Music I'm out. Thank you. We'll go ahead and get started. This is the special Public Safety Committee meeting, October 15, 2013, and it's now a couple minutes after 11. The first item on the agenda would be the approval of summary. If I could have a motion, please. I have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, say aye. Any opposed? Thank you. And next on the agenda is the tenant transition and household disposal placed in committee by Council Member Ford. And we heard this item a couple months ago and had asked the Division of Waste Management, Steve Feast, director, to come back with a plan. Do you want to add anything, Council Member Ford? Yes, Council Member Henson. I look forward to the presentation, and I very well may have some questions in regards to the policy around it, but I'm interested in hearing the operational recommendations as they stand that Mr. Feast will bring forward. Thank you. Steve, you? Okay, thank you. I wanted to just get started here. I guess in August meeting we were asked to come back with a proposal on 24-hour response in terms of bulky materials. I'm sorry, we've got the information here on the screen here. We'll be right in just a second. Thank you. We're going to talk about what we do now, the overall cost of the 24-hour response system, and then some proposals for evictions and some ways that we can help with move-in, move-out situations. So this is what we pick up now without any calls. These are anything that's outside the car, extra bags, furniture, mattresses, small appliances, televisions, other items. This is what we have picked up ever since I've been here, which is about 25 years. And we pick up these items without calls. We pick them up on a regular pickup day. And these are the items that we pick up with calls or with a referral from the driver. we have tires and mattresses and appliances small animal disposal and all these items really present some challenge for us they can't go into regular waste mattresses can have bed bugs in them we don't want our drivers and our guys exposed to these items the appliances can have freon in them and have to have the freon drain from them and the tires obviously can't go into a landfill And so all these items have to be picked up with a separate truck other than our regular collection trucks. And so these require either the resident to call in or oftentimes the resident does not call in. And our route driver finds them and refers them to our dispatch office, and then we pick them up from there. And so at this point we have about a 48-hour response time. so here's the breakdown of what we pick up without calls on a given week about 3,000 service points versus what we pick up with calls about 135 service points so that's pretty much the breakdown this is an average it will fluctuate from time to time extra set out is seasonal and it is usually a little lighter this time of year it's heavier in the spring, it's heavier around the holidays things of that nature here's a kind of a comparison just for perspective about as to how we stack up against other cities you notice Austin, Texas and Louisville pick up bulky materials twice a year other communities Cincinnati, Columbus Owensboro, Georgetown they do a call in basis only and it varies from one to two weeks once a month and the request I guess the overall response is very based on the availability of labor so it's not a regular and it's not a standard time. And if you notice, some of these that have frequent collection, like Owensboro that does three to five days response, there's an extra fee assessed to all those residents. Okay, so we're going to talk about the cost. We spent a bit of time trying to figure out exactly how much this was going to cost us. And like any frequent response, you have to be geared up for the worst-case scenario. And a 24-hour response time means that I think one of the main assumptions that we have to look at here is, and this is really not listed here, is there is not an even distribution of calls in a given week. if we're going to take calls from the general public, we're moving from a system that doesn't require residents to call to a system that does require residents to call, or at least gives that as an option. Because we would still pick up on the regular pickup day, on the regular service day. But if we're going to offer that as an option for residents and try to promote it from an educational standpoint that residents know that they have that option, then we will expect that on any given day that we may have as much as 60% of the set-outs. On the previous slide we had 3,000 set-outs. So as many as 1,800 set-outs we would have to be prepared to pick up on any given day. We think that most of these set-outs are going to probably occur very early in the week because you think about it and residents are going to generate most of this bulky material over the weekend. And so this is going to necessitate that we have people on Sunday come in with LexCall to process these calls. We're going to have to have folks in Waste Management to come in and process and dispatch calls so that Monday morning we're going to be ready to respond to these calls. So one of the other assumptions we made was 100 stops per day. the only measure that we had the only current measure that we had was our mattress truck which picks up about 50 calls per day on a response basis or up to about 50 calls per day and we figured that these trucks could do twice that because the higher density routes that they would have so we're going to do two employees with rear loader trucks. Next slide. So here's the overall cost. You can see it's on an annual basis. We believe it would be over $3.7 million. We've got an additional call takers for LexCall, 23 rear loader trucks, yearly truck maintenance. variety of items that we've worked with other entities to try to come up with these cost figures here. And so while this is our best estimate here, and we've spent a good bit of time here actually putting these numbers together to try to figure out exactly how we would go about this, but this is our best guess. there's some other obstacles obviously than other than just the cost we currently struggle to have enough trucks on a daily basis to to cover the existing routes as far as and also with even with the personnel resources we still have 23 vacancies struggle to get those filled and obviously this is going to impact our division of fleet services and what we have not estimated within this cost is the cost of educating residents and the fact that they could actually call in because all this is predicated on residents knowing that they can call in and even though we try to have residents call in even for used appliances and tires and things of that nature a lot of times they don't call in because they're not used to doing that. And it's a very nuanced message that you would have to provide. And so I guess the other implication is the potential negative implication for our current enforcement activity. If we have a situation where we have a 24-hour response time, then every day is essentially, for a resident's standpoint, a set-out day for bulky items. And I think that's why you see, going back on three or four slides back from the other cities, they've kind of left the high-frequency situation moving toward an enforcement situation to try to resolve the issue. And there's kind of a clear thought amongst the folks that I talk to and amongst people that I've known for years that the higher the frequency of collection, the worse the problem is because the message is given to the residents, I can set it out whenever I want to. The issue of calling is quite another point. so i think we can do some things with the worst problems and i think that's that's what gets our attention as far as the the evictions the the move in move out situations often it's not the single bag or the the one share that gets our issues but it's the it's it's the real problems that that we find. And so what we can do, and I will tell you that while we've had some initial conversations with the constable's office, we've not talked to the sheriff's office, but we've talked a couple of times to the constable's office, and what we can do is to offer to the constable's office or to the sheriff's office when they have an eviction, they let us know in advance, and we will dispatch a loaner box within three hours and that loaner box will be there. Residents can put it in that box and it will keep it off the street. I think it will deter residents from getting at that material because one of the problems that we have is when people set stuff out, whether it's a move-in, move-out situation or an eviction, it's not the initial set-out. It is when people get into that and they start pulling through it and really make a horrible mess. And that's why I think it's actually in this committee. Then it becomes a public safety issue. And we're certainly willing to work, to respond. And I don't want to put words in the constable's mouth here, because they said they'd be willing to work with us, but we haven't got into any specifics. I think we should charge for our services, but that's up to you. I would recommend an ordinance that would have mandatory fees for the homeowners, but it would be at the discretion of the sheriff's office or the constable's office to whether or not we should dispatch anything. And the main thing is that we get this box out there before they start moving materials out on the street so that we can avoid that mess. As far as move-in, move-out situations, I think we can do a better job with our loan-in box. Right now we have about a five- to six-week wait on our loan-in box service for residents that call in. And that's because it's a popular program. We've scoped it at that level. But I think if we have situations where we have move-in or move-out needs, we will gladly work with them and can expedite the service. This will probably require an extra truck, an extra person. I think the evictions, according to the consul's office, it's only five or six per month. That would probably need our services. But with the move-in, move-out situation, we may have more. And so we may have to wait until we get an extra truck, an extra person to respond to those needs. And I guess the other thing is we'd like to investigate having a convenient drop-off location for residents to bring their materials. because that's one of the things that I noticed that we're really missing here is we don't have convenient hours. If you're moving out over the weekend, we really don't have an option for residents to use, and so that's something that we will investigate here to see if we can move forward on that. Okay, and here's a couple of slides, and I know there's another ordinance that's been drafted here, and we drafted our own here. So we want to make sure that everybody understands that the ordinance as it stands is kind of confusing. I don't know exactly how it got there, but it is not reflective. This particular passage here is not reflective of the service we provide now nor the service we've ever provided in the past. And so we wanted to go ahead and revise that. If you can move forward to the next slide there. Okay. This just says that we're going to pick up, like I explained back in there, we're going to accept call-ins for the mattresses and appliances and dead animals and tires, and then we will respond in an expeditious way, hopefully within a 48-hour operational period. so um the i know the there was another ordinance that was drafted but it still used the the term special collections which we haven't done for a quarter of a century quite honestly we we've moved away from that and um we really i don't recall us ever doing truly special collections I think the special collections were only for small animal carcasses and certain items like tires. Somehow the language or the terms of televisions and metals and things of that nature got mixed in with that, and that's not what we have done ever. So I just wanted to confirm there. So that's it. That's all I have. I'll be glad to entertain any questions that you may have. Thank you. We have several council members that have signed up. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Chair. I have several questions, and I perhaps will need to circle back after this five-minute segment expires. I want to thank Steve for his presentation. this is a very complicated issue that we've worked on a great deal before we brought it to committee in August and I want to be clear with the committee that we're really studying a policy issue this is how we're going to reconcile the operational as it goes on right now and I'm not going to stand here to refute Steve's handle on what happens operationally But policy lies with us, and I really want us to focus on Section 1614, which is special collections in our code of ordinance. Steve is correct. He just mentioned about 25 years. It was first codified in 1983, but it was updated in 1999. And I implore us to consider making the necessary changes here in 2013, hopefully 14 if it carries that long. First thing I want to be clear of, my intent was never 24 hour response. That's impractical. And I don't know where Steve got that idea from in response to this presentation. But I think I said that very clearly at the last committee, is that we're not asking for a 24 hour response. Of the things that we studied, we do have a 24-hour emergency abatement that the Division of Code Enforcement, that this council passed in February, I believe, and the Division of Code Enforcement goes. But what I do think is that we have set-outs every day of the week in this community in comparison to the once-a-week pickup that we have in our community. So that very well means that we could have large, bulky items set-outs, household set-outs, For whatever reason, four to five days in duration, I think we need to keep the special collection, which basically allows for any citizen, if they have the need for a special collection outside of their once-a-week pickup, to call in 24 hours, to call in a 24-hour notice. and then I would think a reasonable time would be 48 to 72 hours to respond. Let's go back to slide 8, and I'll start there before my time runs out. If we can go back to page 8, I'm sorry. Explain this chart for me, Steve. You mentioned those 3,000 service points, page 8. Explain that chart for me. Is that basically representative of once-a-day pickup? Does that 3,000? Explain that for me. This is the typical number of bulky items, anything that's outside the cart. There was discussion last meeting about where we draw the line. There's really no demarcation other than putting once material is outside the cart, it's in our consideration a bulky material. So this represents the number of service points, the number of times we would have to stop and pick up bulky materials currently, on average, in a given week. How do you get to that number? Let me ask that 3,000. Is that based upon data derived from collections on regular service dates? Yes, we've assumed a 5% of a total residential refuse rate. We have bulky item trucks, and we use that data to arrive at that number. We assumed that 5% of everything that we pick up in terms of weight is bulky items. And so we translated that. We assumed that then the bulky materials would constitute an average weight of 50 pounds. And so using those two numbers, we calculated that we would have about 3,000 service points. Thank you, Steve. What that chart does not explain to me is how long the material has been at the curb. And that's the whole basis that I really want to get at, is that we have materials that are on the curb for far too long. And the longer they remain at the curb, they create a burden, a nuisance, and a public safety hazard to the community. The one last thing I want to say in the last 20 seconds, Madam Chair, and then I'll come back. The application of road carts. We're talking storage versus disposal. In the task force meetings that we had, the informal task force meetings, the constables let us know emphatically that their job is not to maintain storage. And we said that once things come to the right of way for us as a government service provider, that they become disposal. So how is it that we're going to go from a five to six week wait on a roll cart request? to now all of a sudden be able to turn around and get a road car out onto the street at the request of a constable in three hours. How is that going to work? Well, we will reserve some time in boxes there for that purpose. Right now we have a certain number of boxes that we send out every day, and so what we'll do is we'll reserve a certain number of boxes that are available that are held in case we get a request from the consul or sheriff's office to dispatch a box to a particular eviction. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll come back. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Chair. Good morning. Good morning. My question had to do with your calculation for 24-hour response. That's on page 11. Okay. I think one more page over. There you go. My question is, is that above and beyond the current expenditures we're making for bulky pickups, or is that for August? Yes. We would still, I think the clear indication that I got from the August meeting, that once a week was not enough, and so that we would maintain our collection of bulky materials on a regular collection day. So this was above and beyond what we would do. And this was when you go to a 24-hour response time. And just as a matter of point, we went back to the minutes just to clarify what we were being asked to do because we didn't want to spend a whole lot of time unless we were trying to hit the point that we were being asked to do. And so the main message that we got that the 24 hours was not enough, or that 72 hours, it was 24 hours and 72 hours. 72 hours was not frequent enough, and I really agree because we would pick up most of the materials on a 72-hour response system. It would pick up most of the materials anyway. Well, here was the reason I was asking about that. That's about $71,000 a week additional cost for picking up bulky items that we're already picking up, but we're just accelerating it from maybe 72 hours to a 24-hour situation. That doesn't seem to be real efficient, both from a cost basis and also from a standpoint of operationally. When our drivers that operate the regular trucks, not the bulky trucks, are they working a full shift or are they still on a program where they go out and pick up the trash and if they're done, they're done, and it doesn't matter how many hours it takes? They're on an incentive basis, and we did at one time, in particular when we were twice a week collection because we had the higher frequency pickup. Some days they only had 30% set out. They could only pick up what was out. And so our undertime has decreased dramatically to where it's pretty much nonexistent now. With our new routing system and everything, there's not a lot of undertime. And so we're working pretty full shifts. And as a matter of fact, some of our challenges right now is that we want to make sure that our drivers aren't out too late 5, 6, 7 o'clock at night when people are coming home. When your drivers go around and there's a bulky item like mattress, somebody puts that on the curb, do they call in and say, here's a bulky item, pick up and give them the address on it so you have that information as soon as the, of course the trucks are only going by once a week, but do they report that so you have that information on hand immediately? And our new route wear system, kind of the third phase, that we're not to yet will allow the driver to actually push a button, and if there's a mattress at a certain address, they will push that button, and it will go directly back to our dispatch office, and it will generate a service request for our customized route that will go out ideally to service it that same day. But the other issue is if our bulky truck goes by there on the regular collection day, obviously they're going to take care of that. As long as it's a mattress, as long as it's not bed bug infested, as long as it's not a tire or a refrigerator or a dead animal. Anything else is picked up that day of collection. Okay. The other question I had is when somebody, you know, defaults under their lease agreement and they become into a default mode, then the owner of the property goes to the court and gets that party dispossessed from the premises, and then the sheriff would come out, serve the papers, and then put all of the personal property on the street out there. To me, that is one of the – there are a couple of points there. It's a safety issue because that's a lot of stuff, and a lot of people come out and rummage through it trying to find something that's of value. Is there any way that you could work with the Sheriff's Department on a daily basis to know, they'd say we're going to try to dispossess these people and give you the addresses. Do you have a program like that going so you know to be alerted there's going to be an issue coming up like that? We would be more than happy to work with them. Like I say, we've worked at the Constable's Office. We have not specifically talked to the Sheriff's Office. I think they take the minority of the calls in terms of evictions, but they do take some. and we'll certainly be glad to work with either of them to handle the eviction scenario. We have in certain situations done that, but what we would hope to do is put some kind of system in place that we could respond. Well, you know, my district has less dispossessions than some of the other districts of Fayette County, But that seems to be where you hear the most complaint is that that material is set out, and it sits out there for several days, and it's a safety issue. Right. And it looks like that would be a focus point that maybe we should look at. My time has expired. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. Thank you. First of all, I want to say thank you, Mr. Feast, and also code enforcement, because move in and move out at the beginning and end of semesters in the U.K. area, this came to light because there was a big article in the paper about one on Broadway, But the neighborhoods in the 3rd District look like that during that time every semester, every year. And you all do an awesome job. And also to all the waste management collection folks, they go above and beyond. I've seen them take something out of a Herbie and put it in a Rosie because it's recyclable. And it's a thankless job, it's a dangerous job, and it's a dirty job. And they certainly aren't becoming millionaires doing it. So I want to thank you and everybody in your division and also code enforcement. One of the issues, as far as the constable and occasionally the sheriff's office, when they do that and they don't notify, and I think the constable, in my experience, has been one of the difficult ones in my district where they just do it, and sometimes on Friday afternoon, there's nothing you all can do about that if you don't know about it. And you have responded very quickly in those situations when I've called. But the other thing is that during the move-in and move-out time, the people in my district, the people, mostly young people moving out, just throw all their junk out. It's unbundled. It's often unsanitary. Code enforcement can go out there. But if someone puts a couch or mattresses or unbundled trash or et cetera out on the curb and nobody calls, you can't help that because the truck may not come along for three or four days. However, I know that Ms. Turley does a great job of citing folks. Aren't there citations issued when people put those things out there? We generally process about 20, 25 citations per month through our enforcement activity. That actually goes through enforcement. It goes through environmental policy. And I know we've talked about those citations and how many it takes before they're actually fined, and I think we should look at that fee structure. But it's certainly the homeowner's responsibility or the resident's responsibility to wait to put that out on the curb or call it in. And so I think more enforcement of citations and significant fines for those citations. I know during move-in and move-out time, I walk around the near-UK neighborhoods and knock on doors and say, hey, you know, got a big mess out here, they're not going to pick it up. You know, broken fluorescent bulbs and cracked toilets and mattresses are, you know. So I don't know that I think we need to look at the incentive for doing it right and some kind of consequence for people who put a mattress out there the day after collection and don't call it in or bags of stuff that people rummage through And Mr. Jarvis is here and can talk about, you know, sometimes it's dirty diapers or, I mean, it's unsanitary. So I think looking at this with a carrot and a stick and knowing that if somebody puts a couch out there and it stays there for several days and nobody calls it in and it's the day after a pickup, that's not waste management's fault. So I'd like to talk and explore those kind of citations and increasing those. And thank you all for your service. Thank you. And I'm out of time. Thank you. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to speak twice. I'm going to make just a few more comments, and then I'm going to ask perhaps to allow us to look more particularly into the policy. Steve, you said something that I think that I find, well, maybe I was mistaken. You just mentioned that 72-hour response, which is typical, is not good enough. I don't think that's ever been stated, that 72-hour response would not be good enough. That was in the minutes. Sorry? That was in the minutes, actually. What's not good enough is six days. if you have a pickup on Thursday and circumstances require you to dispose of materials from your home on Friday, it's not practical to wait until the next Thursday for that resident, for the neighborhood, for all involved to have it picked up. That's just where I stand. In that regard, 48 to 72 hours is better than six days any day of the week. I gave four points. And this not only applies to evictions, voluntary move-outs, normal clean-outs of property. If it comes to the right-of-way, it's disposal. And we should provide the service. We can enforce all day long, but we need to provide a more equitable service. I agree with Council Member Lawless. Our government has made an exception. Mayor Gray talks about exception management from time to time. They've made an exception to target the U.K. campus community on the move-in and move-out dates. That's great and fine. No worries. I also, like Diane, happen to represent downtown. How often do we pick up downtown, Steve? What is our collection schedule for the downtown? You're talking about the downtown business district? That's correct. Yes, sir. That's 11 times a week. Twice a day, six days a week. Yes, yes. Well, it's only once on Saturday or once on Sunday morning, but it's 11 times a week. And why do we do that? Why do we pick up twice a day, six times a week for the downtown residents? Why do we do that? Well, it's not downtown residents primarily. is businesses, and the general problem that we have with downtown is there really isn't any place for those businesses to place their waste to store it. It's an issue of storage for the downtown. Okay, and contrary to that, and I don't mean to be argumentative, but I feel strongly about this, But contrary to that, are we saying then hence that the residences, the single family and multifamily residences, we have the storage. Right-of-ways cannot be storage for bulky item waste four to five to six days a week. Madam Chair, if I can ask Attorney Santa to come forward, please. Mike has helped us on this. And I really want to turn our focus to Section 1614. Thank you, Mike. One thing that I'll say to lead into Mike, what we have here, again, is a conflict between operational and policy. We have, by de facto, made our operational practice that we're only going to pick up bulky items once a week. However, there's a caveat to that. We're also doing it piecemeal, which irritates me somewhat. We're saying that we will, however, go and retrieve items that are upholstered. So if there's a mattress, if there's a sofa, we will go outside of the once a day, once a week pickup to retrieve that items. But we will leave everything else that's bulky items out there. that's piecemeal. That's not very good. That's not the optimal service delivery. But right now we have an operational once a week and then we have a policy, an ordinance that says that the residents are allowed a special collection. I want to turn it over to Mike to say that. And before he says something, I don't sit here in support of taking away a service that's entitled to our citizens per ordinance. What I would like to do is for us to find a way operationally to meet the obligations of that service that we've codified to the citizens. One of the things we discussed in the several meetings we had was Section 1614C and the special pickups and the regular pickups, and it was kind of unclear whether the special pickup took the place. of the regular pickup. In other words, your regular pickup day is Wednesday. Well, your special pickup day is also going to be Wednesday, so you had to call on Tuesday to get your special pickup on Wednesday. What we want to do is clarify that you have your regular pickup day and in addition, you're allowed one special pickup day a week if you call 24 hours in advance. So that's what we clarified is that you can be allowed two pickups, a regular pickup day and a special pickup day if you call 24 hours in advance and in the ordinance that was changed we did not address when the response time would be because we didn't discuss that right so as to restate what mike said is right now we have regular collection and on regular collection you can bring your three-row carts and bulky items no call needed but the ordinance also says that you are afforded one special collection per week. Because, and this is what I contend, I do believe that we will need enforcement at times. I do believe we'll have folks that may abuse, but I tend to think that we have a lot of citizens that the circumstance requires them to bring the items to the curb per special collection when they need to bring it to the curb. Mike, can you share on the overhead the, I would like to take a look at the revised ordinance per Section 14 that the Attorney has provided for us. And I would like for us to consider that, Madam Chair. And I'm out of time for this speaking round. Council Member Lawless, do you want... We can... Do you have an ordinance you want to share? Yeah. I'm trying to look at the difference in what we have now for us to sign up and speak and follow up on that line. And following up on Councilmember Ford's comments. Before we go to that, I would like to just say again that, you know, The downtown business district does get that kind of pickup because they're serving maybe 500, 600 people in a night, dinner and drinks and et cetera. Obviously, we have to keep our downtown from smelling like a garbage pile. I'm not sure. And as far as UK area getting special treatment, I'm not sure they get special treatment. but I do know they have special, very dangerous situations because in most of the neighborhoods in my district that aren't around the U.K., if a couch or a mattress is left out, it doesn't get burned. But in some of those neighborhoods, it does, so it becomes an additional problem. So if you could explain the difference between the current language and the revised language. I can explain the difference between the current language and what's up on the board, because that's what I drafted. I did not draft what's in your packet. I don't know that I see that in the packet. Oh, it's not in the packet. No, it's up on the screen. Okay. The difference is the sentence that says calls must be made at least 24 hours in advance of the pickup. In our discussions in the meetings, we were unclear. To some of us that meant the special pickup and to some of us meant the regular scheduled pickup. So you can see we added the word special there. So now it says calls must be made at least 24 hours in advance of the requested special pickup. So you know you have to call for your special pickup, not the regular pickup. And then the remainder of the current language says there's a maximum of one special pickup per week. And, again, there is a disagreement in the meetings whether that meant you had an extra special pickup or the special pickup meant that was the same day as your regular pickup. So the last sentence clarifies that. There is a maximum of one special pickup per week in addition to the regular pickup. So that clarifies you get a regular pickup, which may be Tuesdays. If your regular pickup day is Tuesdays, that's your regular pickup. And you can have a special pickup any other time of the week, whether it be Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. So that clarifies you have to call before your special pickup, not your regular pickup, and you're allowed two pickups per week. And is that the calculation of $3,763,050 to implement? No. That I can't speak to. This language I put up there was what was discussed in our task force meetings. Let me clear something up on special day, like if you got garbage pickup that day, you put these things out on that day, they will pick that up for you. That's what special days mean on these kind of special pickups. To clear it up, if you put it out on a Wednesday and you get picked up on a Tuesday, that's not a special day. So I want everybody to understand, special day is the day you put your stuff out. You can put these kind of things out, and we will try to pick them up. It's not like we're coming in Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Is that correct, Steve? Do you want to come up and clear that up? I think what's happened here is when the, maybe in the last go-around, when the ordinance was changed, Furniture and small scrap metal items were left in the ordinance when it really shouldn't have been. That's not what we ever did. It's not what we do now. It's just not a service that we provide. We do provide special collections for appliances and mattresses and dead animals and tires, which do not fit into our system, which we can't put in our regular trucks. I think it's just a matter of it's a situation where these items were just left in the ordinance and it shouldn't have been. This is not reflective of what we've ever done in the past. That's the problem. And so we've got, I think, I'll just stop there. Well, Madam Chair, I'm out of time, but if I could just ask one more question. Okay. What we're seeing here is only 135 service points that were called in on average a week and 3,000 that were no call-ins. So I think, again, we have a situation where people aren't calling in. they leave them out there and unless a neighbor calls it in or it's put out there the same day or the day before the regular collection no i mean so i i don't know thank you council member ford thank you madam chair i want to implore to the committee that We've taken a lot of study in this. And if you get a chance, and perhaps we may need to do this at another meeting, Section 16 of the ordinance talks a lot about refuse. And I don't agree with what the Commissioner has just stated or what Director Feast has just stated because other sections of this ordinance clearly state that regular collection include garbage, recycling, yard waste, and bulk. It defines all those things. It says on your regular day, everything is regular collection. It says that in the ordinance. I can't get to it right now, but attorney can confirm it. We talked about this during those informal meetings. Special collection is bulky items that are defined in Section 14 that are required by the resident to be disposed of outside of your regular pickup day. That's the definition of a special collection. It's just that simple. And all I can tell is that we operationally are not following the law. Because operationally, residents can, and that chart on page 8 is skewed, I believe, because it does not indicate of those 3,000 service points how long they have been, what's the duration. of their time at the curb. I can contend to you that from the time they get to the curb and the time whenever it is that we come and pick it up, which operationally we seem bent on keeping it contained to the regular day. So what goes out on day one is not in the same condition. It could be in a legal condition, but that's not how we find it whenever we get there on the regular collection day. I think the figures in that 3.7 are erroneous. I don't think it takes all of that, and I think that it's been explained, and perhaps it does not require that. It's going to require investment, don't get me wrong, but it's not going to require a $3.7 million investment for a 24-hour response, which was never the intent of this issue. I would like for the committee, and I want to stop short of a motion, I think what Attorney Santer, who sat in all of those task force meetings with us, he clears up the language of the ordinance right now. There is no confusion, you guys. Unless we want to do away with special collection, unless we want to take away something we know is needed in our neighborhoods, we can eliminate Section 14. But if we want to clear up Section 14 of special collections, I make a motion, I will make a motion, that we discuss and consider the draft that Attorney Sander has brought forward. I graciously ask for a second for the purpose of discussion. Second. We have a motion and a second. Oh, that's right. Council Member Ford. We will need someone else to make that motion. So moved. Will you repeat the motion? The motion is to consider the revised language of Section 1614 as provided by Attorney Santer. And, Attorney, I'm going to ask if we can, if we can get copies of that real quickly to distribute to members of the committee, it would be helpful. But that's the motion, Madam Chair. Thank you. Is there any discussion on the motion? Council Member Lane. Thanks, Chair. I don't know that it will be 100% on the mark here, but I wanted to say that I agree with what Council Member Ford said, is that I think we should stick with our ordinance. And it seems to me how we could improve this is by communicating better with the people that we serve. For example, if you have mattresses, then maybe you should put them out the day that your regular garbage is picked up and maybe call in and alert solid waste that you have a special pickup. I think it's a communications issue that would help out, and then we would only have to focus on special emergency pickups when somebody gets dispossessed and there's a lot of stuff out on the street that's not anticipated, and that would eliminate a lot of these problems, I think, if we did something like that. So maybe that could all be put into an ordinance or clarified. And I know we have some money for promoting solid waste collection, so maybe we could address that idea and hopefully improve our system. So I haven't seen the ordinance, but I'm pretty confident I would be in favor of it, maybe worth a few tweaks in it. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Chair. Can we see a copy of the ordinance? Are we going to put it up on the overhead? Is it the same one that's in the packet? No, it's not the one that's in the packet. Somebody went to make a copy. Jennifer went to make copies of it for you all. Okay, because I think it's important to see it on the overhead for the public viewing. Right. When she gets back, we'll put one up there. I'll hold off on those questions, but I do have some concerns about the overview of what it would take to do a 24-hour response. I'm trying to understand. I know Commissioner Maloney is here, too. We're speaking to the motion. Right. I'm getting there. But if we currently don't have enough trucks and don't have enough people, then if we change the ordinance, as Council Member Ford suggested, then what happens? Do we still have to go out and hire people? Based on the amendment? Is that what you're saying? If we put this amendment up there? Yeah. This is above and beyond the service that we provide now, the baseline service. This is a service that we struggle to get people on a given day this morning to have trucks available from fleet services to do the existing service. So this is a service that's above and beyond what we do now. No, I understand that. So if we pass this motion that Councilman Myers, I think, actually made, or maybe Councilman Lane officially, then we're going to have to hire more people. Yeah, a lot. Yeah. And is this the motion up on the screen? Yeah. So, Mike, can you explain to me the difference in what we have now, what this means? In our committee meetings for several months, there was some discussion as to what the ordinance required. as it was written. I was instructed to clarify it so that it was clear to everyone that the citizen was allowed a regular pickup day, which would be Tuesday, and a special pickup if they called in 24 hours in advance. So that's what I did. I clarified it to make sure that you were aware you could have possibly two pickups in one week. That's all we did was clarify the language. Okay, and right now? There was no discussion to put anything in Section C about the response times. There's nothing in there about response time. And, Steve, what is it right now? How is this different from what you are currently doing right now? Materials that we respond to on calls, we covered that in the presentation, but the only materials that we respond by call to or by reference from drivers are mattresses, bed animals, tires, and appliances. To respond to when we add the language that we have here, when you add furniture, small scrap metal pieces, and then what actually comes into play here is there's never really just these items that are setting out. There's often bags that are setting out with these. Anytime that you have a bulky material set out, it's often, very often, not just one item. It is a variety of items here. So that's why I mentioned, I think, for whatever reason, when we revised the language back 15 years ago or something like that, the last time that we had a revision, for whatever reason, these items got left in there. And it wasn't reflective. You know, that was back when we were still doing twice-a-week pickup. We moved to once-a-week pickup in 2005. For whatever reason, furniture, small scrap metal pieces were not removed from the language and should have been. And I think that's the quandary that we get in. I think that's the confusion. But my point is you're already picking those up on regular pickup days. Yes. and if we're just saying in addition to the four things we're already picking up, we're going to add to it on a special pickup day these things. Yes. And you're saying that's going to cost more money and more manpower to do this based on 135 calls last year? No, the 135 calls were only for those materials that we've identified. The animals. Look back at that. I don't know if you can go back to the presentation I had. So you didn't track how many other things were with those particular items? On a given week, we only have 135 calls. Here we go. It's almost there. We only have 135 calls for the tires, mattresses, appliances, and small animal disposal. Can we get back to that bar graph? There we go. Here we go. This is what we receive call-ins on right now. This is what we respond to within 48 hours. The 3,000 service points is what we pick up. It constitutes the televisions, all the other items that don't require calls. And that's why the critical element here is that what the suggestion is to move from essentially a no-call situation to a call-in situation where we have to, everything has to go through LexCall. We're assuming that everything goes through LexCall. and then we have, LexCall sends it to us, and then we have to develop a route, a customized route at our dispatch center, and then we have to dispatch that route, you know, from address to address to address, hopping around the town to be able to service that in a quick response time. And so that's the reason for the cost. And we want to make sure, the last thing I want to do is say, okay, Steve, you go to it, $3.7 million or whatever it costs, and I could, you know, we did our best because this was not something that we've ever done before. Quite honestly, it's not something that any community ever does of our size. This doesn't happen. But the last thing I want to happen is for me to have to come back to you and say, we just don't have enough money to do this. we can't respond or, in fact, that we can't service the residents and the time that you've asked us to do. Okay. I'm out of time, but I will end on one question. Have you mentioned LexiCol? Have you talked to LexiCol? Yes. Because you're telling me they need another supervisor and four people to do this. Yeah. They're going to have to bring people in on the weekend because most of these calls are going to come in, we feel, on the weekend when people throw the material out. And so we want to make sure that they're going to have to have people to process all the calls and then dispatch them to us. We're going to have to have people on Sundays. It's not necessarily on Saturday, but we're going to have people on Sundays. And then through the week, we're going to have an increase in calls that we don't get right now. I'm not sure that's what we're talking about, though. And I'm not sure. We have 12 people on the next call now. You're saying they've got to add a third more staff just to handle this one issue in government? There's no way. I know Pat Tatum's here. We need to review those numbers. Okay. Thank you, Chair. Okay. Thank you. I would like to comment if the committee's okay. You know, I feel like we're not being heard. I know Council Member Ford and I have spoken about this several times. Council Member Lawless has similar issues where there's UK moving in and out, UK students. And I'm just saying that there is a problem in my district. I'm not sure that this motion will correct it. I'm not sure this ordinance will correct it. And I would be willing to bet you we could implement this ordinance and we would still have all kinds of items sitting on the curb that has not been called in. I just can't believe that people just are not calling the items in. So it doesn't matter if we have, let's call, operators sitting there or not. Nobody's going to call it in because they don't know the rules. So I'm just asking for a solution, whether we, and I can give you a certain area in my district that are, you know, I mean, I talk with the enforcement officers every week, or maybe not every week, but at least twice a month, and they're like, we're going to be in the area. It's not working. We need something that works. So, Richard, if you care to come. We're supposed to be. We have a motion on the floor. And I don't want to confuse anything on this, but I agree with what you said, and that's why we have enforcement officers on days that they put stuff out. Last year, when we had this problem with Diane, we passed out David Jarvis and Steve sent out a notice. If you send these out and they're not out on the right day, we will start finding you. And it worked. And for the first time this year, doing her, and I got one person who calls me all the time on it, called and thanked me, they never had this problem. Personally, when you start hitting the pocketbook of some of these people, it's where the message has got to come around. And I think that's where we're going to have to go in this direction. That's what other cities are doing. If you go to Georgetown, they just started finding people. And the other thing is, if you put something out, they're going to start to nest your feet. And I know that Kevin Sennett's people are looking into this committee on some of what you put out there you pay for on wage. But to me, the only way this is going to work is when you start enforcing it, which we have gone to. And Steve will tell you, and David Jarvis has been a big help. And to me, that's where you're going to have to hit your concern. And I agree with you on that that's where we're going to have to start. It's fine. I think the fines need to be increased. But like I said, those enforcement officers are in these areas, and either the fines are not strong enough, but it is the same properties time and time and time again. The fine has increased. We have increased the fine, and it has gone up in some cases double than what it was used to. And in the meantime, the neighborhoods are having to endure this mess that's sitting in the public railway. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to be brief this time. The title, speaking to the motion, is that we have an ordinance on the books that we're not meeting. And I appreciate the Attorney for helping us clarify that. The name of this proposal is the move-out ordinance. That's the lay term, tenant transition and household disposal. And one thing was very clear, meeting with the constables, the apartment folks, all the code. Folks move, 300,000 people in this city, folks move every day. Every day of the week, folks are moving to and from in our community for a myriad of reasons. So we need, with that said, we need to keep the special collection, 1614, in our code of ordinance. One thing I have to say again, nobody has said 24-hour response. Stop saying that we're asking for a 24-hour response. It's false. It's disingenuous. It's impractical. That's not what we're saying. But what we're saying is a 168-hour response for special collection and bulk item once a week is not enough. I ask for the council in support of the motion. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Council Member Lane. I just read the motion here. I still go back. I think this is an issue that needs better management. The kind of plan that seemed to work to me was if the homeowner or property owner put the bulky items out the same day they put out their regular waste, and then the driver comes by and identifies there's a bulky item for pickup, transmits that information to the solid waste department, And then it's scheduled that a truck will run that route the next day to pick up the bulky items. Then we could get it maybe picked up within 36 to 48 hours. It wouldn't be a special pickup, and it could be systematic and routed most efficiently. It makes me think that if somebody puts stuff out on the curb on a non-regular pickup day that maybe there's a special pickup for that, then there should be perhaps a fee for that because if you don't have some way to motivate people to put it on the right day of the week, then you're going to have people putting it out at any time. I think with dispossession of tenants, that's something you can't control, but maybe you could work an arrangement with the sheriff's department to target that. But as I say, I see management issues here. It's figuring out how to run more efficiently and accomplish the pickups in a speedier and shorter period of time. I'm not going to, you know, I'll have to say whether I'm going to vote on this or not. I would rather, Steve, before we vote an ordinance in, is to have you come back with a specific plan that we could put into the ordinance of how you're going to manage this that we could put a stamp of approval on. Thank you very much. Thank you. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Chair. And I appreciate the attempt of trying to make some good policy changes today. But I do agree with Councilman. I think we can work this out through management solutions. I think our guys and gals in Solid Ways do a pretty good job, actually, a really good job of picking up these things anyway already today. I'm not sure it's to the level that it requires an ordinance change today in terms of the number of pickups we're really having in our community. In my district last year, we had two of these type of issues, and both of them were eviction cases. with the constable involved. But for the most part, they're doing a great job picking things up on the collection day and when called upon. They go out there, and usually it's not within 72 hours. Usually it's the next day they're there to pick it up. If not, some days they pick it up the same day, depending on how busy they are. So I'm not sure it's reached a level of an ordinance change and requiring $3.7 million. I know it doesn't require that. So I would just like to see maybe the communication change a little bit more and to start tracking this a little more often and see if there really is a true need to either ramp up service by buying additional trucks and manpower and an ordinance change together if that's really needed today to get this situation corrected. I just don't see the number of calls rising to a level of emergency that makes big changes today. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Madam Chair. Speaking to the motion, I recognize that we won't have an operational or a management solution today. I hope Steve and his leadership at Waste Management will work with us to find that right balance of an operational fit. But what we have recognized from the task force meetings, the committee in August and now, is that we have an ordinance that's two things. It's not clear. And this is not a totally ordinance changed. This is a much needed clarity and clarification in this ordinance that exists right now. More important, Madam Chair and members of the committee, the reason this clarification is needed is to send a clear message to management. Because it has become very apparent to me that management does not recognize this ordinance. They don't recognize this as law, and as such, they are not applying it. And that's what we're here for, is to, when we have the assistance of the attorneys, is to clarify the laws on the books, to put them in a clear fashion that would allow management to then go back and come up with a solution. I'll ask just for this clarification of the ordinance. Thanks, Madam Chair. Council Member Clark. Thank you. Quickly. Steve, can you answer a question for me, please, sir? In this document, we've got really three classes of pickups. We've got dead animals. And then dryers, washing machines, hot water heaters, stoves, refrigerators, freezers. Then we've got television, trims off the rim, furniture, and so forth. Three different categories. Can you tell me why we have three different categories? I know there's a good reason. Okay. I may have lost you on exactly the three different categories here, but the appliances, I kind of lump them into two. The appliances, mattresses, dead animals, and tires are held in that special collection system where we will respond to calls or driver references on the route because, one, they either can't go into the landfill or they can't be picked up by the regular truck. and then we have the other things that are picked up by the regular truck. And so I'm not clear on the third. Okay, I was reading this document. Okay. That A is animals, B is appliances such as dryers, washing machines, and so forth. C is televisions, tires, furniture, scrap metal pieces. So there's three categories there, and I'm wondering why there's three. And you're talking about landfill. It's a matter of disposing of those things in categories. Right. I'm just trying to reflect to you what the reality is of what we have done over the last 30, 40 years and what we do now. That's the way the service is provided. So is it necessary to have three different categories? No. In other words, on a day where normal pickup is, If there's something out on the curb, then you can take care of it because you'll know it's there. The driver will say this such and such is out. If they can't take care of it there, then a truck will come by and get it, right? Right. And so that's a regular collection outside of the bin. Right. So a special collection is when somebody calls and says, I have a mattress out and I'd like for it to be picked up. So you're doing that now. Yes. So there's nothing that we're talking about adding to this, is it? We're still having regular collections, and we're still having special collections. Right. Is that correct? But the difference here was the scope of the special collections. Okay. That's the fundamental difference here is the special collections include just the mattresses, tires, dead animals, and what I'm missing here, the tires, whatever, or everything else. Everything. Does it include the 3,000? Going back to that chart, does it include the 3,000 or does it include the 135? That's the difference here, and that's where we are with this ordinance. Okay. Okay, thank you, Steve. My opinion is that a lot of this is semantics, And I agree with Councilmember Ford that the wording is not clear. And I think once we clear up the language, then we'll know what we expect, and, Steve, you folks will know what we expect, and we can deal with that. I don't see any need for any additional service if, indeed, we have one category of special collection and we have a regular collection that's going to come on a regular pickup day. So it seems like to me if we clarify the language that this is what we expect, then you understand, we understand, and we're home free. Good. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Steve. Any other council member have any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Could you repeat the motion where it says consider revised? Two. The motion, Council Member Lawless, is to accept the revisions to Section 1614 as provided by the Law Department. and what we have here before us that's been passed out. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Anyone else wish to speak on this item? Then we will move on to, there were a couple items on the agenda that were postponed that we'll hear next month. The Division of Police Home Fleet Policy and the E911 Structural Budget and Balance will be heard at the November meeting. Next is items in committee. Does anyone have any comment on the items? Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. All in favor? All in favor? It was a unanimous vote. Thank you.