The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of the Denver City Council, chaired by Flor Alvidrez, met on August 5, 2026, at 1:30 PM. The main agenda item was a briefing on the Universal Recycling and Composting Ordinance (URCO), followed by the approval of ten consent items related to various infrastructure and airport contracts.
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. My name is Flora Alvides. I am the chair of the Transportation Infrastructure and Infrastructure Committee. And I would like to start with council introductions to my rate. Good afternoon. Chris Hines, Denver's predicted. Kevin Flynn, Southwestern District 2. Great. So this is only a briefing, not an action item. So I think we're good to proceed with a quorum. If our visitors from CASAR want to introduce themselves and take it away. Great, wonderful. My name is Tay Dunkley, and I'm with Katherine and I'm our manager of Zero Waste and Circular Economy. And I'm Kelsey DeFrantia, Circular Economy Senior Administrator. And we just wanted to thank you for the invitation to come present and provide an update on the Universal Recycling and Composting Ordinance or ERCO as we'll refer to it. Last time we were here talking to this committee about this policy. It was a couple of our colleagues, and this was before the updated ordinance was adopted by city council. So a lot has happened between September 15th when the final changes were adopted and today. And so we are really happy to bring you all to speed on what has transpired. And while we, CASER are providing this update today, we are not the only entities involved with implementing this ordinance. There are actually eight different agencies involved, if not more, many of which are in the audience today and can't answer direct questions or on the line. And we are just really excited about the opportunity that this policy brings to Denver. This really expands access to services that have been a reality for residential customers for a really long time. And this really expands recycling and composting across all sectors. And I'd like to also make a special introduction of so CASER has recently hired a dedicated staff person to lead our components of Universal Recycling and Composting. And Christy Turner is in the room. She is our program manager for Universal Recycling and Composting. So really excited to have her on board. And with that, just wanted to run through the agenda for today. We know you all know a lot about this ordinance. We've been here before. It's been in front of council a couple times. And so we're gonna really give you just a brief background refresher on what the policy includes, provide some key milestones, talk about the different administrative foundations resources that we've been developing. So basically, what's happened since September 15th of last year up until now, and then looking forward to September 1st and then beyond. So we'll have hopefully plenty of time to answer questions as well. And with that, I'm gonna hand it over to Kelsey. So again, you have all been along through the ordinance updates, um, and so we'll do a very brief background. Uh, just as a reminder, our Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Services, single family homes and small apartment buildings, up to seven units. And so this ordinance is really meant to cover essentially everyone else. About 20 to 25% of the waste is generated by our DOTI customers, and then you know, up to 80% is covered by this ordinance from multifamily residential buildings, non-residential buildings, food businesses, public permitted events, and public and permitted construction and demolition activities. Um and so this ordinance is really about expanding access to uh waste aversion to recycling and composting and really implementing what was written by the community and passed by community members. And we know that the opportunity that this creates for Denver is huge. Um, for example, tens of thousands of multifamily residential um tenants, for example, will have access to recycling and composting. The vast majority of our attendees at public permitted events will have access to recycle or compost. Um, but we also know that this is a major transition and a big lift for both the city and the community. Um, and so we've been working really hard to support that transition. Because so many different entities are covered by this ordinance. We have a number of different agencies, as Tay mentioned, involved in implementation.