All right, so I'll call to order this meeting of the Executive Committee of the Waste Production District
Board of Directors for Tuesday, March 3rd, 2026. And Mr. McClassen, would you like to do the roll call?
Piedmont-Smith? Here. Madera? Here. Willets? Here. Do you have a quorum present in the room? And Commissioner
Madera on the line.
All right, so the first item of business is approval of executive committee meeting minutes from December
30th. When it was just a counselor Wilson myself from the executive committee who attended that meeting
so. I mean that we approve those a second. So roll call vote on approval. That's the number counselor Wilts. I.
I will vote yes. And we don't need Commissioner Madeira's vote. And she was there anyway, so.
She's there now. Do you want to vote on those minutes? I did read them, but I cannot say yes or no because
I was not at the meeting, so abstain. Okay, fair enough. All right, okay. Motion passes to one abstention.
Next we have the board of director meeting minutes from February 12, which we just kind of review and
see if those are OK to pass on to the board and hold. Um, saw some edits. Yeah, I did some typo edits.
Are you the kind of person who can't read something without correcting typos? Yeah, yeah, yeah, so that's it.
Losing in a curse. Yeah. Curse on the people who are sending me things. That's good. I didn't, um, so,
um, maybe we can, Joey Long is here and Kayla, uh, Strandis are, they're both here. I just, I didn't
want to ignore you. You're here. Welcome to the meeting. Um, and maybe you're here for some of the,
uh, items coming up, like a cornbread composting. So.
Mr. McClassen, you want to go launching to that one? I can't. So the memo on page seven of the packet
introduces this agenda item and I still recall at the end of last year, Mr. Winnia advised that he was
moving out of state and had some new complexes ready to sign on. So the district via the board agreed to
take on assumed responsibility for the partner period for those two new complexes. And so Ms.
Tran and Mr. Long are here. They have done the bulk of the work associated with that. And so we kind
of wanted to initiate and we've kind of discussed this briefly. In the last year, you know, what's the district?
going to do with this program? What is the board's desire with this program? And having having gotten
into this, you know, we have found that Mr Wenio was still also providing some service to complexes
that were beyond their partner period. Predominantly repairs to bins, but also maybe some training for
some new tenants that came on.
So I kind of wanted Mr. Grant and Mr. Long to talk to you about what their experience has been in a
couple of months that we've been doing this and kind of look at down the road, what are we going to
do? Are we going to finish out the partner period for those two new complexes and then be done with
the program? Are we going to continue this program
in the same manner that one sustainable Joe was operating this program? Are we going to do something
somewhere in between? Because one of the things that we found is the complex is beyond the partner period.
Mr. Winnier was, if he was doing repairs to the compost bins, he was billing them for that. Well, we
don't have a mechanism in our fee structure to do that.
done some of that over the past couple of months just because they needed to be done and we're trying
to keep the program moving, but we kind of need the board to understand what it is that we're getting
into and have the board tell us what they want us to do with this program moving forward. So I wanted
them to come here and kind of explain to you
time commitment that's involved, the kind of expenses that we're seeing, decide if we need to change
our fee resolution to add a way to invoice those complexes when we do repairs past the partner period,
but also look at the time commitment that's involved and think down the road, particularly if we're
going to service complexes beyond the partner period, what happens when we have
15 participating, 20 participating. Do we have the capacity and the resources to service those with
our current staff and budget? If one of you wants to take it away. Sure. So most of what I've been doing
has been continuing the contact for the two partner sites, especially.
They were still doing training for new turners coming in. Most of the training for new people coming
in is automated. That's just a when their information gets populated into the form that's on the website
for it. I have to go find their information populated into the form that we keep in the Google Doc for
them and then send the training out to them. So the rest of the-
module. Yeah, it's an online training module. I think there are a few videos with it. And then Turner's
have another training module. And then if they have questions, I believe Joe was doing an in-person
training for Turner's as well. And then any questions or concerns for the site leads and communication
with them as everything changes. And then whenever a partner exits, that same form gets filled.
I have to go and take their information out and then repopulate the info for each person in each site.
And repair work. We've had to do a decent amount of it in the last two or three months. One bin is falling
apart. One is repaired now. It was falling apart. All the rain and snow melt kind of washed out part
of the corner.
and it collapsed one of the bin sides. And to be fair, that was an incredibly full bin. So I'm not very
surprised that the extra rain hindered that. But it's been some other small repair work here and there.
A lot of it seems to be because of snow melt and the weather getting warmer and the weather exposure
to the bins.
their repair work. Part of the problem is when you use untreated wood and it gets wet and dries out,
it expands and shrinks. It was put together with like a one inch brad nail. So it pulls apart really
easy. And you use wood screws. There are some, but there's not many. And they're aluminum. And the other
problem we found is while I was out repairing one of the places, I actually, the lady
I showed how to turn it with a shovel and because there's no structure on the outside, if you imagine
three U's, so it's a U shape as they fill up and they start moving and turning the stuff, it spreads
out. But then you can't get the wood to come back together. So we've adapted ways to put removable boards
on it that will hold it all as one unit. We're spending two guys about four and a half to five hours
repairing them and that's a cost
about $70 to $80 per unit. One of them is a fairly new one, what, a couple months now? I think that's
the church site. That was November. Yeah. And the other one is it's out of its commitment. I believe
Joe told him before he leave that we would repair it. Right now we're waiting on the ground because
where it was placed, it's on a slope. The ground is not level.
It's over full, so it's lifted up and it's expanded out. So we're gonna have to dig that one completely
out, replace some boards and screws, add structure to it, make it all one unit where it's tight, then
put it back together and show the people how to turn this stuff the right way. We're also having trouble
with like there's signs on top. So they have to remove the signs as they fill them up. Like
as one compartment is done, they have to move
at the church, you know. We've shown them how to move the signs that way, they know what band they're
using, because that one was also over four. We had to dig it completely out, fix it, fill it back out.
Just started. Mm-hmm. Well, that's the thing is, you know... That one's, I think, is the fastest build-up
one. Yeah, that's the one that's... New peoples. And that's at a church, and that actually has the most
participants of any of our sites. Yeah, I believe it.
And it's also they have a lot of brown, so they should break the ball, the leaves and put in there.
They have large quantity of browns that Joe was trying to fix with them before he left, and they just
never quite got that mix fixed. And so by the time the leaves and everything froze, it was already over
full, and it couldn't compress down because everything was frozen. I don't necessarily think that,
you know, that any of this is
unreasonable or even to an extent unexpected, but these are the types that if we continue the program
as is, these are the types of things that if we're going to, particularly if we're going to do service
and maintenance beyond the partner period, this is the type of stuff that we're gonna run into. And
then what cost estimate
If we sign a new complex on, what's it going to cost us to build that three-bin system? So I technically
have built one not using brad nails and using the same wood and stuff just to see. We're roughly at
about $220 plus my time. So material is $220, maybe $225, let's say. Is that including the tools and
the weight? That is not. That is not including a shovel, a pitchfork, or a rake. Which you give to them.
Yeah. Yeah. Scale. But that's the three wooden bands built. And it would all be, so the first design
was, as anything's new, as you design something, you know, as it fills up and you work with it, you
learn the flaws. So the way I've designed this one with the same thing that Joe did was mine's all one
unit tied together. But you can remove the boards and do what you need to do, then put them back together
and it ties it all back together so it doesn't lose none of its strength as it fills up.
and somebody can still get in there and move the dirt around and shovel where you're pushing on the
sides of the front and back. And it's still going to be structurally sound. And hopefully, I don't think
we would have to repair it for a while. I don't want to say a couple of years, because you never know
if a board's going to get broke. Somebody's going to treat something. But with shovels and everything,
I would say high side, $350. Including your time? Not including my time.
And it took me about six hours to build it. And I know we are talking too about the possibility of adding
additional bins at some of the sites. The church in particular. When Joe designed was a three bin system
where you have an active bin, a bin that holds your grounds that you mix in as the food goes in and
then the empty bin when the active bin fills up, you can build that. Well, like the church filled up
the active bin in three months.
So they may need four bins, because otherwise... Are you going to be able to use all the combos that
I think you use? Well, I... They've had a lot of members that are interested. Yeah, I think they have.
They have quite a few that are going to stay on the site this year. Another parishioner wants some of
it for home garden stuff, and they have...
areas on site that they can use it. Do they have space for maybe putting the browns in something larger
and separate, like a cage? Possibly? We could build a separate bin for the browns, then they could have
three. That's what I was thinking. How fast are they filling it up? How long does it take for a full
bin to reduce to soil so we can empty it out and start using it again? We may
You know, there may be situations where we have to go, you know, to the floor bench system or construct
a separate grounds bin. Especially if I'm getting that much this time of year. It takes so long to break
down. I will say, me and another guy who was there digging them out and repairing them, there were three
or four customers wanting to know if they'd be able to use it within an hour. It was like, we hoped
to have it back, you know, because we didn't completely repair that one. We got it back structurally
sound where they could keep use of it.
And we had it done within an hour. That was at an apartment? That was at the church. The one at the
apartment, we are going to have to completely have to remove, dig out, fix, and put it back. And it
makes sense for theirs. They have a community garden on site maybe 20 feet away from the compost bin.
So they are actively using quite a bit of it. It's getting... At this particular apartment? Yes. We're
helping them. It's getting very full.
But they put the compost bins probably 100 yards away from the community yard. We're hoping they'll
let us move it to the community garden. Does it make sense if that's what they're going to use it on?
It'll be closer. And the spot it's in right now is going to age it faster. It's in a drainage area.
So the woods swollen a lot more than expected. And the one I built, we do have on hand. That way,
you know, if we need to show somebody one, we have one on hand.
at South Walnut Street. Well, I don't know if we want to be in the business of building and repairing
bins. I mean, it almost seems like it's more in our wheelhouse to provide the expertise and explain
how to do it.
than to be carpenters and ships. And we have been doing that. Kayla and us and the staff at South Hornet
has worked together and we're saving brown paper right now because some places doesn't get enough leaves.
So, you know, I know Kayla has set up boxes of brown paper for them right now. Yeah, that and our restitution
workers worked a lot with that too. Yes, we get restitution workers. It's a great job to have them do
it. Restitution workers. It's community or when somebody
orderly community. Yes, we have that. So yeah, we had a self walnut. We we did that. I accept up to
10 or 12. At a period of time, depending on how active they are. Really? Yes, so sometimes you have
10 or 12 people. We don't know. I mean, I have 10 or 12 that scheduled could be there, but we don't
try to get that many 10 to 12 is about what I have on hand.
Two or three at any one time. Any questions? Yeah. They send us all information, how many hours and
stuff. You don't have to know that. I didn't know it until recently. And we have some criteria on the
types of offenses that we will accept. Just because they are with the public and stuff and work.
hands-on. I do have also one volunteer from Stone Belt right now. I do actually stay and he comes in
and does an hour or two depending on how things are going. But those folks probably are going to run
this whole program for you. And you can't count on them for that later. It is helpful to have that though
because right now I'm having to
we're having to save brown paper aside and then rip it up into manageable pieces, because we don't have
anything that can rip it up. And otherwise it's coming in with sprinkles or these sheets. Yeah. But
I don't think that any of us want to see it just go away. But I don't know that what we're doing right
now is sustainable for us.
moving down the road, like I said, if we have 15 or 20 complexes, schools, churches, whatever, participating,
and they're all expecting us to do repairs on bins, they're all expecting us to do onboarding for new
tenants or new participants, I mean, when you get to that many participating complexes, we just don't
have the staff and the resources to be able to do that. So, you know, I think we need to
I don't know the magic number, but we need to put some sort of a time limit. And, you know, the department
complexes in particular, they have a maintenance crew or maintenance contractor, and there's going to
come a point where you're going to have to take this over. And we'll be there as a resource. We can
help with education and stuff. But, you know, we can't come out and, you know, take care of every little
maintenance need that you have related to expense.
I was secretly hoping that somebody would apply for a grant program and say, I can take this
over. Ironically, I was thinking if either we or say the UU church applied for like a Sophia Travis
or Jefferson, Jack Hopkins, one of those grants to then fund their participation in it. So we changed
the model a little bit.
And if we apply, it would be to pay for the materials to do this for the community, the locations that
we have. If you apply, then we would maybe have to set up sort of a fee thing for managing their post.
And that could be a model for other.
And I think, and right now, I'm not saying this has to go to the board next week and the board has to
tell us what we want to do. We're good where we are right now. The only thing that we're probably not
doing right now is actively recruiting new participants. The six or seven participants that we have
right now, it's not burdening us to take care of them right now.
Two in a partner period. Is it just six total? Pretty sure. It's six total, but I thought we had three
in a partner period. Yeah, two. It's the newer apartment that I showed you guys, and then the church.
Yeah. And we probably could do some recruitment. And if we brought a handful of new ones on,
as long as they weren't all at the same time, we could probably manage that. But I don't want to get
too far into this without having an idea of what the board's expectation is going to be moving forward.
I mean, that's a lot of labor hours and a lot of material costs that are totally replacing something.
Well, but Jeff, I mean, we, we give Joe $20,000 to do, to put all this together and set, you know, provide
the initial bins and tools and training for all the complex. It was the idea that it, those complexes
would keep going. Right. But the idea that they would be taking care of themselves and
to some degree it's happened, to some degree it's not happened. And I think, well, I guess, you know,
Joe was still servicing ones out of the partner period, but he was billing them for those services because
they were beyond the partner period, which was beyond the term of the funding that we, the city would
provide. Would there be anybody to repair things? I don't know that. Were they like expecting
I don't know. The district to do this? Or were they just like? Well, I know that I don't know, but I'm
not sure. You didn't really have that discussion with with Joe. No, the one apartment complex they expect
us to completely fix it, right? Which one? The one where the grounds and level because Joe was already
doing that. He was doing the repairs and charging them already. So they already had that set up with
him and they
they expected to pay to get that done. But we don't have a mechanism. We don't have a mechanism to build.
Yeah. By mechanism, you just mean like policy. Yeah, we don't have anything in the fee resolution that
we could use to build it through this. I mean, that's certainly possible unless it's just beyond
capacity or will? No, I mean, we could amend the fee resolution to include carbon composting,
multi-participate. How do we want to term it? You know, a fee structure to build them for services rendered.
As I said, the question is, do we want to set an expectation that five years from now we'll be doing
this work?
reason why I built one was the idea behind it is if we have it on hand, maybe somebody from the apartment
complex or someplace can come live and we go over it with them and they can have some money do the work
if they can see what needs to be done to beat things and stuff. They need to get a better idea of how
much each part costs us. And if they're willing to pay Joe or pay us to do it and they have their own
maintenance crew, we'll gladly show them how to do it.
It sounds like that would be preferable, would be to let them graduate from the program so to speak.
Wish them well. Some guidance. Yeah. The worst case scenario that we don't want is that it just sits
abandoned and disintegrates into nothing because then we've wasted however much time and money during
that period of time.
And most of the sites are very excited about it. Like, especially the church is extremely excited about
it. And then apartments present a little different challenge because of turnover. And with the church,
you're going to have people that are going to be there and doing that for a number of years, you could
imagine. Church members don't leave and go to a new church every year. Some do, but most of them don't.
The main church, I think,
That's a good, if we were able to continue the program with more new partners, I think reaching out
to some other churches is probably a good idea. I can't remember if it was Joe. Or faith communities.
It could have possibly been Matt and the Bokashi stuff that they do, but one of them had talked with
another church about doing something
at the church property. I think the First United Church would be a good place for people's worship.
So then we can certainly do that, but what are we wanting to do with this program? I don't want to get
us committed to things that the Lord's not prepared for us to follow through with. So we were already
line-iteming
$20,000 annually to make this happen, right? I think it was 25. It was 25. We did have, and the city
did. I mean, it all funneled through us. The city just, you know,
gave us their hand of the contribution and then we did all the finances with Sustainable Joe. How much
of that $25,000 was actually drawn down by Sustainable Joe? Was actually what? Drawn down, like how
much did we actually pay out based on the full amount? Yeah. Was there a limit on the number of participants
under that amount?
There was not a hard limit. There, I think, was an expectation each year to get four to five complexes
signed up. Obviously, that wasn't that because we're only at six right now. But all that you could do
is present it and you can't force somebody else to do it.
It seems to me that it's more important for the district to get more sites than to keep babysitting
the old sites. Especially if we focus on churches or other like. Yeah, I would agree. Or other,
you know, big bang for the buck kind of sites.
The way that we increase the impact of the program is to get more sites up and running. That's how we're
diverting the material. Yeah, we have limited resources, so I'd rather spend them during the end of
the week, if I've said anything. No, I'm just listening because I didn't know very much about this program
since I came in, you know, to office part way through. So yeah, I really like it. I'm just wondering
if there's
ways to grow it. Well, I think there are, and that's with one sustainable job being done, that means
that it's us having to go out and identify and recruit new participants. I wonder if we can partner
with the high school, like Hoosier Hills. You know, and I actually, I don't remember if it was about this,
I've had discussions with, and I can't think of her married name, but Katie Frue, who used to work at
Purdue Extension Services, and now is at Food for Builders, about this. And she had interest, and it
would fall, and it would fall under her program. It might fall under it, I do. Food for Builders, vocational?
Katie Frue works with FFA, so that's part of it. My son would have loved something like this, because
you get the building, and you get the farming,
you get, or agriculture, or egg science, and you could almost get the marketing in there too. So I could
certainly reach back out to her, and this may not be the right time to start something she may want
to shoot for next August, start of next school year, but. I think it would take that long to get it
prepped, but there would almost be like an entrepreneurship or a business club that could help to pitch.
So you can get a group of seniors together to pick up where one sustainable job left off after they
or partner with IU is a capacity, you know, maybe. I mean, if we if we take the product on and continue
it, is there interest that you want to keep doing the work? That's a question.
I enjoy it and it's definitely needed. It's one of the biggest gaps that we have that we get asked about
constantly is some sort of composting somehow. And it's a good idea and it works better. I think part
of it was just, there were a few things that the design we needed to change to make the building material
last a little longer. And I definitely think, especially with me having to input each person
as they come into the program, moving that off to the site leads of the sites, all of that is gonna
help a lot more. Or having a different outlet for them to buy browns or something along those lines.
Well, what Joe started the program with was they were only using leaves. And a lot of the sites either
didn't rake their leaves in time, or there's no way for them to keep that many leaves in storage to
last the entire year. And some of that's education and training with the participants. Don't recycle
or throw your newspapers out. Put them in the grounds. Or the packing papers. Most of what we've got
is brown packing paper. Yeah, right. And I know one site uses straw.
though Joe didn't recommend the straw because it takes longer to break down. And I was going to tell
you, if they go to Rilken, I think because Rilken gets most straw with a lot of the first part, they
throw it away. So I was told that if you go stand it up, you could get something. You can go sweep their
straw for free. That's fine. Yeah, some sort of outlet for them to buy browns or something that we can
do for that. And I think the education and all that is definitely good. We just need to find a point
where once we set you up, get you going. Yeah. Where do we launch them off and let go? Yeah.
At some point, you know, we got to move on to the next customer. It has to go beyond residents. Yeah.
You know, you have to have an employee, I mean, you know, someone at the site who's not moving. Right.
And yeah. And, you know, like I said, apartment complexes should have a maintenance crew or a maintenance
contractor
that they can get set up to do this. Churches, and it's kind of, oh yeah, you got a parishioner that's
a weekend carpenter that can do this. I mean, most of them have an on-site staff.
I'm sure there's at least one person who can delegate it to someone there. But I don't think any of
those are insurmountable. Yeah, I don't know how many would be there. At some point, we would have a
full time position just taking care of them. So we need to get away from that. Between all of us,
that's what? I think easily we could get up to 10 to 20 units between me and Kayla working with somebody
at each location, we could handle that fairly easy. At that moment, it might be an hour a week for one of us to
to help somebody, we could do that. I think we kind of need to, if we're going to move this forward
in a similar or same fashion, we kind of really need to redefine what that partner period is. And maybe
it goes to two years, to 24 months, and then it's a hard stop. Was it two years? It's 12 months now.
Oh. So we kind of need to redefine that and say that is a hard stop.
At the end of that, and we're going to, you need to make sure, we're going to train your staff or whoever
you identify, the bin construction and the maintenance, and they can understand the design of that so
they know how to fix it. Yeah, because it possibly can't grow. Right, if we stole the bins, if you can
make them on site, I get fee structure, blah, blah, blah, but installing them.
Because they can pick it up or we can deliver. They're fairly large. I mean, you can build them and
install them, but that's not so much the problem. Again, it's how much do we have invested every week
with each unit? That's where our problem is. And when you say unit, you mean site? Yeah, each site.
So I would hit the three things. That's one unit. So. Yeah, I just wonder, I mean,
and storing them. That's going to be the other issue. Oh, yeah. And we provide a certain amount of technical
assistance. I'm just trying to not drop them. Well, no, I think that we're always there as a resource.
But we can't always be there to go repair a bin, particularly if we get up to 15, 20,
participating complex. Say after two years, you can call. But if you have a new tenant, a new resident
participant that has questions, yeah, have them call us. We can do that stuff. Why do we need to keep
track so closely of the people who are participating at each site?
I believe part of it, well, so the system he has right now, training partially, and the system he has
in place right now, they have each person has a code, and that code is a QR code that is associated
with them. That is how they are tracking the weight of the compost for each site. When they go there,
they're supposed to use the app and that QR code, scale their weights, and then they dump their compost
so that we can keep track of the weights of each site. That's how we measure.
The impact of the program. Each one has the impact. And I know we've talked about moving to some sort
of average per person. Because when we met with Joe, before he turned it all over to us, he was pretty
confident that many of the places, many of the participants had kind of quit weighing
Yeah, I would be looking at the data even so far for this year from the church's one and the little
bit they did last year. There is no way that even a quarter of their people, I think it's barely a quarter
that away because that volume is not weighed it. You don't still want me to track each person. I mean,
you could just track the site and the people tracking is is how he's he was keeping track of
their number for that weight and if they've done the training. He wasn't giving them the information
or the bin codes until they completed that training. There's a lot of things I think I would tweak about
this whole process to make it easier on you all. Yeah, yeah. Making it easier on the participants. Yes,
for sure, yes. But I do think that we, and what Kayla and I had talked about was we set up somebody to
And you tell them, okay, for the first three months, everybody needs to weigh and we're going to get
an average per person. Each dump into the bin averages two and a half pounds. And so then we just need
to know how many participants don't think how many times a week and we can estimate this is how much
weight we're doing. Yeah.
Or I mean, honestly, we could do calculations just based, we know the depth, we know the dimensions
of the bins. That's exciting. We know how much brown, roughly, that we're putting in. We could do an
estimate calculation just based on how full the bin is. And what happens in the church, the three people
weigh it, they just have to do it. Yeah, I don't think any of them are weighing it hardly at all. But
we need to have some way to estimate that difference. Yeah. And that is because we have to track everything
we do? We have to show some impact and how, and this is to justify it.
If you look at your estimates of how full the bucket is, we could. We could do the buckets that we're
providing them, compost buckets that have the QR code on them to scale. We could do a volume calculation
based on how full the bin is. Some of it is also anticipating state reporting requirements coming down.
Yeah, that's fine. You haven't promised any specific entity, specific types of data at this point, right?
But it's also, yeah, reporting requirements, or if there becomes a grant that we can then become aware
of, maybe, you know, say, hey, this is working, but when you want it to continue, we need that data.
Yeah. But yeah, not for a person. But like I said, you know, this is not something
that we need the board to provide direction on next week. I think after this discussion, I think we
can go out and we can start reaching out and we can try to find, you know, try to recruit some
new participants from the apartments or churches or- I mean, honestly- or whatever. We have some great
businesses that I know are interested in that before. But I think, but I, we need to make the board
aware of this and what we're getting into and that we need, you know,
In the near future, we're going to need some sort of direction on where this program is going to go.
So we did budget for this for this coming year, right? Yes. So we did. How much? $12,500. The city has
$12,500 budgeted, but it's not given that up yet because we don't know what we're doing. Well, that's
a good idea. When the city give us $12,500 to manage the program,
I don't know, I'll have to talk to Sean Mia and see what, you know, explain to her where we are and
what that means for the city's portion of the funding and what they need to see, what data they have.
I'll have to reach, I can reach out to Sean and explain to her where we are, you know, at least in the
short term, how we plan to move forward and,
What does that mean for the city's agreement to help fund this? Yeah, let's continue to think about
and maybe put this on the agenda again the next executive meeting. Do we not want to put it out to the
board? Oh, I don't care. I don't care if we bring it up to the board next week or not. I don't know
if they have. Yeah, but I think we need to make them aware at some point that
what we've gotten ourselves into and stacked up like some direction on where do you want to see this
program go? Well I wonder if can we use the CAC also for studying how to make it more efficient or have
an extra committee like how are we going to move forward with because I hear two things first of all
we need to have some more clear timeline cutoffs
And this is after that date, we will give advice, but we won't do X, Y, and Z. And then on the other
hand, from what Kate said, there are things in the program itself that we should make more efficient.
So how are we going to move forward with those? Just as an executive committee or? You guys are the
ones that have been doing.
Well, I mean, and I, you know, um, you know, I mean, in the packet was chose participant agreement is
scheduled. That was basically the scope of service. You think you could go through that and, you know,
suggest some tweaks revisions that will make it easier on us, easier on the participants. We could sit
down tomorrow or the first day and go through and talk about it and see what we can do to present something or
somewhere you know what we feel comfortable with we could do and handle and what our options are because
we don't want to kill the program it's just we need that clear we just need a more hands-on way of handling
yeah especially the later participants we see that eventually it's going to get out of hand we can't
do it with what we do we hope it grows to that point yeah yeah i mean it's it's not like any of the
business plan at this point but it
it does need to be articulated, you know, what you are committing now, what you are willing to commit,
but also like the budget for that because time and $25,000 on the one hand seems like an awful lot to
do composting for just seven sites, but I do six sites. Oh my God. You know, on the flip side, I also
know time is money and
You know, you all are being paid right now. I hope to talk to us. And so, you know, there's a lot to
it. Yeah, that's again why we built one on hand so we know what it's going to cost to build one. And
if we could just be there as education and get the business to take over the church or what organization
to take over for us, then they have the expense of keeping it going and we can just be there to help
them maintain it. That's why I say hands off. What we're doing now is fine, but if it grows,
and we get 10, 15, 20 participants and we're still doing this for all of them. We have other duties
that we have to take care of. Maybe when you talk to the city, they might be a little, and I don't know
what they're thinking at this point, obviously, but I would think they would wonder
about the $25,000 for seven, six sites as well. I mean, it is sort of the elephant in the room and what
can they, can we look at it as here's what it costs to do it. We're not here to like profit and here's
what it'll cost as we add two more sites or four more. And then your conversation can be a little bit
more specific around need.
Am I making you less hard? No. No harder than anybody else. I do a good job of that. Okay. So wait,
so the total spent has been 25,000? Or was it more than that? Because we did one year and then we did
another year. So we've done two years of it. Right.
I know that the first year was $25,000. The second year may have been less than that. I would need to
go look at the count, right? But I think without question, we can do it in house cheaper. It's just
a matter of graduating those participants so we don't get overwhelmed.
Wow. Yeah, I mean, if we think if this is a combined city and district, we spent $50,000 on this. I've
seen it, right? That is not the marketing that we go with. No, no, no. But speaking of marketing, and
this is not necessarily my favorite, but I assume we would also need to think about how to
sell the idea that this is worth Mr. Apartment Manager, Mrs. Apartment Manager time to do. And there
are things I think you could say about reduced cost for what's in your dumpster, but. Well, I know that
two of the current complexes are both owned slash managed by the abode.
And that's, they did their first one and it worked well. So they, and I think that's one of our, it's
going into the parking period is their second complex. And, you know, so dealing with those management
companies that have multiple conflicts. So they say, let's make, let's pilot it here. If it works, then
let's move into this one and then this one and then this one. And, and then when the other companies
see that they're competitor. Yeah.
attracting residents by offering that, then that was kind of the hope all along that it would become
a recruiting tool for, you know, a pitch for tenants that, you know, hey, we do this, nobody else did.
There are lots of ways we can get past one or two, especially with like the buckets and everything else.
We can move forward where we are now. I want to say one more thing. I volunteer at New Hope Preschool.
They waste so much food. So I mean, that's a nonprofit, but you know, each kid gets their little breakfast.
and some kids eat one bite and the rest goes in the trash. Well, that's, and I bet that's not the only
principle. We modified the terms of the agreement with One Sustainable Joe to allow the church
to participate. And I think that modification was certainly not specific to churches or faith institutions.
It was more broad than that.
I was talking with Harmony School and so we tried to put the language in there that would allow for
a variety of different things to fit into that. Yeah, I was thinking of the four-year-olds to distinguish
that they're going to put their food leftovers in one place and their snotty Kleenex. Isn't that what
the volunteer is for? And that's going to be the point too because
The way this compost program is set up, we don't do dairy, or high citrus, or meats, or anything like
that. Anything cooked in meat technically shouldn't be composted in this program, in this system. It
takes like an orange. Technically you're not supposed to put citrus, because it kills the composting
bacteria. I mean, this is... Yeah, the acid kills the bacteria. This is in essence backyard composting
on a little bit bigger scale. We're not commercially composting, and we're not generating the heat,
to take care of a lot of... The bacteria from meat and dairy. Things that aren't compostable, we just
don't want to put in there. We also don't want to attract animals. Oh, I have a story for you. How about
for the board meeting agenda, we just put a Back to Earth program update
and we can face, you know, Jimmy, Kayla, and I can teleport the same things that we've told you. And
if you can put some of those things in a PowerPoint, I think the visual always helps if you have time
to do it. I have pictures from the pairs and stuff too, if we need them. Did you let us know about the spool?
Like I can, or I guess it doesn't matter because that was a contract with somebody else and it can be
whatever you all want now. Getting your little kids on board. That was the contract for sustainable
Joe that kind of placed restrictions on him on what he could use our money for. We, you know, as long
as the board says, okay, we can do whatever we want. Is composting at all?
Anymore, you know? I don't know. I don't know. I don't have kids in school anymore, but that whole day
I stood there and I was like, that goes in there. See, now the other thing that we have to be conscious
of in this is the item regulations regarding composting facilities. So we've got 300 square feet. So
if you get into too big of an operation,
and your compost pile goes beyond 300 square feet, you're now suddenly subject to item regulations.
Part of the purpose of this was to keep them, I don't know. I've seen the cafeteria at North High School.
I think in weeks they could get over 300 square feet. Yeah, the program I had experiences with
We took it off site, collected it and took it. Does Katie do that at Hoosier Hills? Because she does
the FFA and they have the greenhouse and all the garbage. No, I don't think she does. A couple of years
ago when we were talking about getting something like this going, I reached out to her and said I'll
reach out to her again. Maybe she would have the ability to work with the cafeteria staff and say limit
what we're going to take so that we get the right stuff and that we're not getting too big.
and still give her students some sort of a worthwhile experience. That could be really good, because
then you're also educating the teenagers who are in that program. Take that forward. Yeah. And they
have a building construction and building class, so they could actually maybe get them to build a box.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Because I go to the building church through them to build habitat.
They're really, really good, too. Yeah.
Okay, we'll put an update on the agenda and kind of review everything that we've talked about and let
the board know that we'll probably be coming back at some point when we have a better idea of what we've
gotten ourselves into and make sure that we're all on the same page with what direction it's going.
Great, thank you for coming and letting us know about that. So next we have one applicant for the community
grant program.
that we can take a look at. Tom, you want to give an intro to this one? I can. Remember on page 19,
the CAC did discuss and review this and score with that rubric that they rescheduled reading last week.
But they didn't scramble and get a meeting in so they could do this. Do plan to have a written summary
and then with a recommendation for the board for the board package. At the meeting, they all seem to
be in agreement with recommending to award the grant to the board. And next, they'll get a summary and
that recommendation in writing. Unfortunately, beyond that, I know the person that applied for this
grant, so I cannot comment.
It was unexpected. I'll say that much. I didn't think about this as a way to reduce waste. I did not,
but I absolutely love it. I think it's amazing and kudos for someone for thinking about it. That's all
I got. I didn't do the rubric though. I did not either since we only had one. Who's buzzing, Cindy?
It's not me.
Yeah. Do we have a sense of how much they could purchase with $3,000? They included one sheet that had
some products in it. I don't know if I'm trying to get down to it. So there's pricing on the sheet that
they included. So if you think $30 a product, and they've let $3,000, so 100 things,
Yeah, they said that between 100 and 200 people would be in packets. Because these are the cups, and
I don't know what the end of our stock could cost. For the board packet, I will look there. They weren't
active, but they did. I got page 23 of the packet. There are two different links.
products. I will put those into a web browser and rent off to the board what it looks like. Yeah, it
looks like the underwear could be between 10 and 20. Well, yeah, I mean, if you were able to get 100 people to
stop using disposable feminine hygiene products. Or even I'm not. Yeah. That's a lot that can be visible.
Especially if they were using pens. Especially for schools and stuff like that. Like, even janitorial
costs. Like, such an impact. Yep.
What is the, can you remind us time of the process? The whole board receives the input from the CAC
and then votes on it. Well, yeah, we set the application deadline and then time that so that the CAC
would have a chance to review the applications prior to the board meeting and provide recommendations
to the board of the award.
to any grant applications that were received. So we're aiming to do that. So we're aiming to do that
next week at the board meeting so that the CAC said they would have had the written summary of their
review and discussion and their recommendation to include in the meeting packet. Are there four or five
people on CAC then? And the irony of four men reviewing, yes. I was just about to say this was the female.
A format and then there's three on these and we have one on the executive. I did not think it was going
to be on their agenda anyway. That's awesome. So any concerns about this? No.
had some kind of report back, right? At the end of the grant period, they're supposed to report back
on the input. Yes, yes. That'll be interesting. Before we move on, then I will also, one other thing
that CAC did discuss, because we appropriated $20,000 for this grant program for this year, and we only
received one application that's asking for $3,000, the CAC also is going to suggest
then we reopen an application window to see if we can get some additional applications for other projects
that might be able to be completed in this year so that we can still utilize some more of that. So that
would be another question put out to the board next week if they want to set up another grant window
till the end of May or something like that.
see if we can get any other interest. All right, any other comments or questions on that? Then we have
a review of internal control policies following the accounting entry correction we had to make in January.
Yeah, it was I asked about, you know,
our internal controls and there was anything in there that might have lead or could be tweaked to prevent
the entry errors that resulted in those adjustments needing to be made. And Ms. Owens is with us online
here. And we've reviewed that. We also talked about
policies and procedures that the consultants that we use help us reconcile and figure out what those
adjusting amounts would be. The consensus really was that no, that there's not. It was the way things
were input and managed by the previous accounting software and the current accounting software. Theresa
can probably explain better than I can,
handles this all different and this should not happen in the new software. Theresa, do you have anything
to add? No, I just, I mean, I've been monitoring it monthly ever since we got the adjustments. So far,
I know it's early in the year. The bank is always balancing. It's just the balance between the fund
and the bank.
And that's, if anything, it's the payroll claims stuff that would be off, which is adjustable once the
items are paid. And then there was consensus that the bulk, if not all, of that adjustment was related
to payroll liabilities in a way the previous accounting software
either the way that that handled it or the way that they were entered into and handled by staff. Both
of which have been correct. Yes. May I jump in? Yes. First of all, I read the whole report that you
have here on your internal controls. And I
I really appreciate you sharing this with us, you going through the review. And I have to say that I
was pleasantly surprised that in such a timely manner, you responded to the request to do this. I just
really appreciate it because it wasn't really, it doesn't always happen when you just say, hey,
you know what, it would be really good if you like checked into this so that we were sure. And so I
really appreciate it
I mean, I know it's stuff you already had and you already are doing, but putting it together, pulling
together, checking and presenting, I really appreciate it. If I don't do it when I'm thinking about
it, you would have been asking six months from now, what happened to this? That's what I'm doing. So,
you know, it's notable. Yeah, I think it can make us all rest easier that
The problem won't occur again. Yeah, thank you, Twisa, too. Yeah, you're welcome. All right, any other
questions or comments about your two internal controls? Do you want, I think it could be just a part
of a department report or something, but do you want anything reported to the board about the internal
controls? Because I believe the question was raised at a board meeting.
I can just put in my department report that staff and executive committee reviewed and determined that
internal controls are adequate. That was not the problem. Yeah, it makes sense to make that part of
your report. Right. Any other items deemed appropriate for discussion today? Yes.
I do, but I will gladly wait, defer if anybody else has anything. Go ahead, Tom. Okay, we've got a few
things. I will give you the good news first, and I can't remember off the top of my head. I don't know
if Teresa does or not, but apparently, once upon a time, the district participated in some Indiana public
risk management thing or whatever, and
The state is shutting that down, and they're sending us $92,000. What? Say what? So we paid into something,
and they're? We have the email correspondence confirming that we are the correct entity, because it
obviously came to Monroe County Solid Waste. Right.
Teresa, do you remember what department we were communicating with on that at the state? No, I don't
have it right in front of me. No. We have the email correspondence confirming that we are the correct
entity. So we filled out their requested paperwork. They are processing our, I guess, refund or reimbursement
after they're terming it.
And it's for participating in a risk. It was an Indiana public risk management. I can't remember. I
like to manage those kinds of risks. Yeah.
It's fascinating. That's awesome. Well, yeah, we were pleasantly surprised. I was like I said, that's
I made sure that I did. Last thing I wanted to do was get this money and have to turn around and give
it to somebody else. Are you sure we're right? Um,
That's the right one. Was a member of the Indiana Political Subdivision Risk Management Commission?
Yeah, that's it, yeah. Managed by the Indiana Department of Insurance. Yeah, and the letter was from the
Deputy General Counselor from the Indiana Department of Insurance, and that is who confirmed that, yes,
you are the correct identity. Go ahead. The city and the county governments aren't getting anything.
Well, that's your good news. That is good news. And then, just a heads up.
getting everything together to send to William Ellis and welcoming him to the board. When I sent him
the bylaws, I realized they've not been updated since we changed our name, since electronic participation
in meetings was allowed. So next month, we'll have some revised bylaws to consider. Sorry. Next month,
like April or? March. It is March. Next month is April.
At your next meeting, you will have revised bylaws to consider taking to the full board to three. How
about that? So our board bylaws. Set aside some reading time, is what you're saying. It's wide margins
and generously spaced, 10 pages. It's not too much.
Uh, and then the last thing I had, uh, and one of the other, the other reason that, uh, Kayla is here,
um, you know, there have been, been some questions, concerns, you know, expressed about the district's
website and meeting the new accessibility, uh, standards. So, um, and, uh, Kayla's,
done the bulk of the work going through our website page by page and running an accessibility scan tool
on those and making the necessary adjustments. I did have a meeting with our web host and developer
that developed our current website and they said we're on the right track with what Kayla's doing and
they're still
to help in any way that they can, but they're pretty confident that the platform that it's built on,
there shouldn't be any issues getting things updated. The big heavy lift is gonna be the meeting minutes,
document packets and all of that. But the web developer said that our platform that we're on
has a feature for blog posts. And his recommendation was that as we move forward and have those documents
that are necessary to meet the new requirements, that since the bulk of those are originally drafted
in Word, we just use PDF for combining everything into packets and stuff that we
just take those original documents in the Word and copy and paste those into the blog post, and it should
be searchable and meet any accessibility requirements at that point. As long as the Word document originally
was accessible. Right. Yeah, and I wonder about tables. Yeah, I mean, there's still some caveats.
This way you have a lot of reports. In the meeting packet, when you do the claims, those are PDF files
produced out of the accounting software that we scan and put them on. So there are still some kinks
to work out. But Matt, the website developer,
confident that we'd be able to figure these things out. He's done them for other clients and things
will be okay. What is the platform? Squarespace. That's Squarespace. Yeah. Yeah. So our website is also
hosted by Squarespace. It is now. It is now.
Is it Lambert Consulting that's still helping us with? Lambert Consulting is the host. And Matt Aldridge,
and I forget, he has a company name, but it's him. He's the one that built the website, developed the
website. And he works for Lambert? Our partners with him. I guess when I say web host, that means the
website is on Lambert's server.
That's who we pay to have space on their server to house a website. And that is the one that built the
website. So do you think that we'll meet the deadline in April for the new existing? Yes, sir. Well,
in researching all of this,
You know, looking at ADA websites and what do we gotta do? What are we gonna do talking with Andrew
and Matt yesterday? I stumbled across a fact sheet on the ADA website that had two different compliance
dates listed. One of which was for special district governments and that compliance date is April 26th
of 2027. Wow, that's a big difference, isn't it? Our attorney is out of town this week.
So the question is, how does the ADA define a special district government? And do we fit that definition?
Fascinating question. No. I don't have to answer it. But regardless, you're working on it.
Are you documenting that you're working on it? Is there any way for somebody if you were? Because there's
no accessibility police. So the only problem is if there's somebody who does an audit,
as part of like Monroe County or local government finance or something like that or you get sued because
somebody's tried to access information and couldn't and usually it's a complaint process and show all
you have to do is show that you're working and you are actually doing it. I mean we do have copies of
the old pages of the website. Yeah well so we there is some email correspondence between Kayla and I about
know, where do we stand on this? How are we managing this? What are we doing? Because some things we
just had, we had to basically redesign the page. So we have some email correspondence. And
then in Squarespace, you have the currently active page,
that may or may not meet the accessibility requirements. And then you have unpublished pages where she's
working on redesigning that page to meet the accessibility requirements. And only one of my pages is
live. Only one of them is accessible. That's why I think we can easily show that we are working toward
meeting these requirements. Awesome. Well, thank you, Caleb, for checking that out.
It would have been slightly faster, but we've hit hiccups with the composting and then everything else.
And I will say the- Thank you. But Bron, I think you- I do. I am now the catch-all. That's right. County
IT referred me to a tool in Google Chrome that does an accessibility scan and rating.
The majority of our pages are upper 80s to a little bit 90s on that score. So we're not far. Right now
we're not far away from that. I know you sent me the version of the minutes and I said that's the bigger
lift is dealing with those scanned PDF documents. But the web pages themselves,
are pretty strong, as we said, but we're still doing what we can to increase the scores. Do we have
any statement on our website that if any of the linked documents are, if anybody has problems accessing
linked documents, please call us or something? You know what, I think that there actually is, because
I was looking at that today, and it's maybe not the most obvious thing in the world.
But it is there. So, let's see. It says, I can't be reached. WasteReductionDistrict.org, right? No, .com.
Oh! So, if you go on the top menu bar under Get Involved, there's a link for meetings and public records.
And then at the bottom of that page, the asterisk note for the link under Access Archives. At the end
of that, it says, if you are unable to locate a particular record, please contact our office to request
the copy. That may not be exactly what you're looking for, but that's what we can. We can change that
in a matter of minutes.
Yeah, maybe add something about we are currently working on inferring accessibility of our documents.
If you are unable to access something, please contact us. Because this is more about timing. We will
upload them when they're ready. Yeah, I just read you the last sentence of a larger statement. But yeah,
we can certainly
add another statement on there about. I would put it on the front page. We can do that. Or down in the,
a lot of places do it right here. Your signature, though. And then it's, you know, put whoever to contact,
we contact them. You can look at other websites, they're all. Which one of your cell numbers do you
want us to look at? 5555. Yeah.
Go away. I think the website is, it looks really nice. I've always been impressed with this website.
I don't use any assistive technology, so I don't know about that, but it looks great. Well, I know we've
had some colors that we've changed and probably some more that need to be changed. In other words, I
think the bigger one,
The graphics or picture links don't have the description to them so that if a visually impaired whoever's
their mouse over it, it doesn't tell you what it is. None of our kids currently have alt tags for them.
None of your what? Our images currently on the active website have alt tags except for the one page
that I added today. Which one was that? The printable under resources. So the printable you showed me
that? Yeah.
Yeah, that's the only one that's active at the moment that I've changed. And that one got a 96 on the
accessibility score. Do you have an accessibility information section at all, like about not the website,
not electronic, but accessibility of your sites and services? Yeah. No. No, we can. I think that would
be great to put on your to-do list.
I'm going to get kicked out of this place. This catch-off. That's a good point. What if you are somebody
with a disability and some folks can drive? And to be fair, we do get calls. Can they get help with
putting their stuff in the bins? You're right. I mean, the rural sites are all gravel lots. That's probably
an important thing to know for somebody with a physical disability.
Yeah, cause I can add it to the site page and I can see that adding it to our Google listing, but that's,
that'll be fun. Yeah. Again, I would say check out some other websites to see how it's boarded and stuff
because there's some pretty boilerplate language. Um, but yeah, description of what to expect is always
lovely and depreciated.
can't predict when there's 15 inches of snow in the room yeah and they don't shovel the sidewalk ever
that's not me no although you'll be pleased to note that it is rising up the ranks of city council priorities
for next funding cycle we do the sidewalk for our site yeah and that's because city ordinance requires
us to do that
And luckily, the bus now will drop them off pretty much at South Walnut. Very good. Anything else for
the good of the community? Yeah. One other thing, Tom, about the board member's signature for the bank.
Oh, yeah. So, yes, because we generally have always had the three board officers as signatories on the
bank account.
and we have a new officer. So I guess now, so to get Jody added to the bank means we all have to do
signature cards again. So which is fine. We've done that every time and we can certainly do that or
we can take Julie off without doing everybody's
Can we do that, Teresa? To get Julie off, do we have to all do it anyway? Maybe we do still have to.
I can't remember what we did when I had the... I guess when Teresa were talking about it, we were thinking
that we could get
Remove Julie without redoing all the signature cards and then did was the executive committee comfortable
with two out of three or do you want to go ahead and redo all the signature cards and after you have
it. Does that involve going to a bank? No, in the past they've
given me all the signature cards and let me track everybody down to get signatures. Yeah, I recall it
was fairly painless for us, but it was just right. And it's fine. And actually, why don't we just do
it? Because if I tell the bank tomorrow, I could probably have all the cards at the board meeting next
Thursday for signatures. Yeah, let's continue the practice of having all three officers on.
Because we're going to have a check, one of you will have to sign next week. Shall we order the orange
bags? The big ones. It's a big one. All right. We will take care of that. Thank you, Tom, for doing
the life work. Well, if everybody comes to the meeting and I have them, it's easy. All right. And our
new member, I've
Assume can come to our board meeting. He I emailed them, you know, send him, you know, copies of bylaws,
internal controls and I mean by some of what our meeting schedule was, and he did not indicate there
was any conflict there. I assume they talked about that. What do you think? All right, well, I think
that's it. So we can adjourn.
Thank you all. Thank you.