good evening and welcome the wednesday january 10 2024 city plantation solid waste workshop is now called to order at 501. miss beggarow please call the roll councilmember anderson here councilmember andrea here councilmember pageant here councilmember horland council member reinstein here mayor sordle here city attorney ezra here okay carol okay good afternoon um for the record carol morris assistant city administrator we're here to talk about solid waste recycling yard waste and bulk trash real quickly we're going to do a quick overview presentation i am going to try and be as brief as possible and to move as quickly as possible it is an overview a summary of much of the information that you all have already received we do have waste management representatives in attendance barbara herrera is here as in as is tom ritter um barbara and luigi did see this presentation and did see the backup material about a week ago because i wanted to make sure we were all on the same page and there were no questions or concerns about what we were presenting so our agenda for tonight real quickly is to get through a summary of the franchise agreement our current service issues what happens what the process is if the franchise agreement is terminated to talk a little bit about pay as you throw and carts and then to talk about next steps so basically the franchise agreement started in october of 2016. it is a the initial term was seven years there are two five-year renewals we have just exercised the first of the five-year renewals there is a provision wherein we can unilaterally extend the comp the contract at any point for an additional three years but the total contract duration cannot exceed 20 years it is an exclusive franchise agreement for solid waste bulk yard waste recyclables it includes residential multi-family and commercial collection and it does include all of the city and before i forget if you notice up at the top you'll see those section references from time to time those correlate to the section of the franchise agreement that we're talking about general information about collection services and frequency residential collection can't begin before 7 a.m it must terminate by 7 p.m there is no service on christmas day single family homes townhomes duplexes triplexes quadruplexes and mobile homes are serviced by pay as you throw plantation acres melaleuca isles lago largo and hawks landing are all on cart service and again just as a reminder i know you all know this on the paid system the service fee appears on the utility bill the disposal and the bag cost is paid separately on the cart system everything appears on the utility bill so i hope you enjoy my little pictures i must apologize this might be one of the dullest powerpoint presentations i've ever handed anybody but i threw in a truck picture here and there so with regard to commercial customers size and frequency of service are determined by the customer and waste management if they cannot agree there's a provision whereby the city can make that determination commercial customers are billed directly by waste management there is a provision it is actually part of the first amendment to the franchise agreement called the clean program which allows waste management if we have a commercial customer who has a habit of overfilling their dumpsters to snap a photo and add a surcharge onto their bill commercial collection hours are 5 a.m to 7 p.m monday through saturday 8 a.m to 7 p.m on sundays and schools cannot be serviced prior to 9 a.m without the mayor's approval residential containerized collection is provided for multi-family dwellings both residential multi-family containerized collection and commercial collection as we noted before have service agreements directly with waste management they're invoiced directly by waste management periodically we do have one of those entities approach us because they are having a service issue um we because the city's franchise agreement does require that they use waste management we'll then reach out and try and coordinate a meeting of all the parties to get the issue resolved there are a couple of contractual provisions that deal with some of the issues we're going to talk about today one is missed collections if notification of a missed collection is received by 3 p.m it is recovered the same day if it is after 3 p.m it is recovered on the next day um for both pay as you throw and carts they're supposed to be out by 7 a.m with regard to customer complaints there is a definition legitimate complaints is a defined term under the contract some examples of legitimate complaints are on the slide complaints in general need to be addressed within 24 hours legitimate complaints also need to be addressed but they need to be addressed within six hours there is a provision in the franchise agreement for administrative charges liquidated damages in order to levy administrative charges the city needs to provide 10 days written notice to waste management of our intent to levy those fees and waste management then has 10 days to file a letter of protest there is on the slide some information and some examples as to when we could levy an administrative charge i also provided you with that portion of the contract as part of your backup to date we have not implemented administrative charges we are ready to do so if indeed you tell us that's the direction you want us to move in now the slides get ugly termination of the franchise agreement there's a couple of ways that it can be terminated the first of which is by cause and the city may terminate the agreement for breach after giving waste management notice waste management has seven days to cure the default waste management may be granted an extension of time not to exceed 90 days if it is not possible to cure the default within seven days if that's the situation they are supposed to provide us with a timeline and the steps that they are going to take to cure the default if they fail to adhere to the timeline if they fail to adhere to those steps we can declare them in breach and terminate the agreement there is also a provision in the agreement for a repeat violation or a habitual violator and if waste management's record of performance shows frequent or repetitive default the city can deem them a habitual violator issue a final warning and terminate the agreement by written notice effective when the notice is delivered the agreement can be terminated for convenience upon 360 calendar days written notice to waste management that termination is without cause and without prejudice or any other right to any other remedy it can also be terminated by mutual termination and essentially that is us sitting down and negotiating an exit agreement with waste management it all needs to be memorialized in an agreement and that agreement would come to you for approval so what are our current service issues well primarily they're missed collections whether it be bulk recycling or solid waste complaints are residential and they typically range from either a single property being missed to a street or even an HOA typically missed collections come about through driver error sometimes they're caused or precipitated by delays at the disposal site if a truck goes to dump and it is stuck there for two or three hours that's two or three hours that they lose of collection time so that contributes to incomplete routes and some of those issues that we're experiencing when we started experiencing problems on an increased level staff started meeting with waste management to talk about the service issues and we requested waste management develop a plan of action key points of that plan of action included increased supervision and training of both new and swing drivers a swing driver being a substitute driver we set up a communication system with the city right now we receive three notices a day from them we receive a notice at noon time giving us a status of where they're at on collections we receive a 4 p.m. update and then we receive an end of the day which either confirms completion completion or gives us the information is to the areas that were not completed so that we can arrange for social media post some of the problems that we've had have been on the bulk side so one of the steps that we took in those meetings was establishing the practice that the bulk provider would drive the routes the day prior to collection so that if additional vehicles or additional assets were required in order to get the route completed they make provisions for that the day before okay pay-as-you-throw an automated cart service and as i as i start to talk to you about this please understand i'm trying to give you the information i am not advocating for one system over the other that is your call as my husband would say that's why you guys get paid the big bucks so pay-as-you-throw collection is a little different it is done using a rear-end loader truck as you see pictured here it involves both a driver and a helper so you have two employees it is more vulnerable to weather in that if we have a hard rainstorm and there's standing water on the roadway the roadway becomes slick it's difficult to see where your footing is frankly depending upon the amount of rain sometimes the bags fall apart obviously if there's lightning that's a problem as well also i think we've all familiar with the idea or the vision of the the garbage person getting up on that back step and holding on to the edge of the truck that back step can become very slippery um so it's a workers comp hazard and i will tell you this is one of the highest workers comp classifications again costs for service are on the utility bill blue bag costs include a portion of the disposal cost and i'm going to give you some numbers and show you some graphs on that in a minute the automated cart system here's your basic automated truck it's one driver in a vehicle he mechanically has an arm that reaches out dumps the can he stays in the truck he doesn't have to get out clearly it's not as affected by weather it is going to be affected by high winds it is going to be affected by flooded roadways but pay as you throw will be affected by those issues as well the cost of collection and disposal for cart service is fully on the utility bill so there's nothing extra to buy no extra charges to be incurred so before i show you my pretty charts i wanted to share with you the assumptions and i tried to use sources that most of us would agree are reputable so epa estimated in 2018 that the average person generates 4.9 pounds of solid waste per day the census bureau tells us that the average household and plantation is 2.57 persons a little bit of math 4.9 times 2.57 times seven days a week is 88 pounds of garbage per household per week and for my calculations i base them on four weeks in a month our pay as your throwbacks come in two sizes the large one is 32 gallons the small one is 15 gallons and for purposes of looking at inflation and moving ahead we assumed a three percent increase on bag costs a three percent increase on disposal costs and a three percent increase on collection costs so here's my first pretty graph and i need to caution you that this reflects only those charges that you would see on a utility bill so obviously the lighter green is the patient throw rate the darker green is the cart rate i also will point out to you that my projections end in 2027 because that's when the renewal ends and there are a lot of things on the horizon right now and i'm not clairvoyant there may be some days i wish i were um there are a lot of things that could affect that one of the issues we have here in broward county is that we are running out of landfill space and it is necessary for us to build and develop further facilities that was the purpose of the solid waste authority which has recently been founded under their agreement they have two years to create and bring to all of the participants to approve a master plan of operations so conceivably by 2027 you're going to be starting to see some of the costs related to building some of those new facilities and at this point in time we don't know what those facilities are we don't know where they're going to go so we can't estimate what those costs are and then the other factor is just the waste management renewal um i have no idea what that may look like you may see some reallocation of charges you may not the next slide gets a little more colorful um i went and created a couple of different scenarios for you option a is four small bags which is the 15 gallon bags two recycling bags and a half of a large bag on a weekly basis option b is three large bags and two recycling bags per week and the important thing to remember here is if you are on the pay as you throw system you have a lot of control over what potentially your solid waste disposal bill may look like um yesterday in conversation i was asked to develop one more and i added it to the presentation and barbara tom i apologize you haven't seen this one yet um this one includes an option c and it does get a little busy so i apologize but option c is one large bag and two recycling bags per week so that sort of gives you an idea of what the costs potentially are going to be over the next couple of years so next steps if you made a decision that you wanted to terminate the agreement there are a couple of avenues open to us this agreement was procured through a competitive exemption you could utilize the same competitive exemption and instruct staff to make the necessary arrangements take the necessary steps to provide for termination of the agreement and at the same time begin looking for a new provider and clearly that's something we would want to contemplate very carefully because we would not want to have a lapse in service um so we need to be thoughtful about how we would do that if we went in that direction and if we had no problems you could potentially have a new contractor in place six to 12 months after council approved the new contract the other route would be to go the full competitive process again we would need to be mindful about how we couch termination on all of those pieces if we go to a competitive process again there's two ways that that typically is handled staff could draft the bid documents or many cities choose to bring in a consultant who is an expert in the solid waste field to assist with that again if you bring in a consultant you have to allow time for that part of the process so your time span becomes much longer a couple of key points i want to make sure that everybody realizes whether you terminate the agreement early or whether you make a decision that maybe you want to go out for bid for 2027 since that's when the end of this renewal period is you need to be thinking well in advance um if you're thinking seriously you want to go out to bid in 2027 those are conversations we need to start having in 2025 so that we can get the bid documents drafted and get proposals on the street and go through the evaluation and all those mechanisms and be ready to go the other thing is you probably want to think about your service delivery method we do have a hybrid system here we have pay as you throw we have automated carts maybe you want to continue pay as you throw maybe you're concerned about that labor cost because you do have an additional person on that truck maybe you want to look at perhaps piloting automated carts in certain areas but one of the things that you will have to decide at any point when we go to reach out for new service is what that new service is going to look like and and i also have would encourage you to think about bulk pickup at the same time we're seeing a lot of changes in bulk pickup throughout broward county some cities have eliminated it entirely if you need bulk pickup you call the provider you make the arrangement other cities have gone to weekly bulk collection so if indeed you determine you want to open up that contract i think we want to think about it soup to nuts because again it is a long-term contract so if you're going to do it let's do it um and lastly you know just what do we need to talk about and what do we need to focus on now really comes down to a couple of directions do we want to continue to work with waste management to improve customer service do you want to direct us to and you know move forward with the process to implement administrative charges um do we want to talk about a pilot program for carts in some areas the one caveat i would tell you about that is if we did a pilot it would have to be something that makes sense for our contractor waste management as well as something that makes sense for the city the other thing is if we are talking about an hoa the entire hoa has to go we're not going to mix blue bags and carts on the same street we're not going to send two trucks down the street it just doesn't make sense unless we move the entire community um maybe you want to start to talk about what a transition to automated carts looks like long term and then we can have those discussions um if indeed you want to talk about franchise termination we need to talk about whether or not you want to make that for cause for convenience whether we want to try and come to some sort of mutual termination arrangement again we need to be very mindful of what that termination looks like so that we don't precipitate a service interruption which would be i hate to say catastrophic but yeah i think that's probably the right word um again we need to talk about you know would you want to use a competitive exemption would you want to go for bid because again all of that factors into the time period for your transition of service and again what type of service would we be going out to bid for would we be seeking bids on paid would we be seeking bids on carts what's the the bulk situation going to look like so i've given you more questions than i have answers but now we get to your part of the meeting so i'll sit down and shut up thank you quick question yes sir and whoever wants to speak um who are the players if we terminated it's waste management it's coastal waste management coastal waste pro republic are i'm going to say the biggest ones did i miss anybody those are the big ones yeah okay um council member andrea good evening thank you miss morse for the comprehensive uh powerpoint presentation i learned a lot of new information um and thank you for moving the date up of this presentation so as i stated before and i think it was one of our last meetings in december the reason why i wanted it expedited was because of the number of complaints and i did not even know the magnitude so i'm going to say very honestly with them in the room very frankly as wonderful and as nice as they are if i had over 300 complaints i would be terminated i'm not recommending that but i want to be very clear that i don't think anybody sitting here could have 300 complaints and keep their job so i am advocating for the administrative charges for failure to pick up our waste as outlined on page 84 and 40.2 of the contract um and this should have been done probably a year ago but that's okay i think we need to do it now um i was surprised to see the language about a protest because and i'm not sure if you or if it would be um our attorney i i don't understand how they would be able to protest the number of complaints that are documented so what would they be protesting and how would you have a resolution for that because we've already um been working you have been working with them to try to rectify these concerns already and i think you know we always use progressive discipline when we're talking about staff i think that we've been using progressive discipline you started verbally then we started documenting and writing and there's daily conversations some action plans have already been presented it's still not working it's actually getting worse so one thing i would caution you about is this and this is an unpopular thing that i'm going to say so please don't throw eggs at me one-offs the one house that didn't get collected yeah it's a problem but it's a problem that occurs everywhere and in many cases it is that mrs morris overslept and didn't get her stuff out on time the ones that concern me the ones that i think if we're going to levy administrative charges we want to focus on are going to be when we're talking about incomplete routes and when we're talking about full streets or or hoas um obviously they're going to be a little bit easier to document uh but i feel like those probably rise to a higher level in terms i agree 100 percent um i'm not even really considering the one-offs i am talking about complete streets complete neighborhoods and so that is exactly why i think that we need to go the administrative charge route and then if things do not improve from there then um i would be willing to have a further conversation about what our next options are but if that could be rectified as a result of this um and those will have a few questions about that so like i said i want to understand the protest portion of that and then also what will those funds be used for because ultimately those savings in essence should be passed on to the residents so um how what happens with the collection of those fees how is that is that going into general fund what are we doing with those funds it goes back to general fund if enough is in there could we ever reduce the charges to the residents or is this just going to be for this is a penny is pennies but just on its face if it ever were to amount to serious money y'all would be to the point where you're terminating you know because then you know we we wouldn't want to realize so many revenues from from fines that it it wouldn't be a positive offset to the customer okay and and mr esral attorney as well could you help me understand the protest portion of this oh well excuse me i will as soon as i can pull up the document okay so if you want to move on and come back to that thank you council member reinstein yes thank you uh miss morris thank you not only for the powerpoint but for all the exhibits uh it was it was um i guess elucidating would be the word right um because i i was aware of the complaints that i've received personally um i'm sure all of us receive those and so it's one thing when we get them and we think it's a lot and then you think about how many um everybody else is getting um i will say since you introduced um some of the people here from waste management um barbara herrera has been very responsive um every time that um at least quite a few unfortunately in my own neighborhood um and then um particularly because the property managers for my neighborhood are property managers for other communities um they know how to get me very quickly and um and every one of those instances um was not just a one-off um it was it was usually a whole neighborhood um or a whole or a whole um route so in in looking at what um what was provided to us um i have about i think about five different questions and i'm going to go through the packet miss morris that you provided and just go through those questions that's okay um so one of them was um where where you reference that the franchise agreement provides that missed collections be recovered on the same day if notification is received by 3 p.m or before noon the next calendar day if notification is received after 3 p.m have do we have and maybe i maybe i didn't see it but um do we have examples of that not being met so that once we've notified them um that they were not able to um to make that deadline i'm going to say that i am not aware of that being a problem now that said we have had instances and i think you've had instances where a pickup was missed on thursday and we weren't aware of it until saturday and obviously it took longer to get it recovered but i'm not aware i mean generally when we reach out to waste management with an issue they are responsive about recovering it uh and that's been how i've understood it and that's maybe my lawyer hat goes on right is that um you know every time we asked they they complied i wish we didn't have to ask right um which takes me to the next point and that was the the process that begins with the city's contract administrator providing written notice um to assess administrative charges and i thought i heard i just want to confirm that um we've never requested the administrative charges we have not okay um so you know those two things right compliance and then never actually doing that um was something that interests me to to clarify um the uh one point was that um complaints regarding damage to property and um again maybe i didn't see it and it may have just may have been in the exhibit but it wasn't pulled out from it um what kind of examples do we have of of damage to property most of the damage to property pieces are a truck running over a curb um a truck running over a corner of a parking lot maybe we had the one guy who was backing down the street yeah a claw truck taking outside that type of thing again when it's brought to their attention they're generally responsive so and that was that was my next question because the the next the the next sentence that i'm looking at it says city staff has met with uh waste management to seek resolution to these in um these issues um and it says in response provide a plan of action and so i didn't actually see that every single time that the issues have been raised that they've been rectified to the satisfaction of the residents and the city is that would you say that that is true that they have been of those that were aware of i did have an instance i did have an instance a couple of months ago um and you all were copied on it where we had a condominium association that sent a rather lengthy document with a number of complaints when i sat down with the association and with waste management one of the things that we learned was they had some property damage allegations there that they had never reported to waste management because they felt they were minors so they just repaired them themselves okay um so jumping ahead to some of the um the options that um and this is under options in continuing the relationship one of the references is to implementing the to implement an automated cart pilot program right essentially offer others the cart program that some of the communities already have and i'm just wanting to know is that if we were to look at that for those communities particularly hoas because obviously they're much more manageable and distinguishable um is there have you thought about or started thinking about or or what are your thoughts as to a survey of hoas or some type of questionnaire to our hoas so that we could get the feedback as to how many hoas might actually want carts again going through their process and then determining um hey if we have that option we'd like to move to carts thoughts on that process let me throw out two pieces first of all one before i forget um we did have an instance in the last week i think it was monday or tuesday wherein we had a number of complaints relative to one street that appeared to be a missed pickup when we actually got out there because part of what our process is now when we get a complaint that involves more than one property owner matt has a public works team member who goes out to photograph and document and see what the situation is and in that particular situation essentially the entire street was tagged because they did not comply with the paint process they had all sorts of stuff in bags it was a mess so we need to probably do some education in that particular community that said in answer to your question about carts we had had some conversation about potentially some type of cart pilot program because we do get requests from time to time and what we had initially talked about was working with waste management to look at implementing a pilot in areas that they would be able to service with existing equipment and existing routes so that would probably be the best way and just to start reaching out to those hoas see if there is any interest i think we need to be very transparent with them as to what the difference in costs are and again as to the fact that you know i kind of jokingly say no blue bags left behind everybody makes the transition but i think those are conversations that we kind of put on hold because it seemed about the time we started thinking about that we started having service issues so you know in regards to that i i wonder if um something that we could do as a city to at least give us more information is uh reach out to hoas and just ask them um if they can whether it however they choose to do it whether it's their own straw poll whether it's an actual you know vote at their own hoas and determine how many hoas would actually want to make that switch um i think that that information would be helpful to us um in in making any determination uh now the the other and i only got two more but i want to go through them all so the i'll go to the last one and that is that um i'm wondering may another option and i didn't discuss it with you before is that what if we um you know a lot of people are it's the blue bags is what you know they they don't really know any of the details but it's just the fact that they have to get a blue bag um i'm curious as to what the cost would be for residents if they weren't purchasing blue bags they were just black bags right whatever bag that they're they're using so that it's essentially and i'm not saying this is the best option i don't think it would be the best as financially for any for our residents but i think it would be another option to help explain to residents that hey if we don't have blue bags and you're just putting out whatever bag you choose to put out that is acceptable right um what would the total cost for your family or your household be um everybody whether it's a single household or you know a family of however many would be paying the same but um i mean that that's another option i'd like some some information on that okay thank you thank you president um i'm going to try to go real quick the 300 complaints uh do we have any idea of those complaints um because i wasn't able to look into detail of it the one-offs like what how much of those 300 complaints were the one-offs even a rough estimate we get a lot of yeah yeah half no okay i'd go a little higher than that yeah and then one complaint's too much but of the 300 complaints what percentage of the total service does that represent i mean like how many how many houses are we servicing in a week i have not pulled those numbers i can pull that for you but okay um regarding the pilot team regarding the hoa i would want to vote by the community not not a representation from the board because to be honest with you when i get someone that comes up to me and they say i want to talk to you about blue bags it's 50 50 for the people that i talk to whether they're for it or against it um you know there's people that understand and believe in it and then they're you know and and see how they can manage their their tax because that's what the blue bag is it's a tax um so i would want to direct them now is it and if we did go to communities for a piloting would we reach out to them and say um a buy-in by them for a vote would it be 50 plus one or is it a 60 margin that they would want for that what would i think we have to establish that i don't know the answer to that what's that i don't know the answer to that i think that's something we would have to establish um regarding what council member reinstein said about black bags is i'm curious like generally those blue bags sometimes are not of the best quality and i was curious like what if we allowed them to get whatever bag they want up to a certain gallons and then they can get like a sticker or a tie or something on there that would signify that this is because the whole point of having the blue bag is that you know it takes it out your utility bill and you're paying for as you throw so i don't know if it's some kind of decal that could be pasted to the bag or some kind of like tie that would accomplish the same thing the blue bag says all right they bought the blue bag they're paying the tax so that's just a thought regarding the black bag because i don't know how much of the problems the quality thing my last question and we'll um go to council member horland um how much of the city is capable of being picked up by cart and the reason i ask that is i live in a townhouse with a single car garage and basically if you move into my neighborhood in bridgewater um you're basically told if you have more than two cars you can't live here because you're not supposed to park on the street although we do have that problem but we have a towing company that tags them um i have no place to put a cart like how does that how would i be taken and i got to be honest with you they're saying that we're going to build a dumpster bin and we're going to put it i wouldn't be for that again is the whole city capable of being on carts probably not okay okay we have some multi-family communities now that are using blue bags because they are not readily serviceable by carts okay that said you also have a variety of sizes of carts and again in some cases dumpsters may be an option we haven't gone down the road of what a total transition looks like there could be smaller carts but even a small cart wouldn't fit in my single car garage so i don't know that's a personal problem but i have neighbors like i said we haven't gone down the road of what a full transition looks like i'm going to say that i agree with council member um andrea regarding the administrative um fine or whatever whatever it's called um i will end it by i don't think it's in our best interest to me okay i have one more question that 27 is that the would that be the um expend our full 20 20 years of those extensions is that the maximum our agreement can run is 20 years the initial term was seven right there was one five-year renewal which we have presently executed there is an additional five-year renewal available to you in 2028 2027 2028 and you have in the contract a unilateral ability to extend any one of those terms for three years maximum of 20. so what's the most that we can go out what's the 20. what no i know that for the contract here is the so 2036 is okay um be here before you know i would like to see them correct their correct the situation um going to cart doesn't seem to be necessary okay i'm sorry councilmember horland um are the service issues on the bag pickup or is the services or is it everything is it cart and bag or is it just service issues on both we are seeing more service issues on the back side so it's not necessarily the type of service that's really kind of a different issue if we decide to make we are seeing more issues on the back side okay the other thing is i need to be honest with you and again i'm not being waste mount waste management's mouthpiece here but the bulk of our county we are the only city in the county that uses pay as you throw and the bulk of our county has moved towards cart service i understand so again keep in mind as nice as us keep in mind one of our challenges may be if and when you choose to go to bid i would strongly suggest you bid pay as you throw as an option just to ensure that you get the maximum number of bids and options okay if you require it really short on time i feel that i want to um go to councilmember horland thank you mr president um i'll try to keep it brief um i want to echo um what has been said before miss morris you've done an excellent job in not only preparing this and communicating with us you know the concern is we're getting out social media posts but not every residence on social media so i received a call the other day that people were wondering why their trash had not been picked up when in fact they did not see the facebook post so um the level of service has dramatically decreased i made my concerns known it seemed a bit coincidental right after we signed that extension uh level of service dropped off now i know there's mitigating factors i know that there is a labor shortage and it's tough especially to get two people on that truck but there have seemed to be a lot of issues since we assigned that extension um um i agree what with what councilmember andreas said i would rather go for the administrative uh fees levied at this point i think there as miss morris has stated there's going to be a lot of changes uh in solid waste i think potentially uh with the solid waste authority as broward county attempts to get a hold of this situation so i would rather not have to go out to bid but i think there need to be some consequences at this point um listen and it would be a lot easier for waste management if we did away with blue bags wouldn't it um but i am still a vocal uh proponent for the blue bag system i think that it is more cost effective for our residents i think that that is shown in the graphs that you provided but i think that we also need to be realistic as we look forward that that may not be something that we're going to be able to sustain long term but i think it should definitely be an option so i think that the administrative fees would be a start to kind of hold this situation accountable so great points made by everybody tonight thank you thank you councilmember anderson just right in line with everybody else same thing uh they're they have good customer service as far as responding to a problem but the problem shouldn't happen in the first place um i absolutely in alignment that we should be charging the fee they like councilmember hurland said right after we renewed and rates went up we got drop in service they easily can afford the fees but i don't even want the fees to begin with i'd rather have just solid service that we're paying for so to start with yes the fees um i have a technical question one percent of route was if one percent of rat i think was a thousand dollar fine how long is a route and what is one what does one percent look like ballpark is a route a certain distance or a certain number of a hundred homes he says a route is about a thousand homes yeah so one percent would be 10 right i was off that's why i paused yeah we 10 homes so that means a lot of these would hit that yes sir would you want to come up yeah sure so that means several would hit the one percent of route i'm that means it's a lot more than fees than i thought hi hey tom ritter senior district manager and i was just going to say to your point what percentage is 300 just operationally i mean i will dig through and get the right numbers but we approximately have trash is picked up twice a week for all the citizens so in a month there's 45 000 services of trash and then there's about 23 000 of recycling so there's 68 000 and 49 services per month so that's how many opportunities we have to times 12 not pick it up so whatever percent of the misses is to 68 000. but that's just math anything else councilmember understand they just a little bit on the pilot i i don't know why we're using the word pilot we already essentially are doing we know what carts are we know what it costs we already it's so we already have piloted it it's out in my little guiles and lago lago lago that's hard to say yeah um and now look isles and so forth so but if we are going to be serious because i we we're on the campaign trail we're out in the town we hear people talk about bags we see it on social media we should be real about asking hoas that's the perfect thing if they want to do it i don't know if it's i don't know if it's a carrie ezra or a hoa condo association type thing that it would be probably in their own bylaws because you're forcing a fee that's a tax that's a fee that's money you can't impose it with a small board to do that would not be in favor only a board doing that to me it's probably in their guiding hoa documents that says if they're going to impose something what it what percent you have to pass it by and it's probably not even 50 because we're at 50 50 anyway they're probably up at more like 60 that's why it's so hard to make changes to your thing i'm not sure that uh hoas are directly billed for service they are not they are not but but in order to in order for an h a to decide the costs on people you would think it'd have to be a pretty high threshold anyway i'm sure it's not each hoa has different bylaws and governing documents and it's it will be sticky again we have not delved into all of those pieces but at the end of the day as it would be the city assessing the charge i don't know that's a conversation we need to have i think i mean under any circumstance i'm assuming the city's going to continue to assess the charge somehow directly on the consumer correct uh i'm not sure of any other thoughts i had on it mr mayor oh you know just eventually though with the big change is coming this is i'm happy with waste management for my whole you know for as long they've been around except for just recently but as the big things are coming we would need to look and i think it would be criminal not to look at going out to bid down the road when all that's coming out there we would be we'd be indefensible to our homeowners our residents to not look at all fully knowing i'd be happy staying with them as long as they're competitive but we should make it competitive that's all mr mayor thank you very much uh a couple things to think about uh getting hoas to do something formally is always a problem jack randall lakes i've been there 15 years we've never even had a meeting we haven't had enough for a quorum a thousand people live there and now with vacation rentals and everything the number of actual residents who show up for the vote whether you can even track down by proxy is really a big problem what we do have coming up is february 12th we have strategic planning meeting and we're talking about sending out a survey and perhaps perhaps we want i don't know if we talked about this or not whether we want commentary about uh trash services in the survey i think the challenge becomes you've got a small sampling size correct you're going to have to add multiple questions in order to get valid information because my feelings on service depending upon how that service is rendered may be very different yeah i'm i'm taking votes and um whether we make them binding or not is is kind of a problem i think we got the goods here to make the decision i got one more thing and i'll give it up i want to weigh in on that yeah yeah um the the other thing is we've talked to them a lot about about this often and we're not the only ones having the problems that they're having right now they have labor problems everywhere they have truck problems everywhere many of these problems they you all have nod your head touch your nose if i'm right is this is common you're having these same talks in many many cities is that close you're having similar talks um in other cities you service challenges let's um okay i think it's safe to say that equipment issues labor issues and challenges with the disposal facilities are common to all some universities some university out versatility in there yeah um go ahead i just want to comment on what the mayor said about the survey very quickly i would rather leave the strategic planning survey um alone because that is such a small sampling but it is in our franchise agreement that waste management does a survey and that has not been done in quite a while so i would suggest that that's the approach good point take it the only thing i would suggest to you is we can work with them and get that survey out there but when you ask a question people tend to believe that you're going to rely upon the answer and do whatever that answer is so it does kind of open a little bit of a pandora's box um i think maybe one last thing maybe miss her miss herrero would like to come up and say something just get our confidence back just to summarize going forward i will get a letter out tomorrow notifying them of our intent to begin levying administrative charges so we'll go forward in that direction because i believe i heard a consensus here today to do that um before mr were you able to find the answer yes carrie yes sir go ahead so um generally assuming the letter goes out tomorrow by miss morris serving as the contract administrator uh waste management would then have 10 days to object to the letter um if they fail to do so the um fine would be imposed um if they protest object uh it's elevated to the cao to render a final decision um under the um provisions of the franchise agreement in the event the administrative fine exceeds five thousand dollars it reverts possibly to the formal protest procedure and i say possibly because um i'm reading a small print on a screen and i'd like to have more of an opportunity to review the document that bid protest procedure may not apply um in that instance so there there are there are administrative mechanisms in place to resolve the issue okay um saving money miss herrera thank you sir thank you very much good evening my name is barbara herrera government affairs manager for wm also known as waste management i am very grateful for you to give us the opportunity to come here today and have this discussion we are certainly quite aware of the service issues that we've had i want to i want to tell you i want to give you a couple of assurances number one we're taking them very very seriously we've been meeting regularly with your staff and with the mayor to ensure that whatever issues that have come up uh that they are addressed immediately and not only that we've taken proactive measures as miss morris stated as to not only what happened but certainly to make sure that they don't happen again what has been the issue it's been a few a few items have just come together at the wrong time unfortunately uh it can be anywhere from from well is it the manual collection okay well that's certainly part of it because that's that's challenging across the board uh could it be uh the fact that we've had uh different changes and managerial staff new drivers etc so it's been a bit of a perfect storm which we've identified and moving forward we hope that this conversation would not have to be had again um we will always be responsive to plantation we've been your partner for for a while we value this partnership um we hate that we're here today obviously but we want you to know that we do take it seriously we're moving forward we intend to take the letter that we received from miss morris uh with grace and with the with the purpose of just making sure that we leave this behind and move forward to serve as a city of plantation correctly um four minutes councilmember andreo two minutes even better thank you president vagin i wouldn't be able to sleep tonight if i didn't say we all need to reduce our waste so let's start there and and by the statistics that miss morris um showed us shared with us tonight uh we need to reduce our waste overall so i won't start talking about composting but we'll have that conversation later with the uh other advisory board but um i thank you for being here and for uh understanding the seriousness of this and working to correct it so i appreciate that we do value the relationship and the partnership and and hope that this can be remedied so thank you thank you very much councilwoman um thank you i think we all want just the situation to be fixed absolutely um good luck get it done no more emails no more emails does anyone else have anything to say we got two minutes thank you again thank you with that uh meetings adjourned at 5 50.