Aug 10, 2020 Public Utilities Board on 2020-08-10 9:00 AM

Okay, Susan. Okay. Good morning. It is 9 o'clock and we do have a virtual quorum. So we'll call to order the Public Utilities Board meeting from Monday, August 10th, 2020. The first item on the agenda is a consent agenda. Does any board member wish to pull one of the items? All right. So then do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda? I move we approve. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Next item is a consider approval of the July 27th, 2020 minutes. And I was talking with Tony earlier and I just want to remind everyone that this is supposed to be a summary of meetings that are official minutes are the videos. So we don't need to really make sure that it's verbatim, but at least that it's accurate reflection of the meetings. Okay. Do we have a motion to approve the minutes of July 27th? I so move. Do we have a second? I'll second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Okay. Then consider approval of August 3rd, 2020 minutes. Do we have a motion to approve? I move we approve. Okay. And a second? Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Management reports. So thank you very much. So the first item that we have on the management reports is a update on a grant that we received. Dr. Banks is certainly on the line if you have any questions on that, but we will be taking a resolution to the council to receive approval for that grant. It is for surveillance of some sites, primarily around the city limits of the city where we have some frequent illegal dumping, but certainly our environmental services staff will be working with the cog doing a risk assessment and potentially those cameras may be rotated from location to location. But if you have any questions on that, Dr. Banks is on the line if you like to have anything that you'd like for him to add. Welcome, Charlie. Good morning. Sorry, I was a minute late. It's all right. Any questions on the surveillance camera grant? Dr. Banks, real quick, I remember that this came up when you were going to apply for the grant maybe a year ago. I was wondering if you had the date of that when it was on the agenda, just so I can go back and check my minutes. Good morning, board members. This is Ken Banks, general manager of utilities. Can you hear me? Good morning. We actually have the information on the prior action and review section of the agenda information sheet. So that information was provided to you, the board, on December the 8th and then we followed up with the December the 9th work session with the with the city council, both the grant, both the board and the board recommended advancing in the council advised staff to do so. Okay. Does that answer your question? Yeah, thanks. For some reason, I didn't see that on the on the information, but there it is now, of course. Thanks. Sorry about that. Okay. No, no problems. Thank you. All right. Okay, so the next item is a future agenda items. This is certainly not a, you know, a fully exhaustive list. There's there'll be other items are just to give you a sense of women may be coming up in the in the coming agendas. And then the last item is our action matrix. Think everything on there except for the very first one, which is the lawsuit update that the committee has or the board has requested legal department will be taking that to council for consideration and depending on their direction, and then we'll certainly follow up with the P B on that. And that really concludes the city management section update. If you have any questions, we certainly happy to answer any questions we have. Yes, go ahead. You're on mute. Russ, you're on mute. Sorry, you missed all my wonderful narrative. Item four is something I asked about several months ago. The difference between the approved capital versus the amount we're able to physically implement and accomplish. And it says the status of the July 27. I still don't think that we've got a adequate response on that. What's what's the What's the idea there? So the rest of that's, that was an update that was provided to the PB as part of the budget presentation that we did for water and wastewater. We thought that we had addressed your question, maybe you and I need to get offline and get a better idea of what it is that you're looking for. But certainly, if that hasn't fully provided your response, I'll be happy to meet with you and see what it is you're looking for. Yeah, you did the I think the comment was made that we're getting more projects accomplished than we used to, but we still don't get everything done that we say we want to do and needs to be done. And my question is, why? What's the impediment? What are the obstacles that's preventing the utility department from getting the projects implemented on time? That's the question. I've never heard a real adequate response to that. I think the adequate response is that it's taken us two or three years to basically pull up all the projects that had been approved based on fee increases implemented from 15 to 17. And there was 10s of millions of dollars parked and unallocated funds and in electric water, wastewater in particular, those projects were piling up, reporting wasn't there. And there was no way of really tracking on a year to year basis what had been approved versus what is actually getting implemented. It's taken us three budget cycles to kind of get all that pulled up along with the streets program as well. So we can actually sit there and audit it and then monitor monthly spend to ensure that whatever we're taking is getting invested in the infrastructure. But it was just simply poor reporting, not the ability to decentralize finances. So we've been able to put all that together. We're meeting on a quarterly basis to measure spend, make sure that what is being told to us that they can get done is actually getting done. And just really emphasizing the coordination between the water, wastewater and street departments in particular. And that breaking down those silos, kind of sharing that information and putting all of our projects up on spreadsheets during the last 18 months has dramatically turned that around. But what we found is that there was a significant four or five, six year backlog on projects that we had raised rates for but had not gotten done. And so that is that's the issue. And we've cleaned those processes up. And, and I feel comfortable that we could share the same kind of level of reporting that we're seeing at house with you at any time you'd like to see those. Okay, that's good. I can understand getting behind. I guess my question is, can we see a projected schedule on when you think you'll be able to catch up? Absolutely. Approved projects. Yeah, absolutely. That's exactly how we're monitoring it in house and making sure and it's part of the reason that you've seen no rate increases request for us the last couple budget cycles is I won't support that with council unless I know that we can actually keep up and get the projects done that we that we say we can get done and whittling down that backlog. So we were absolutely able to share that with you probably no later than September or October in that timeframe. Yeah, that'd be great. I like okay. And on the list here that that we would I would like to see a written estimated schedule of completion for all the various projects that didn't get done when they were supposed to be done. Yeah, there's got to be some catch up period and some plan to catch up. Yep. Thank you. Alright, that brings us to concluding items I guess already put one on the list there. Does any other board member have an item that they'd like on a future agenda or anything they'd like to say to the staff? Yes, Ed. Go ahead, Ed. You're on mute. Oh, there I go. I don't know if it's possible to pursue this now with but I would like any sort any sort of update on the progress of the solid waste strategic management plan where that stands. And I also had some questions. We will be told or have the opportunity to have a presentation on the company that is that is chosen to do this plan the consultancy that's chosen or if it's just something that's going to be done by staff, and then when the plan is done, it will be brought to us and then the council. Will we have any voice in the preparations going into this waste management strategy plan? I guess is my question. So we have Brian Borner here. He could probably respond really quick on that. Brian. Good morning, Brian Borner, Director of Solid Waste for the City of Denton. I appreciate the opportunity to address this question. We are very close to bringing forward to the PUB and the City Council the contract to actually enter into the agreement with the company to go ahead and start our solid waste management strategy. We're currently under a non-disclosure agreement, but as soon as we get that all the I's dotted and T's crossed that will be brought to you. We will have a short presentation on the company, why they were selected, and what the flow of the implementation and preparation of the strategy will be. So I would expect that within the within the next few weeks before the board. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Anything else? Alright, then we will go into work session and receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding update on options concerning the operations of the residential recycling centers in the City of Denton. You're on mute, Brian. Excuse me. Good morning. Brian Burner, Director of Solid Waste for the City of Denton. I appreciate the opportunity to talk a little bit about our residential recycling centers here at the City of Denton. We'll be sharing a screen. Alright, the City of Denton operates a very robust solid waste and recycling program throughout the City of Denton. As part of our recycling program, we have established several convenience, convenient points throughout the city to actually collect residential recycling from our residents, whether they are currently have access to our program or not. Currently, we have two locations. The first one is located at the City of Denton Landfill. It's open during normal operation hours, Monday through Saturday, 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. of the landfill. And then we have an unattended, unstaffed site at the North Lakes Park. Currently, just like the rest of our program, we take programmatic material only. So we do not take textiles. We do not take metals. Really, if you can put it in your cart at the curb, that is the material we will receive at our residential recycling centers. We empty these dumpsters three times per week. And, you know, they're heavily used. And so we do service those on a routine basis. One of our issues, though, is we have a tremendous amount of illegal dumping at the North Lakes site. Currently, we have, you know, lawn care equipment, electronics, furniture, just thrown out at the site. And it requires us to go in on a daily basis, usually multiple times during the day and actually pick up this material and haul it out. You know, both the sites, both our staff site at the landfill, as well as the unstaffed site at the North Lakes Park, is open to use by anyone. We do not shut our doors because we understand that this is a need throughout the area. But, again, we would assume that everybody using this site would dispose of program material also, programmatic material also. When we ask who actually is using our recycle centers, while the North Lakes site is unstaffed, we do not know actually who goes there. We do take names and addresses of people that come to the landfill site. And it gives us a good insight of who may be using our facility. At the landfill property, we have almost 60% city of Denton residents. So this could be, you know, just your single family dweller. This could be an apartment dweller. Just somebody who lives in the city of Denton and wants to manage materials other than at the curb or at their facility. About 35% of our traffic actually comes from within Denton County, but outside of the city of Denton. So we may have cities like Sanger, Crumb, Valley View, Crossroads, Corinth, Lake Dallas. The list goes on and on. But they come and they dispose of material at our facility. The remaining 7% of the visitors that come to our landfill come from outside of Denton County. We've had people come from as far as Decatur, city of Dallas, residents of Fort Worth, throughout Cook, Grayson, Wise, Tarrant, Collin, Dallas counties that actually come to use our facility to get rid of programmatic materials. So again, we have a very diverse participation at our facilities. When you look at the recycling materials that we collect from all sources, only about 5% actually come from our recycle centers here in the city of Denton. 65% of the material that we get on an annual basis or about 5,400 tons comes from the single family residential units and 100% of our single family customers have access to curbside collection. Currently about one third of our commercial customers, which again includes business and multi-family customers, choose to recycle with the city of Denton. While commercial customers are required to have trash service through the city of Denton, the recycling opportunities are open market and approximately one third actually choose to come with the city of Denton. Those that do not, we know that some of those contract with outside partners to manage recycle material, but we don't have a handle on who exactly or how much is recycled through that. So the 30% of our total sources that are collected are about 2,400 tons. That comes from our commercial sector. I had a question. Yes. You say roughly one third of commercial customers choose to recycle. What do the other two thirds do? Either they contract with a private hauler, so somebody else that may offer commercial recycling services elsewhere, they will come in and manage that material or they choose not to recycle because either one, they're processes or what they dispose of does not contain recycled material or two, just from the cost benefit analysis, they've chosen not to do that. Thank you. You're welcome. I've got a question. Yes. I was wondering if apartments were considered commercial or I know that Ed is probably going to ask about apartment recycling, so I thought I'd just jump in ahead of him, but what are the opportunities for apartment dwellers? Because only the single family. Apartments are considered multi-family. So again, five units or above has the opportunity through our commercial collection to recycle. Again, about a third of those commercial customers, both business and multi-family units, choose to recycle with the City of Denver. So they're considered commercial? They fall under a commercial collection, correct. Thanks, Brian. You're welcome. I want to follow up on that. Do we know how many apartment complexes do offer recycling programs? We do, but I do not have that number off the top of my head. All right. I can follow up with you on that. I had also a question if you have the information of how many rental units there actually are in Denton. I do not know that off the top of my head because there are some rental units, which may be single family, which may be duplexes or quadplexes, which still fall into that single family, but they are commercial, but the account is carried in the lessor or the renter's name, and as a result, we do not know whether that's rental property or whether it's privately owned. Okay. Next slide. Looking back the past year, June 2019 through June 2020, and this may seem like an odd time period, but we wanted to make sure that we caught the COVID in our data analysis here. One thing that we've really seen since March is a real uptick in the amount of material, both garbage and recycling, that's coming into the city of Denton as a result of material, people staying at home, working from home, a lot more waste is generated from home. Going through what I like to call corn cleaning, you're quarantined and you need something to do, so you're cleaning out that old junk door, that closet, the garage, so we're seeing a lot more material either placed at the curb or brought to the landfill as a result. One other thing that between this June, excuse me, this June 19 and June 20 period, we did have an additional unattended site at the cupboard that was set up through the end of March. The city of, or excuse me, Denton ISD actually bought that facility, turned it into their IT center. As a result, we had to close down that facility, so part of our results here include those volumes. Looking at our unattended staff sites, about 63% of the material that we collect are actually programmatic, recyclable material. The other 37% is contamination, again, films, tanglers, textiles, materials that we don't have on our program material and have to go through and go to the landfill. And again, that could be a recycle material, but it's contaminated because it wasn't emptied or clean or dry when we got it. As a note, this contamination level does not include the amount of illegal dumping that occurs at the staff site. That's collected as bulky material thrown in the truck, so we don't have an actual weight on that material that we collect at the facility. If we look at our staff site at the landfill, you'll note that we collect about a little bit more than half the material that we collected at the other two sites, but again, on a one-to-one basis, the volumes even out. About 85% of that material is actually recyclable, with the last 15% being contamination. Again, either program material that's not empty, clean, or dry, or a plastic bag or something else that makes its way into the system. Again, we note here by the data that having a facility that is staffed, somebody there, somebody sort of taking toll of who's coming in and out, actually creates an opportunity for the materials that we're collecting to be more valuable, cleaner, and at the end of the day, the potential to be recycled is greatly increased. I have a question, Brian. This is a better rate than it was previous year, correct? At the landfill it is. At the unstaffed site, it is not. If you'll notice, if you'll remember for those of you who've been here for a bit on the committee, about two years ago, the landfill site was actually located at the entrance outside the gate, and at that point in time, 100% of the material that we collected was contaminated just because it was unstaffed. By moving it back behind the gate, having staff at the landfill being able to observe what's being offloaded and observe residents actually managing this material, we've actually significantly cleaned it up and created a value chain that's beneficial to the city. Thank you. In last year's budget, we actually proposed to move our North Lake site from the east side of the park to the west side of the park. This move was necessitated as a result of the creation of the City of Denton's Competition Tennis Center. The area that is currently accounted for with our North Lakes Recycle Center would be parking facilities as well as tennis courts, and as a result, we need to be moving that. There was about $462,000 that was earmarked for this project, and it's actually funded through the residential customer class. So, again, this would be actually revenue funded. There is no bonding that's appropriated with this. Currently, we have completed design and permitting. We're getting bids for the construction, and if we go forward with this, we estimate this job to be completed by December, end of December, end of this year. One of the upgrades from the existing facility, first and foremost, is the enhancement of the containers themselves. Currently, most of the containers that are collected are just standard dumpsters with holes in them that you can put material in. What we want to do is to put these 30-yard containers in that have size-selected holes. So, basically, you can't put materials in that are too large or non-programmatic. So that we've noted by doing some test runs on these at the North Lake site, the quality of the material within these dumpsters are significantly cleaner. There will be video as well as time-controlled gates. So sunrise to sunset as opposed to 24 hours a day. In the dark of night, you don't have somebody coming in and illegally dumping. It would be actually closed down at that point. One of the things that we were thinking about, though, is that with the significant amount of outside residents that are using this at no charge to them, as well as the tremendous amount of illegal dumping, we've got to get a handle on this. We thought about piloting a mobile recycling center throughout the city over the next year, working to host events basically 26 times a year. So every other Saturday, from about 9 in the morning to 12 noon, we would basically hopscotch around the city, one site a weekend, start using recreation centers, park sites, city facilities, basically to host these recycle events. We would put two or three cans out on the ground, have city staff there to help assist residents answer any questions they have about recycling and appropriate practices. And as this thing potentially works towards success, we can expand this, working with Keep Denton Beautiful Sustainability, add additional services such as appliances, home chemical collections, do tree giveaways at these areas. I think the opportunity to have that single point of contact with residents is greatly increased at this point. So when we look at the finances between the two analyses, when we look at our single unstaffed site at North Lakes currently, if we keep going down the road with the debt service that we've discussed, we're spending about $157,000 a year to operate and manage these sites. And that does include the revenue offset of slightly more than $6,000 that we receive off the sale of those recycled material. We would anticipate that by moving to mobile staff, staff mobile collections, we could actually reduce that to about $44,000, almost $45,000 a year with, again, that commodity with no impact, commodity revenue offset. Annual savings of slightly more than $112,000. When you look what's happening regionally, you'll notice that most cities are actually shying away from unstaffed type of facilities or events. Again, it goes back to illegal dumping, very poor recovery due to contamination. By using staff site staffed events, whether it be at transfer stations, drop off stations, at their landfills, or again, like we're talking about potentially implementing pilot mobile sites, staff sites, again, create a cleaner product and again, have a much better result in the contamination sector. So to that end, we have two options to consider for recommendation. The first one, which staff recommends is to actually keep the staff site at the landfill open and collecting material as we currently are, but actually close the unstaffed North Lakes Recycle Center. What we would again do for about the next year, at least through the opportunity to complete our solid waste management strategy and then move forward based on those recommendations, is go ahead and pilot our new mobile recycling center program and then evaluate it as we move forward in our solid waste strategy. The second option, again, we can continue going down, expanding the capacity at the landfill and North Lake site, create additional capacity with the customized dumpsters, try to double down again on our education program, targeting really the empty, clean, and dry moniker on the programmatic material. Again, installing cameras, fencing, but again, we would continue to evaluate this for appropriateness as part of our solid waste strategy. With that, I would answer any questions you might have and seek a recommendation from the board. I had just a quick question. Yes, sir. Now, there is going to be a new North Lakes Recycling Center, correct? Currently, that is the plan. However, if we go into this pilot, our recommendation would be to close the North Lake site only for several reasons. First of all, because of the illegal dumping and the contamination that we are seeing at the site and in the bin, but also because of the amount of material that actually would be able to be recycled, actually manage that material through the mobile sites as opposed to North Lakes. Hey, Brian, just really quick, could you drop down your presentation? I can do that. That way everybody can be seen. There we go. Thank you. Okay, I understand. So the option then is to do away completely with North Lakes? Correct. Do away completely with North Lakes, but keep the landfill site operational. And use the mobile. And use the mobile, correct. Has there been any community survey done on how residents, especially residents in that part of town, might feel about that? No, we have not done any sort of outreach at this point, but based on the amount of what we're seeing also from our landfill site, we're seeing residents come in from all areas of the city, not just from the area around the landfill. So again, we feel that by doing it this way, the mobile sites actually brings the Recycle Center closer to the neighborhoods as opposed to where the North Lakes side is. One thing I noticed, even though I get residential recycling pickups every week, is myself and a lot of other folks were using North Lakes and the cupboard when it was open, the cupboard site, for big bulky cardboard and things like that that couldn't fit well into recycling carts. So I mean, I know that people take advantage of both. Even though they have the curbside, they also use the recycling centers like North Lake. I don't think it's a correct impression if there is one, but a person who gets residential recycling just does that. They also use the actual recycling centers. Russ, did you have a question? Yes, a comment. I like the idea of the mobile recycling effort. Not only would that give you a larger amount of recyclables that have some value, but it's a continuing education thing for a lot of residents. And I think I looked at your proposed sites there. Might I suggest you drive it out here to Ropes and Ranch sometime? We have a big parking area and the people out here a lot of times throw things in their carts simply because they're ignorant of the requirements for having a valuable recyclable item. And so you could gain some ground there, I think. And again, the map that we showed, I don't think was exclusive on the sites. It was just to show an example. And again, I think we would fully embrace bringing it out to Ropes and Ranch and other areas that may be satellite concentrations of the population. I think, Charlie, did you have a question? A comment. I echo Russ's comment and also on the mobile recycling. I like the idea. I think the idea of every other Saturday will be a lot more problematic for people. I think if I learned that Woodley Field had recycling every Friday, even if the hours were a little shorter, or North Lakes was every Thursday or whatever day. But the idea of doing every other week, you have to go to a website, you have to look up whether this is your week or not. And I think the frustration of having people come on the wrong week probably outweighs the benefit. I would encourage you to consider doing it every week. And second, if a lot of our recyclers are coming from Denton County, I think it makes sense for us to encourage Denton County to participate in the cost of the center. I think it's valuable to the county, particularly the unincorporated areas to have this kind of service available to people. And maybe they'd kick in some of that 150 grand a year for one of these sites that it costs to do that. Third comment and then I'll be done. Education in terms of the non-programmatic materials. You know, what should you do with that hundred pound aluminum item that you have? What should you do with your 20 pounds of copper? Maybe on the city website, if we're not going to process that, we should let people who do buy use materials advertise what they offer as an alternative. Because I do feel bad throwing away something that has 10 or 15 or 20 pounds of aluminum in it. I know somebody would like to have that. I just don't know who that is. All right. Karen had her hand up. Oh, yeah. Just to sort of follow up on Carly's last question. Do you, Ryan, do you have an idea of what outreach and education and advertising you're going to do for the mobile sites or is it too early? Because you're going to have to reach people who, well, I don't know. I suppose you could go on the solid waste bill or something like that, but how are you going to reach everybody who's going to be eligible for the mobile sites? Well, again, I think first and foremost, our web presence and social media outreach, while it's been successful, I think that would be our first hold. Citizens Connection putting out a 90-day calendar, which would say, you know, here's the next three months' worth of sites. We would put things in the bill and then next door and also work closely with neighborhood associations and homeowners associations so that they can communicate with their residents when this mobile unit would be in the area. But again, and also we have specific outreach that we do with our multifamily. As a reminder, again, every resident, single family resident in the city of Denton has access to curbside recycling. What we're really wanting to focus on, again, is those who either choose not to or have that extra material. So focusing very closely with our multifamily communities to manage that material in an appropriate manner. Okay. Yeah, okay. You're muted. Sorry, I had a question about the Mobile Recycling Center. It's called a pilot program. Correct. And most pilot programs have a time limit or a time framework. What is the time framework for this pilot and what will happen if it is not successful? What we anticipate is this pilot will run for a year and in that year time is when we will be putting together our solid waste strategy. And from the strategy will flow what our ultimate determination will be on how we manage either mobile or fixed sites with regards to recycling, illegal dumping, things of that nature. So this is a really a stop gap till we get through the solid waste strategy and then we move forward with recommendations and strategy. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So you need direct, I am going to say I'm in favor of option one. You know, I have a background in solid waste and we have never been successful in unstaffed drop off centers, even with cameras. So you know who did it, but you can't really do anything about it and you can't go after them. So I really think the mobile program will be a success. We did it back in Minnesota and it was a success. So I'm a hundred percent behind that one. I think most of you have already said option one. Yeah, I'll go with options. Okay. All right. I think we have the direction we need. Okay. All right. Very good. Well, that is the agenda. So do we have a motion to adjourn? Don't move. Okay. We're adjourned.