A MOTION acknowledging receipt of a demand management pilot program implementation plan in accordance with the 2017-2018 Biennial Budget Ordinance, Ordinance 18409, Section 107, Proviso P3.
So perhaps we could have one of my SO yeah, if we could move on to the next agenda item. Thank you very much, everybody, for that discussion, for that presentation. And we will now take up our final agenda item for today, and that's item six, where we have staff from the Solid Waste Division to speak to us regarding a demand management pilot program. Council will recall that during the budget process we spent some time reviewing the issue of how to complete the solid waste transfer network. And I think that you all are keenly aware that we have a long awaited, solid waste, comprehensive plan that needs to be adopted. And some of the issues have to do with the how our transfer network builds out and whether or not to proceed to build a new Northeast transfer station. The executive budget recommended a demand management pilot project to test whether the service needs of that area could be addressed through strategies partially to address, through strategies to control demand . It's an issue we've been hearing quite a bit about, including at the regional that regional water quality, but Regional Policy Committee and in particular, there's been interest on the part of the council on how the pilot would deal with places like the Holden Transfer Station in Kirkland, which serves Northeast King County. So we had a proviso which the executive transmitted a response to. We're going to ask our staff, Mike Reed, to provide an introduction. Are you prepared? Yes. Okay. And and then I understand that the division will be presenting a PowerPoint. And so I want to ask Mike, would you please proceed with the report, understanding that we have given a little bit of short term, short change this discussion a little bit, so maybe we can just do a high flyover and come back to it at a future meeting. Thank you. I'll do this very high level again. You've noted, Madam Chair, that that that the council did approve a $2 Million increment for a pilot project for demand management in the 2017 2018 budget. And the context, of course, is, is that the the region is working to complete its upgrade of the transfer network because of a decline in tonnage that occurred over the course of the Great Recession 2720 ten. There were questions raised as to whether the full buildout was was needed. And what you indicated in the years 2013 to 2015, you you called for a review of that buildout process and the results came back, said in certain some two things. First up, that you need not build the full transport network. And in particular, the northeast sector could be served through a demand management strategy. And I'll talk in just a minute about what that what that constitutes. But secondly, that if you were going to do a demand management strategy, you needed to test that on the ground. You needed to have a pilot project to, in essence, test whether it would work in real time. Demand management is basically a tool to push transfer demand up from those hours of the day. And those are locations that have limited capacity or no capacity to those locations and hours of the day when there is greater capacity. So the executive proposed in the 2017 2018 budget a $2 million pilot project for demand management. The council approved that that funding, but also added a proviso. And that proviso said, in sum, we there are some remaining questions. One has to do with the Houlton transfer station. Does that station remain open or is it closed during this demand management process? And secondly, does recognizing that that there's a compromise, a planning process that's going on and that is expected to be concluded prior to the end of this demand management process, how do you incorporate the results of that process into that comp plan? That was the sum of the of the proviso you did provide for withholding $1 million until a report was provided back to the council addressing those those questions. That's the substance of this morning's presentation that that has been transmitted to counsel. And I should again note that there is a motion in your packets that would approve or acknowledge receipt of of that response. With me this morning is Megan Moorhead. She will she's the strategy communications and performance manager for file with the business you present the the proviso response. And also Pat McLaughlin, who's the director of the division, is here as well. Madam Chair. Okay. Good morning. Thank you. Welcome. And please go ahead. Loved it. Here talking solid waste with you. And let's go pretty quickly through this presentation. You've already heard about the budget proviso and its history. So we were asked to submit a implementation plan that says what we're going to do as part of this pilot. So why don't I just get into the recommendations for that? Demand management basically asks whether we can serve users of our regional system without a transfer station in the northeast area. Now, where's the northeast? Well, it's that kind of green upper right hand side of our service area. You can see the Houlton station. And Kirkland is the one station that's currently serving that area. We're recommending a 12 month pilot program starting in mid 2018. That's a little bit later than what you had heard when you approved this pilot during budget, because we found through our interaction with our stakeholders and partner cities that we needed more time to set up for a successful pilot and work out host city concerns. So what's going to happen? We're recommending that we suspend services at Houlton to best simulate the absence of a northeast station. That means about 135,000 transactions during our yearlong pilot will be redirected to what we think will be the Victoria Station and also to shoreline, about 90% to Victoria in the Eastgate neighborhood of of Bellevue and then the rest to Shoreline. Let's go back. We're recommending that we retain the self service recycling that's there on the the OTN site as a convenience for northeast area customers. So what does that mean? That means we're going to more than double the tons that are going into the Victoria Station and more than double the transactions. That's the number of people kind of coming across the scales. How are we going to accommodate all those extra people at the station? At Victoria, we're going to do that by extending the hours on weekdays, taking it from 4 p.m., closer to 10 p.m. and on weekends, extending a little bit in the morning and taking the evening closer to 8 p.m.. We're also trying to get people to use the station outside of the peak hours of use, and those peak hours of use are from 11 to 3 p.m.. And so the study that was conducted said we needed to double the price during peak hours to get people to choose to visit at different hours. And so a doubling of the minimum fee for self-help customers would occur during the peak periods at Victoria. They would pay the same if they used hours outside of the the peak periods. We're going to as part of the budget, you approved temporary staff to accommodate these changes in hours and the increased use at Shoreline. Our first strategy, though, would be to use the regular full time staff that would be taken from the suspension of service in it at Houlton and redirect them first to this pilot project and then use temporary staff to fill in the gaps. So part of this is measuring beforehand and then during the pilot what some of the effects are. And our regional partners have had a lot of questions about what's this going to mean in terms of the amount of time it's going to take for customers to go through our stations. Will there be queuing out of the stations, sites and onto local streets? Will there be noise? Can we actually put the amount of waste that we think we're going to see through our stations without having it pile up? What's going to happen to local intersections as well as regional highway and and road systems? The Proviso asked us to look at other options that were not recommended. Those included increasing rates at home and curtailing hours at home and or changing the mix of services at home. We felt that leaving open open except in a minimal way for recycling, would not replicate the absence of a North-East station and so would undermine the credibility of the pilot. So what's going to happen? Right now, we're talking with the host cities about what permit issues need to be resolved and the associated environmental review with that for us to actually proceed with the pilot. We'll need your authorization of the suspension of hope services as well as the peak prices at Victoria, and that would be coming at the end of this year. The haulers would need to plan new routes because now all the collection, curbside collection that's currently going to Houlton would now be going to either Victoria or Shoreline. The haulers would need to plan that route and if they needed to recover some of the costs of those new routes, either through their city contracts or by going to the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission, they would need it next year to open up those contract discussions or go down to the state and talk to them about rates. Clearly, this is going to have a big impact on customers and we need to do a very solid communication plan and rollout of that plan as we move into the implementation of the pilot and during its implementation. So we plan on doing that next year and then through the end of the pilot. And currently this isn't a precise date, but mid 2018 start date is our estimated beginning of the pilot. So the final you. You were so interested in this pilot that there were two provisos related to it, the one with the implementation plan requirement we're talking about today. But there's a second proviso that requests a status report after a seven months of pilot project implementation. And so we expect to be coming back and talking to you again about the lessons learned and recommendations around around how to proceed with the pilot. And so that's the pilot project. There was a question in the proviso about how could we proceed with a pilot project on this schedule? Well, we're still trying to update our comprehensive, solid waste plan according to a schedule that would have the solid waste comprehensive plan going out to the public in October of this year. So here we've got a 2017 public review draft comp plan, but we won't have results from the demand management plan until mid 2019. So just to remind you, the comprehensive Solid Waste Plan Act is required by state law. It sets the long term goals and capital program for the regional system. It goes to action not just by the county, but also by our city partners and identifies cost impacts and funding sources. And it helps implement regional goals such as climate protection. And here are just the categories of policies that are adopted as part of the plan. You can see that transfer is one of the categories that we have to address as a regional system. And it does seek to to answer questions about what's the best combination of facilities and practices to serve to serve the transfer needs of the system. And that includes either new stations like the Northeast or approaches like demand management. So here's the comprehensive plan adoption timeline. We're working with our two advisory committees, our city oriented and our stakeholder oriented advisory committee to evaluate policy options that would go through September of this year. At that point, we would have three months of public review at the end of the year, at the end of the year, and then we go through a very prescribed state process for review and approval. Our state regulators, Washington Public Health and and ecology review the plan. After we finish public comment, then it comes back to the Regional Policy Committee and to the County Council and then on to the cities for their endorsement, and then finally back to the state. And they get a period of time where they can do the final approval. So there was a question, what kind of policy would could we put in the plan that would allow any outcome of the pilot project to be to be accommodated, either continuing demand management in the long haul or doing a new northeast station. So we gave you an example in your implementation plan of a policy that might do that using level of service standards from the Council adopted 2007 transfer plan. Other service standards could be used instead. Basically, the policy might say to to meet the future transfer needs. We would want to if we're using the 27 standards, have 90% of self haulers within 30 minutes of a transfer station have cell Paul customers make it through their transfer stations in 16 minutes or less, that sort of thing. And then if if the pilot can't reach those service level standards, then it would might give direction on moving forward on a northeast station or an equivalent alternative. I'm done. Excellent. That was less than a minute. So thank you for observing the queue. No, I gave her a one minute cue about 30 seconds ago and she she nodded at me and meant it beautifully. So Councilmember Lambert has a question. Thank you. Well, first of all, I am very concerned about this. This is where my neighbors take their garbage and I take mine when I need to. So the idea of it being 30 minutes away, I think is too long. I think too many more than enough. I am concerned about people. I know everybody's supposed to cover their loads, but not everybody covers their roads well and putting more debris on the freeways, which is also dangerous. That is a concern to me. Doubling the price and doubling the distance is also of a concern to me. And then if we decide that the community that knew when they bought their homes that there was a transfer station, there has a whole year of not having this in their neighborhood, then getting it back going again is going to cause conflict. And then if we decide that we're not going to put the new station there and the new community that didn't know when they bought their house that was going to be there is going to be up in arms. So I think we're doing a lot of things to ultimately come to some problems, and I am very concerned about those. Won't put that on the record. Thank you, Councilor, for Councilmember McDermott. Thank you, Madam Chair. Page 14 of your slide deck. How is council approval of the peak pricing ordinance in November of this year? And I'm wondering if today's motion in any way sets the stage by means or hands, builds an expectation that we are accepting the pricing numbers that were in your presentation today. My understanding is the motion. Just acknowledges it's. Not on. Sorry. The motion acknowledges receipt of the implementation plan and says that by that receipt the proviso is met. It doesn't say we endorse the content of the plan. And so you were not you wouldn't feel that we were locked in any way and argue at a later date that we had to approve or needed to approve the peak protein or the timeline. The routes. Will come back in November with the peak pricing ordinance, where you'll have the opportunity to get into the. Details. Thank you. So I will just add. Oh, we're we've reached the end here. There's no money associated with this proviso as my understanding. Correct? Actually, I believe there is a $1 million withholding until the council approves the. Just pointing out not noted in the motion language or in any of the staff presentation materials. So in the future, it's really a good idea that the motion should recite. He might have said it. But I you know, there's things going on here. It's not written. And I wish in the motions that it should be written. So with that, are we before I ask for emotion, I want to also say on the record that this is a appreciate the report. The information's helpful. And in fact, it's going to be necessary for us to engage with future requests for decisions. As as you all are aware, and I think my colleagues are aware, the Salaries Advisory Committee and the Municipal Solid Waste Advisory Committee both have expressed serious reservations about this approach. I have the I enjoy having the district where it will be hosted. And and there are strong differences of opinion within my district with regard to whether this is a good thing and a necessary thing or a terrible thing. And it should never be never be done. And those those differences of opinion are mirrored by differences of opinion about whether we should or should not build a new north east transfer station. And so it's it's a it's going to be a really challenging discussion. And I think everybody's aware of that now. The public is also aware of it. So with that, because we have withheld some money from the agency's budget requiring this report and we have, in fact, received the report, I wonder if somebody would be so kind as to move approval of proposed motion 2017 0160 with the do pass recommendation. So move, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Is there a. Comment? Just clarification. So we're approving the report showed up, but not that we like what it says. We are acknowledging receipt. We're not even approving the report. We are acknowledging that we received it. And I, I feel very strongly that we did receive it. So I am going to vote in favor of the motion. Okay. Adamant about that? Yeah. I'm really, really, really. Feels we only need for one quick please. Go ahead. Councilmember. This envisions by closing voting a scenario where voting for the pilot where voting would be closed kind of permanently to see how that works. I did see in here you referenced there'll be some kind of still sample recycling and some special days, right? Maybe have a yard holidays or things. Yeah. We continue solid waste use on the site, but only for recycling orientation. Right now there's cell Paul a small self. Paul pull through area that would remain open as a convenience for the local customers. I guess if we're modeling scenarios long term, it's always been a question in my mind of whether home could be reduced in terms of its type of operation, say from our full MSW facility to maybe a yard waste and recycling facility. And I hope that as you develop final plans for the pilot, that maybe that notion might be able to be tested if there if that makes any sense, and that that's not just one council member with an idea. So anyway, I just wanted to put that on the record. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. All right. At this point, I would ask for the clerk to call at home. Thank you, Madam Chair. Councilmember DEMBOSKY. Councilmember Dunn, Councilmember Gossett I. Councilmember Cole. Well, I. Councilmember Lambert. Councilmember Mr. Stein. Councilmember up the Grove. Councilmember gone right now. Madam Chair. I thank you. Madam Chair. The vote is ayes, no nos and council. Dunn Excused. All right, with that, the motion carries and we will take it up. Council. I don't see any reason to expedite, but it can go on consent. And with that, we are completed with our agenda and we are adjourned.