A MOTION confirming the executive's appointment of James Borsum, who resides in council district seven, to the King County solid waste advisory committee, as a representative from a bargaining unit representing the greatest number of solid waste division employees (Local 117).
Is there anyone who would like to offer testimony on the solid waste committee appointments and see no one will close the public hearing? And I'll introduce. I'm Terry Rose with counsel staff. Miss Rose is staffing this item. The Solid Waste Advisory Committee is comprised of industry representatives and interested citizens, and it's an advisory committee that provides recommendations to the council and the county executive about policies and programs related to solid waste, handling and disposal. And today will be taken up for appointments. And I fear Miss Rosen may have taken the majority of your staff report. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Members of the Committee for the Record, Tara Rose, council staff. And as the Chair noted, agenda items five through eight concern appointments to the King County Solid Waste Advisory Committee and the materials begin on page seven of your packet. I'll briefly provide some background and then introduced the end point. The appointees. State law requires each county to establish a solid waste advisory committee to assist in the development of programs and policies concerning solid waste handling and disposal. King County Solid Waste Advisory Committee was established in the mid 1980s and per county code, and as the Chair noted, the SWAC is comprised of at least nine and not more than 20 members representing a balance of interests, including citizens, local elected officials and industry representatives. Our code also requires that the committee shall include one representative from each of the two bargaining units representing the greatest number of solid waste division employees, as well as one representative who resides within a mile of the Cedar Hills Regional Landfill that's owned and operated by the county. Unless there are some additional questions on the role of the committee, I'll now introduce the candidates. And Mr. Chair, would you like them to come up one by one or at the conclusion of my remarks or. Whatever you would like if all four of them would come up as a panel? Okay. Great. So proposed motion 2019 0339 would confirm the executive's appointment of Lee Eric Moman, who lives in District two as a citizen representative. Mr. Roman's application notes that he has spent the last 11 years of his career focused on managing waste disposal and processing in both the public and private sectors. He currently works for Seattle Public Utilities as a solid waste operations manager. Propose Motion 2019 zero three for one would confirm the executive's appointment of Heather Trim, who lives in District four as a representative from the recycling industry. Mrs. Trims application indicates that she is the executive director of Zero Waste Washington, which is an organization that works to reduce waste, improve recycling and remove toxic chemicals from products through policy, advocacy and community program. Motion 2019 0366 would confirm the executive's appointment of Robin Friedman, who lives in District one as a representative from the Solid Waste Management Industry. Mrs. Frieden's resume indicates she has worked for Waste Management since 2011 as a senior communications manager and now is a senior manager for Public Sector Services. Proposed Motion 2019 0367 would confirm the executive's appointment of James Balsam, who lives in District seven as a representative from a bargaining unit representing Solid Waste Division employees. Mr. Burnham's application notes that he is currently a union representative for Teamsters Local 117 and represents drivers and machine operators in the recycling industry. Staff is. Identified any issues with the proposed appointments. They appear to be consistent with the requirements of King County Code. And I will just note for the Chair that we also have solid waste division director Pat McLaughlin and Dorian Waller, staff liaison to the SWAC here today as well. Thank you and good afternoon to each of you. I might suggest that you introduce yourself in order. Is Miss Rose introduced you and speak to why you'd like to serve on the Solid Waste Advisory Committee in your background. An experience that qualifies you. Good afternoon. My name is Lee Moman. I am operations manager for Seattle Public Utilities. I've been in this alloys industry for 12 years. I'm hoping to bring some equity to the group as well. With living in South King County, I. I've also traveled around the U.S. and I hear what others are doing in the solid waste industry. And with the current contamination rates and the other issues that we're experiencing, either through folks coming to the station or curbside. Having experience working at waste management as well as the collections and the transfer station. I'm hoping to bring some experience and some updates hopefully to the new King County stations. Good afternoon. I'm Heather Trim, executive director of Zero Waste Washington. And I'm a straight shooter. And when people ask me where they should, if they're new here, where they should work, I tell them that King County is one of the best places to work. They will learn a lot. There's a lot of cutting edge work being done. And so I'm proud of King County. And our mission is to make trash obsolete in Washington. And it's going to take innovation, it's going to take hard work. And I believe that King County is a leader in doing that. So I'm very happy to have the opportunity to potentially join this committee. Hello, I'm Robin Friedman. I work at the Waste Management. I'm in charge of public sector services, and I'm thrilled to be here and honored to be on the committee. I also live in Seattle and I'm raising a family and this is a very important issue, materials management and creating a more sustainable county and city. Thank you very much. James Balsam, Teamsters Local 117. I've represented members in the recycle and yard waste lines of business for two years now. I see not only the disposal regulations across the country that were all facing currently, but also, I guess the the things that are our members that are picking up the garbage and waste and that are also usually customers of the same companies they work for and the safety and all that they that they're having to go through each day in order to get these lines of business picked up and disposed of properly. And I just feel, you know, having a seat at the table to be able to, you know, speak about the labor piece of this as well would be beneficial for not only my members, but for this committee. Thank you. Are there questions of of the panel? Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. I have a question for the first gentleman and the third lady and then a question for everybody. Do either of you belong to Swann? I do. You do? Are you going to the conference at the end of the month? I am not. No. Dang. Do you belong? Are you going to conference? Yes. We do belong. And most likely, my colleague who is closer to Swann and does more work will be there. So would you tell that person? I would love to pick their brain when they get back. I can't go, so. Oh, you won't be there. Okay. So I'll be sure that somebody follows up with you. Thank you. It's one of the solid waste advisory committee of North America. And then the question for all of you is, are landfills going to close in 2028, potentially 2040? What do you think we should be doing to prepare for that? Well, I think what we have to do is try to figure out how best to get less going into the landfill. Obviously, either be a recycling and then the contamination rate. Trying to figure it out. And I know that now part of what we're doing is if you can't clean it out to throw it out, and I think we have to reduce our R use. I know with Amazon and all the boxes and all that people are throwing away. We just got to find a way to reduce it. I'll ditto that. But there was an article in today's paper about a new enzyme that was discovered originally in Japan and then accidentally improved a better one found in U.K., where the bacteria eat the plastic. And this is going to take, you know, some years to get up to scale. But this actually looks super promising. So the idea of new innovations to help us address these issues is something I think we should embrace. I guess I would piggyback on that. Being part of the private sector and working at Waste Management for over ten years, we're very much an innovative company, the largest recycler and then in the North America. So I look forward to the opportunity to partner with King County and really develop some of these solutions together in partnership. I think that a big problem that we face right now is that people aren't educated on what's recyclable or how you recycle. I feel like moving forward, we have to be doing a better job with teaching everybody, not just younger kids or anybody, and how you recycle, but why we do it. And you can't, you know, put a yogurt container with yogurt still in it and throw it into a container that's got, you know, clean paper like cardboard and expect that that's not going to be contaminated with the levels that are acceptable at this date. And then also moving toward more compostable materials that can actually break down over time. Thank you. Council member Van Dike Bauer. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, folks, for wanting to serve on the advisory board. Many of us have a long memory of 2012 when there was a strike. And I'm curious, given what's happened with the republic in the last 24 hours, if anybody wants to share some thoughts about how things are going in the industry starting out that year with the Republic has decided to obviously as many people know, pick it here, even though the issue is an East Coast issue. Is that correct? Yes. There were members from Boston that were in the northwest and they've been across the country just recently. And those workers were facing an employer that at the time their that and I don't know how far I want to get to the politics of this but that were offering less than a living wage for most of these people. My understanding is and they did extend their pickets to this side of the country and our members were not picketing at that point. But there were people that did honor the line at that with those those individuals standing out there. I don't really know what else context to give you other than that. Yeah. Thank you. Robin, you're your your company was directly involved, I think, in 2012. Yes. I was the company spokesperson. I'm trying to forget those days, but I really can't speak to what's going on with Republic. But most importantly, I can speak to that. We don't want to look backwards as a company. That was a painful, difficult time for our community as well as our company and our employees. And as we look forward, I feel very confident that the that our employees will be happy and that we will have solid contracts and we won't see any more strikes. What was the best lesson? Because I know you were the spokesperson at the time and I was involved because of the Regional Policy Committee. What do you think the best lesson was learned for that whole process in 2012? Well, just speaking from personal experience, I was in politics in Washington, D.C. for over 20 years before I came here. And I think nobody wins. You know, the company went through a lot during that period of time and as did our drivers. So, you know, it's important to have good working relationships with the union. And it was a it was a difficult time for anyone, everyone. So I would say nobody wins. Right. And I think that maybe the company tried to be more communicative as we went forward after that strike and open up more channels of communication. I would agree with you. I think that we've been working to heal those relationships. We were very close with the union now and we're also thinking farther ahead well before the contract comes up. Thank you. Thank you. The other comment, I would just add, I think communication was very key with with waste match. I also work with Waste Management and King County on kind of both sides. And I think what worked well is honoring the picket line for those for and understanding that there's a two minute wait and just making sure people keep level heads and on both sides of the table. And I believe that really helped out during the 2012 strike. Thank you all and thank you for your willingness to serve. And thank you, Mr. Chair. You're welcome. Councilmember Gossett. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to ask you, in your introductory remarks, you said that I see myself representing equity on the committee. Could you elaborate as to what you meant by that? Well, living in a South King County and I work at Wallingford and just making sure that the when they build a facility that we don't have such an equitable facilities as we do in South Park versus Wallingford, where Wallingford has a big, gigantic playground. And South Park, we have there was nothing else built there, no playground, anything for the community, and just wanted to make sure that the community is being heard and that they're offering up at least get trying to get to some community people to see what what they want in the in the facility or need for the facility . Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. One issue that's before us that you need to know about and potentially work with the state on is the currently and the unincorporated areas there UTC. The state decides what the rates are going to be for the unincorporated areas. So a city council like this. You're a colleague. But we are also a city council when we are dealing with the local government. So sitting across the street council can negotiate the rates. We want more recycling, we want more this, we want more of this, we want less that and the negotiate on that. We sitting over here a council. We are a regional body at this moment, but we are also a local government body. We do not have the ability to negotiate our contract. We take whatever the contract amount is. And in some places in the county, it's double the price of what their neighbor across the street pays. That is wrong and we need to fix that. So I hope that you will fix that. And while you're fixing that, we also need better garbage cans into the areas where bears are getting in and causing havoc. So those are the two things that aren't being talked about but are really important to the people in this county . And I agree with you that recycling first, compostable is are second, but not everything is is recyclable and never will be. So we are going to have to get past all preconceived notions and look at the different technologies around the world. And I hope it's sooner than later. Thank you for the questions. Discussion. Councilmember Cole. WELLS Thank you, Mr. Chair. We do have four motions to the last to have technical amendments. So I'm proposing that I propose a solid. I propose the motion be made for two at a time. To Lee Eric Moorman, which would be 2000. 19 0339 and the motion for Heather Trim 2019 0341 be taken together. Council member Caldwell's moved adoption of motions 2019 339 and 341. We've heard from the two appointees for their discussion. Madam Clerk. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember Bell. Duty Councilmember DEMBOSKY Park. Councilmember done by. Councilmember Garcia. I thank the member for. Well I'm Councilmember Alhambra. Councilmember off the ground. Councilmember one right there. Mr. Chair. Oh, Mr. Chair, the vote is 19 zero now. Thank you. Given the vote, you've given a do pass recommendation, two motions, 2019, 339 and 341. Councilmember Colwell Thank. You, Mr. Chair. I new proposed motion 1219 0366 to confirm Robin Friedman to the Solid Waste Advisory Committee. Councilmember Caldwell's has moved to give you do pass recommendation two motion 2019 366. Councilmember Coe Well, thank. You, Mr. Chair. We have a technical amendment and that would change the language that was inadvertently included, that identified the appointment term as a partial term when the term expires expiration date and the motion reflects a full term. Amendment one would correct that era. Councilmember Caldwell's has moved adoption of the Amendment one others in favor. Please say I oppose. Nay, the ayes have it. The amendment carries for the discussion. Madam Clerk. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember. Councilmember DEMBOSKY. Councilmember Dunn. Councilmember Garza. Council Member. Cornwall Council member. Lambeth Council. Member of the Council member. MAN right there. All right, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chambers, 97. Thank you. By your vote, you've given in to pass recommendation to Motion 2019 366. Councilmember Colwell Thank you, Mr. Chair. I new proposed motion 2019 0367 for the appointment of James Balsam to the King County Solid Waste Advisory Committee. Councilmember Calls has moved adoption of motion 2019 367 Councilmember Calls. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And as was the case with the prior appointee, we have a technical amendment to change the language to reflect that it is for a full term, not a not a partial turn. Councilmember Caldwell's has moved adoption amendment one. See no discussion. All those in favor, please say I. I opposed. Nay, the ayes have it. See? No further discussion. Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember Bell, Dutchie. Councilmember Dombrowski, Councilmember Dunn, Councilmember Gossett. Hi. Councilmember Caldwell. I'm Councilmember Lambert, I Council member of the Grove. Right. Councilmember one right there. Mr. Chair. Oh, Mr. Chair, the vote is nine. I sereno's. Thank you. By your vote, we've given a do pass recommendation to motion 2019 367 as amended. By an objection, we'll place all four motions on the consent agenda for Council. And with that, that takes us to the Winery Brewery Distillery, Distillery Ordinance and public comment.