Hey Denver, it's time for this biweekly meeting of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of Denver City Council.

Join us for the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee starting now.

It doesn't look like we're on the air yet.

Oh, there we are.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Today is Wednesday, December 3rd.

My name is Chantel and Lewis, and I serve as your Denver City Council Person for District 8.

And I'm excited to chair this committee.

We'll start with a round of introductions, and we'll start with the folks who are online.

I understand we have at least two folks online.

Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver Snowden District 2.

Welcome, Kevin.

Good afternoon, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver District 4.

Thank you.

And then we'll go into the room, Councilwoman.

Councilman Flora Vitras had lucky district seven.

Good afternoon, Paul Cashman, South Denver District 6, neither Schleet nor Snow.

No, the dark never mind.

I won't just I won't agree with that because things will stop me.

We only have one thing on our agenda in terms of action items, and that is from uh CASAR.

And so you all can introduce yourselves and jump in.

Thank you.

Uh I'm Jonathan Wachtel.

I'm the deputy executive director for the Office of Climate Action Sustainability and Resiliency.

And Justin Sykes, uh budget management office director.

You all are very sick of me by now.

And Madam Chair, we're never uh we're here today to discuss updating the disposable, the allowable uses for the disposable bag fee special revenue fund.

So I have a brief presentation, and we also have staff from CASER and some other agencies available to answer questions if um if you have them and uh they bring a lot of subject matter expertise.

Um so with that I will I will jump right in.

Uh I want to start by just uh quick reminder of the disposable bag fee, the disposable bag fee uh program that exists currently.

Um, and then I'll talk a little bit about the current allowed uses and the proposed changes, and then we can take questions.

Uh so to start, I'll um just do the quick overview of what what what the disposable bag fee is.

And I want to just um flag that this was really a um uh a program that was led by city council.

It's very forward thinking.

Uh there were some other communities that had programs like this, but Denver definitely joined um in a group of of early cities um addressing disposable bags and the pollution and environmental impacts from that.

And so in 2021, council adopted a fee on all uh disposable bags that were being provided at checkout in retail stores in the city and county of Denver.

Um and that's a 10 cent fee per bag, of which 60 percent of that or six cents of that dime comes to the city, remitted to the city, and 40 percent or four cents is main is kept by the business to cover the cost of administering that um for their business.

Uh we were back uh to city council in 2024 to update some of the nuanced language of that ordinance after the state of Colorado passed uh you know uh legislation that banned plastic bags, um, and specifically that actually had an end date on when stores could no longer provide disposable plastic bags.

So there was a brief update.

Um, and just so that everyone's on the same page.

Your paper bags now are still allowed, but also still but do require that 10 cent fee.

Why was this put in place?

The real intent as we went back to the records and really looked at the discussion that council had at the time.

Um the real intent here was to create a financial signal and incentive to help change behavior to reduce the number of people that were using single-use bags, uh help people start really being diligent about bringing their own bags or passing on the bag.

Um, and it has been highly effective.

So uh we've seen a 50% reduction in the total disposable bags being used in the city of County Dent.

We're talking over 50 million plastic bags that have been avoided because of this program.

So this has been highly effective, and I want to make sure to be really clear that none of the proposed changes we're bringing forward would do anything to put at risk the continued administration education outreach and support that's resulted in this type of effective program.

Uh, quick snapshot of what the revenues have looked like.

Um, you know, this started in 2021, and we needed to build.

And because the behavior change is occurring, we're seeing declining revenue, and that's okay.

That's the whole intent here.

Um, and we anticipate it to continue to decline in future years.

So I talked about the 50% reduction in total disposable bag usage.

We've seen 99% compliance.

That's also amazing.

This has been a highly successful program.

Keep saying that, but I think it's really uh should feel good for city council to know that that their policy has really led to measurable impact here.

Um, and we've used funds to do education to do outreach to provide free reusable bags to cut down costs for residents and to pilot innovative programs for additional support for reducing and minimizing the use of single-use disposable products.

So programs like when you've gone to venues and you've had a reusable cup instead of a disposable cup for a beverage, things like that we've been able to pilot.