day. Thank you for that.
- I think we've heard from everybody. Any other thoughts or questions? Anyone else come to the door and
- ask questions? Oh, that's great. These are some of the best questions I've ever had, so appreciate it.
- Yeah, yeah, I really appreciate you taking the time to present and field all of our questions. And it
- sounds like if you don't already
- have it, there will be contact information exchanges. That'd be great. I look forward to it. Perfect.
- Thank you again. Have a good meeting. Sounds good. Very good presentation. Yeah.
- Just to verify it, the website's for excellent farm stock. Yeah, yeah, it's Daniel at. I can just send
- that out to them. Perfect. Yeah, I got. It's it's it's on the website. Let's say you're looking to the
- website. Well, it's talking his emails on there. OK, that's good. All right, well, that that picks up
- our first order of business. Fortunately, all the rest of much shorter are next is just the approval
- of the meeting minutes from the
- August, August 21st, regular CAC email sent out by email leave on say the 14th. Are there any corrections
- to the minutes as distributed? All right, seeing none other approved. And then you go to reports, starting
- with the district. If you're ready, Tom. You got it. Well, I'll go to the conference because that's
- later on in the agenda.
- So, uh, uh, county council adopted our budget as presented Tuesday night. So that's all, that's all
- set and done. Now we transition to year end stuff. Um, but one thing I do have for the CAC is what's
- in the budget. It's a $20,000 appropriation for community grant program.
- So that program has to be written and adopted by a board. And I pretty much have a program drafted.
- What I've been using, Boone County and Hendricks County have had these programs in place for a long
- time. I know those directors well, so they sent me all their stuff. They understand. One thing that
- they have in there is a role for the CAC in reviewing grant applications.
- So that is in what I've drafted. I do plan to present a first draft, I guess, to the board at the November
- meeting. I doubt that they will vote on it and adopt it at that meeting. I'm sure they're gonna want
- it to have some input and go through revisions, but it's also $2026. So I would like to have it approved
- by the board
- at the December meeting at the latest so that we can turn around and advertise open grant applications
- and get those in reviewed and awarded early in the year for the people have time to actually do what
- they've asked for. So. So I guess. And I don't know if now it is time to think about
- what role you might want or would be comfortable having in that grant process of making recommendations
- to the board. I mean, obviously, when I get it finished, I can get ahead of time. I can get you guys
- copies of the draft. I'm going to give it to the board. But obviously, there's criteria in there about
- how to get into those proposals that align well with the district's mission.
- you know, criteria. I mean, we're not paying for somebody's recycling fees or disposal service. We'll
- buy a toast to implement your program. We'll help you, you know, if you're putting a employee break
- area outside and want to buy recycled content furniture. And those are the types of things that, that,
- that, and at least that the Boone and Henderson County do and in my mind would be appropriate for, for
- district funds to be used up.
- So that's coming, and we're going to push to have that happen fast, because we need to give people time
- to spend the money next year. That's what we have. Let's see, the board did approve. Thank you, everybody.
- We had the Superfund cashed out settlement agreement that was approved. That's all been completed, and
- the check sent.
- don't have a certified receipt back, but as far as I'm concerned, that's all done. We did get a placement
- truck for the one that was wrecked. It's just got that last week, Friday. It's a foot shorter than the
- one that was wrecked.
- staff said that, I mean, they went and measured their gay lords and their toads and said, it'll work.
- We can still work with this. And that was, we got them a lot faster than if we'd had them build exactly
- what was right from scratch. We'd still be waiting. We're starting to transition over the year and stuff. Oh,
- One other thing that is on the board's agenda for November that was introduced at the F-Tower meeting
- is we're proposing what looks like really substantial revisions to our fee resolution. A lot of it is
- just reorganizing. In the fee resolution, if our fee is attributed to South Walnut, we can collect it
- in the House of Representatives Waste Department. That's South Walnut, we don't transact money to recycling centers.
- So we moved, we reorganized it a lot. The only residential fees that are going up are latex paint, at
- least proposed to go up are latex paint. But we encourage people to try it out. It's not like we're
- not actually listening to this and throw it out. So I'm not really concerned about those going up. I
- think it's an alternative
- So the majority of the changes are for commercial and small body generators, for hazmat, small businesses
- that don't meet the immediate threshold to produce hazardous waste, and out-of-county residents. Those
- are the pieces that are changing. Some are actually going down.
- We can get our costs and it's not about making money. It's about trying to have it be a wash when those
- customers come in. And we've had to add some new categories on their damage with the ion batteries.
- A big deal right now. They're expensive.
- We split those out cost-wise from undamaged lithium batteries. So there's things like that in there.
- In my mind, nothing should be sticker shopped to anybody. Many of them were just, we don't do pennies
- next door, so I'm not charging $3.08 for something. It's $3.10.
- We don't do a lot of cash transactions anymore. Nobody likes pennies. What happens to that? America
- Recycles Day, November 15th. As we've done in the past few years, we did have a musician planned.
- Unfortunately, he's had to cancel on us, so we are trying to do Plan B on the fly.
- We will try to do something at all the recycling centers to acknowledge America Recycling Day on the
- 15th. Not November 15th is America Recycling Day. Every year? Back to the 17th. It's not Labor Day.
- I think that's, I guess, all I can think of. Questions? We want to ask for the other counties who have
- the grant programs, the role that the CAC plays, is it to make a recommendation? To make a recommendation
- to the board, because it's district funds, the board, and that's, I guess, I guess, I guess,
- The board could establish the program in such a way that they delegate, you know, the award of those
- funds to the CDC. The CDC would, you know, they could do it to staff. But those districts haven't done
- it. They just, they want the CDC to review them and make the recommendations for grants they feel
- post in line. Okay. That's a good agenda item for a subsequent meeting to discuss more completely. I
- just want to have an idea of the reference one's work. So that makes sense. Thank you. All right. So
- that is it for reports from the district. I do have one note for a report from the chair. As Tom mentioned,
- we're nearing year end and we have one year of terms.
- So I think it's probably a good time to indicate via email, I think directly to Tom, if you would like
- to renew your CDC membership for next year, I'll send an email out after this meeting. So the members
- who are absent can also see that. And then that could maybe be one convenient thread for everybody to
- use to respond to Tom. And I just, if I could, I guess have those before Thanksgiving, because we would
- try to do the appointments at the December meeting, the reappointments at the December meetings.
- Yes, that would be also between now and our next meeting. I'm not mistaken. Maybe after your next meeting.
- Okay. Yep. All right. So there's that on that note. I will also let you know if you don't already that
- I am planning on moving on Bloomington next year. So that be a member of this case. After separate.
- So, yeah, we have to go back to me because I'm sorry. Yeah.
- Just give you some notice. So I have to think about that because in January, you guys got an elect officer.
- Yes. That's all I have for the chair report. Any questions? All right.
- Technically, probably it's possible. I don't know if it's going to be possible or accessible.
- On the sheet. Yeah. So, okay, that's it for reports. We don't have any special committee reports, special
- orders, or unfinished business. The only new business item that we have on the agenda is just an item
- for AISWMD retreat discussion that was last week. Okay.
- So any thoughts in particular? I know Tom, Matt, and I, and I think John were able to attend. Yeah,
- I like the Indiana Compost Council. I think it makes sense to join that with the Waste Reduction District,
- and I know they're trying to raise funds for that. I don't know, Tom, that's something that we'll do
- with the Board of Directors. We get to look at it and what the students are and how that fits in their
- budget. I think it was 150 or 250 for nonprofits
- What did that entail? It entailed being a part of it, having two of your organization's members attend
- ICC things for free, being able to guide, provide guidance as to where they're moving goals,
- things like that, but handling the direction.
- I didn't hear about that. I found it really interesting to find out that Coca-Cola hasn't been using
- recycled bottles until two years ago. It was interesting to see the process that the Republic does with
- them and whatnot. So I found that interesting. And they are interested, Coca-Cola is interested
- in potentially doing something in Monroe County with
- some sort of sustainability stuff, maybe with IU, with tailgates. So I know IU is meeting with them
- at some point in time, this month or next month. So hopefully there'll be something that they have done,
- something with IU's Indianapolis campus last year. And they have done something previously with Clemson
- University and that tailgate. So hopefully something can come out of that. That could consolidate, would
- be trying to fund that.
- So there might be more opportunities. Yeah, that's good. Thanks for that. Do you have anything in particular?
- I really enjoyed the land trust. The meditation was on Tuesday and I found that really informative.
- There's a lot more types of land trust out there than I was expecting. There's a lot more of them that
- are active.
- And as a director, the attorney from the coordinating group, who was basically the association's lobbyist
- arm, spoke on Wednesday afternoon and talked about some of the legislative changes that occurred and
- the impacts that those are going to have. Things I wasn't aware of at ATRL.
- subject to them until sometime in 26 or 27. But once I got asked what happened this year, I guess I
- didn't read far enough into the film to see, oh, there's another requirement a year later. So that's
- not what I was doing. That was important. But I enjoyed it, but I needed to hear it. I'll add that I
- also thought it was informative. And I would say I did enjoy it.
- but I also don't have to deal with the consequences of it as directly. And I was saying, I didn't understand
- all of it. Well, thank you for attending as well and for hearing our summary for those who already knew.
- I always get a lot of value out of it. I really enjoyed it a good bit. I thought all the sessions were
- really good to share, man, if not a bit.
- if somebody directed it, if somebody like me, but I think that all the sessions, somebody got something.
- That's it. Yeah. All right. So that's it for our one item of new business. I do have one more item that
- I want to note that just came to mind when talking about the board meeting and end of year stuff. We
- should have a second joint meeting
- We talked about, we have done one around the budget. We're gonna do one around the end of the year.
- Yeah. Good try. Okay. So I will say, you know, in recent years, we've actually been pretty good about
- that, but that's not always been the case. And that is certainly not the case for every district. Sure.
- But again, we can't put it out there. I know we're running short on time, but I will also
- Uh, I guess I got that cause should, could or should have said to him, I just report that with one of
- the things we talked about the later year or joint meeting being what your plan, which would be up for
- update this year. However, item is working on a new statewide materials management plan, which is going
- to replace the state's current solid waste management plan. So,
- I'm not sure that it makes sense for us to put the time and effort into updating our plan. If a year
- from now, it's going to be moved because of what the state, new directions the state's trying to go.
- So, doesn't necessarily excuse us from having a required joint meeting, but that was the topic that
- as I recall that was discussed for that joint meeting. I'm not sure that's the best use of time right now.
- Yeah, I saw that email on Tuesday, I think, and that contains that article that changed. I personally
- didn't have a chance to read it yet, but unfortunately all of our time is already well spent on other
- things, but I thought that may be a good item for our next meeting agenda. The state is nowhere near
- adopting a plan.
- Any thoughts on timing for, if we were to do a joint meeting, is just the usual target, our CAC or board
- meetings to do sort of back to back. Is that generally where it comes from? I'd say the December board
- meeting, I mean, the CAC meeting starts to butt up against Christmas break. I don't know the plans for
- that. Right, okay. Okay. Monday's more sensitive in December, is what you're saying, because. Well,
- at this point, yeah, I think it's been hard to. Okay.
- It is a first step to see with the board. It's a lot easier to get the board to commit to something
- face to face email about that. Okay, that's all I had on that. Any other thoughts or any items that
- weren't previously mentioned? Alright, well, that brings us to public comment. I don't see anyone in
- the room or see.
- Nope. Okay. It's nobody else on the meeting either. Okay. So no members of the public present. So just
- make a reminder that our next scheduled regular meeting would be November 20th, 530. That's not Thanksgiving,
- right? Uh, no, I think it's the week before. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yeah. We should have checked that during
- our meeting. Beginning of the year review of calendar. So, okay. Thank you. So, yes, that is when our meeting
- The schedule. And it will be in this room. If there are no objections, we will mature.