Go ahead and call this meeting of the fiscal committee, special fiscal committee to order on September 18th, 831.

If you want to go around the table and say who we are first, public south there, that's a three.

Last Sears, Director of Sanitation Department.

Adam Wilson, public works director.

Is it about the Mox Med City Council District?

Sophia in the Dow Text Office.

Okay.

So I just opened up my computer, analyzed the whole thing and restarted somehow overnight.

So I'll bring up my agenda.

But I think basically we need to prove the agenda.

And then we have sanitation here to discuss their memo presentations, questions and comments from the committee, and then public comment, and then we need to get back to our elephant official salary discussion and public comment on that, have not on scheduling.

And then adjournment.

So any concerns or additions to the agenda.

Great, then we'll proceed like that.

And I will hand it over to our wonderful sanitation related folks over here who are going to tell us all the things.

Great.

But it's kind of ironic that we're in here today to talk sanitation rates because when this room first became a conference room in 2016-2017, we sat around this table for months and months on end with the sanitation modernization advisory committee.

We did not call it the SMAC, but it was when we first looked at how to revamp and modernize sanitation.

And that's a weekly service for both trash recycle and then yard waste during uh yard waste season.

Um and so uh since that kind of big switch over in 2017, uh we have seen we we've really had great um uh benefits from the new programs, lower injury rates, uh, I think customer satisfaction is higher.

I was uh sitting at a table with some folks yesterday at a luncheon, and the topic of conversation when it came to public works and sanitation was how glad they were that they didn't have to still go to the grocery store and buy stickers for uh collection.

So um while we have a much better system in place for both residents and staff, uh it's a more expensive system, and everything's more expensive right now, as you folks um have been seeing in our budget requests and everything.

Um we were asked to put together from the fiscal committee um some projections on what it would look like to eliminate the general fund support for the sanitation division and what those fiscal impacts would be.

Um so uh we have set a sent off a memo uh to the fiscal committee and to the council that outlines um what uh what we considered in all of this um uh to set those rates uh a couple big factors to recognize up front.

Um everything is simply more expensive right now.

Um it's not just that trucks that used to be $360,000 or $450,000 now, um, but all of the supplies across the board for sanitation are more expensive.

Um fuel.

Uh we all know what's going on with fuel uh costs across the country.

Um those are hitting us directly.

So when we're we had been averaging between 600,000 and a million dollars in general fund support, it's looking more like a million and a half uh for 2026 here and into the future.

Um and so what we've um kind of worked on here is a uh proposed uh uh a rate structure for council uh to consider that would um at the council's request.

We put together a um projection here of what it would look like to eliminate the general fund support over a three-year period.

Um, so those are all outlined in the tables that are in uh the memo.

Um to just cut to the meat of it, what that looks like to um sanitation, um the the residents that use our sanitation service, our uh monthly costs for our uh so we're continuing to propose rates that are based on your cart size for trash, uh the 35 gallon, 64 gallon or 98 gallon.

Um what we would uh the proposed increases um from 26 to 27 are um gonna look like uh so from $9.66 for a 35 gallon up to 1072 um for a 68 gallon or 64 gallon from about 1750 to 1940, and then 96 gallon would go up to 29.11 cents.

You'll see three subsequent charts that outline what that would look like for 28 and 29.

Um then also um as we look at this ordinance update, we would also look at updating the costs for uh moving on to page like 10 in the memo would be uh a chart that outlines what how we would change rates for yard waste, large item appliances, uh cart exchanges, and extra pickups.

Um, you know, this is a uh rate proposal that um it looks like it's about 12% the first year, 16% the second, and 12% again the third year.

Um, and that does capture the amount of revenue by the third year to cover the whole cost of the system with the caveat it that what will happen with costs going into the future is still somewhat of an unknown.

Um there's a lot of information in this memo.

Um I think probably the best way we could go about this is to just go through questions that the council committee has and let us um try to answer those as we're able to today and and such.

But Gretchen, Jeff, do you have anything you want to add on this topic?

I mean, it's um you know, there's a lot covered in the memo here.

I would just call our attention to the end where we're comparing to market rates and what's available in the market, and note that you know, in the market, if you're getting the largest size crash and you don't need weekly recycling pickup, we can you know, we're on par-ish with those um services, but the majority of if you're looking at the 257 proposed rates chart, um, if that shows the total carts of inventory for 34 gallons, 64, 96 gallon, um, the majority of Bloomington residents choose the smaller size.

And so as we think about our environmental goals and uh what our costs are to residents and whether we're providing them a good value for a city service compared to what they can get on the market and covering the costs.

I just think we should keep that in mind that um one of our citywide goals, obviously, is to encourage people to make less trash and offering smaller carts is a really important piece of that.

And it also lowers their costs.

So anyone who's concerned about the cost of their trash, uh making less trash pays pays off for a resident.

And then I guess just the other this is just sort of a um another piece of information to consider uh as far as the numbers go.

I I've been looking at your uh kind of monthly expenses versus revenues, taking out the fleet set rate, you know, taking out any capital expenditures and taking out the uh transfers from the general fund.

You're basically running both from last year and this year around a 40,000 monthly deficit in just basic operations.

I'm saying 43,000 last year, 41 that 42,000 this year.

So the numbers are actually a month, yeah, per month uh deficit.

And that again, that's just that's basic operations.

Does that kind of jive with what you guys are saying?

Also, uh a couple other things to note.

Um with the with any um uh equipment intensive uh division of public works or department of the city, um, one of the biggest things we can do to stay ahead of um increased costs in the future is to have a really strong capital replacement program.

We need to replace at least one truck every year.

Um, with the rising costs that we've been seeing, we've not been able to keep up with that um uh like we would like.

Um it's we're about one year behind right now.