Date: August 17, 2018 To: Board of Commissioners From: Amy Jewell Re: August Board Meeting Cancelled/September rescheduled AUGUST FULL BOARD MEETING CANCELLED The Chittenden Solid Waste District Full Board of Commissioners meeting has been cancelled for the month of August. The September Full Board Meeting has been rescheduled to Wednesday, September 12, 2018.
MEMORANDUM To: Board of Commissioners From: CSWD Staff Date: August 17, 2018 Re: Program Updates 1. Solid Waste Disposed (Jon & Nancy) Trash tonnage for the one-month period ended July 31, 2018, is down 6.6% compared to the same period for last year. Of the overall tonnage, the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) component is up 12.2%, the Construction & Demolition Debris portion is down 32.2%, and the Alternative Daily Cover portion (fee is 25% of the full rate) is down 87.2%, compared with the same period of the prior year. From a budget perspective, revenue recognized is 2.9% above budgeted revenues for the first month of the fiscal year. Please refer to accompanying charts. 2. MRF Overview (Josh) The data for the MRF is not available currently due to calculation verification of annual contractual CPI adjustments. Data will be available at the end of the month upon request and will also be included in next month s updates. 3. Compost (Dan) July food scrap tonnages were 482.7 tons, 13% more than the same period the prior year and 14.5% above budgeted amounts. Total sales as of August 5 th were $44,782. This is $8,522 below the same period in FY18, with most of the difference due to a large, atypical midsummer bag order last year. Sales are typically the slowest during July and August. 4. Outreach and Communications (Michele) Michele met with City Market representatives to discuss recyclables markets and benefits claims of specialty recycling programs. Businesses (Ethan): Ethan interacted with more than 17 businesses in July, confirming new composting programs at three of them. He led three workplace presentations and three facility tours for business groups. Schools (Rhonda): CSWD School staff gave five tours and nine presentations to colleges, teachers, and camps, reaching over 200 people during July. Recycle Rhonda taught Burlington School District teachers how to incorporate composting into the curriculum as part
of Shelburne Farm s Sustainable Food Systems STEM training. Rhonda developed and demonstrated several lesson plans for teachers to pilot during the upcoming school year. Lipscomb University students toured Green Mountain Compost and the MRF during their annual sustainability trek to the northeast from Nashville, TN. Events (Robin): Robin provided on-site technical assistance at nine events with combined estimated attendance of more than 30,000. She coordinated Waste Warriors at eight of those events; 42 volunteers spent 102.25 hours monitoring sorting stations and educating event attendees. Two WW events were cancelled due to excessive heat and thunderstorms. Robin met with the Event Coordinator at Shelburne Farms to finalize plans for WWs at upcoming events and discuss expanding our partnership to include additional events in upcoming seasons. The bin loan program provided 52 bins to nine events in July with combined attendance over 2,000. We awarded a grant of $150.50 for a three-stream collection station to be used at weekly events within the District. Community/Residential (Lauren): Staff gave six tours of the MRF to a total of 50 residents including groups from Heineberg & Champlain senior centers Lauren showed GMC to residents from Community Health Centers of Burlington s Beacon Apartments. Seven residents attended two Backyard Compost Workshops offered in July. Six residents and staff at Pillsbury Senior Housing attended a recycling presentation. Lauren attended two community BBQs to answer questions about the new food scrap pick-up programs at Champlain Housing Trust s South Meadows and O Dell properties in South Burlington Community Clean Up Fund project proposals were received from three towns. See attached FY18 CCUF summary, which also includes current balances. 5. Marketing (Jonny) The CSWD public tour & workshop campaign is still in progress, with more public tour and workshop offerings being added to our calendar. We produced sandwich board signs and flyers announcing the closure of all CSWD ReUse Zones as of September 29 th, 2018. The flyers are being handed out to all DOC customers from now through September. Staff conducted interviews with various media outlets in response to the July edition of the CSWD Digest (email newsletter), the ReUse Zone closure, and the fire at the MRF. Stories ran in print and on TV and radio outlets, including WCAX, VPR, Williston Observer, Fox/ABC, NECN, and VT Digger. We published a My View letter in the Valley Reporter entitled Keep Calm and Recycle On in response to a previously published commentary with a number of misstatements about recycling. Hotline: 330 calls from the public were received on the Hotline in July. Website stats for July: 9,600 unique users, 26,103 pageviews. Finance We are working on converting to QuickBooks ERP for our finance software and have hired a consultant to assist. Our goal is to simplify our processes, reduce our dependence on exporting data to Excel, improve the process for budget to actual reports, and adjust to a changing
organizational structure. We are redeveloping our chart of accounts to align reporting with our audit format and to adjust to the new structure. We are converting in January so that we do not have to convert payroll data mid-calendar year (which runs counter to our fiscal year) allowing us to produce W-2s and 1099s entirely out of the new system. This will mean that we will have a change in our chart of accounts and reports mid-year as well but will also be prepared for the FY20 budget as expected. We will also need to review and update our policies to respond to technological solutions and reduce our dependence on paper. We anticipate bringing revised policies to the Board in September for your consideration after working with staff and the Finance Committee. 6. Compliance A Safety Committee meeting was held on July 26 th to begin discussing the agenda for the annual Safety Training. Josh conducted Lockout/Tagout training for the Maintenance Dept. 7. MRF Fire (Jen) Around 5 p.m. on July 30th a small fire broke out at the MRF on the tip floor after all Casella employees had left. The fire department responded and quickly contained and extinguished the fire. The facility was up and operating the next day by early afternoon. The cause of the fire is still unknown but it likely started from something that was flammable or reactive placed in recycling by a resident. The building suffered minor damage on one exterior wall and several sprinkler heads and lights had to be replaced. 84 tons of material that was on the tip floor when the fire broke out had to be landfilled due to soot and water contamination. CSWD received permission from the state to landfill the recyclables that were contaminated.