A bill for an ordinance amending Chapter 48 of the Revised Municipal Code of the City and County of Denver to repeal the fee on composting and implement a volume-based pricing system for trash, including recycling and composting services at no extra charge, to facilitate improved waste diversion and its related environmental benefits. Amends Chapter 48 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code to repeal the fee on composting and implement a volume-based pricing system for trash, including recycling and composting services at no extra charge, to facilitate improved waste diversion and its related environmental benefits. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 6-7-22.
12 Eyes, one abstention. Resolution 22, Dash 668 has passed. Madam Secretary, would you please put the next item on our screens? Council Member Clark, would you please share your comments on Council Bill 685. Thank you. Council President I will have more comments on this bill as a whole and especially next week on final consideration. But as we saw from our our public comment today there, this is a bill that is very of high interest to a lot of people. And so I would like to officially and formally request a courtesy public hearing be held on Monday, June 27th on second reading or final consideration of Council Bill 20 20685 regarding implementation of a volume based pricing system for trash. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Clark. If ordered published on Monday, June 27, there will be a courtesy public hearing on Council Bill 685 regarding implementing a volume based pricing system for trash. Councilmember Black, will you please put Bill 685 on the floor for publication? I move that council bill 20 2-0685 be ordered published. Thank you. It's been moved and second to third. Councilmember Ortega, your motion to amend. Thank you, Madam President. My first motion. I've got two amendments to proposed amendments. Council members. I move to amend Council Bill 20 20685 as follows On page nine, line 31, insert section nine, a new Section 48 dash 50 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code shall be created by adding the language. Underline as follows Section 48 Dash 49 Dash Sunset. Subsections A per and B per NC and per an EP of section 48, dash 42.5 and Section 48. Dash 48 shall sunset on October 3rd, 2028, and page nine, line 32, strike section eight and replace it with nine. Actually its strike eight, underline nine and replace with section ten. So it needs a second. It's actually. Permit me to explain what this amendment does. Yes, I want to make sure that we're tracking with the council secretary as to the script. And I had that you were going to offer the other 1/1. The other 1/1. But we can go ahead and move to this second motion. Is that all right, council secretary? Okay. All right. We've got it moved and seconded. Councilmember Ortega, go ahead and explain this amendment. Okay. Thank you, Madam President. What this amendment does is it provides for a sunset of the volume based pricing and the lean provisions, but it keeps the requirement that revenue collected from the fee be kept separate and only be used for certain costs. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Ortega. And I'm going to wait for just a second because. Sorry, I didn't realize they had a. Council secretary. I want to make sure that I'm at the right place. In the script here. Councilman Clark, go ahead with your comment, please. Thank you. Council president. I I was not able to be in committee for the discussion that this brought, so I just wanted to speak up here. You know, I think that will sunset on certain programs and certain funding sources are, you know, not always a bad thing and often appropriate on a fee based service that the city is providing. I don't think that this is a good idea to institute a sunset were this to sunset without council action. You know, the the program would immediately terminate without necessarily a plan on how to continue to provide trash service, how that would be funded that could lead, you know, in an in a budget that we have , we have not seen and we won't see because of the summer of, you know, years in the future could lead to massive cuts in other programs. And in all, without really the robust discussion like we're having today about how what to do, how to handle this service. And so I just don't think that this is the appropriate way to to institute or the appropriate place for a sunset to be instituted, as we're talking about fees for a service that the city is providing and just the ramifications that, you know, and a sunset would have on the rest of the budget. I mean, I guess there's a possibility at that point that the general fund doesn't have the capacity to pay for this service. And then we would be talking about are we privatizing trash collection, like many cities have as a bigger discussion that needs to happen, not because all of a sudden a program sunsetted. It would need to be a discussion like this about how should we handle this city service? And and I think that a sunset is absolutely the wrong mechanism for that. So I will be voting no on this and would encourage my colleagues as well to vote no on this amendment to the bill. Thank you. Council President. All right. Thank you. Councilmember Clark and Councilmember Ortega, I see you're in the queue, but since you offered the amendment, if it's okay, I'm going to go ahead to the other members and we'll come back to you. Councilmember Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. I'll support the amendment. I believe in sunsetting new programs that have been not yet tried or proven. If it turns out in five years that all we have done is charge people a fee and not achieve the goal, then all we've done is displaced. Or actually we've opened up new money in the general fund for other purposes. I was here. I was here. Excuse me, Robert, please. Robert. Robert, please. Thank you. Please. Where? Mr. Bailey. Thank you. All we will have done is charged people up to $252 a year and had no and did not and do not get the result that we want. But we would have freed up $33 million in the general fund to use for other for other purposes. And I recall sitting here maybe five years ago when another member who shall remain nameless said to me, Why don't you support paying for trash? Just think what you could use that other $33 million once we free it up. And so, Madam President, with that in mind, I think I would support this sunset and put it on a future council to come up with a solution if this program doesn't actually achieve the stated goals. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Flynn. Councilmember Ortega. Thank you. So what we're doing is creating a forever fee on trash service. This is a service that our citizens in Denver have been able to enjoy all this time. And now, because we want to require everybody to compost, we've found a creative way of charging them based on the sized trash can they're going to use for their regular trash. People who may already compost in their backyards. You will be able to continue to do that, but you will now be expected to pay for your regular trash service, which is already provided. People who have composting today can they pay for their service? The city is trying to fold this into where the city delivers all of this service, but they're going to charge everybody now, everybody meaning single family households and up to eight units. It doesn't include apartments. It doesn't include any of our business industry like McDonald's and Chick-Fil-A and many of those places that generate a lot of trash . That is not always compostable products that they're using. And so I think the timing of bringing this forward is not appropriate. Creating a forever fee. If you all remember, taxpayers had to pay for the plant to Park Hill Drainage Project. That was based on how much you pay on your property for your impervious surface. But somehow we figured out a creative way to expound on charging you all for a 300 million plus dollar drainage project through raising your impervious surface piece. So this is a fee that can be increased at any time based on a study that has to justify the increase to cover the cost. But instead of saying, let's just pay for composting, we're now somehow folding it in where everybody's going to pay for all of those services. And I'm bringing this sunset forward. We did this when we created the lower downtown historic district. We reviewed the existence of that district every two years for six years, and it was going to sunset at the end of six years. So this is not something new that the city has done. And, you know, we're spending a lot of money and a lot of time to put together a program. That currently there are challenges with the billing system. You will hear at the public hearing, because I've received many, many emails about this, the inconsistency of our delivery of services. I think we're imposing a lot on our drivers in areas where we have moved the trash service from the alley to the street. We're now seeing in those cases where we have citizens who cannot get their three bins down a stairwell, a staircase, if you will, down their steps to the front of their street. And that assumes there's room on the street and there aren't a bunch of cars parked there. We're now going to have the driver park in the middle of the street, go up and get the bins and take them down. And I'm assuming they want them to be taken back up because where we have elderly individuals who can't do that. We've been told the drivers are going to do that while the trucks sit there and idle. Right. So where we can move the needle in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions is on the transportation side and do a whole lot more there. We're doing a lot with our buildings, and I commend our Climate Action Office for the work they're doing there. We're doing a little bit on the transportation side, but there's so much more and that's where you can see the needle moved significantly. More than what we will do with the way this program is being structured. I don't disagree that we should encourage people to compost. I have a compost bin in my backyard. I've been using that for years. But the reality is we're creating a forever fee that Denver citizens are going to have to pay at a time when citizens across our city are being hit with other increases, not to mention the cost of living, housing, food. And so I, I am bringing this forward as a way to lighten the blow on our citizens of Denver. And so I just wanted to explain that, and I'll have another one in just a minute. So we'll see where the votes are. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Ortega. And we're going to go ahead and go Councilmember Kinney. We had seen your hand raised and so we have you in the queue. I see that you lowered it, but just want to check in if you did have a question or comment on the amendment. Thank you. Council President Very briefly, I want to remind the council that we are not voting on the bill itself, and I respect that there are people on this body who have differing views about this policy. This particular vote is on an amendment that would turn off the entire solid waste program as we know it, with a light switch, with no plan to fund and make sure trash gets picked up in five years. That is not a responsible way to manage a program. We have never used a sunset for a program like this for a fee like this, and it would put the city at whatever financial situation we're in at that time in dire straits. And so even if you're someone who has some concerns or questions about this policy, I would ask that you vote no on this amendment because it is financially irresponsible for us to leave our city with no method to pay for solid waste five years down the road, and to potentially risk having to go to the voters for a tax increase or have some other emergency measure or massive cuts to programs. So those are not palatable or financially responsible ways of managing this. So I encourage folks to set aside the difference between the policy and this particular mechanism. Should this bill pass, this particular mechanism would be financially risky for the city. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Meech. Next up, we've got Councilmember Flynn. And before we go to you, sir, I know you're standing up against the wall, but we have a requirement that everybody be in a seat for ease of egress if we needed it. Thank you. Councilmember Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. I respect what Councilmember Kenny's just said. I actually would counter that I have faith in the future council to come up with a plan. They would have a lot of time to plan because we would see the trends and whatever situation occurs in five years at a potential sunset, they could renew the program , as has been done many times, like with the downtown lower downtown historic district. Or they can come up with a financial plan to to resume covering it under the general fund. I don't think it's I don't think it's accurate to say that we would be leaving them without a plan. It's five years from now to be a completely different council and let them use their judgment. I trust them. I don't know who they are, but I trust them. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Flynn, Councilmember CdeBaca, thank you. I agree with my colleague, Councilman Flynn. I think it's important, especially since. The intent of this change is to change behavior. To have that review period there. There doesn't need to be a forever fee. If we are able to see that this does change behaviors in the desired way, then it's not like we're planning. It's not like we don't have to plan to incorporate the cost of doing this into our budget. We just might be able to incorporate that cost in a different way where it's not exactly a fee on the customer, where it's just part of the way that we do business. And so I do think that it's important that not only do we have a sunset, but that every single year I think we should be evaluating if the change has. Changed behaviors in the desired way and know our progress every step of the way. I don't think that in five years it just poof, like out of thin air disappears. I think that the agency, if the agency is responsible, then they are planning, they are assessing the metrics annually. And we will know every step of the way what needs to be done if we need to course correct, if we need to renew it or if we need to modify it. So I think this is a good amendment and I will be supporting it. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember CdeBaca. Councilmember Hines. Thank you. Council President I completely agree with Councilmember Flynn that I trust the council that is is going to be here in five years. That means we don't need any sort of sunset or amendment provision because our council, if they see something that's happening in four years or six years or five years or eight years, they will be like we are and they'll move with intention and and change or modify or repeal are what we're what we're passing tonight. So or actually what we're moving forward to the next week. So I trust that that we just as we are moving forward, hopefully tonight, this provision, if it happens at some point in the future, we can also take it away. We've already done it once. This class is already done at once with the Otter's provision, we passed it into law and then we took it back out and that didn't require a sunset clause. So I'll be voting now and I hope my colleagues also vote no. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Hines, and seen no other members in the queue. A reminder this amendment is to sunset the provision. Madam Secretary, roll call on the amendment to Council Bill 22, dash 685. HINES No. Can each. No. Sandoval. No. Ortega, I. Sawyer? No. TORRES No. Black No. CdeBaca I. Clark No. Flynn. I. Herndon? No. Cashman No. Madam President? No, Madam Secretary. Close voting and announced results. Ten NIS three eyes. Ten nis three eyes. The amendment fails. Councilmember Ortega, your second motion to amend. I move to amend Council Bill 20 2-0685 as follows On page six Line four, strike the manager of transportation and infrastructure and replace with City Council to on page six line five after the word study ad conducted by Manager of Transportation and infrastructure. Three on page six strike. Line five. Page six, line five, strike through an update to the rules. And number four on page six, strike line six, seven and eight. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Ortega. It has been moved and seconded questions or comments by members of Council on this amendment. The member Ortega. Yes, please. Okay. So this amendment gives City Council the power to sit and update the fee structure based on a cost to service study by Doddy, which was required before this amendment was proposed, and removes the authority from the manager of transportation and infrastructure to increase fees. And if I could just add a few comments. Additionally, historically, our fees have been approved by city council over time. Some of that has changed where the managers of agencies have been given that authority to increase fees. And what this does is says that based on a study that justifies an increase that would be brought before city council and city council would approve those proposed increases. So that, in essence, is what this amendment does. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Ortega. Councilmember Clark. Thank you, council president. You know, again, I'm not going to get into the broader bill, which I know we got into a little bit on the amendment. I'm just going to speak to this amendment, and I believe this amendment is a bad idea for this. You know, the primary responsibility that Dottie has when managing any fee, because this is a fee, is to adhere to the table requirements and ensure that the fee does not exceed the and is lined up with the cost of service and meets those legal standards. And so I think that this is a fee as a fee. This is very appropriate for Dottie to be doing that. We have other pieces in place. The bill requires biannual reports on revenue and expenditures. The Council. There is a required cost of service study before any fee would change. There are lots of protections in place. There are places where council overlaps with that to keep track of this. But at the end of the day, the fee has to cover the service and it cannot exceed that. This is not revenue generation. This is a fee to cover service. And so inserting. So I think that I think that inserting council into that decision making process versus the appropriate places where I believe this bill puts council and allows council authority and oversight, I think that's the right way to go is as written with the reporting. And I think that it would not be appropriate here to move that authority on setting the fee that is based on those legal requirements and TABOR and the cost of service study to ensure that it lines up they're out of date. And so that reason I will be voting no and would ask my colleagues to vote no as well. Thank you, Council President. Thank you, Councilmember Clark. Councilmember Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. I on this body at least, I am very reluctant to give up and surrender any city council authority over the things that affect the people of this city. We should retain the ability, the authority, to look at these fees and to measure them against the study and analysis that's done by Dottie over that period and determine whether the fees should be that much or should we look at the level of service instead of putting it on autopilot? We did that with the wastewater fees, and I think that was a big mistake. We did that with the wastewater fees back in 2016 and we put them on autopilot. I think it's a gauge to Denver Boulder's CPI. Which is not a good measure to for construction. But look at what inflation is doing this year. I know that this fee isn't based on CPI, but it's gauged on what the director of Dottie feels should be the level of service. And I think that that should be a decision that rests with this council. We're setting the initial fee. Why would we surrender the authority and the ability? To approve or disapprove, disapprove of future fee increases. We do this with the Golf Enterprise Fund. The fee increases for those and for parks comes to this council as it should. And so I would support this. And in line with my last remarks on the last amendment to Councilmember Hines. Let's trust future councils to do the right thing. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. Councilmember Flynn and Councilor Pro Tem Torres. Thank you, Madam President. Is there. Anybody that can speak to where. Else council is. Able or empowered to raise or lower fees that we charge for for city. Services? Sky console or sky, whichever wants to take it. Sure. Thank you. Council President Ultraviolet. Assistant City Attorney. City Council. Has various fees. Look at it in ordinance, primarily license fees. Almost all the license fees are in ordinance. The charter requires actually that we have license fees, an ordinance. There's a couple of other places what council said to be an ordinance because they're subject to change by council. Not all have to comply with the city requirements. The central requirement for people here at the disposal is one other fee that council sets an ordinance. Are they also. Bound by the same TABOR. Requirements? So yes, thanks for the question. So anytime a city council has a fee, an ordinance, if it's a fee, and then the tax is subject to the same requirement. He did. We set. And do we change as a council? The current composting fee. Is there someone from Dotty on that? Jason. Sky. Sure. High Sky Student Mayor's Office. The current composting fee is in code, so it is set. It was set by council when it was originally set. There are a number other fees. Angel answered, some that are set by council. There are also. A number of examples that are not set by council. The authority rests with the. Individual agency, so it's really a mixed bag across the board. Can you give me an example of some that are not that. Are changed by. Departments? Sure. Meter rates are changed by the Department of Transportation through the. Manager's. Authority. Our street occupancy permit fees. There are a number and 40 that have a managers and authority with them associated with a fee study. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Sky and Angel. And thank you, counsel pro tem Torres. I'm not seeing any other members in the queue for questions on this amendment around setting the fees. And so. Madam Secretary, roll call on the Second Amendment, please. Pounds. No. Carnage? No. Sandoval. No. No. Ortega, I. Sawyer? No. Torres. I. Black. No. See, tobacco. I. Clark. No. Flynn. I. Herndon No. Cashman. I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results. Seven days, six days. Seven days. Six eyes. The amendment to 20 2-685 has failed. Council Bill 20 2-685 is on the floor for publication of questions by members of Council on Council Bill 20 2-685c None. Comments by Members of Council O Councilmember Flynn. If you have a question, go ahead, please. No amount of press actually comments. I called this out for a vote earlier today, so I wanted to discuss why I'm voting no on publication. I why this proposal has been through a lot of thought and development. I don't believe it's well-structured. It's not likely to produce the results that we want. First, the city has never done a complete and comprehensive educational campaign among our customers on how to recycle or compost and divert from their trash bins. We shouldn't even be thinking about imposing fees to supposedly incentivize people to do something that is unclear to them on how to do it. How about giving people very clear tutorials on what goes in the Green Bay, what goes in a purple bin and goes in the black bin and seeing the results. Second, even with sparse public education on this, our customers in the residential trash program already are doing much of what we ask of them. No constituent has ever asked me for weekly recycling, but my office has helped them upgrade their purple cards to the 95 gallon size and in many cases to get a second recycling cart. It is a waste of money and resources, not to mention harmful to the environment, to have to buy twice as many recycling trucks to drive this entire city every week instead of every two weeks for weekly recycling, when in most cases we'll be collecting only half every week instead of the full carts every other week. We heard in committee two weeks ago that the Solid Waste Division workforce currently has a 28% vacancy rate, and that's down from a 35% workforce shortage in January. At that rate of hiring, it would take until January 2024 to get to 100%. Even for the current program today, without accounting for having to hire 22 more workers to go to weekly recycling. And we heard in public comment earlier this evening how our crews are struggling to maintain even the current schedule. We should not be charging for a service that we can't not yet provide today. Save the money and the carbon footprint by sticking with biweekly recycling, by deploying 95 gallon purple cards or second cards to households that need them. Third, our residential solid waste collections make up only 18% of what goes to the landfill from this city. Fully half of what gets dumped comes from construction and demolition activities. The other 32% comes from these large multifamily complexes and commercial and retail disposal. I showed the committee two weeks ago the photos. I took, the dumpsters in the many apartment complexes and the office and retail plazas in my district. The photos are available in the council files on this bill at the public, which is to to go and view them easily. 50 to 75% of what was in those dumpsters was recyclable or compostable. I cannot ask the people who already are largely doing the right thing by filling one or two of the recycle bins to pay up to 252 bucks a year. While we are not mandating diversion from the 82% of the market that throws such an enormous amounts of needless waste into the landfill, instead, I advocate remove the fee we now charge for compost collection and delay consideration of charging for trash collection for at least a year to see the benefits of actually educating the public on what we want them to do. We've seen that cities with a high diversionary have charges for residential trash. A correlation is not causation. There's no evidence that the fee is what's causing it. In fact, some of those cities like Portland mandate recycling of demolition and construction debris, and that's what's moving their needle. You could charge many of our households 100 bucks a month and they wouldn't be able to divert much more. Only by mandating recycling of construction and demolition, debris and diversion from commercial buildings and large multi-family residential can meaningfully make change. Finally. Madam President, I do not have great faith in the promise of a discount program for lower income households. Many of my constituents are renters and they live in Brentwood and Harvey Park Valley, and they live in single family homes and small unit residential. And I know that we're geared up to do outreach to them. But to many of them, I believe, will fall into the cracks of the landlords who already provide the largest card and will simply add 21 bucks to the monthly rent. And this is in a city with rising rents. I worked last week with a retired city engineer to crunch some numbers based on the published figures of what goes into our landfill and Denver's greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. Solid waste produced only 2%, 2% of Denver's greenhouse gases. The city's residential customers contributed only 18% of that 2%. Fully two thirds of Denver's greenhouse gases come from comes from buildings and 30% comes from cars, busses, airplanes and, yes, trash collection trucks. My engineer friend calculated that if all those customers diverted their recyclable or compostable waste from the landfill, there would be a reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions of five and a half. 10 billion with a B of 1%. If global emissions were measured in the length of a football field, the reduction would be to ten millions of one inch. That's a difference that cannot even be measured in the real world, only on paper. I cannot ask people who are struggling this year with eight and a half percent inflation, $5 a gallon gas, the prospect of higher utility bills through xcel's upcoming time of day pricing, plus more fees potentially on the November ballot to pay up to 252 bucks a year for this. In committee, I said, it feels like we're swatting a fly with a cannon. After seeing these calculations, it feels like we're swatting a fly with a cannonball the size of the earth. So my vote tonight is with the struggling households of this city trying to maintain their affordability in the face of this year's extraordinary economic distress. And I ask my colleagues to consider this and at least to think about delaying implementation this program for a year. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilmember Flynn. Councilmember CdeBaca. Thank you for for. Many of those reasons. I do just want to give everyone a heads up that I will be proposing an amendment. I've been working with the city attorney to try and figure out how to. Equitably exclude our. Most vulnerable neighborhoods and people who've been in their homes for over 20 years, so that we make sure that we're protecting our elders, protecting people who are experiencing involuntary displacement and not making them. Jump through more hoops while. They're already jumping through hoops for our other rebate programs. On property taxes. Or any of our benefit programs that many people are using right now. So just putting that on everyone's radar, that that will be coming. If this does get. Published next week. Thank you. Council members said about the council member Cashman. Yeah, thank you, Madam President. Is it okay to ask some questions? Sure we are in the questions and comments, period. So go ahead, please. All right. Well, somebody from daddy I have some questions on the program. The first one is we heard earlier in public comment that the landfill doesn't generate greenhouse gas because it's captured and somehow used for electricity. Can can someone address that? Knowing all of my kids. Good evening. Bruce Frank, Executive Director of the Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency. We have received that question before, and I was able to ask the the folks in environmental quality who actually run the contract for the landfill. And they told me that 30% of the methane that is generated at the landfill is currently captured. In. Their renewable natural gas system. Thank you very much for that. Next. You might have this as well. I've always heard that. Right now, we have about 30,000 homes in paying for composting in our program. And I saw something online from a constituent that said, that's not right. It's 18,000. Can you give me the correct figure, please? 30,000. A third. About £30,000. Thank you. Very much. So for the public, I mean, just the lowly project manager with 30. All right. Thank you. And as far as our composting program, I have heard from a number of constituents who have long backyard composting. Can you tell me the difference? My understanding is the city's compost program allows you to put far more things into compost. Is that correct or incorrect? Definitely. So the city's composting program is an industrial composting program. So we accept like meat, dairy, bones, all these things you can put into a backyard compost pile. We encourage everyone to do both. Thank you for that. Now, as regards the program that's being proposed, it was proposed for an October implementation date. My understanding is we're now looking at January one. What I would like to know is on January one, what percentage of our homes will have their compost bins? So at that time, we'll be in the midst of rolling out compost carts to the first phase of residents. That service won't start for them until about end of February for the first 100,000 homes. Okay. So that's. Some more. We're getting close to two thirds. Yeah, about thirds of the compost customers will have their carts within the first quarter of the year. Anyone who does not have our service, even if they have the carts, will receive a credit on their on their invoice for the inconvenience of the rollout. And when their service starts, their credit will be removed. And have you set the dollar figure on that inconvenience figure? We're looking at about $3 a month in order for that cost of service. When will the rest of the homes have their composting? So the full rollout will be complete. By mid 2023. Okay. Thank you. Let's see. So talk has been from the dais that we're instituting a forever fee. We already have a forever fee that people are paying out of their out of the, you know, per person, out of the general fund through a variety of taxes. What does that amount to now per single family home? What does it cost to serve? Service. What we're doing now. And I see that you would like to get back to me on that. I'll get back to you. I would. Complicated. No, it is. I understand that. But I think it's irrelevant. I'd like to know. And the last. Thing. I get what my question is. I'm guessing you need to get back to me on this. What would it cost. If we. Offered the new services for free until the point when everybody has their compost bins? So if you could get back to me with that fee, I'd appreciate very much that number. Thank you, Madam President. All right. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Councilmember Kimmich. Thank you. Council President, I really appreciate the fact we're on first reading tonight. I had hoped to defer most of my comments until the public hearing and the debate on second reading. But a number of claims and concerns have been raised. And I think it's important for our community that's watching tonight to hear all the the both sides of the story, even as we just vote in first reading. So I'm asking for a little patience. This will be debating this again next week. But just a few things. One of the things I've heard described both tonight and in other conversations is that Denver doesn't have any fee for trash today and that our residents do not pay for trash. And that is factually inaccurate. And I need to really clarify. This city has 700,000 plus residents in it and just under half of them live in multi-family housing that is paying for their trash service today. Those are residents of our city, their constituents. They are families who live in our city. And they are paying their taxes. They're paying their property taxes. They're paying taxes through their rent. They're paying their sales tax when they shop. They're paying all those taxes. And they are also paying for their trash collection. The median income of those living in apartments in our city who are paying for their trash service today is around $50,000 a year. Today in Denver, we have a fee for our solid waste customers. You just heard a minute ago 30,000 of them are paying for compost. So it is just factually inaccurate to say that residents aren't paying for trash day. Half of our residents are paying for their. Trash. And another 15% or so are actually paying to do the right thing. So the remaining residents are really the ones we're debating and what is the equity of the system we have today? So I just want to run a few figures by folks, which is that 87% of the customers that we serve in this program, they live in single family or duplex living and the median income in the single family homes, that's renters and owners together. That's the median income for both, whether they rent or own. The median income is $108,000 in those in those products, and it's in the high $80,000 a year range for the duplexes. So what we have today is a system where our taxpayers, our apartment dwellers are actually subsidizing the cost of trash collection for a much higher median income set of residents. That is the situation today. And so, you know, I asked the question, so if we had a set of residents who got all the water that they wanted in our city right from their taps, and they could water their lawns as much as they wanted and they could, you know, fill their swimming pools as much as they wanted. And they paid no difference. But then we had another set of residents who was actually paying for the amount of water they used, and they actually were subsidizing the cost for the water of the other set of residents. Would we think that's fair? I don't think that we would. That is what we have is a solid waste system today. And so when we think about what is fair going forward, what is equitable going forward, it's really important to first ask, is the system we had today fair and equitable? And I would argue that it is not. We have a many we have a majority we have a majority of residents in our city today paying some form of cost for their trash, whether it's in the multifamily arena or whether they're paying to compost, majority are paying something. It's actually the minority of households that are not. The other thing I think that's really important to bring up is to remind folks, as we think about the concerns we have for those in our community who struggle, it's not to say that there are not residents of single family homes or duplexes or small apartment complexes who might have financial constraints. We know that to be true, and we have a whole set of tools built into this policy to protect those households from any negative impacts. So just to throw out some of the numbers, the rebate program that this is included in this ordinance will serve households, for example, for individuals earning up to 56 I'm sorry, $58,600 a year. So almost $60,000 a year for a family of four is provided a rebate. And these are among the lowest fees in the country. So I think it is really important for us to debate equity, but I'm going to challenge us to debate the inequities in our current system and also to be very transparent that we have a rebate program for those earning less than this income in this program. So really now what we are debating is even a smaller subset of households and whether it is appropriate for them to throw away all the trash in the landfill that they want subsidized by the others with no accountability to our climate. And so that's the question I think we're debating, and I think it's important that all those facts be out there. You know, one of the things that was said earlier, it was mentioned about a forever fee and it was the it was mentioned a cannonball the size of the earth. And I personally would like to live on a forever earth. One of the things that Councilman Flynn raised with boiling all of the greenhouse gas savings down to a percentage. I can't speak to the math that his engineer did, but I'll speak to the math and the and the science behind a different way of looking at it , which is that for us to meet, our solid waste goal is worth keeping 600,000 cars off the road. So I ask you, as we prepare for more 100 degree days. As the newspaper reminded us that probably only about 30 or 33% of the residents in this city have air conditioning and they are at serious risk of heat related illness and death. On those 100 degree days, if we can take the equivalent of 600,000 cars of greenhouse gas emissions out of the climate, why we would not do that? That is the question for us to debate if you don't want to do that. That is a valid policy position. But to say that this does not have a climate impact or that that climate impact doesn't matter is to ignore the science of climate. The best climate policy is every climate policy that we can pass. This is our behavior locally in the city and county of Denver. We can control it. I cannot control oil and gas extraction happening on the western slope. I cannot control ozone floating in from California, oil and gas or industry. I cannot control what happens internationally. But we can control the equivalent of 600,000 cars emissions simply by not putting proxies from Amazon in the landfill, which every week is happening in our city because recycling bins are full or because compost bins aren't available and we don't have a practice of doing the right thing. So those are the questions we're debating. We'll talk more about some of the operational claims and maybe some of the other details next week. But just wanted to put some foundation out there before we vote tonight on how important it is to move this to second reading so that we can hear more from our community, both about what's hard about this, but also what's necessary, hard and necessary sometimes go together. In our world particularly, we are talking about our one earth that we want to last forever. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we've got Councilmember Ortega. I'm not going to repeat what I shared earlier, but I just want to say that when you look at what we're trying to do and Councilwoman Kinney just talked about the inequity of this system and the way it's set up, it has been like this as long as I've been in the city of Denver. Anything over eight units have always paid for private trash pickup. And anything below that, the city has picked up the trash and that is built into your your taxes that you pay for your property if you're a renter that's passed on to you by the landlord. I have played a role in trying to bring different folks to do presentations before my colleagues to look at how we can be doing transportation differently. Again. That's where we can move the needle. The city council had an opportunity to express their voice when the I-70 project was being constructed and being widened to the number of lanes that it has today. Some of us tried to impact that project. Unfortunately, we were not successful. That added a lot more cars on the highway. So, you know where we talk about where we can really have significant impact in reducing greenhouse gases. It's where we can try to get people out of their cars and create a greater opportunity for mass transit. I think you all know that the state legislature approved funding for front range rail, which would connect Fort Collins all the way to Colorado Springs and tie into our RTD system, will be able to move the needle as we can, get people who commute back and forth and spend a significant amount of time on the highway adding to the air quality challenges that we have. And, you know, this this is an important conversation in terms of encouraging people to compost. That's what we're adding to the equation here, trying to get more people to compost and those who have not been recycling to recycle. And instead of just adding that and figuring out how much that cost and the figures that we've been given is that to just add this new. This new system or this new cost to the system. It's 13,964,000. $768.10. 13 million. 13 point almost $14 million. Right. But what we're going to do is charge 25 million. But that's the that's today's cost in 23. We've been told it's $33,000,483. And. So we're instead of just looking at the compost piece being added, we're folding the whole program under this this new fee. And so when you talk about the end of the what we were proposing as a sunset, these are costs that have been covered by the city the whole time. So the anticipation was it would be put into like an enterprise fund. And that's where I think some folks were expressing concern about what do you do? You put it back into the general fund or what. But to Councilman Flynn's point, the council could figure it out at that point. And I just think we're. Pushing so much of these fees and costs onto single family households and everybody under seven units to cover this cost, to create a whole new program that could be significantly cheaper if we just added composting. So I am not supporting this tonight. I tried to, you know, come up with some ways to lighten the impact on the folks who will be bearing the brunt of this program. And unfortunately, it was not successful in doing that. I think the timing of all of this is just couldn't be worse. And so I will not be voting for this tonight. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilmember Ortega. Councilmember Clark. Thank you, Council President. Again, I'll save the bulk of my comments for next week on final reading and when we have the opportunity for the public to weigh in during the courtesy hearing but did want to hit on a couple of things, Councilman Cashman brought up a good question about the amount of methane at the landfill. And I just want to put a flag in another conversation that we need to be having, which is why are we only capturing 30% of that? We need to be making the investments to capture more, if not all of that. But at the end of the day, all of that is methane being created. And even if we capture it, instead of flaring it off where it's just going and burning and creating that emission there it's being captured, is being put in a pipe where it's burned somewhere else. So it's not a sustainable solution to our climate crisis. It's a better option than just burning it right there. But the best option is to not have more methane being created. And the way the path of that is to not throw things away that we have another use for it, that we can reuse, that we can recycle to minimize the amount of methane being created through that process that then either has to get cleared off or in the best case scenario at that point, which is not a best case scenario, has to go and be burned somewhere else. But we really need to again, this is a yes, and we need to be doing all of these things. We needed to be doing all of these things a decade ago or two decades ago to not be in the situation with our climate that we are right now. And we have to take action now. Another thing that I just wanted to play, because I know a lot of things are being thrown out and and and stated as fact. But I just want to point out that we have in our presentation slide deck, it has been presented by Dottie that when you look at the various sectors of who is creating waste that is either composted, recycled or or sent to the landfill. And you look at what we're hauling for a single family, up to seven units versus multifamily as a whole. I know that my my colleague down there has taken some pictures of specific dumpsters. But when you look at the actual numbers of as a whole multifamily versus what we haul for our customers commercial versus what we haul construction and demolition versus what we are, we're the worst. We have the worst diversion rate. So if you were able to take a picture not just of an individual dumpster and what is happening right there, but you were able to take a picture of all of those dumpsters that make up all of that thing. What we are hauling, we have control over here on council to vote on is the worst diversion rate we are sending the most to the landfill. We are worse than the pictures of that dumpster because we're worse than all of that. And so I just want to be very clear. We have that data in our deck, and I think it is I wanted to clear that up that when we're talking about this, it's not about an individual dumpster, it is about systems. And as a system, our system that. We have in place that has been in place for many, many years is the most broken of the systems when it comes to diverting things from the landfill, the climate impacts and also the other impacts. I just want to like again, first reading, we have not had the public hearing yet and I know that there are a lot of people who feel very strongly and me included on this issue, but I would implore my colleagues to to move this out of first reading and to second reading. Even if you are struggling with this issue, even if you have your mind made up about this issue so that we can allow for that public hearing and to get this, you know, through the system, to have that that full debate on final hearing, you know, especially because this specifically and we've talked about this and there's this is in the slide deck, too, and I rehash everything here, but this is something that our own way has been has been put forward as the recommendation and the ask from a lot of different groups. But I want to flag specifically our Climate Action Task Force that came together. And it is it's very difficult with this crisis, with this emergency, for a climate that is happening because it is. Needing to happen every day. And so it's very difficult to keep the level of intensity on it that it deserves and that it needs. And we had that very much when we put together that climate task force, when we created the climate office, when we referred to voters, which voters overwhelmingly approved of the initial kernel of funding , that was just one piece of what the total need was established was to remember how important this is and what an emergency is and what a, you know, an appropriate response to an emergency is. And so at that, I want to take us back to that moment with the climate task force coming to us and standing here , you know, presenting to us and saying, hey, this is what we need you to do, that we took action on a very small part of that report of all the things that we need to do. This is specifically called out almost verbatim to the program that is being presented by that task force, among many others, saying this is what we have to do as a city. And I know that there's been some made of, you know, what it would have might impact if it's too small. We as a city, we can't solve a global climate crisis by ourselves. But if we throw up our hands and say, well, my impact that we can that I can do as a city is too small. So I just won't do it. I won't do anything. That's how we fail as a planet. How we succeed as a planet is everyone saying no action is too small, all of them are necessary and we need to do yes and we need to do it all. If we are going to preserve the habitability for us and for all the other amazing creatures that call this planet home, and this is a part of that. And so I just I don't want that to get lost in this. Oh, this is too small from that perspective. And a lot of people said that when we brought forward all of the climate work that we did with the Climate Task Force was, you can't solve this as a city. So just don't just don't try. It's too hard. Well, it's not a convenient truth that we're up against. It is inconvenient. It is hard. And it is going to take all of all of us in the trenches on all of these decisions, having these hard conversations, if we are going to have a chance at preventing the worst outcomes that we are already starting to see today. Two last things that I just want to flag outside of the climate impact, because with that emergency happening is very easy for all conversations about the environment to go immediately to emissions and climate. But just from a materials standpoint, we are taking things to our little blip on this planet in the long arc of human history. We're here for this moment. We're taking a tonne of materials and we're just burying it forever in the ground and materials that could be used for generations beyond us, that can be reused, that can be recycled. And on top of that, then those things that are buried are creating methane for hundreds and hundreds of years. And just so I asked Jessica and thanks for the quick reply. Give me an idea of scope. And these are numbers that are hard to wrap your head around. But and this is, you know, quick math on the go. So I apologize for that if I don't get it exactly right. But the numbers that we generally have is 181 between 270 970, 280,000 tons that we are putting in the landfill from our systems every year. So I wanted to quickly look at that. When you take out that 75% of our waste room could be composted, recycled, we're putting that meters rolling in well north of 100,000 tons of material that we are putting into the landfill today, this year that doesn't have to go there. I've been on this council for eight years. That's 800,000 tons of material. It didn't have to go to the landfill. That will sit there for hundreds and thousands of years creating methane, creating problems, and being materials that no one after us. And that moment of use can use 800,000 tons in my eight years for some people in their first term. You've only contributed 300,000 that. We have an opportunity. To do better. We have a mandate to do better. This is these are the decisions that have. Been being made. For generations of humans before us that have led us to this place where we are in an emergency, where our our planet is is experiencing all of these impacts from decisions, from people saying it's too hard right now. That's too hard. And not taking a second to say we. Yeah, it's hard. But we can no longer. We can no longer. That can no longer be acceptable. That on on my watch, with my vote, I continued to let 100,000. Over 100,000. Tons go into a place that it didn't need to and create the impacts that it's creating. And so I think with all of that and in respect to public to our Climate Action Task Force, who asked us not just to take action then, but to continue to take action until we have done everything that we need to do to fight this. I would really ask that we move this on from first reading to final, even if in the end that doesn't change your vote or your decision. Let us get to that public hearing and voted out of office reading into final consideration next week. Thank you. Council President. Thank you. Councilmember Clarke. Councilmember Hines. I think your council president I, I don't want to repeat everything that Councilmember Clarke just said, so I'll just. I mean, really, tonight's vote is just to publish this for next week's consideration. So I'll be brief. Generally refraining from comments about preserving our habitability on this planet like Councilmember Clarke has just eloquently said. Um, so just a couple of things briefly. Residents have asked council to slow this process. They've asked me to ask council to slow the process that is moving forward too quickly. Just for what it's worth, this is the single track, single topic I've tracked the longest. I've followed this kind of conversation about pace you throw since before I was even a candidate. I'm excited to hear from the public next week and to finally vote on this issue. So pass or fail, it is time to bring this conversation to a vote. I sure would like to hear from the public before we make that decision. And so I like Councilmember Clark say that even if you were not in favor of the, you know, the the the concept, please allow the public to to voice their opinions next week. I also want to talk briefly about the things that I've heard from perfect ten residents. There are two major concerns. First, the vast majority of perfect town residents pay for trash collection, but do not benefit from it. You know, most of the people who live in and district tend to live in multi-family buildings. Many of them are large multi-family buildings, you know, hundreds or hundreds of units big. And these are the people who pay into the trash collection fee, as in they pay into the general fund, and they're subsidizing the fees for those single family residents and for small unit building. So as one of my colleagues has mentioned just a few minutes ago, who's saying that the single family homeowners are are are getting the the brunt of it? I would say it's the exact opposite. It's actually the apartment dwellers who are paying for trash collection, subsidizing trash collection and not getting it at all from the funds that they're. The fees that they're paying into the general fund are the. And yet the single family homeowners are benefiting from it. So I think this is only the most equitable thing to do for for for everyone, particularly considering we are the only city in the nation that are considering, you know, equity. Speaking of equity, an equity structure for those who cannot afford, you know, just barely struggling financially in Denver. And and we will have an equity fee structure just for them. Sorry. Rebate structure just to them. The other thing that I want to say is that trash collection in some areas of District ten are frankly frustrating. Specifically, there's there's a change of trash collection in Kyra's park that moved the collection from the alley to the street. I have had lots of conversations with dotty leadership and and, you know, the waste collection leadership. And I have sent lots of Congress residents to to that diary leadership specifically for them to directly address some of the concerns. And frankly, the folks in Congress are still frustrated by it. But based on my conversations with with party leadership, it is my understanding that the change was because of efficiency. Put another way, we add, as has already been mentioned earlier tonight in this conversation, we are short workers. While we're short workers in part, you know, we're in the great resignation or as the Biden administration wants us to call it, the great upgrade. But partly we're short workers because we don't have funds to be more competitive with a recruitment retention process and to be more competitive with a way to to make our workers most effective and efficient in the trash collection process. You know, we also don't have the funds to be greener with our trash collection itself. So as Councilmember Flynn had mentioned, you know, our trash trucks are contributing to those greenhouse gases. I mean, we could if we had the funds experiment with electric vehicle trash trucks and this fee will allow us to live our values and and electrify our or at least test or electrify electrification of our trash collection. And and still make sure that we have a process for people's waste to go where it needs to go. Waste as in reduce, reuse and recycle. Hopefully we'll just reduce. But but if we do need to send something out of our home, it can go to the appropriate place for trash, recycling or composting. Those electric trucks, along with a better fee structure, will help us more fully staff our trash collection activities and live our values. What's more, we could with if we had appropriate funds, we could consider trash trucks that are appropriately sized to return trash collection to alleys and neighborhoods where it makes sense, like perhaps Congress part. So I will probably say more next week, but but I'm encouraged that I feel like our colleagues will at least move this forward to publication. I hope that is the case and I hope we have a more robust discussion next week. Thank you. Council President. Thank you. Councilmember Hines. Councilmember Flynn. Backup. Yeah. Thank you, Madam President. Since I kicked this off, I appreciate the opportunity to wrap up and offer a little bit of rebuttal and clarification and thank you to council members. Can you and Cashman and Clark and Hines spoke with especially Councilman Hines. Let me kick off with just a few brief rebuttal remarks. First of all. The reason that multifamily and commercial properties. Multifamily. Eight and above. The reason that they have to pay private haulers for their own trash collection isn't that the city doesn't want to service them or wouldn't service them. But the state legislature many, many years ago bowed to the private trash hauling businesses and mandated passed legislation that prohibits Denver from serving them. I wish we would serve them and then we could all cover it out of the general fund. Right. That's the reason. It's not that they're doing some favor for people who live in single family or small multifamily. It's that the state lawmakers have said you can't serve them. The the private industry has to serve them. That's the reason for it. Thank you to Councilman Cashman for bringing out the 30% figure, 30% of the methane at at the dad's facility, Denver Arapahoe Disposal site. And we view that on a tour. Many of us. Several years ago, they convert the methane emissions to electricity. Goes back into the Excel grid. That's pretty good, too. Okay. But I made note here that councilman, that that reduces my five and a half ten billions of 1% by yet another 30%. And finally, Councilwoman Kenny, to respond and also to Councilman Clark, there's a false narrative that's being generated up here inadvertently, as I suppose that those of us who don't support charging a fee don't want to see increased diversion from the landfill. We do. We want to see it. We simply don't believe that our failure to impose a fee for our our program is the reason that it is the way it is. We will probably see this November because I believe it's already certified for the ballot. There is an initiative on the ballot that would mandate exactly what I was saying needs to happen. And Councilman Clark, every single dumpster I looked into had 50 to 75% recyclable or compostable material in it. I suppose that can be overwhelmed. That 30 to 82 year total of 82% of what goes to landfill is probably greatly consists of construction and demolition debris. That's why Portland, Oregon, has such a high diversionary because they mandate that it's not because they charge a fee to their homeowners. So those of us who don't support this, we want the same thing that the people who support this want. We want people to divert as much as they can. We simply don't accept that it's our failure to charge you a fee. That is the reason. In fact, I've had constituents call me and say, if you're going to charge me 21 bucks a month for my black card. Why am I bothering to recycle anymore? I'll just put everything in the black card. I would. I don't want to see that either. I want to see us delay a fee for at least a year, do the kind of robust education that we've never done, tell people. Does this thing go in the green card? Does this go on to purple or does it go in a black car? Educate them first and see how they respond without charging them a fee. In this godawful time of eight and a half percent inflation of Excel, a time of day pricing and other fee increases that are coming down the pike. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. Councilmember Flynn and I will go ahead and add in a few brief comments around this. The first thing is, if a councilmember tonight votes to move this forward and have it ordered published, I want to be clear that that doesn't mean that on final that council member is going to vote affirmatively for this bill. And. Really in listening to my colleagues, I'm thinking about the residents. A lot of folks talked about the planet, and I understand that. I understand it innately. I am a wildlife biologist. I went to school for this, but I also am an educator and it is next to impossible to get people to change their behaviors. If we don't tell them why, if we don't explain to them very clearly and explain again and again and again, because there's a certain amount of privilege that just goes along with really understanding these issues and getting into it. A lot of folks are struggling to just survive and stay in Denver, and as my colleagues kind of brought up their different pros and cons around it, that robust education plan is so important and to really implement that and work that plan. And the other piece is that there was an article that came out in The Denver Post today that according to the city of Denver, approximately 30% of our homes in Denver lack air conditioning. We used to have a swamp cooler. It used to work to cool our homes. There are changes in the climate that we know that not mitigating trash is one of the issues. But is it time to do that now? Or is the time to do the education plan? Make sure that we can help support our residents so that they can stay in their homes and be comfortable and be at a place to even hear the education that we as a city are going to put out, or are we going to pass over that and put another fee on them when they might be struggling with credit card debt, rising cost of living in Denver, inflation of student loan debt, etc. There's a lot of bills that our constituents are struggling with, and I'm really struggling with putting another fee on them on top of this without that robust education plan. And so, again, members might vote affirmatively to move this forward to the final reading and the courtesy public hearing that we are going to have along with that bill. But I want to be clear that that doesn't mean that that council member is in support of the bill, because some of us, as you can see up here , are still struggling with the impact that this is going to have on homeowners in the city and county of Denver, coupled with. An unease as to Dottie being able to even secure the trucks that are going to be necessary to roll out and implement this plan. I've been told by some city employees that sometimes it can be 2 to 3 and a half years to get fully orders in and secured. And then on top of that as having severe vacancies within Dottie as well to implement this program. Madam Secretary, Roll Call on Council Bill 22, Dash 685, please. Hines. I. Can each. I. Sandoval. I. Sawyer. I. Torres, I. Black. I. See tobacco. I. Clark. I. Flynn now. Herndon. I. Cashman. Ortega. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, close the voting and announced the results. You have a nice two days. 11 Eyes Council bill 20 to 65 have passed. To remind folks it will be on final reading next week on June 27, with a one hour courtesy public hearing. Madam Secretary, would you please put the next item up on our screen?