SOLID WASTE TASK FORCE

Monday, March 21, 2022 - 11:00 AM

Joe Pete Wilson, Chairperson

Chairman Wilson called this Solid Waste Task Force meeting to order at 11:27 am with the following members in attendance: Clayton Barber, Stephanie DeZalia, Derek Doty, Jim Monty, Matt Staley, Ike Tyler, Joe Pete Wilson, Meg Wood, Mike Mascarenas and Jim Dougan. Steve McNally was absent. Davina Winemiller and Ken Hughes had been previously excused.

Also Present: Todd Hodgson, Hugh Harwood, Rob Wick and Dina Garvey.

WILSON: Good morning, we’re ready to jump into our agenda, here. The agenda’s pretty basic, but these are the topics with a lot of depth.

The first one is going to be getting our Smartsheet pilot towns going, but maybe we can discuss adding some towns that want to use Smartsheet after the pilot towns are trained and up and running.

DOUGAN: If we could I would actually like to start with the RFP and then go to Smartsheet. Is that alright, Todd?

HODGSON: I can bring that up on the screen.

MASCARENAS: Yeah, I think it answers a lot of questions that you might have, so I think it’s probably the place to start.

WILSON: Okay, excellent. I’ll turn it over to you guys then.

DOUGAN: Yeah, Mike gave us a good starting point with quite a few questions and what Todd is going to give an executive summary of what the RFP is. We are responding a little bit, Mr. Tyler, about an RFP and maybe not getting everything you hoped for out of an engineering firm, so we want to make sure we get everything we’re asking for here. So, do you want to go ahead with that, Todd?

HODGSON: Sure, so the questions that Mike had put together, we went through that list and tried to form an RFP according to some of those questions. So, the $40,000.00 grant package, that would be $20,000.00 in grant funds, $20,000.00 in County funds. It’s kind of a limited budget for us to work with, so the approach is to utilize town data that the towns gather from their transfer stations, as well as the County assisting them and that’s why Smartsheet comes in, to be able to pull all those records together, so that the consultant isn’t going through the motions of doing all the data mining. The towns have quite a bit of data anyway, so we would be working with attendants to compile that data for a consultant.

So, the first couple of sub-categories, the history is something that probably myself and our staff work to pull together to assist the consultant to define what the current system is comprised of and then as we get into the sub-categories of garbage and recycling, those questions, basically the data collection, we put together on Smartsheet and supply data the consultant.

For infrastructure and equipment, that is in part coming from Essex County as Essex County owns most of the infrastructure, the containers and the trucks and then some information coming from the towns or their respective transfer station sites.

And then as far as the costs are concerned, this is where the consultant would step in heavily to pull together the costs for both the current system and then the implications of future regulations.

Some regulatory impacts, again, kind of a combined effort there and then outlining the options, which the consultant would be responsible for, to make sure that the grant achieves the objectives of the Local Government Efficiency Grant and the municipal restructuring application in the future. So, the idea is that this RFP and the study would result in a much bigger grant package to assist both the towns and the County with significant capital improvements that need to be made.

DOUGAN: So, if I were going to give a little bit of summary, really quickly, as we looked at Mike’s questions, as we looked at the overall system, we really thought a consultant could get bogged down spending all their time collecting that data. We have quite a bit of that data now and all the towns that would be willing to use to Smartsheet, right away, we’ll have a little presentation on that shortly, that will make that easier of us to mine that data and then the ultimate goal, I would say, is something similar to your EMS, in that this report is going to give us a project that suggests a pilot for shared services. There’s probably, mostly going to be about those other regulatory things that are coming, like food recycling, food waste recycling, those kinds of things and few questions or the few responses that we’ve got back, so far, have actually said that people want to recycle more, our constituents what to see more plastics and things like that picked up. So, we’re going to have a consultant, basically spend most of their time on what regulations are coming and how we can provide that higher level service, similar to what your pilot did for EMS with missed calls and then hopefully a bigger grant would pay for the kind of equipment and infrastructure that we need to implement dealing with those things more efficiently and effectively, is what our ultimate goal is with this. So, we’re going to do a lot of the data mining ourselves, so that the contractor or the consultant can spend their time on that regulation and a different, we’re going to want at least different conceptual plans.

MASCARENAS: Just to add one thing and certainly Chairman Gillilland is conscious of this, because he participated in the EMS process. In terms of timeframe, something like this, once we decide what we want to put out to bid, this is our framework to do that. You know, we’re doing to be out to bid for a period of time, we’re going to award that bid to a consultant, we’re probably going to have a year worth of plan, that’s plan’s going to take probably a year in order to complete that plan and then we’re going to do application. So, okay, just to give you a timeframe, we’re probably a minimal 2-3 years out from a completed plan, pilot award from the MRF program, in terms of getting what we want to get accomplished long term. So, and the only reason I bring that up is I feel like we have a couple different deadlines, as a Committee, that we really need to look at; right? Is we really need to separate our long term goals and our short term goals and what we can accomplish quickly rather than what we want our system to look like long term. We need to figure that out. You know our Serkil contract ends the end of the year. Do we extend that or are we looking to fill that role utilizing some of process? Or resource? This plan’s not going to be done in time for you to make that decision. So, those decisions are going to have to come from this, this recommendation is going to have to come from this group more quickly in what you want to do in the short term versus the long term. So, just in terms of timeframes, I think it’s important to keep that in mind.

DOUGAN: So, this step is if the Committee is genuinely happy with the plan and what we’re going to ask for in the RFP then we can move forward. It is specifically budgeted, up to $40,000.00 is specifically budgeted in the DPW budget, so we can go ahead and put that out, that RFP out or we can bring it to the Board, the Full Board to approve us to go to RFP, if this Committee is comfortable where we sit right now, what we just described.

WILSON: So, I guess the first question then is, are members of this Committee comfortable making the recommendation to the Full Board to proceed with it, putting out this RFP and committing to the timeline Mike’s explained and we’re going to be doing a little of the work, each town who runs a transfer station in suppling information, so that we can put our consultant on, you know put their expertise to work on more higher level things. So, does anyone of the Committee or anyone else have concerns about this?

DOTY: Joe Pete, I’m mostly concerned about a $40,000.00 limit to equire what we already identified as some really important information. It means, does it mean that we’re going to rely on Mike, or Jim or Todd putting in 3 times the hours that they already do when stealing $20,000.00 or $30,000.00 from somewhere to get this thing in gear where we feel it should go. I mean there’s no sense starting in a limited basis.

MASCARENAS: Yeah, you bring up an interesting point, you know typically we do always have limits and that kind of thing. Typically, we don’t tell people that it’s $40,000.00, because that’s where you’re bid will come in at; right? That’s what there they’re looking at, so a lot of time we don’t even put that out that. I guess we’ll see what the bids look like; right?

DOUGAN: I’ll out in at $30,000.00.

MASCARENAS: So, I think you bring up a good point and I appreciate you considering all of us that work here and try to make these things work, regardless of our resources. But, I think if we get the RFP out, see what they come back at, if it’s something that we have to, it’s not saying they’re coming back at $40,000.00. They could come back at $50,000.00, they could come back, they’re going to detail what it is and if it’s worth reviewing, we’re going to come back to the Committee and we’ll get a recommendation for the Board, if that’s the case.

DOTY: Just one more comment, you’ve reach mentioned that Serkil’s contract is done the end of this year, I’m not sure how many other companies even do that type of thing that are out there, so I think we should kind of admit to ourselves that there’s a good chance the County’s going to be stepping in and honoring this for year, until we have a definite direction. I mean, is that on anybody else’s mind?

WILSON: Yes, that’s definitely and that will come up in more discussions, yea. But, the point about the scope of this, I mean we could add one final point in our RFP to ask for, you know have a couple of levels of additional work and what would the cost be to those, you know, you could say have a phase two and give us a proposal for that, so it would save us having to go out for another RFP, if we find we’re not getting the scope we need here. So, if we, you know, if we added a second part, you know a contingency to do, I don’t know, we would have to identify what that is.

MASCARENAS: Yeah, I think Jim usually breaks things up, so that people have to bid on it by category, they refer to them as alternates, a lot of times in bids that we do. Is that how you were thinking, Jim? Show each item, each category, what that cost is?

DOUGAN: Yeah, I think we can do that, as we focus mostly on the data collection piece is what we’ve done since you put out your template, Mike and that is really, we really felt that the most cost was in collecting the data. So, you know I think we can come up with a couple of alternates, you know, Todd and that way we can hopefully award the first time it comes in, even if it’s a slightly smaller scope of work. I can’t tell you that I’ve got them figured out yet, because I don’t.

MASCARENAS: Yeah and those will come back to this Committee to review.

WILSON: Yeah, I just hate to drag it out another month.

MASCARENAS: I know

WILSON: But, maybe we could, I mean does anyone have any concerns about what’s here? You know before we jump to that bigger, do we do more. If everybody’s okay with this, our recommendation from this Committee can be we need to proceed with this now and if we add a little bit more to it, we could review it again.

TYLER: I just want to add that, you thought out a figure of $40,000.00, it’s like any other grant, my experience with the town, is you get a grant for $100,000.00, they’re coming back with a cost of $100,000.00.

MASCARENAS: Absolutely.

TYLER: That’s just the way it works; they’re going to spend every nickel of it.

MASCARENAS: I don’t think you’re putting that down.

DOUGAN: We’re not, that document is called executive summary for you, people. I have a totally different document that is the RFP that is all technical. We try to break it down into bullet points that answers Mike’s basic summary of questions.

TYLER: I think if you’re looking for a RFP to come in at $40,000.00 to do this, we’re all living in a fantasy world, because it’s going to be considerably higher. You can’t get people to anything for less than $100,00.00 these days. I mean that’s in my opinion, maybe I’m wrong.

MASCARENAS: You’re not wrong, I think that’s why Jim’s trying to pull out where the majority of the hours are going to spent just collecting the data and trying to set up Smartsheet, which does put more work on Jim and he’s workforce to do that piece, but it’s going to make the budget more feasible for us to be able to do, we’ll see.

TYLER: Right

DOUGAN: Yeah, I am going to give them our D&C annual report, to the consultant, along with this data that we’re getting from each transfer station. Every transfer station, there’s some data that we hope to collect better in the future. None of you know exactly how many tons of glass or how many tons of plastic are coming from you. That’s something we hope to identify ways to deal with that, as part of this pilot, but I think if we make the scope narrow enough as the base bid, I’m hopeful that we’ll be close to that $40,000.00, but it’s going to be a stretch, which is why really, I say my staff, it’s Todd and Hugh are going to do most of that data, along with the stuff that every transfer station, if they can help us.

WILSON: Alright, any other questions or concerns?

DOUGAN: Alright, so, I’ll bring that as a resolution to my committee on Wednesday of this week, to go out to RFP.

WILSON: Great, anything else on the RFP from your team, Jim or Mike?

DOUGAN: We’ll try and develop a couple of alternates and then just email that out to this Committee, so they know where we’re at.

WILSON: Alright and then you wanted to talk about Smartsheet, next or the review of the information collected? What makes more sense?

DOUGAN: Why don’t I just talk about, generally the information that was collected from the towns, so far, as far as, you know, we got good comments back from probably 10 or 14 towns that operate a station. The most common theme was Serkil and pick up, scheduling pick-ups, as being an issue, you know sometimes you guys are full for a number of days before they show up and then the second most issue was that your constituents wanted to see more recycling. So, with that said, without going into a lot more detail, because those were the common themes, it leads me to what I think Smartsheet would help with that first item and Serkil. I believe Joe Pete, maybe you can speak to that, if it’s been better for the Town of Keene since you’ve been using it and then I’ll let Hugh kind of walk people through what that process is.

WILSON: Yeah, so out manager uses his cell phone and the Smartsheet app to notify Serkil of what we need picked up and how soon. It also, Todd and Jim can view what’s going on there, so they can, in real time if things are moving properly or not and we’re really lucky. It’s cleaner when we notify Serkil, it’s clean if they respond or not, it allows us to make some notes like then we have a glass container filled with snow, you know, you can make a note and so Serkil couldn’t show up and say, oh, we’re not prepared. When they got there, they’re were warned in advanced. So, our staff is using it really lightly and it’s starting to build some of the data for the RFP. It’s easy to use. My manger said he would be happy to come to any town, if the operator there wouldn’t, had questions or need some extra help, because he really feels it’s made the job easier. So, it’s working to get us data, which makes our consultant money go further. It’s easier to keep Serkil accountable and it’s easier for the people doing the work to, you know, it makes life a lot easier. You know, there’s no leaving messages on the phone, there’s no unanswered calls, it’s direct communication to Serkil.

DOUGAN: Serkil’s old way of, or they current way of dealing with towns is someone at Serkil takes a phone call or pulls something off of the answering machine and then they write the information down on the whiteboard and you know if someone else is standing there, lining up to weight a truck going across their scales, they may forget to write that down, they may not, but it’s just not real efficient. So, here we’ve got some documentation and we can see what’s going on. You know, I’ve always been the complaint department. You guys generally deal with Serkil directly, but when it goes bad, I get the call, this allows me to immediately to take a look at it and see what’s going on. See if there was a notification and if I have an issue, say the baler breaks down, which happened 6 months, then I can proactively kind of look what’s in there for calls and I can start to be a problem solver rather than relying completely on Serkil. I think most people that deal with Serkil know that problem solving isn’t their strength. So, I would love to see to every town use the Smartsheet and part of this data gathering would actually help.

TYLER: I would just like to add that I know that my attendant could not do that. I we have issues with getting things done that are a lot more simplistic. I’m not sure if any of the other towns have that issue with your attendants, but I’m not saying my attendant’s going to be there for a long time, because they have been there for a long time, but I just have issues there and it’s not even, I wouldn’t even dare ask him, because it wouldn’t work.

DEZALIA: I don’t even know if mine has a smartphone.

WILSON: So, we started to document, I got the training and got it online, because I have, wanted to make sure things we’re subject to a crash. So, at the beginning, I was the backup reporter, but you know it got going pretty quickly and now I’m out of the loop, so you know, I’m not going to volunteer you guys to do that job, but at the beginning we had those same concerns. You know we’re jumping from a dial telephone to an app. It’s kind of a big transition, but for us it has worked well. I started out with similar concerns, so, I would say, let’s see if we can problem solve to do it.

MASCARENAS: Yeah, I think each town could have a different type of setup that might work well for them. You know, in those communities like that, you can still use paper, but get them to your office, get it to your town hall and then there’s a clerk or a receptionist or whatever one of those people that input what comes from there. So, I think there are some solutions, maybe, maybe not; right? If the attendant can call the town hall and say, I need a pickup and then it’s somebody else’s responsibility just to throw that in there. Then maybe we can do that kind of thing and it will work, but every town’s going to be different, I am sure of that.

WILSON: And I think you’re putting your thumb on the growing pains, that right now, every town is doing their own thing and this is an example of us having to start sharing the resources and doing things in a uniformed way. So, I think this isn’t going to be the first time it comes up that every system’s different.

TYLER: I’m not so sure that we have service.

DOUGAN: Get your broadband coordinator.

TYLER: We’re in Elizabethtown, my transfer station’s in Elizabethtown. If we brought it back to Westport, we would have service.

WILSON: Jim and Todd, though are you ready to open it up to any town who feels they’re prepared to do it?

DOUGAN: Yeah

WILSON: Okay

DOUGAN: Hugh, do you want to? If it’s alright with you, just let Hugh, quickly show people, we’ll try and not take too much time, but just show how that app works, right now. It is fairly simple and I would expect that out of this grant and this final report and submission that we would probably come up with a recommendation that says, there needs to be a little more connectively and hopefully we can get infrastructure to pay for some of that, down the road. If they’re really going to coordinate all of this.

MONTY: So, would this work at my transfer station, Jim?

DOUGAN: Absolutely not.

MONTY: That’s what I figured.

DOUGAN: Not unless you take the app and you’re the one that calls us.

HARWOOD: So, I’ll try not to ramble on. I do apologize, it’s not the best clarity, but for basically what we kind of discussed before, pretty much what’s done now, is the attendant, pretty much calls Serkil, might leave a voicemail, might not and then they actually put it on the whiteboard. What Smartsheet is, Smartsheet is essentially a lot like Excel, it’s based off of sheets and cells. The beautiful part about this is, as Rob knows, Rob’s department uses this a lot, is it automates. So, it can send out emails, it can, based off of automation, so basically, it can make you these forms, it can print out your report, all based on this one sheet. The beautiful thing is DPW sets it up, completely sets it up. So, Serkil is purely a user. So, we can add and subtract things, as we go. Also, each town as a very different setup, so we can curate Smartsheet to better fit each town. So, it’s not just a one size sheet fits all. So, I’ll start here with the form. So, instead of the phone call, in a perfect world, the attendant will pull this up on their smartphone, click the app and it will automatic go to this form, in a perfect world. That mean that you have cell service, and various other things, depending on the person that is actually inputting the information. So, based off of this form and as you can see, it’s pretty simple, I have a little description on the top; which is a little hard to read, but it just basically states what’s happening with the form, as you go through, location, that’s just your town, I’ll put in Keene for now, requested pull. This is all a dropdown menu, so they cannot type anything into this, so it has to be these particular fields. So, we’ll just do cardboard here, any comments? I’ll just state comments there, but this is your comments, is your container full of snow? If you’re requesting, I know a lot of times, Joe Pete, before the requested a date. You know, they said, it’s doesn’t need to be done tomorrow, but if we need to done by the end of the week. So, these are little comments we can do and also, it has a file, so if they’re using a smartphone, they can just take a picture and they can attach it with this, as an attachment. Of course it depends, again, with your attendant and various other things, but all they do is those two right there, submit and essentially if you have Wi-Fi connection, there might be a bad Wi-Fi connection here, but that’s all the attendant needs to do, right there. Now, automatically this is going to go to a sheet, which is this your master sheet. This is, doesn’t have a lot in it, but this is what Serkil views, but as you can see, this row right here, I just submitted from that form. So, the beautiful thing about Smartsheet, Serkill would have just gotten an email notification saying, you have a submission, please schedule date. As you’re going through, obviously the notifications, this right here, the town requests, this is an email with the contact information, in the case of Keene, as you see down here, there’s a facilities manager in Keene who is Roger, the actual attendant, and also Joe Pete right underneath, so we can send multiple emails, as well. So, it can notify supervisors, it can notify the town clerk, attendant, etc. As you go along, go to the right, just simple stuff, requested pull, cardboard, location is town, any comments, now the beautiful thing here, is the date submitted, this is a time stamped date. No one can alter this, so now, right now we have a date and a time right when that attendant submitted this form. So, this is a lot of those little safeguards that basically, that puts everything in black and white. As we go over here, this gray is simply what Serkil will input. Schedule request, so when they put in a schedule request, they put in whatever date, when they put this date in here that status automatically changes to scheduled. Whenever this status changes, it automatically sends emails out to who we’re emailing notifications. So, even when, so you know when it’s submitted, when Serkil responded and they scheduled and when it was completed. So, you know, you have a time stamp all the way through and the beautiful about this is since we’re the ones developing it and Serkil’s the one that’s using it, we have a complete activity log. I can go back to the beginning of the days with this sheet and I can see exactly who changed what. So, it’s just a little bit of that safeguard of it and the ability to allow the different company, an outside company to use. Again, you keep going down, assigned to. This is a beautiful part that DPW really likes, is that it’s our equipment that they’re using, so it’s nice to know how frequently a piece of equipment is used. Weight scale isn’t being used right now, but just as another option of what can be, the data that I can collect in Smartsheet. Any Serkill comments, any problems and then obviously the date completed. When this task goes to complete, it simply timestamps it complete and then moves it out of this sheet and into a completely different sheet.

That’s pretty much a lot of it, again, we can have this sheet notify anyone, at any time, for any reasons throughout the whole process and then the beautiful thing, essentially after this, again, here are all the completed pulls. So, this is everything that has gone through the Town of Keene, so far. So, it’s just the same page, no real reason to go over that.

What Keene sees is a report, this is another beautiful part about Smartsheet, it takes everything out of this information and puts it into a report. This is not information to change or anything like that, it’s just purely for the Town of Keene to see. So, obviously you can see when a pull was requested and when a pull was completed, so you can see those response times and any other instances that have happened to it, any problematic things, any comments that were made, etc., etc., very clean and then we haven’t done this. I will be quick with this one. We haven’t done this with Solid Waste, but this is what’s called a dashboard. If we really want to make something clean, we can do this with Solid Waste, this right here is our department works, it’s really, it takes all the information from multiple sheets and puts it on to one that’s clean on the dashboard. So, information in essence of data mining, it just makes it extremely clean in communication. I don’t want to go too far in-depth, because when we do get a kickoff for your town, I will definitely talk until my blue in the face with all the attendants, but if there’s any questions with the Smartsheet.

TYLER: I think it’s very good, you know when I took this job as Supervisors, I’ve done a lot of weird, different kind jobs that I never thought I was going to do, but now I’m going to be the transfer attendant. I’m glad I can put that into my resume now.

DOTY: Has this system given your town any satisfaction in the problems that you are seeing?

WILSON: Oh, it’s huge. It’s made it easier for me to work for my staff, it’s easier to see when, you know was it a problem, because our attendant ignored something or was it because Serkill ignored it? It’s really making it clear cut and once we started doing this, I couldn’t advocate more strongly and Roger, who you mentioned, he’s volunteered to come to anybody, you know if you’ve got an attendant was hesitate or uncertain about how to use this, he’s volunteered to come and you know reinforce the training the training he does and share his experience. Yeah, I would keep using this, even if we don’t change anything else. It’s definitely been helpful.

DOTY: Can I ask a question about the history on how this came about? I have to assume that there’s been more than a year’s worth of problems that lead to some research to bring this program into use and now we’ve created an accountability file, if you will, in trying to decide on how to move forward.

DOUGAN: If I could jump in there, as you heard me, I would say I am basically the complaint department, because the towns or your attendant works directly with Serkil and I don’t hear about it, until it’s gone wrong. So, quite often what I would hear and usually it was from a Town Supervisor would call and say, my attendant called Serkil 4 days ago and they haven’t done anything, come pick it up. I would call Serkil and Serkil would say, I don’t have any record of that and there’s two sides of every story of where’s the truth; okay? You guys are the town Supervisors, so I answer to you, but the answer you’re getting from your attendant could have been, they might have actually forgotten to call, but they’re still telling you, because it’s been noticed by somebody else, we don’t know. So, Smartsheet, we’re using for what you saw for Buildings and Grounds and the projects and those of you who have that have sat through the Facilities Committee with me have seen some sheets that we have created on Smartsheet and how we try to project manage all the projects we’ve had and then Joe Pete actually, the Town of Keene, they were actually doing their recycling with Casella and as they moved away from Casella, because of the dollars and cents and went back to the County’s form of recycling, which wasn’t zero sort, it had a lot of animosity from some of your residents, I guess and it just highlighted the issues and we were like, can we try this, Joe Pete? And he said yes and so we believe that it could be helpful in a lot of other situations. So, it’s still ongoing, I’m still the complaint department if something doesn’t go right between Serkil and the Town or if something gets broken down, Serkil doesn’t call you when the baler’s broken down and they might not even call me, so this will help me and quite often, if I call ahead of time we can find ways to solve some of those things a lot better than you finding out after you’re completely full.

WILSON: And one of the things that started the conversation between me and Jim and Todd and Hugh was we were investing in try to make a cleaner cardboard recycling stream, because it still has value and the town is investing in separate container, but we found right away that we had this great container, but if it wasn’t getting picked up in a timely way, the cardboard would get wet and spoiled and wreck the whole thing. So, that’s, when they came and said, let’s, we’ve got this Smartsheet, let’s try it and so now, you know, we’re producing more revenue from a cleaner cardboard stream, with less headaches. So, you know, in trying to work out a way to have been recycling operations, this was one of the solutions that Jim and Todd and Hugh came up with and it has worked. You know, we’re making a little extra money on the cardboard, because we’re not ending up with frequently with contaminated, wet trailers, because they didn’t get picked up right away.

DOTY: Thank you

WILSON: So, reaching out to towns, should we put together an email to all Supervisors or what’s the best way to get more towns onboard with this?

DOUGAN: Let’s put out an email.

WOOD: Find us new attendants.

DOUGAN: Yeah, let’s put out an email, realistically, the three towns that have volunteered to be part of the pilot, definitely need to be part of this, right off the bat. So, that’s you, Joe Pete, who’s already using it, the Town of Moriah has volunteered and so as St. Armand. So, we have, but I think it would help, but of course, I am saying as the complaint department. I’m thinking it would help anybody that could make it work with their current attendant and Hugh loves the system. Don’t get me wrong, he presents, because he loves it and he’s doing a great job at tracking projects and things for us. So, he’s glad to meet with whomever and see what you have for technology with your attendant or what will work. I’ll send an email out to all Supervisors.

WILSON: Alright, anything else from the agenda?

DOUGAN: Did Shaun want to talk?

WILSON: Yes, but you guys are all set? Any other last questions about Smartsheet RFP? Alright, thanks, Shaun, please go ahead.

GILLILLAND: So, I want to go ahead to this Committee first. So, Dan Manning penned a letter to Serkil basically told them to execute what the landowners, you know, for the glass dump and asked them to go and get with the landowners and answer what their remediation steps were going to be and so far Serkil has stonewalled and continues to stonewall. Before this Committee I talked to Dan, who’s going to make a phone call to them. At this point, I was called last week by the landowners and the two responsible parties and they’re pretty upset, because they’re on the hook with DEC of possible fine for May 31^st deadline to get this place cleaned up. At this point, you know, I think that Serkil is trying to stonewall this problem and to, you know basically not have, putting leverage in on their, renewal of their contract. So, pretty tired of it, you know they’re playing chicken with us at this point and it’s time to move to the next level of, I’ll like to and I’ll talk to the DPW Board when I get more members of the Board here on Wednesday, but I think that at this point that we should, as a Board, you know give them written notification that they either execute the cleanup of this or the Board will consider punitive action on this contract and you know, probation from going forward with a renewal. You know this is going to affect us for the long term in a lot of ways for one things, for years they held it from this Board and from DPW that they couldn’t get rid of their glass and dumped tons and tons and tons of it, so we’re doing this study right now and as so as the word gets out, you know, after we force them to clean it up, all that glass is going to end up in solid waste and the weights are going to go way high on us, because they don’t have a way to get rid of their glass and they’re just trying to save money by not going, either cleaning it up or transitioning to a safe mode according it to DEC and disposing of it, basically on-site in closing up the stump dumps. So, I’ve had it with them. I think it’s, you know, we cannot afford at this time to have them continue, you know, unless they immediately fix this problem. If they don’t, I would never vote for them on any contract again. In my opinion.

WILSON: Any questions for Shaun?

DOUGAN: Can I ask a question? Because we’re talking pending litigation; right? In what we just discuss here, we do have Tim here with the media.

GILLILLAND: I’m speaking as the Supervisor of the Town of Willsboro. It effects my town and as the Supervisor, my other job I am extraordinary upset that my town is used as a dump.

DOUGAN: Understand that, I didn’t know if any of this should be, not be in the media now or not. That is the only question I am asking, Shaun.

GILLILLAND: I don’t mind.

DOUGAN: Okay

WILSON: So, I think that also sets our agenda for our next committee meeting. We’re going to have to look at the status where things are at with Serkil, the status of our contract and explore the options of Serkil or other alternatives, so that’s really going to be our next meeting.

MASCARENAS: With that being said, when is our next meeting scheduled?

DOUGAN: It’s not scheduled yet.

WILSON: In a month, basically.

MASCARENAS: Alright, can you pull together what it would cost you, because again, without Serkil we would be, we would have Casella and then we would have us running it, I think is really our options; right? There’s not a lot of options in terms of what we’ve seen in the past. So, I think we need to have an idea and be able to look at those two options and what they would be.

DOUGAN: The last time this was bid, the only two bidders that we received bids from were Casella and Serkill. Casella was significantly higher. So, if you put it back out to bid, perhaps you would get Casella again, perhaps you would get Waste Management; which is more towards Queensbury. I have worked some numbers on putting this together and I’ll have an update, I’ll have a proposed update on what it would cost for the County.

MASCARENAS: Well, and too, Jim, wasn’t it a big issue, we use Franklin County landfill where Casella was going to use their own.

DOUGAN: I believe that was the case.

MASCARENAS: Yeah, so I think there was, it wasn’t necessarily apples to apples in terms of those bids either, because of the fact that you had to bid out the landfill separately, so it’s a hard comparison to make, in my opinion. If I am remembering it correctly.

DOUGAN: I believe you’re correct, I believe you’re correct that they were going to haul to their own landfill, rather than Franklin County.

GILLILLAND: I think that we also and I hate to put a lot of work on you, but you know basically something a little bit better than the back of an envelope, but not a full engineering study of the fact that we’re working for the County. So, we have a number to work with for County taking over the whole process.

DOUGAN: Just want Serkil does or what the towns, the towns role, as well?

GILLILLAND: Just Serkil, I think, to replace Serkil, for the County.

MASCARENAS: Yeah and that gets us to our short term goals, anyway. So, either way we have to do that work, maybe we just do it a month or two early.

DOUGAN: Yeah, if we were going to take over, as much notice as I could possible could have, I had 6 applicants for truck driver send in applications, only 3 actually answered the phone for the interview and only 2 showed up and 1 wasn’t qualified and the other was going to be too much drama.

TYLER: I still have my CDL, maybe I’ll apply, I don’t know.

DOUGAN: Okay, I can definitely have some kind of cost proposal together for the next meeting.

WILSON: Does anybody have any other thoughts?

Thank you everybody, thanks for the presentation, that was really helpful, too and I’ll work with Jim to follow up with stuff and get ready for the next meeting.

DOUGAN: Yup

WILSON: Thanks everybody, have a good day.

AS THERE WAS NO FURTHER BUSINESS TO COME BEFORE THIS SOLID WASTE TASK FORCE IT WAS ADJOURNED AT 12:12 PM.

Respectfully submitted,

Dina Garvey, Deputy

Clerk of the Board