On May 20, 2026, the Hollywood City Commission held a workshop to discuss the Solid Waste Authority (SWA) master plan and the proposed interlocal agreement (ILA). The meeting featured presentations from Sam May, Executive Director of the Broward County Solid Waste Authority, and the SWA Interim Director, along with a consultant. Commissioners explored the plan's economics, governance, opt-out provisions, and environmental goals. No votes were taken, but the workshop laid groundwork for a decision by an August 14, 2026 deadline.
Well, welcome and good morning, everyone. Today is Wednesday, uh May twentieth, twenty twenty-six. We're here for a uh City Commission workshop to discuss the Solid Waste Authority, uh, where they are in the point in time, what they are proposing to the city, um, and just the discussion about uh their goals and how that fits the goals of the city of Hollywood. I know we're gonna have uh the city manager introduce uh staff and the SWA to uh discuss where they are in this point in time. We all know there's a uh an August uh timetable for cities to decide if they're in or out of this uh current interlocal agreement that's proposed as modified a couple of days ago. And uh it's a big undertaking for us to uh discuss um, you know, this what we're being asked for, which is a very, very long uh commitment in time um for this uh service. And so looking forward to learning uh more about where the SWA is today, what they're proposing, uh, the knowns and the unknowns, uh, and how we might uh consider uh and when this will come back uh to the city commission for an up or down decision in uh weeks and uh weeks ahead. So yielding the floor to the city manager. Good morning, uh mayor, Vice Mayor, and City Commissioners. We are here this morning for a workshop to review the master plan and work that has been done since the city of Hollywood joined joined with Broward County and twenty-eight other municipalities back in twenty twenty-three to form the Solid Waste Authority. As you know, Commissioner Shoeham has been serving on the executive committee along with a number of other elected officials from uh cities throughout the county, including uh City of Sunrise Mayor Mike Ryan, who uh has been chairing the executive committee and is here this morning. Our public works director, Joseph Kroll has also been an active participant. Joseph is not able to be here this morning due to a death in his family, and he's on approved leave. Good morning, Mayor Advice, Mayor Commissioners, members of the public and fellow city staff, Javon Douglas, Assistant City Manager. The purpose of this morning workshop is to provide an information overview of the Solid Waste Authority of Broad County, referred to as the SWA and the proposed master plan currently being discussed among Brown County municipalities. As the Commission is aware, Broad County continues to face challenges related to future disposal capacity, recycling requirements, and rising operational costs. The SWA master plan was developed to explore a more coordinated countywide approach, focused on long-term planning, recycling, expansion, and future infrastructure needs. Today's workshop is intended to provide information regarding SOBA strategies so the Commission can continue evaluating the initiative and ask questions as the discussion move forward. At this time, I'd like to take the time to turn to introduce Mike Ryan, City of Sunrise Mayor and Chair of the Solid Waste Authority Board. Good morning, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commission, staff, and everyone who has been involved in this process. It's been a long time since we first met in the Solid Waste Working Group, as we gathered in almost what appeared and felt like a constitutional convention with tables set up of all the cities and us all gathering. And we did that because it probably was historic, because we recognize that we were in a failure process. To take some background to this, where we are today, we are in a trash crisis. And this trash crisis is not entirely the making of any of us here. It is a historic problem that we inherited. And we did the best we could for many years, but what we face today, as you know the data as well as anyone, we produce five million tons of trash annually here in Brower County. That's 20,000 pounds per minute. It is like throwing away three or four or five cars every minute of every day of every year. And we are failing in every metric. We're failing in our ability to control our economic destiny. We're failing in relying on landfilling and waste energy, and we are failing in meeting our environmental and paramount social policy goals of recycling. Now, Hollywood has been a leader. It has worked so hard in so many different programs, from composting to recycling. You understand as a coastal city how important it is that we are mindful of the environmental impacts of the decisions we make. And as for this, for us on the West, we we have the Everglades. So from the seagrass to the sawgrass, we share the same mission. We are in the midst of a threatening economic crisis. We have ceded our power, our economic strength, our destiny to industry forces, to monopolistic forces in some cases, and in the vagaries more importantly, of the market shifts through short-term contracts and us competing. We have lost the opportunity to control our destiny economically and socially, and our trash infrastructure has not been what we need to succeed. To understand how we got here, though, and I know you know this, but most of the public doesn't. Fifty years ago, decisions were made that doomed us to this moment on May 20th, 2026 in this city chamber. And that decision that was made then was that we would not own any of the important infrastructure. But we weren't alone at that moment in time. Palm Beach County was in the identical position. They had the same problem with a growing trash issue. They didn't own the infrastructure. They went one way, and we went the other. We decided to go by agreement where the county was in charge. If we remember the resource recovery board, we had four municipal advisory board members, advisory board members, and the county made every decision. And along the way, when we built, we paid for the brick and mortar for the waste to energy plants, the two plants that existed, and we paid the mortgage on that.