October 7, 2022 — Meeting Transcript

everybody to our Friday morning Friday morning session. I think we're here just to really talk about our financial projections and I'm just going to turn it right over to our city manager.

All right well thank you good morning everyone it's nice to see you all on a on a Friday morning and have some coffee at a meeting which is a little bit different but but good at the same time so as the mayor said we are going to talk about finances today and our financial projections and we've talked about this quite a bit We've all known that this conversation was forthcoming. So there was a lot of work that went into putting these projections that we're going to go through together. And I want to thank Karen Dilber in our finance department, our finance director for working on this and really going through all of our revenue and expense lines, line by line, trying to figure out what might happen to those over the next five years and projecting anything beyond two years gets really, really difficult. You know, if we went back five years and try to figure out where we would be today, I'm pretty sure our numbers would be way off. Even if you look at the numbers that were put together during the property tax issue last year, those numbers aren't exactly the way things have played out. So there are a lot of things within the macro picture at work, inflation, interest rates changing, all those things that all have an impact John Pimentel, On these numbers, but I think karen's done a really good job of trying to figure out where we're headed so. John Pimentel , I did include and i'm not going to go through it in the meeting, but if you've got any questions about it, I did include in the packages for public transparency. John Pimentle, And I also gave it to the board all of the underlying assumptions behind these projections, so I have had residents in the past that wanted to sit down and go line by line. John Pimental, Through projections through our numbers to make sure that they're accurate, so we wanted to be open about that and show everybody what we're working with so. those were provided for everyone's review. So I'm going to go ahead and open this up. And we'll start looking at some numbers here. So the ice is off my screen. Okay, so what we really wanted to do here was was show numbers four different ways. And so one Concern that the board has had consistently or something that we've discussed is that transfer from the capital fund to the general fund to help it balance every year. So we wanted to look at where's revenue going over the next five years with and without that transfer. And then also on the expenditure side, with our waste collection contract coming up, it ends in September of 2023. And as we've said, we need to go out to bid early next year. So it's really kind of an urgent conversation for us so we can put together this scope. and ready to hit the ground first part of the year so that we can bid it, we can select a vendor. And if there's a change of provider, then we have plenty of time to roll that out to make sure that on October 1st, the service continues and it's seamless. But we did want to look at, and because the question was specifically asked by some members of the community, if you just took away waste collection, free waste collection and had residents directly billed for it, would you be able to balance the budget with that? And we felt that was a really important question as well. And we thought that would be good information for the board just to know right out of the gate that one really expensive service that we had, that's about 7% of our budget overall, if that was eliminated from the budget, and turned over to residents, could we make that work? So Karen has put together revenue numbers with and without that capital transfer. Those are the first two lines and with and without waste collection. And so what we've done with the projection scenarios below is we've shown kind of a mix and match of those scenarios. So the first one is the revenue with that capital transfer and It's typically anywhere between 600,000 to 750,000 somewhere in there. It gets a little bit higher in the out years. But if we continue to transfer that money and we continue to pay for waste collection. So this is status quo. This is where we are today. We just keep doing what we're doing. Where do we end up? And you can see on these numbers here, we've got our deficit this year. We've got a deficit next year that's less than this year. And there are reasons for that. A lot of that has to do with like the one-time expenses we have. So the comprehensive plan is in there that's quite expensive. We got the compensation study. We've got some other things in there that are kind of driving that cost. But anyhow, we know, we also know that we're going to have a, we should, if the revenue continues the way it is, have a nice increase again with sales tax David McGoldrick, M.D.: : At least for 2024 so we projected that it's still going to go up pretty significantly next year and then start the taper after that. David McGoldrick , M.D.: : But anyhow, you can see that the deficits continue and they are going to grow over time. David McGoldrick, M.D., And the key numbers down below, and this is the the percentages that you see here in 2024 you can see we're at 54% so we're still above that 50% operational goal that the Board of Aldermen has set. But in 2025, we start to dip below that. We start to get into really those kind of towards that action threshold where we'll take immediate action to avoid getting to 25% because you always want to stay above that. And these projections, again, going five years out, you can see that in 2028, we finally break below 25%. So this is status quo. This is just doing what we're doing.

Yes. Just to clarify in my own mind, you made a comment in your video The CIP transfer is, as I think you said, in order to pay for things in the general fund that capital things that in the general funds. And we've made that change this year to a higher number, right?

That's correct.

So there are going to be more things in that, right?

That's correct. So that number is going to fluctuate and it is going to grow.

Okay. And that transfer is coming out of the capital improvement fund, which is funded by the... Sales tax, right? That's correct. It was a dedicated capital tax. Okay. I just wanted to clarify where that all, it's not just funding money going back and forth. That's a great point,

and I should have mentioned that. So there's a dedicated capital tax that can only be used for capital purposes. We can, however, book some of that to operational expenses related to capital. So engineers' salaries, for example, if they're working on capital projects, consulting fees, other things that might be within the operating fund that relate to capital, we can book those. And that's what allows us to make that transfer. So I know the conversation always comes up that it's related to the firefighters and that's when the transfer started. There's no doubt that started in 2019 is trying to find a way to get a little more money of the general fund, but the amount that's transferred, there's no correlation whatsoever between that and the cost of any kind of personnel outside of those capital eligible expenses.

So there, there, there is a legitimate reason for having it. Correct.

Correct. There is a legitimate

reason. Sorry. I just also want to point out that the state statute allows us to do maintenance of capital items. So like say if we had a pothole that we had to patch or something like that, asphalt, whatever, if we take that out of operating space, we are allowed to reimburse that with the capital tax. So I just also wanted

to- Thank you. Thanks, sorry to interrupt.

David, I was just gonna too, just in terms of the capital fund, is that pretty much everything we fix around the city? So for instance, we're moving that money into the general fund so that prevents us from using a significant sum to potentially fixed infrastructure around the city, right? So that's kind of like, I mean, yes, potholes, but also big things like public works buildings. So that makes it harder to do big capital projects around the city.

Correct. So as you take money from the transfer, when you transfer money out of the capital fund and you put it over an operating while you're extending the life of items we have, or you're paying for those support functions really that we have for our capital projects, it does diminish your ability to take on new projects or larger renovations or anything else. So But as we looked at a few weeks back and I didn't bring the slide today, the capital fund is relatively healthy. And really the concern is more on the operating side, but we do have quite a large unfunded project list. And if that transfer wasn't happening and you kept 750,000 or whatever it is in the capital fund every year, then your ability to check more of those items off would certainly be there. So any other questions about that capital transfer?

Yeah, I have one. David, are you discussing also, is our credit rating affected by the reducing our fund balance?

Yes. So, you know, you always want to be above 25%, and they'll tell you that. But the higher your fund balance, the greater the chance that, you know, I can tell you that last time we had our ratings calls when we did the refundings early last year and at the end of, 2021. We had one at the end of 2020, we had one in 2021. But anyhow, we had a lot of uncertainty at the time as we were going through that refinancing and our revenue numbers were way down. And we were able to preserve that AAA credit rating because of the money we had in the bank that we had in our fund balance. So it is important to have that. And that way we could make the case that, hey, there is financial uncertainty. We do have issues with revenue. We are running a deficit. We do project we're going to run a deficit, but we have time to figure that out because of the money we have in the bank. And Moody's at the time they did the rating, you know, they were comfortable that we'd be able to make good on our promises.

Thanks. Thank you.

David, I had a question. To the extent we take on a big capital improvement project in the future and we seek financing, does the likelihood of getting to financing at all turn on how much we contribute to the project ourselves out of the capital fund so that the less money we have in the capital fund would hurt us in terms of financing?

Not necessarily. They're really strictly looking at your ability to pay. So whether you're the cash outlay up front is larger, not a down payment almost so to speak. If you were talking about buying something else doesn't make a huge difference with it. In the end, they're looking at your fund balances. Okay. Thank you.

Um, can you talk a little bit about, so it doesn't look to me like the CIP transfer is like a fixed amount. Like it's not 500,000 or 750,000 year over year. What can you talk about how that amount was calculated for this exercise and projection?

Sure. Karen.

I don't know why you thought you'd get to sit halfway back in the room.

That's true. It's good

for

you. So the initial number when this first started, I'm not really sure how that came about. But for the projections that I've put together, I just put in a standard 5% increase. taking into consideration all the different avenues, the different maintenance items. You know, like David mentioned, engineering, you know, salaries. I was considering road maintenance, any type of capital item maintenance, and it's projected cost out five years. So I just added on for the purpose of these projections a 5% increase year over year. so is it

essentially um sort of like maxing out what's allowable as a capital like a transfer from capital to the general

fund or so um in terms of what's allowable this the statute doesn't cap us at what we can spend it on if we decided that we weren't going to make any more capital purchases or do any type of capital improvement we could use that funding to maintain the capital items that we have. So there's no real cap. If we decided we weren't going to maintain it and we weren't going, we could get rid of the tax, which obviously we don't want to do because we want to maintain our assets. I'm trying to think of the best way. I guess what I'm trying to figure

out is, is it kind of taking based on what you said about like imagining a 5% increase? Did you kind of just kind of start with where we are and then look at like maybe an assumption that that's going to increase about 5% each year? Or did you look at like what expenses we have to make that are capitalizable or Do you know what I mean? Like, do you understand the question? I think I understand what you're

asking. Yeah. I did not look at what, like a specific financial goal that we need to meet. I just looked at what I assumed we were using it for when we did the initial calculation, all the different things that I've mentioned and kind of factored in the cost increases. Cause you know, right now we're seeing high inflation. And so I kind of smoothed it out over, five years, instead of assuming like next year is gonna be huge and the next year is gonna to be really small. So, and you'll see that with some of these other projections because we can't really know what's gonna happen. So like the IRF, the items we took out of the IRF and we've moved into operational, I did an average. to kind of, you know, figure out how much we would spend each year. But like some years will be higher and some years will be lower. These are just, you know, kind of averages. So I kind of did the same thing with the capital transfer. Just kind of try to factor in different items that may come into play in the next, you know, few years to figure out what that percentage increase should be. Okay. I think that helps. Thank you. I

don't think we're maxed out with that number we had. If we wanted to, we could get into detail where, you know, at the David Grabowski- A vehicle is a capital purchase, you could do everything related to a vehicle and your operating fund and attribute that to it, along with probably mechanic salaries and all that equipment and everything else. You could probably balloon that number up quite a bit if you wanted. Historically, though, we've tried to increase those eligible items almost in the same manner that our expenses generally are increasing just to try to keep pace with it. But I imagine if we got in there and really went through a lot of detail, you could inflate that number if you wanted to.

Right. And I'm not advocating- But then you're taking more from the capital fund, which is a bigger concern. That's definitely not my goal, but theoretically that would be an option.

Yeah. The tricky part is the balance. And that's kind of the dangerous thing about these transfers is you're trying to balance your operational needs along with what you need to spend on capital because you've got that unfunded project list and you've got projects that are expensive. And as we've seen, the projects that we're bidding out are coming in 35% over what we had anticipated. So- you're just trying to balance the two and not take too much out of the capital side.

Thank you.

So that first scenario, again, that's just if we keep doing what we're doing. And if you look at the scenario beneath it, so revenue without CIP transfer expenditures with waste collection built in, and I should say with the waste collection built in we plugged in a 30% increase next year, and then a 5% escalator after that. We have no idea what this contract will look like. We, We know anecdotally, and we know from talking to other cities, you know, from talking to our hauler even just about, hey, what are contracts doing? We're looking at an increase anywhere between 25 and 45%. Hopefully not higher than that, but, you know, wouldn't shock me at the same time. So we use 30% for that number. And Whether that's going to be good or not, I'm not sure. But it's a, you know, again, that's a big jump. So we did for 2024 put that expenditure increase in there just so everybody's aware of that. So what happens if we eliminate the CIP transfer and we've had conversations about eliminating that? If we did that and we kept paying for waste collection knowing that that increase is coming, you can see that the situation where we get below our fund balance minimum It's just accelerated. We project that would occur somewhere around fiscal year 2027. So you can see that we just get there quicker. Essentially what you're doing is in this scenario, you're taking out that CIP revenue, which is $650,000 a year plus 5% year after year on here. So in that particular situation, we're in bad shape pretty quickly. So that's what happens with the waste collection increase we know is coming and the current revenue expenditures on the books. So I think it's pretty easy to see that something has to happen here. This is the path we're on. The biggest question is, how do we go about fixing it? It could be a mix of revenue, new revenue streams and reductions or changes to service levels. So that's the whole point of the conversation today. When you look down below revenue with the capital transfer, just like we're doing, if you just took the waste collection contract out. So again, back to that question of if we just made that one move do you end up balancing the budget? The answer is yes. And you can see the numbers here. We have surpluses here with the CIP transfer all the way through the five-year projection, surplus of about $900,000 projected in that fifth year. Again, the fifth year is always murky, but you can see we're in good shape as far as the fund balance slightly increasing it over time. And then if we eliminated the CIP transfer and we eliminated the waste collection and turn that billing over to residents, you can see over time again, we're pretty consistent with our fund balance here over time, keeping it just below that 70% mark, but really no problems here as far as balancing the budget for at least five years. And so what happens beyond that? Not quite sure, but without that expense in there, you can see we're in the black, we're in good shape and really just kind of maintaining throughout this projected period. So I wanted to give you that information kind of as a baseline, because again, we've got some decisions to make with waste. Yes.

Yeah. So looking at these two, the top one, obviously, as you said, starts to, it looks like it's going to start to trend up potentially based on the assumptions that we're making. And then the bottom one is somewhat similar, but it does do a little dip down at the end. Is that a trend or is that Like, is that significant? Because I couldn't think of any reason that that one would start to trend

down. So what's tipping it is that CIP transfer, which is the only difference between the two. So as you add the 5% to the CIP transfer every year, the amount that we're reducing it speeds up on that particular scenario.

Okay.

Yeah. So I can't remember in that in 2028, but that's the IP transfer number is. Yeah.

It's just something about that. That's the difference you're looking at. That's the only thing that's

fluctuating there.

Okay. I think Becky, you're the, when you look at the top one, basically you've got a big jump in, in the fund balance early on with the higher net profit, net profit, higher It's not called surplus, sorry. The higher surplus, but as the surplus starts to dwindle, you can see that while it's going to continue to increase because it is a surplus, but that surplus is getting smaller. So it went from 77 to 78, 79, whereas early on it went 70, 73 up to 77. Okay,

yeah.

So it'll continue to increase as long as there's a surplus, but at a much slower rate.

And actually here's your difference here. I said, I didn't know what that number was. The math's right there. So it's, if you just look at the surplus itself, 890,391, you got 26,000 down here. So the difference is the amount of those CIP transfer in

that

2028.

Does this take into account, it's been in the news lately, the jump in personal property tax revenues with used cars and utility taxes going up because the costs are going up. That all goes into the operating budget, right? And is that,

that is, that is reflected here. I don't know how, where those numbers, right. The personal property tax revenue, um, isn't as significant as real estate tax for us. On the utility tax side, we used a 5% increase for the first year in there, so 2024, and then 3% increases after that.

Is that what we're seeing?

Well, the other thing that makes this murky for us rather than just pure utility revenue is the fact that the cable franchise fees that we have are being rolled back as the Wayfair or the use tax is being ramped up with online payments purchases coming in. So while we may see increases with electric and gas revenues and that sort of thing, we're having to roll back the revenue we're getting from cable due to that legislation that enabled us to receive the Wayfair money. And the Wayfair Money comes in as a use tax. So that's all booked to the capital

fund. Great question. Yeah, it is.

Yeah, that number is not as big as what you're seeing reported, but there's a reason for it. That's because we're having to roll back the money we're getting from the cable providers, unfortunately.

On your assumptions? Yes. I guess we're looking at that a little bit.

If you'd like

to. Did you take out the Calaris project

revenues? We did not use any. We only used approved projects. So anything that's listed on there as pending was not included in the calculation.

That's a hefty sum.

It is. No, if we didn't have a zoning approval, we did not include it. So other projects may pop up, but as we've seen, even if a project in 2023 or 2024, all of a sudden we start talking about it, it gets approved with zoning. By the time it's constructed, we probably wouldn't even see that revenue towards the tail end of this projection anyway.

Yeah. Gotcha. Okay.

So any other questions about this? So we'll talk about waste collection next. And again, there's, there's, a sense of urgency at this point, especially if we want to survey the public and get some feedback on that. So that's going to be a component of this conversation. You know, I think we just need to have kind of a general waste collection conversation to start, but then we need to formulate some questions to get out to the public. And we need to do that fairly quickly if we want to get results turned around in time to have some conversations and make decisions about the scope And so we can get that out on the street early next year. Before we do that really quickly, the one thing that in these meetings we've had lately with condo owners and just conversations with residents generally, even last night, we had a good meeting with a group of residents and they wanted to talk about property taxes. Everybody kind of goes straight to that because we tried it last year and it's, when's this going to come up again? What's the rationale for doing it? That sort of thing. And I'm always quick to say, hey, that decision hasn't been made. I don't know if we'll have that conversation certainly with the Board of Aldermen to figure out where things are going. But the one thing I feel like last time we didn't communicate very well and I think is kind of a striking point is if you look at the typical single-family home here in the city of Clayton, the tax bill is right around $10,000. It's actually a little less if we're looking at the median home value. If you look at the tax bill itself, people just think I pay $10,000 a year in taxes. I'm just getting killed on taxes. Where's all that money going? We need to do a better job of communicating that our piece of that is 9.5%. So of that total bill that you're paying, that's a big number, 10,000. We're getting $950. But then when you think about that on a monthly basis, that's about $79 a month is what we receive that we know we're going to get. That's your base rate really to live here. is $79 a month is what you pay. And for that $79 a month, you're getting our parks, you're getting the best police, you're getting to best fire you're gonna find anywhere. You're getting the leaf collection at the curb, you're getting best snow removal in Metro St. Louis. You're getting your waste picked up behind your house at no charge. And all that stuff is happening for a base cost of about $79 a month for a house that's worth 850,000 or so. To me, that's a pretty significant value that you're getting for what you're paying. And when you think about what you spend $79 a month on, you know, that's your internet bill. That's maybe a fraction of your power that you pay for, your electric. It's a dinner. You know, we pay $79 a month. On all sorts of things. But I can't think of anything that provides as much value as what we do for that amount. And when you think about how little that actually is for what you're getting, it's easier to see that we're in this situation here because that's not a significant amount. And we're getting a lot for it. And we can't extract any more value out of that particular amount than we already are. So I think that needs to be part of this conversation going forward and getting people to understand it really on a monthly basis, because that's really how you think about most of your bills. I know how much I pay a month for everything. But for some reason, when you talk about property tax, it's always what I pay per year, not on a monthly basis. And then also you're thinking of the total bill, not the fraction that actually comes to us to do what we do. So I just wanted to put that out there before we get into the waste collection part of the discussion and just say that you know, to everybody in the room for everything you do. It's amazing that we do so much for, you know, an average bill that's actually a little bit less than $79 a month. But that's how we've gotten to where we are. And that's why we have some hard choices here ahead of us. So I'm gonna switch gears and pull up this sheet that I emailed out regarding waste collection. So we, again, have some decisions we need to make really before the first part of next year so we can get this scoped together. Latest we want to be on the street with this is February. So that's why we're talking about this now and we're going to be talking about it a lot. So as just a quick recap for anybody watching at home and may watch this recording later, we provide solid waste, recycling yard waste at no charge to residents for all single family and multifamily residences in the city. We are the only city in Metro St. Louis that provides rear yard collection at no charge to single family residents. We are the only City in the Metro area that provides free collection services for all of the multifamily properties in the city. This is a unique situation, a unique service that we're providing currently. In the current fiscal year, we're gonna spend $2.25 million to provide those waste collections at no charge to residential properties, which is again, a significant amount Typically in a given year represents, you know, seven to 8% of our operating fund goes towards waste collection. The contract we have right now, again, expires on September 30th, 2023. So the next fiscal year, fiscal year 24, will have a new waste contract in it. The bid documents for those waste haulers must be developed and posted again no later than February of 2023. So I just wanted to go over that background again so everybody kind of understands the situation. and the reason we're talking about it now. So really, I think the first question that we need to ask because this is a component of the scope is do we wanna continue to provide waste collection services at no charge for residents? And what that looks like if we decided to turn that over the billing to residents is they would be billed directly by the hauler. So the city can't send out those bills process that. We could, we'd have to add additional staffing, but the biggest impediment to that is with the Hancock Amendment, it would be considered a new user fee if we were to collect that money ourselves. And if you do that, then you'd have to put a proposition on the ballot and go out and get voter approval for it. So I don't know if, I think there's one city maybe left that still does that billing in-house, but they also have utilities so they have a billing department basically. Other than that, everybody turns that fee over to the waste hauler and it's wrapped up in the contract. Yes.

When we last talked about this, didn't we look at some municipalities that have a separate tax category for waste? There are

some cities that pay for waste collection themselves and they've gone out and had ballot issues where they've gotten property tax increases specifically to pay for trash. Dedicated funds, right? They've committed to their residents that the revenue that comes in for it will only be used for waste collection. So again, if the hauler's got the burden of doing the billing there, there will be administrative costs. There will be, you know, billing costs. They'll have, if they're sending out hard copies, they've got postage and everything else with it. But one of the bigger parts that people tend to not think of so much is the debt collection as well. If you have people that aren't paying, you know, typically in your contract, it's going to say you're going to pick up their trash really no matter what. We can't have trash piling up. So they'll pick it up and then they have to go after people to try to collect those debts. And there's an expense there to the haulers. So that's a key decision we need to make. And if you looked at the other questions that are down below, you know, we need to talk about the scope of services itself. So should single family collection services remain the same? This is a huge one. And this is, you know, I think a pretty big part of this discussion here. So right now we're providing one pickup a week for single all of those waste types. So solid waste, recycling, yard waste, we do that one time a week. So a question is, is one pickup per week sufficient? Some cities have two pickups a week for solid waste, that sort of thing. Really, if your recycling numbers are good, if people are recycling the way they should, one solid waste pickup will typically do it. And I feel like we're doing a pretty good job there, but I would ask the question, is that enough? Do you ever hear from residents? I'd love for the truck to come by twice. The next part is that curbside versus rear yard discussion. So again, we provide the rear yard service, which is unique. There's only a few cities that do it. Typically, it's a curbside automated where they have a truck that's got an arm. It's compatible with the container. It dumps it. There's a driver. There's nobody running around outside the truck. They're actually haulers and cities to provide the service that do not allow drivers to get out of the truck at all. because of work comp concerns and that sort of thing. They just want them in the truck using the arm all the time. So the collection certainly looks different. This is push it to the curb and they come by and get it. The curbside collection would cost less than rear yard. We know that there are savings there for the cities that we have information for. There's typically a premium to upgrade to a rear yard service if they offer that option. And in a lot of cases, it's close to double. And the rear yard collection, if it's optional, is typically solid waste only. You still got to push your recycling out to the curb and your yard waste. The curbside collection from a sustainability standpoint is advantageous. And the reason is the truck idling. So the numbers that we got from our haul are about our particular routes. show that we idle about 58 seconds more on the rear yard collection than we would on curbside. So that idling time, if you calculate that out through the course of a year, we've got over 2,300 single family units. Per collection, we spend about 37 hours idling trucks here in the city. Two collections per week, one trash, one recycling. That's about 3,800 hours a year that trucks are idling here in the city with the rear yard collection. That's on top of what they would do with a typical curbside service. It doesn't take yard waste into account either. Yard waste is hard to calculate because it fluctuates with seasons. And then we have some residents that take advantage of that. We have others with lawn services where they haul everything off. So yard waste is hard to factor into it, but there is the environmental consideration. The change to curbside collection on the initial contract would have some sort of capital outlay built into that. I fully expect that would happen. So if they were gonna roll out containers for 2,300 single family units, they probably don't have those just in stock. So there's a big capital outlay where they've got to buy those containers and deploy them for both recycling and for trash. So pretty significant expense there. Also, as far as trucks, most of these haulers are right-sized where they have the number of trucks they need with maybe a couple in reserve to provide their services. So if we were to pick up or change that service and they needed to change trucks or add trucks, a lot of that capital cost is going to get passed on to the city as well. Curbside service containers can create visual and physical clutter. You can You know when it's trash day in surrounding municipalities that have this service. Here where we have parked vehicles, and I'm kind of dropping them below, but parked vehicles, leaf piles, snow at the curb, those types of things, those do present challenges for curbside collection. They make it more difficult to get to containers. So there's got to be some education component, certainly if we were to make that switch. And there is going to be some hassle. When a truck's coming down the street, if it's narrow and cars are parked and there are leaves out, it's going to clog up that travel lane as it works its way down. And then a question that comes up a lot, and for good reason, with the curbside, if you have folks with accessibility needs, how do they get their container to the curb? You can work all of that into the contract as well, where in certain circumstances, they'll go back and get those containers if people can't get them out themselves. And then the final question on scope would be yard waste. So Should we continue to have unlimited yard waste? You could change this to an optional yard waste service. Some have a fee per bag. Others just have a monthly charge for yard waste, but that's a possibility as well. For yard waste option, looking at other cities that have it here, Ellisville is $4 per month per container. Creve Coeur is $10 a month. Maryland Heights, $5.50 a month. And then finally, if we're going to continue to provide waste collection that no charge to residents a conversation the board's had in the past is do we look at the multifamily buildings that receive that particular benefit and do we have any kind of discussion on what that benefit looks like. Relative to the number of units within a building, so I did provide some example cities in here and what they're paying. really what we're typically seeing is for one time a week, if you've got recycling, you've got yard waste, you're doing it at the curb, it's typically about $25 a month. And that's what cities are finding as they bid these things out. I should say that these bids are getting a little bit stale at this point. Most of these cities are a couple years into the contract. And of course, with diesel costs and labor costs and everything else up, I would imagine if they went out to bid today, those numbers would be a little bit higher. The rear yard is really hard to figure out Frontenac has a contract that's $25 a month. The hauler was new to the area. They wanted a contract. They got a really low number from them. The other two bids that they got were double that number, so they were north of $50. They had two haulers that are the biggest haulers in St. Louis, didn't even bid on that particular service. They weren't interested in providing rear yard in Frontenac. So Ledoux and Town & Country both have rear yard service However, in those particular cities, they have an approved list of haulers and then residents choose which hauler they want. They typically do it by neighborhood there, but those are two communities that are primarily private streets and they have well-formed neighborhoods. And so those neighborhoods make their own decision about who their hauler is going to be. and they go out and get contracts off a pre-approved list. So it's hard to use them as a comparison at all because it isn't a citywide service. And to do that in Clayton on a neighborhood basis is very difficult because as we found with indentures, we have some very well-formed, well-organized subdivisions. We have others that are quite large that don't have any sort of representation whatsoever. So figuring out in Clayton Gardens what trash service looks like for the neighborhood having that discussion is, I don't even know how you do it. Or in High Point or an area like that.

And those are private pay, correct? Not the city pay?

These are all private pay down here, correct. So we'll go ahead and move back up to the top. Again, these are the decisions we need to make before we get into the discussion. And Mayor, I'll even let you kind of leave that if you want or ask questions here. But are there any questions about any of this information about the different types of services?

I guess, David, at the outset, I mean, it seems like one of the first questions is to talk about, you know, a tax and whether or not, you know, because people are asking whether to like what Susan mentioned, you know, Maplewood has a tax that pays for trash. So, you know, does that come before the question as to whether or not to provide waste collection services at no cost to residents. Because you talk about the tax and in the video to us, you said that the 18 cent tax that we proposed a year ago would not cover the contract. So it would have to be a tax that would exceed 25 to 30 cents, which is substantially larger. Correct. So I guess from my point of view, I'm not sure that a tax for trash is worthwhile at this point.

you're looking at about a 50% increase of the tax rate here for residential properties in order to pay for trash exclusively with that increase. Yeah.

I mean, it's a good question to just get that out of the way. I don't think that's really a good option at this point either. So I think what we're trying to do here is because of the numbers that our staff has crunched, it's clear that the easiest option simplest, most direct way to balance the budget is to do something that most other cities are doing, which is to have our residents pay for their trash service, whatever that trash service is comprised of. So I think it's, I'm sitting here looking at this. It's been hard over the past year for me to wrap my mind around that idea that we don't provide trash anymore, but I

really seriously think that's the only way to go. I think in considering that, though, it's the same people paying and there will be, I think what you estimated a 20% increase in what each resident is paying. So, you know, we're just changing. Right, I would love not to not to go for tax increase. I'm saying we should, but it's the same People paying or paying 20% more because there's administrative costs at the haulers going to be charging them. So there's not a savings to residents must going that route.

Well, I think A, we don't know that it'll be a 20% upcharge, that's number one. And B, even if we were to continue providing the service free to residents, we would be facing significant increases one way or another. So I'm not sure in the end, you know, we can negotiate, I think as a city, a really good rate for our residents. The fact is that the way we're doing it now just isn't sustainable. Right, and I'm not

disputing that. We all should be aware, though, that residents will be paying more because in addition to whether the city or residents are paying, there's going to be the administrative charge, which we don't know the amount, but it's going to be, you know, there's debt collection, as David said, and all these other things on it. Each individual resident will be paying more. Right, you're either paying the tax or you're paying

for trash. Right, and the individual billing is

more expensive than having the city pay it. Right, we'll get a better deal than individual residents.

Right, but if we go out for a tax for 25 or 30 cents or whatever the case may be, then we're hamstringed on using that tax only for trash. And five to 10 years down the line, if things continue to look not great, it would be hard to go out for a general tax increase on top of a trash increase, so.

So I think the other part of that is that we know from the last attempt to increase taxes, which was not specifically tied to waste collection. And from some of the conversations that some of us have had with residents since then, what we know is that there remains a very vocal and active part of our community that opposes any property tax increase that's related to this. And that And so it's very hard, I think, based on what we know right now to imagine that ever being successful, even though we can believe that for many people it would end up being a net savings. The fact is like if we can't do it, we can't do right and so without unless we hear. from a vocal contingent of residents who are active on the other side that actually see that the city administration of waste collection as a beneficial service for us to provide, and they can make the case for that in contrast to the folks that are opposed to it. I don't see that we really have that as an option regardless of whether we think it's like truly like smarter or better savings for people or something else. And so, you know, that's kind of where I've come around to, I think kind of as Michelle said that, you know, it's taken me a while to be like, okay, maybe this really is just what we're going to do. And the results I think ends up being Hopefully, I think I've got questions too, but it's fairly somewhat like equitable in that if you're in a high rise, the hauler is going to determine the cost of what it is to collect trash there and charge those people for that. And if you're in the house, you're going to get that. And if your in like a mid-size multifamily, you're going get a different rate and we can expect the haulers to accurately calculate that and and people will be paying based on the actual service that they're receiving which seems appropriate to me as opposed to based on like the um you know the value of their property which is what a property tax increase does well it's more fair

because the multi big multi-families aren't aren't subsidizing what let's say it's rear yard or even single family somehow you know they're not subsidizing that which is one of the big reasons they opposed the property tax for trash um

but a fall i think to follow up on that it's not any more not only it's more equitable but it's clearly not inequitable which is i think what would be argued if we tried to deal with the property tax which would give rise to an argument for opposing a property tax increase and probably a formidable opposition and that would be a fair objection. So again, I think it suggests that property tax is not the way to go.

And one other thing, you know, Susan, to your point, I do hear your point for sure, but residents in other communities that are paying for their trash face the same same issue this is not like we would be inflicting something on our residents that everybody mostly isn't already doing they are covering not only the cost of cost of the service but the cost of the bookkeeping behind it

right and i'm not trying to take a position what we should do but i want us to be aware of that the other thing that again just so we have all the facts there are a lot of communities out there and i don't know the cost of all these things but So many communities say, you know, one trash bin and two recycle or they limit what they pick up that's covered by the city or whatever else or charging for the leaves. There's a lot of different compositions of the services provided. And I don't know what, I have no idea what the most economical and sustainable approaches are. It's not just that we either pay for everything or we build our residents directly. There's a whole lot of different mix in there. I also don't know if we can, when we bid, is it possible to bid alternatives? If we don't, we're guessing. We're guessing all these things. What does it really cost to get backyard pickup today? What does it really costs to have once a week? If we had two things that were palatable to us in representing our community, would we double bid it just to see what the difference in cost is, or is that not something? No, that

is something we can do. You know, in the billing component, that's one of the reasons for asking this, but also because for obvious reasons, it solves the budgetary issues. So that's why that's a question. Question two, I think is where you get into those, those bid alternatives is what does the service look like? And I think that's, you know, that particular discussion, you're going to have people that are going to have all kinds of different ideas about what the service should look like. And if we have a couple that stand out and we're kind of on the fence, what should this ultimately look like? You can always bid it with two alternatives and make the decision at that point in time.

Because very often when people have very strong opinions until they see the price tag that goes with it, we have to have that, oh, well, maybe not. So that's it. I just don't feel like I have enough information to really know that, especially when I'm looking at when I'm thinking that our decision really will be an additional cost to residents. And I fully understand a lot of people pay it directly. I get that, but it's something we should consider.

I mean, that is a good point. Like that should be something we ask residents, you know, these questions like, do you still want your rear yard pickup, even if you will be paying double? You know, so really consider that option. Like, are you going to pay $50 a month or $25 a month? So, I mean, how badly do you want, just like you said, you

know, so. I've got a couple of questions and a couple of points. And dovetailing off of what Susan's saying and what Becky has said as well. But one question I have is, if we're going to have residents paying for their own trash pickup, they're going to get billed and of course that's the administrative cost. Is there any way to stop them from opting out? If I'm paying for a trash hauler and I don't like the way he's dealing with my house, what's to stop me from saying, you know what, I don't want you picking up my trash anymore?

So the way this would happen and the way it happens everywhere else is the city would negotiate a contract with a hauler to cover waste collection for the city. And an ordinance would be passed at the same time requiring everyone to use that hauler.

So they would be forced to do that? That's correct.

If you start leaving up to individuals like that, inevitably they'll cancel the service to save some money. They'll bag up the trash, put it in their car. They'll bring it to work. They'll find a dumpster downtown, all kinds of things to kind of circumvent it. But it starts to get messy that way.

use their neighbors.

Exactly.

Yeah. So, okay. So the other thing I'm looking at though is, and it's, we're talking about equity and I know, you know, I like the points about, you know, the high rises, but my point is that, you know, we may have some low income people in our city and this might actually cause a real hardship. I'm not saying I oppose us doing this this way. I'm just trying to figure out if there's a way for us to help some of those people that are on real fixed incomes, real low incomes. They're going to be hit with a bill, you know, the same as my house or the same as, you You'll find in, you know, in some of the, you know, big houses in the big areas, you know, a little house is going to get the same hit, you know. So is that equitable? And is there something for those people, those families or those, you know, elderly people who may, this might hit them harder, of course, in relation to what they can afford than other people?

So I haven't seen any type of discount for low income individuals or that sort of thing. Really, it's built like a typical utility and if people need assistance with, you know, paying utility bills, there are different organizations out there that assist with it, but I haven't seen that written into municipal contracts. I have seen senior discounts built into municipal contracts where, you know, those on fixed income are concerned about that. And then, you know, if you go that direction, then the question is, is that discount provided within the contract, which means the people that aren't paying a discount are basically subsidizing or pick up more of that share? Or is that something that's reimbursable by the city up to a certain percentage where at the end of the year, if you're over a certain age, you bring your trash receipts into the city And then we take a look at it and refund, you know, a specific amount, 20%, whatever the number may be. So there's some different ways to run that program, but I've seen senior discount programs, but I've never seen anything geared towards low to moderate income individuals.

Yeah. I had

a question to the extent that this, this decision about servicing of trash relates to individual property owners. So you've got, You've got solid waste, you've got recycle, you've got yard waste. And it looks like from your summary that there were some options given in some cities. And it just struck me like if I was a waste hauler, that that would be very difficult to implement. If one subdivision says we want it this way, okay, that's pretty easy. If you start getting down to the people at 623 South Central want this and the people right next door want something else, it seems like a logistical nightmare that most haulers would have a real hard time with. So I'm just wondering from what you've heard, is that realistic? Is this really something where you could offer residents a choice is this something we think a trash hauler would take on, you know, would they have to have a computer in their computer? So this address gets this service, you know, it just seems to me like it would be very difficult to actually

carry that out. Yeah. So there are a couple of cities on here that have a rear yard option where you can pay extra and they'll get the container from behind your house. They only do that on for trash so they don't have to keep track of it for those recycling and yard waste days. So yes, it administratively, it is a, somewhat of a burden. They've got to keep their system updated and know who's getting what service. So I think that's always a little bit of a concern to the hauler. As far as yard waste though, where it's an optional service, you know, those are curbside cities that are doing it. So the hauler knows if it's out at the curb, I don't know if they're checking whether or not you have the service or not, but Hey, if there's some lawn bags out by the street, that's pretty good indicator. They have that particular service and they probably grab them. So when things are put out at the curb it's easy to identify that it's there and we're going to pick it up as we go down the street. That difference though, between I got two curbside houses and then three rear yard houses and then curbside, then rear yard, keeping track of that on a route is difficult. What makes it even harder is you need two different trucks to provide that service. So logistically, there's a lot that goes into that. Thank you.

Well, I'd like to put a thought out there, which is this, you know, We talked a lot about doing a survey previously and figuring out exactly down to the, you know, fine hairs, what kind of trash service we ought to put forth. But I think, you know, if we are going, and that was kind of, I think behind a tax increase move. So at this point, if we think we are, you know, definitely if we're moving toward just charging people for trash and not having something on the ballot, our residents are gonna be hit with sort of, it will be a big change for them. It'll be an increased cost. They'll have to figure out the bill. You know, it'll be something new and different that they'll have to adjust to. And I'm wondering if we should also hit them at the same time with a change in the service level. So in other words, you know, there's a lot of talk about eliminating rear yard, which maybe we should. I see a lot of sustainability reasons and other reasons to do it. But is it too much all at once to say, hey, you're going to pay extra now for your trash. And by the way, your service is going to be downgraded. Don't know, but I'd like to put that thought on the table. And I think if we do a survey about Do you want rear yard? Don't you? Well, what's going to happen is pretty much single family homes are going to say yes. The condos are going to say no, and we'll be at the same place we were, you know, with that other argument. So just something for you guys to, to mull over. Cause I really think it's a lot to ask, ask of people to do all of that at once.

I think though, in making our decision, we need to have asked again, because we have to say we're informed by the survey. And if I have no idea where it would come out, if we also said this is your cost will double or whatever it is with rear yard versus this, which do you prefer? If you put the cost on it, I have no idea, but you're right. The condo versus the residential or the single family will be different. And I also wonder again, just throwing it out to think on is, is there a basic level that the city can provide? And then you see this, if If you travel, you see, again, charging for your every bag of leaves you have out or charging for your excess cans. We want to encourage recycling, but is there a basic level and then people can pay an additional if they want more? I don't know. I guess it gets hard for the hauler to figure out what we talked about, you know, who's where or when.

It does. It's doable. You know, one of the concerns that I think we always have is just the more complicated it is, the less desirable the contract is, the more you're going to pay. And in some cases, you may not get many bidders at all if it gets overly complicated. But Those are all things that we can work through. And that's why I think if we had a couple different ideas and a bid alternates may not a bad idea because they may be interested in one of those services and not the other. And you can see how that plays out. The only other thing I'd say is when you survey Everybody wants to know the cost, and we'd love to provide numbers. It's difficult without having that number, but the other thing I don't want to do is I don't want tell residents, hey, it's going to be $55 a month, we estimate for rear yard service or something like that. we could have a bid that would come in, had we not said that at $40 and they think, okay, Clayton's happy to pay $55 a month. We're going to set the rate there. So it's really hard when you're not actually in a bidding situation, a competitive bidding situation to throw numbers around that are guesses or hypothetical. And I'd hate to put us in that situation where, hey, Clayton has an expectation that it's going to cost X. So we can charge at least that and people are going to be happy with it. But at the same time, I hate not telling residents what they should expect to pay in their bill. So we've got that conflict as well,

which is difficult. Michelle, you make a really good point. We have, whatever we decide, it is gonna be a big change and we have to be able to, even if people disagree, we have to be to defend it. And if we have this, we need that survey to support our decisions. So I'd

like to just differ with Alderman Buse. I originally thought when we were talking about this survey made a lot of sense But I think given the direction we're going, I agree with you, Mayor, that this is a major change to ask people to start paying for this. We've been an outlier, but it's time to stop being this. There are good things to be an outlier on. This is not one of them. I happen to believe that the vast majority of people in Clayton like the service they're getting right now. I think that this survey will be very difficult to put together, very difficult to get meaningful responses on in great part because as David's pointed out at the end of the day people wanna know if you tell them is it gonna be this or this I think the vast majority would certainly say rear yard, unless you tell me it's going to, you know, you give me exact pretty good numbers as to why I'm going to save. But we can't do that. We're not going to know how much it's going to do, how much it's gonna cost. So I think if we do the survey, first of all, it's going to cost us a bunch of money to do that. at a time when we're trying to save money, not spend money, I think the results are not going to be terribly helpful. And I think it's ultimately obvious, at least to me, that we want rear yard service. And that's, I think, what the majority of people in Clayton want. Yeah, people will, some people ask, well, why didn't you ask me? I understand that. But I think the answer we're going to get is going to be all over the lot. It's not going to help us. And I think what it will simply do is actually create division in the city because you're going to have, again, division between the multifamily folks and the single family folks that'll be reflected in the survey. So I think actually the survey would be, would be counterproductive at this point. So I believe this is a path forward. That's pretty bold to actually tell people after all these years are going to have to pay for their own trash collection. which frankly seems to me to make a heck of a lot of sense. And so that's the route I would go. I

just, strongly disagree that we think we have enough information or evidence to say that the majority of Clayton residents prefer rear yard pickup. I think we all individually have different anecdotal information. We have actual data from our last survey, which was highly inconclusive. And importantly, like, and there are many better ways that we could design a survey tool, right? I mean, I think we all would recognize that, that that tool was not designed to really effectively identify, right? So you can ask in a certain, like you can build a survey that starts out with like what kind of residence do you live in? And do you actually owe it and pay the property tax or not? Like we can get that. And I believe what we budgeted for was like people with the expertise to help build a survey like that that can give us meaningful data. And it may reinforce what some of us think we know, and it may give us new information. But I think we owe to do that because my anecdotal experience is much more mixed than yours, Gary. And so I'm not comfortable saying that it's obvious one way or the other. So I definitely think we need to think about what questions we can ask and what information it might give us to help inform what we put in the RFP for services. I generally would love us to be able to come up with something that does provide options or ask the haulers, you know, this is kind of maybe the minimum service. And if you can suggest any value added things you would do that would provide options and alternatives to our residents, that would be great. And like perhaps a bonus right in the evaluation process. Um, and I also think we need to consider looking at, um, the is when it comes to sustainability, like if we want to continue to offer rear yard I'm open to that, you know, based on as we continue to get more data to suggest the interest in that. And I think we need to also be very aware of the fact that there are people in our community who don't like the fact that a vehicle idols in front of their house because they're not allowed to bring their trash to the curb. And we have an ordinance in place, I believe, that prevents people from taking their trash to the curbs. I don't think that that's a requirement of Republic, that the trash be in the back. Is that accurate? That's a

city requirement.

Right. So like we could right now from a sustainability perspective adjust that ordinance and say, if you are concerned about sustainability and you do not want a truck idling in front of your house to come get your trash in the backyard, you have the option to bring it to the curb. And the guy will save minutes, thousands of hours a year potentially you know, coming in collecting your trash. But still then, if you don't bring it to the curb, they will go back and get it. So we're not taking away the service from those who want to do it. So I think we need to think about a variety of options and as much as we can do to actually gather meaningful data from a survey collector who is like trained in developing questions that will give us the information we need and, you know, giving options where we can.

Bridget, did you want to make

a

comment? Just that I feel like I've been telling people, you know, for many months now, we are going to engage with you to find out how you feel about trash. So I do think it's very important that we send out a survey. And just like Becky mentioned, I think it's important we can ask in those surveys, what kind of home do you live in? You know, and it seems to me that gathering that data wouldn't be terribly difficult. But I think, I guess one of the questions I had was, depending on that data, can you fashion, you know, as part of a bid set, can you fashion different, I guess, neighborhoods that would maybe do rear side? Or do you envision, David, that the whole city will either do rear or curbside?

I think we need to go citywide just because it's going to be hard to differentiate between neighborhoods. Or if we did it just for those neighborhoods that are organized, then if you're in a neighborhood that doesn't have organization, then I'm not sure that that's necessarily fair that you didn't get to choose for yourself. I just didn't

know based on survey results if it was going to be... And I didn't know as part of our survey if we were going to do kind of look and see what neighborhoods seem to be more interested in. And that's why

we asked that first decision point is... whether or not billing is a question is huge for what the survey looks like. Because if folks say, no, I don't want to pay for trash directly. If that's one of the questions we have in there, okay, then we've got to ask the follow-up question. Well, how are we going to balance the budget? How would you prefer to contribute more money? And that survey looks totally different. We're just talking about scope of services. I think it's going to be something that's relatively easy to tailor. We do have a research professional that we've got under contract on an hourly basis so we can run questions by and make sure those are accurate. You know, we've got our communications manager in the back of the room listening to the conversation. We're ready to go and start putting questions together, you know, based on what this generalized scope should look like. On the asking the question about what type of residence you're in, I think that's an important question to ask, but we need to remember as well is if we're turning over billing to residents. Um, I don't know that a multifamily resident that just has a dumpster that they'll pay a portion of, I don't think they care what happens in the neighborhood because it doesn't necessarily affect their bill in the end anymore because they're not contributing to what a single family resident would pay. The single family residents are paying there, you know, on, on their own. Um, but for simplicity sake, uh, in, especially in this, this bidding environment, um, And if we're going to ask for a rear yard service, which most of the haulers don't want to provide at this point, if they still do, I think it's really important that we have some sort of consistency citywide and not try to break it up in individual chunks.

I just think you know I just think it's hard, I mean everybody knows this, but you know our community is very different in like the width of streets and alleys and it's just I mean it will be. If we were to go to curbside there will be just communities that you know you know I mean again everybody knows this it's just it's difficult, you know it'll be very difficult for.

Just go to a neighboring community and all of them around us are doing curbside and go on trash day. And if you happen to get into that street or you want to turn onto a street while the truck's there, you're going to have to wait because there isn't enough room. And we know in a lot of our neighborhoods it's going to be that way if we were to make that change. So that's certainly a consideration.

And I totally understand the sustainability perspective, of course, with idling. But also like, you know, once you shift to these giant dumpsters, then every single person's trash container right now goes in a landfill too. So I mean, you know, it's just, it's, you know, and over like the long period of time, of course, idling is probably different than dumping, I don't know, 5,000 rubber and metal trash containers in landfills. I don't know. But it's just, yeah. So anyways, Ira, were you going to say something?

Sorry.

Yes, I was. Is my mic on? I hope I'm on. Yeah, so, you know, it's funny because everybody's right. I mean, it's just a problem because everybody's kind of right. But I think we do owe the community a survey for something that changes things as drastically as this does. At the same time, we as a board, I think we have our own opinion and we kind of feel like, I think, in fact, what I'm hearing is everybody seems to be on the same page about where we go And then we do a survey and then we find out, okay, well, as Gary says, now we're all confused. Now we don't know where everybody, where the city is and what we want to do. So the survey really, I mean, if we do one, it's going to have to be really focused. I mean, incredibly focused and incredibly clear so that whatever answers we get become very, very clear. And whatever answers we get have to really give us a solution. They can't just leave us with, oh, now we don't know what to do. So it's a conundrum for sure. And a lot depends on the quality of that survey and how we can put it together so it's clear what it is we're asking. and that there are clear choices that are being made for us to be guided by if we're going to use the survey to be guided. I think it's a bit of a risk to do the survey, Certainly a political risk. When we have judgment that as our judgment I think should carry the day, you know, because that's what we're being asked to do is to, you know, be able to make these decisions for the city that's why we were elected. So it's a tough choice to make, but I think I fall in favor of us doing the survey, doing something that does get some opinions from the city back. So that's kind of where I'm at on that. Although I do have an opinion about where we should be going at this point and what we should do. which is to go ahead and build a residence and include rear yard. I think the idea of idling is huge for me. I feel it's very important for us to be very mindful of sustainability in our environment. I think it's been huge, but I I also think that we can't piecemeal this as well. First of all, it's a huge thing to change to begin with. So I agree that that's probably something we have to consider that, you know, making a major change like this and then saying, okay, and then by the way, you know, you're going to lose this very high quality service that Clayton has been famous for for a long time. But at the same time, when it comes to idling, you know, we can focus on all other kinds of idling in the city. You know, I see the cars as I pass Whiteown when they're letting the kids off for school. I mean, there's a ton of idling going on over there that nobody's measuring and deciding what we can do about.

Yeah, like the Amazon trucks. How about that?

The Amazon trucks, they go by and they're sitting there idling and they're looking for addresses and they're stopping and then going a block away to go deliver because they didn't know where the house was. And in the meantime, their truck is idling. There's idling issues in the city all over the place, not just with garbage pickups. So I think it's something to address, but I'd like to address that holistically. I want to see the whole issue be addressed. all together. But I think it's a little drastic at this point to say, okay, we're going to take, take away rear yard and we're going to have you pay and you're going to probably pay more than you would if we had an increase in taxes and the whole nine yards. I think it's, it's a lot to ask. So, so that's where I'm at guys.

I will tell you in Wydown there's been, we do have an ordinance in Clayton about idling, you know, how much is enforced, how much it can be enforced. That's a question. but I know at White and what you brought specifically, the kids actually approached administration for a long time. They had signs out in front reminding people. So yes, we need to continue all those efforts. I am with Becky that I think that we all have mixed information from our areas about who, about the rear yard. And we have to remember too, another benefit of the survey is not only to get our community input, which we always want community voice but it's also to let people know the issues we're struggling with. If we get a survey out there, people are looking at those issues and when we make a decision, again, we have data to support whatever that decision is and people are aware, it's informative. So yes, it has to be well-drafted to actually give us the information that we want for our decisions. And yes, I were elected to make decisions for the community, but as far as having a community survey, I would think it would help us in a couple of ways. And again, on the rear yard pickup, I'm not so sure it's universally, so uniformly supported through our community. I think we need that data.

Rich, we haven't heard anything from you yet. I'd like to give you an opportunity to make a comment.

Just listening, gathering it all. Let me start with a question to David. Could you talk a little bit about the timing of this whole thing? I mean, we're kicking around this idea of surveys, but it'd be helpful to know what you think the timing would be of developing an RFP, getting the information back, and then where we would slot a survey in based on whether we have information from the RFP or not.

So the survey I envision happening before the RFP so that we can can use the survey data to put together the scope in the RFP itself. If we do the survey afterwards, you know, if we had, we could do a follow-up survey where we get, perhaps we get an alternate bid or we have two different scenarios and they bid on both, and maybe we go back to the community and say, hey, here, this is how it came back, you know, choose A or B, you know, you could always look at doing something like that. But I think this initial survey would need to happen immediately where we have questions formed by the end of October so that we can get that information out on the street as quickly as possible. Because if it's going to be statistically valid, we need a certain number of responses. It's going to take some time to get those out in the mail and make all that happen. So if we want to go that written mail survey type that we've done historically, that's going to take time. And I wouldn't expect results back until probably the end of the year Even if we had those questions ready to go right now, we would then have to make some decisions about the scope immediately first part of next year. And again, I think we would have time to go ahead and get that contract together. The follow-up survey would be kind of really close as far as trying to get an RFP together in time. But I would envision this if we were going to survey, I would actually get with Gabby and Andrea right away and our consultant to come up with survey questions that the board could take a look at. I would love to have just some preliminary things, maybe even as soon as Tuesday night, but on the meeting, the Friday session on the 21st, have some well-formed questions for everybody to take a look at and get the survey lined out. Well, I guess

with regard to the survey, I agree with Ira that we're not going to... it's not going to be conclusive. You know, I look at what are we, the tax results, which are somewhat of a proxy for what we'll get in terms of this survey, because that was the issue, was what 48, 52, 48% 52. Is that going to give us a mandate to make a decision on anything? No, we're going to end up you know, sitting here kicking it around. So I'm not sure that that in and of itself is going to give us a lot of direction. It will be informative. We'll get lots of input just like we do when people come up and stand at the podium and give us their ideas. So I guess having done, having spent quite a bit of number of years responding to big RFPs, very often what we had was a basic set of requirements. And in some cases there was requirement A, requirement B, and then they always said, and tell us what else you think we should be doing. So that they were saying, so we would be saying to the haulers, we need a curbside number, we need a rear yard number, and tell us in your expertise, what else we should be thinking about in order to provide the best service for our residents. I think that is a perfectly legitimate RFP and one that would give us some information. That's why I was wondering what the timing was because then you could come back having gotten some of that information back and then go to and ask, Are you willing to pay this much for rear yard or not? So I'm asking the question whether that timing would work and whether we could put an RFP together that way. Any good company should be able to respond to an RFP in a reasonable amount of time. Back when I was doing this and having to respond to General Motors, they would give it to us on December 15th and tell us it was due January 2nd. And they all went off. It always drops right

before a holiday. And they went off on

holidays, so they weren't available to answer questions.

I think they can turn them relatively quickly. The reason you build such a cushion in these is just the deployment time for potential change. So that's where the rush is at. They need to know what's going to be pretty early on. Right. And I should say this too. We talk about the survey and we commonly think about it as we're gathering data from the community This would certainly be structured where before they answer any question, there's a pretty good narrative about, hey, this is the situation. This is how we got here. These are the advantages of both types of services. This is what they look like. You know, all the considerations, the kind of things that are on that decision-making sheet that we have here. You know, I see that as an opportunity to get out ahead of it and kind of make the case, this is why the changes are coming in the first place and then ask the questions and try to gather the data. But if we wanted to go RFP first to get some of that baseline information, I think we could do that and follow it up and we would still have time for it. I know we haven't talked about that a whole lot. The other consideration too is will they hold their rate that long? If we ask for the numbers now or we asked for it in November or December, are they gonna hold that until October 1 of 23? That's a long

time. I personally am, as I think others have said, I think the rear yard is where we should go so that we don't make that much of a change. for all the reasons other people have said. But I would like to throw out one suggestion as an alternative, having in a previous life lived in Ladue and paid for my waste hauling. Basically the guy came, parked his truck in the subdivision and then ran around in a little car a little go-kart type thing with a thing on it and picked everything up and then took it back to the truck. So there was no idling really going on. And it seems to me that as an alternative or even a requirement would solve some of that and still keep rear yard pickup. So just a thought. That's something we hadn't considered.

Just to go off on a little, were you done by the way? Are you sure? Just go off on a side tangent about that. I worry about idling too. And I actually put in a call to Republic this week. I was just asking if we if we decide as a community to keep rear yard, are there any things we could be doing to reduce the emissions or to make it more sustainable environmentally? And my first thought was turn off the truck every time, because what they do is they pull up and the truck is there. Then they run around to two or three houses right there, dump it in, and then they move on. But I was told that that really doesn't help to turn off the truck, which I sort of question, but anyway. The second thing, though, that they brought up to me was, you know, we have these two types of trucks. We have the natural gas, liquefied natural gas, and we also have diesel. And diesel is much more offensive. I think they told me something like the natural gas trucks reduce emissions by 40%. compared to diesel, yeah. But that's pretty big. And so I question, can we say that we want only natural gas trucks? And she said, you know, we probably could. In fact, right now out of seven trucks, we have three natural gas trucks. And those are the ones being deployed in the single family rear yard neighborhoods. So just saying, I think that along with some of these questions you're asking, When we do put out the bid, I think we should ask that question. What else can we do to reduce our carbon footprint with our trash, even though we have these extraordinary services? David, you just missed all of my brilliant comments, but okay, I'll tell you later. I was just

going to ask too, I guess I thought part of the survey process, we talked about the interactive survey that was going to be web-based. So will that dovetail the stuff that goes in the mail? Yeah, we can

still do the web-based survey as well. It won't be statistically

valid. A lot of people throw stuff away. I mean, people get stuff from the city and they automatically

No, we're happy to do that. That's actually way faster than the statistically valid survey. We can certainly talk about that. It's actually much easier for us to put together if we're just asking a waste collection scope question rather than how do we solve the budget deficit because there are so many variables we were going to have to build into it. So we haven't done a lot of work on building it out yet just because we wanted to have these conversations to figure out what the survey might look like. But I think if we're going to go the survey route, I really think we still try to do both.

And will that, the one, the web-based one, or will that, will it be tied to it? Like, will you, will it ask like, what's, can you tell us your address? So we know that we're not getting, you know, 20 people who live in the park tower or whatever. You know what I mean? Not that, I mean, of course there's more than 20 people that live in the park power, but I just having somebody, you know, we don't want somebody to, you know, be so concerned that they're skewing the results or

something. Yeah. We can build in an identifier.

That'll be key because we will have people that will respond and the people that are unhappy are going to be the ones that respond the most. I mean, you know, they'll come out. The other thing is, I'll just say, I think listening to Gary and Ira and Rich, I mean, I think we're gonna end up, I think not changing our service this go round, but we can do the survey. I just don't know that it's, I just don't want surveys to complicate things and confuse us as Ira said with all these different options and people, if we have to go out and explain to people, here's your billing process and now you have 28 options on how your trash is gonna be picked up. And it's like, oh no, what do I do? I think it's a lot to throw at people, and I think that we should really not forget that. If we do the survey, we have to be able to really discreetly define single family versus others because those are the people that are going to be very unhappy if we take away that service. I mean, I know we have all anecdotal. I've got mine. I haven't talked to a single person who hasn't said to me, keep my rear yard, I'll pay for it. I'll pay double. This is what people are telling me. So that's not statistically significant, but it's a feeling that I think is out there pretty strongly. So all I'm saying is I'm okay with doing a survey. I'm not sure we really need it. I'm not it won't confuse us, but if we can make it really specific and really focused then maybe it can help us just support whatever road we go down. I don't know.

I think I was just going to say, not withstanding what I said about survey previously. I mean, I think that, I think it is a question of timing and having more information that is available in the survey. I still think that to go out with a survey now when we have no idea what the cost differential is, is certainly going to prove non-conclusive kind of information for us. So if we can do a survey at the right time with the right information, that certainly is beneficial. Certainly if we're gonna turn responsibility over financially to each of our individual residents, they should feel like they've had some say in it. At the end of the day, we're elected to represent the entire city, not individual property owners. And we have to do what's in the best interest of the city And I think we need to figure out a way to get there. So I think trying, frankly, to rush through a survey now when we still lack adequate information, specifically financial information, I think a survey at some point might make sense. I don't think it makes sense now. And I think it will produce divisive and, as has been said, non-conclusive information.

Rich, you had something?

I

was just going to ask the question. And I don't know, David, whoever. The difference between a survey and holding public hearings, what would you, could you, anybody have any opinions about the difference?

You could do the public meetings. Historically, you get the same people that attend. It's usually a smaller group that shows up. The survey, you will get responses from people that probably wouldn't show up at a public meeting. There's no doubt about that. So we could do it. I mean, even when we had the public meeting for Proposition A last year, if you remember, we had sent out a ton of information about it. I think we had outside of staff, maybe 10 or 12 in the room, and we had maybe another, maybe 20 online that we're watching. So The response wasn't all that great. Where the survey, I think people might take a little bit of time to read it and fill it out. I think the key if we're going to send out a survey and do it is that it's not overly complicated. And we really use that as an opportunity to be informative and let them know what the situation is. let them know the pros and cons of rear yard service and curbside service, and ask some really direct questions, a limited number of questions, and leave it at that. And not try to really overcomplicate it with a lot of different options and moving pieces. I think that's how you make it effective. I think people would take the five minutes to interact with something like that. but to ask people to give up an hour of their evening, an hour and a half to come in and then come up to the mic and say their piece. We can hold the public meeting, but doing that in lieu of some kind of survey tool, I don't know that there's a whole lot of benefit to that, to be honest.

And I guess, yeah. And I mean, I would agree with-

The long answer there.

I mean, I wouldn't agree with that. And I think also, you know, I think the survey should be very pointed. I'm not sure we need to ask about yard waste and everything. It should, I think, be very, like you say, quick and informative. And perhaps at the outset, we say the city has made a budgetary decision that we are no longer going to provide your trash service. You are gonna have to pay for it. Because I think that's kind of what we're all saying, right? I mean, it sounds like it. Here, we can do rear side. And even though we don't have exact numbers, we do have information that you've given us that says it will be double, that it will be significantly more, perhaps double the cost if you want to keep rear side. So do you want to do this?

What Rich is suggesting is that we wait till we have that information. Till we go through the bid process, we get the bids on our different levels of service. And then we use that information in the survey.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I was hearing that I wasn't sure that it would be the turnaround, that it would be such a tight turnaround that I didn't know that was going to be a possibility.

We could do it that way too. We just have to be

It's hard to get someone to propose to a contract like that's a year out, right? Because we wouldn't actually start and to get them to give you rates that they will honor for that period of time. Or like where you have to build it in and the rates are going to be even higher because of that too. I mean, there's a lot of factors there. The hard thing would be

to get the proposals back or get the responses and then say, thank you for submitting the information. Hold on, we're going to ask everybody which of these two options they want. Thank you. Well, and

I guess I kind of feel like to the point of we're elected to make these decisions for the city is that it isn't like in my mind, getting some information from the community about what they prefer and how much they value these services. And do they value them enough to pay twice as much for them? Or potentially, like we don't know, but would you like... Like I am, and I'm not a survey expert. I hope we're engaging with someone who can really help us figure that out, right? I mean, people study this and know how to do it to make the information meaningful. And that then that will give us the information that we need together with ongoing public discussions that we're gonna be having. We're gonna hear from more people as we roll this out. Hopefully we're gonna be pushing it out to people ourselves to get, increase the feedback, right? And it will generate conversation. We'll have a lot more information to bring into that decision on

how the RFP works. I thought you had said just minutes ago that you didn't want to put out there a number for Republic to see

Correct. I would not include a number. No, we could say that it's-

It could be as much as double.

We could say something like that. Whether it's

20 and 40 or 50 and 100, we

don't know,

but-

And in talking with them and in looking at other cities, I'm pretty comfortable saying that. What I wouldn't want to do is give any kind of idea as to what the actual cost would be because we're going to be wrong. And we'll hear about it later.

So that just brings to mind, I mean, maybe we can get into this with our survey, you know, when we talk about survey itself. But so if we put it in there, hey, you're going to pay for your trash. We don't know how much that's going to cost. We don't how much you're going to play. And you might pay double if you still want. Double of what?

So I think the way I envisioned this, and I'm happy, like I said, I will even put this on Tuesday night and give everyone an outline of what a survey may look like that we could discuss. We don't have a discussion item on Tuesday night's meeting, and we could put something together where, again, I think it's a narrative up up at the top of it that talks about the situation. Uh, we can talk about the fact that this will be bid out, uh, you know, the first part of next year and we don't have concrete numbers, but we know from looking at other cities that could be up to double the cost. Uh, but I think what we're really trying to gather is, um, are, are whether or not people are married to the rear yard service, uh, or whether or not they want to take this opportunity to consider a curbside service, um, is the way the survey would look with really direct questions. Um,

And there are factors to consider that are cost, environmental impact, aesthetics. Like there's a lot to consider. It's not just one. The factors that were on that

document would be included in there. And it would look something like that. And I guess that's my question is if we want to move forward with a survey like that, I'm happy to put something together that the board can review. We just need some direction on whether or not we want to. My concern is, you

know, David, we started off the meeting talking about when you only deal with $79 a month, approximately, you have a real example, people sort of say, oh, okay, well, that's really not, I understand the magnitude of that. If you go out and you don't really have numbers and you simply say to someone, you can have X or Y and Y is double the amount of X. And I think people's natural inclination, or I guess Bridget used the word significantly more. And again, we're not writing the the survey right now, but I think it clearly creates results that are not terribly meaningful when you can't really tell people the actual dollar figure. I understand the problem with giving a dollar figure, but the minute you go on, you know, the bias is obvious in the question. Do you want this or do you want to pay twice as much for that? You know, people don't necessarily think of it.

We're hearing people will pay twice as much or more.

So why are we asking them to say it again?

Well, because we're trying to actually get a more significant data set of how true that is, right? So anecdotally, people on this board are saying that people have told them that.

I

don't know. No one's personally said that to me, but I believe it. I don't doubt it at all. But let's get a broader set of our community to provide input on

it. Can we wait to argue about how we do this survey until we see the survey that's proposed to us in terms of what we want to do with the survey? I think it's important for us to do that, but not maybe now because we don't really see what those questions are even looking like. But I'm hearing David say that we're not going to focus the survey on whether people want to have a tax or whether they want to pay on their own after a negotiation from the city. And I agree with that. I think I don't think the survey should in any way involve the question of whether or not they want to raise taxes because a survey, if we go by that and we go out and raise taxes and we lose and we've lost all this time and it's not going to make any sense. I think that question has to be answered by the board. Um, and I agree with David. I think the focus needs to just be, uh, to what extent are you, to what extent do you feel a backyard pickup is, uh, is something you want to keep paying for?

Um,

so that's my input.

Well, I think, you know, that's fine. I, right. I think you're right. We're kind of getting into the weeds on the survey here, but, uh, it'll be important to see what the survey could look like, I guess, that will help us decide in the end if we even wanna field it because I just, I do have a lot of concerns about what we'll really get from it. And it is money that we could devote to something else and educating our residents about the direction we're trying to go is really important. And I'm totally in the boat on doing that. So we would have to find another way to get the word out at the challenges and what our decision choices have been. Yeah.

I'm happy to sketch something up if everyone would like to see it, if that's the next step.

Yeah. And I mean, if you could show us how we're going to make sure that we aren't asking people that live in the Crescent whether they want rear yard pickup You know, we don't want those things mixed because the results are going to be clear. We don't have to do a survey to figure that out. I mean, we could always

look at being more targeted, too, where if it's online, you put in your address as an identifier. We can talk to the survey company and maybe they can even tailor this so that it's single family only.

That's great. I mean, it has to be pretty contained, if you will, to get a good answer, I think. Still don't know about the double of

what. As we're sitting here listening to people talk about what is our job, where do we make decisions for the city? There is an argument that could be made that says, well, if we've made the decision that we are going down this route of having residents pay for their garbage, we've We believe that's within our purview to make that call. It's also a very easy step to say, well, and all we're doing is making that decision and not changing anything else. I could argue that I feel comfortable saying that's the only decision we've had to make. Everything else stays the same. And therefore, when we get it, only getting into the survey because we're wondering whether our residents would rather pay this much money or that much money and and where their value is and that sort of thing so it gets pretty pretty squirrely i guess for us to try to make those calls um But I think that's, I'm not sure we're going to be able to do that after we get the survey either. Yeah,

because if we went the other way and we were just going to keep the service the same and turn over billing, we'll draft it up for city views and roll. Yes, but on the

other hand, we do need to engage and communicate. So if that's, I guess I see the survey as that kind of a tool as much as anything, so.

I guess, and I'll just add this real quick. The way I view it ultimately is if we're turning over the billing and we're doing the survey, what we're saying is we're buying the service for them. We're determining what they're going to ultimately pay for. And I think that's where a lot of people want to weigh in. If somebody's going to tell me, hey, you are going to pay for something, but not really taking any of my input about what I'm actually receiving as a service, I can see where people, you know, they want that type of interaction. Okay, but I'd like some input as to how that happens. And so when we're talking about a survey, whether or not we do it, that's in my mind, and I hate to interject an opinion here, that's what I always kind of fall back on is, in the end, we're negotiating, ultimately, we're bidding out what they will pay for. And this is just an opportunity for us to listen to what they might want to receive as a

service. I think there's a lot of value there. I really do. But then in the end, we've got to make the call.

No doubt. It's the board's decision ultimately.

And just to clarify, I think the survey should go to every resident. We can know whether they're condo or whatever. I figured it would

be just random. Well, no, not

every, we can't, it shouldn't just go to single families. Right. Because I think that we are an entire community and we're making the decision for an entire community. And we can know the source, but just want to make sure that

I just wasn't sure what you were

saying.

And we can sort the data.

All right. Anybody else have any comments about any of this for now? Okay. All right. I guess we are concluded. This is great.

I appreciate the conversation. There's a, an extremely complicated topic. Um, I will get together with, with Gabby and Andrea. We're going to put some time June on the next agenda that we'll go. It'll be posted today, uh, for Tuesday. And we're going to have a sketch up of a survey and determine whether or not we want to go that direction. Um, and, uh, we'll pick up the conversation there. I will mention one thing that we're going to need to adjust in those projections that Matt had brought up yesterday. Um, We talked yesterday afternoon briefly in the hallway, but he just reminded me that on the waste collection contract at 2.25 million, there is a very small component of that that's actually the city's trash service for our facilities and then also the city's events. So if buildings turned over to residents, there is a portion that the city is going to get billed for. So I just want to build that into it. It's not a significant amount, but it is going to be a slight adjustment.

Party pooper.

Right.

We got to have our survey. We got a survey too.

Yeah. So anyway, I just wanted to let you know if you see those projection numbers again, there's going to be a really slight change in there. It's not going to move anything really, but there will be that

adjustment. That is a good catch. We were

just looking at a big chunk. You

can be in charge of deciding how the city wants to hold. It'll be in the

back. We're not taking it out to the curb. Yes. Okay, everybody. Thank you very much. We'll see. Have a great weekend.

Thank you, David. Thank you,

Karen. Great job.

Thank you all.