HomeMy WebLinkAbout052223 Re_ question about other alternatives to fee increase at transfer station________________________________
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Folks,
Mr. Cairns' responses tell me quite a bit about the attitudes of our public servants toward the residents they serve. Please don't stop reading. This will not be a hot-headed screed.
Comments below in purple. I ask that you actively assume some compassion for the many residents who are in my situation.
Further, his inclusion of the 2 documents reveals the actual strategy behind the 100% rate increase for trash haul minimum: driving small residential customers such as myself into service
from the one commercial hauler. I could share with you the many reasons I stopped service with Waste Mgmt., but I am sure you are familiar with the numerous complaints.
His comments also make clear that this isn't about annual operating expenses, or traffic volume, but about the desire to have a fatter cushion (25% is better than 15%!) at the end of
the year. Wouldn't that be lovely? I would love to have that in my family budget too! Instead, due to living on a fixed income, I have to improve my efficiencies year after year. I
also have to cope with years of unpredictably high expenses, just as the issue paper described in your budget.
In my case this increase will not reduce the number of trips I make per month. In fact, if I behave as this "strategy" is intended, that is, to save up my trash even longer (risking
the attraction of vermin), it will INCREASE my trips, because I will not be able to fit trash AND recycling into my truck in one trip. I will have to make a 2nd trip for recycling.
Al, your lengthy and somewhat flippant responses are unconvincing. I remain concerned that alternatives have not been adequately considered. Even so, jumping on the "it's just the cost
of inflation" bandwagon, a fee increase should reflect the rate of inflation since 2014 (though confusingly, the issue paper mentioned a fee modification in 2019), which does not equal
100%. While this will assist your true goal of padding your budget excess, it will not decrease traffic to improve wait times. And it may drive low-income households to returning to
the bad old days of dumping trash in the woods.
Thank you for reading and considering my concerns.
Sharon Rader
970-903-3586
________________________________
From: Al Cairns <ACairns@co.jefferson.wa.us>
Sent: Friday, May 19, 2023 11:38 AM
To: Sharon Rader <sharon.rader@live.com>; jeffbocc <jeffbocc@co.jefferson.wa.us>
Cc: Monte Reinders <MReinders@co.jefferson.wa.us>
Subject: RE: question about other alternatives to fee increase at transfer station
Ms. Rader,
Thank you for your feedback on Public Works’ recommended fee revisions for solid waste disposal. I have responded to your comments/questions below in red.
Best regards,
Al Cairns
Solid Waste Manager
Jefferson County Department of Public Works
acairns@co.jefferson.wa.us <mailto:acairns@co.jefferson.wa.us>
(360)385-9160 X213
From: Sharon Rader <sharon.rader@live.com>
Sent: Friday, May 19, 2023 7:37 AM
To: jeffbocc <jeffbocc@co.jefferson.wa.us>
Cc: Al Cairns <ACairns@co.jefferson.wa.us>
Subject: Fw: question about other alternatives to fee increase at transfer station
________________________________
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Please consider alternatives to the fee increase at the transfer station, as suggested below. I doubt it will achieve its stated goals and will merely double yet another fee on homeowners
such as myself. I haul my trash because the local service is too expensive. I already wait as long as I can, arrive with a small truck fully loaded, and rarely exceed the minimum tonnage.
Thank you for considering my concerns.
Sharon Rader
970-903-3586
________________________________
From: Sharon Rader
Sent: Friday, May 19, 2023 8:31 AM
To: acairns@co.jefferson.wa.us <mailto:acairns@co.jefferson.wa.us> <acairns@co.jefferson.wa.us <mailto:acairns@co.jefferson.wa.us> >
Subject: question about other alternatives to fee increase
Hi Al,
Since about 45% of the car traffic are self-haulers like me, most of those vehicles (small trucks or trailers) are already fully loaded and will not be able to delay the trip to the
dump. Also, I wait as long as I can to accumulate enough trash for a full load, which in my small household is about a month to 6 weeks. I rarely exceed the minimum, and most often
am paying a much higher per-ton rate due to the relatively small amount of trash my household generates (we are avid recyclers, composters, and reuse champions). Your proposal will
not slow my trips since my truck will only hold exactly the amount it holds right now. What it will do is double the rate I pay and create a justification for throwing MORE stuff away.
That’s correct. Assuming a trip to the transfer station every 6 weeks with a minimum weight load (which will increase to 240 lbs. from the current 120 lbs.) you would pay $173 a year
for garbage disposal. If you subscribed for curbside service from Waste Connections and got the 60 gallon roll cart + 3 ea. 19 gallon recycling bins on an every other week schedule
your annual cost would be $335.88 – a difference of $162.55 over making the trip to the transfer station. I applaud your recycling, composting and reusing. And we are operating a
30 year old facility that costs more to maintain every year and has been over designed capacity for 12 of the last 15 years. Rebuilding the current facility to handle the ever increasing
tonnages and large number of low weight customers will take 5 – 7 yrs. so we need to address the congestion now. The minimum fee is the tool that we have available.
Again, this action will not reduce the number of trips for my household, but more likely will increase them. I still believe there are alternatives that have not been considered, such
as adding recycling-only hours, and adding a gate to the booth? I know that might increase staffing cost, since people can be awful and require monitoring. Is there a camera set up
to prevent dumping of trash in recycling bins? There may not be one solution, but applying multiple approaches may create the literal and figurative space needed to solve the problem
of traffic in the short-term.
My questions for you:
1. Wouldn't the traffic bottleneck be better solved by having 2 workers in the booth during high volume times? That would double the speed of outflow. The worker in the booth works as
quickly and efficiently as they can. But running back and forth between the 2 windows slows things down on both sides. Please don't tell me you can't do that because there is only one
computer! It actually takes 3 servers to run the scale facility so not enough computers isn’t an issue. Space is however. The scale house is about a 1/3rd or less than the size it
needs to be to meet industry standards and to meet ADA requirements. The planning that is currently underway for either remaking the current facility or building a new facility at
another site will address this issue. For now, however, we can only fit one scale attendant at a time in the scale house except for training new attendants.
Adding on to the scale house would give us short-term relief from this problem. This seems like a minimally difficult engineering problem. For example, expand the scale house on the
exit side, adding a 2nd window, just past the scale. Use lights to pause traffic for taking the weight, then a light to move the vehicle up to the window. Two workers would double the
speed with which traffic moves during high volume times.
2. If the recycling center were moved to a location outside the gate, recyclers would be better served, and that traffic would be diverted from the line. The county owns the entire parcel.
This would enable another change that could ease traffic (see #3). The property outside the gate is leased to the Gun Club and is not available for relocating the recycling center.
The ideal fix would be a separate entrance for recycling, solid waste and yard debris (21% of all customers). Even a bypass lane for commercial haulers would be a big improvement
but there is a wetland to the west of the two lane entrance/exit road not showing on County GIS mapping that makes this a non-option and there’s not enough property to the east to add
a lane. As part of the facility replacement planning process we will consider a number of traffic revisions that could include an extension of Gun Club Road to create a loop through
the facility.
Thank you for this feedback. I hope all options haven't been dismissed prematurely but I would like to see a public presentation showing these locations and limits in more detail.
3. Route exiting traffic around the building, through the relocated recycling area and onto the longer exit road. During low volume times, the old egress could be opened. I have attached
a drawing. The red circle represents the relocated recycling center; the blue represents an alternative traffic pattern. Again, several traffic flow revisions are being considered as
part of the facility replacement planning process which includes public meetings this Summer and Fall. We are on track to have a recommendation presented to the Board of County Commissioners
in December or early January, 2024.
4. Alternatively, can specific hours for commercial loads be considered, perhaps during the last 2 hours of the day? They are much slower to unload. Small homeowners could voluntarily
avoid those times in order to avoid adding to the traffic. Yes, but we would consider limiting the hours that self-haulers would have access to the site. Many self-haulers, especially
those with trailers, have a hard time backing into the stalls and we often have to coach them on which direction to turn the wheel. Some cannot figure out that Reverse is indicated
with an “R” on the shifter. Some, despite having a 6’6’’, 300 lb. attendant dressed in reflective yellow waiving their hands and yelling “stop!” as loud as possible nevertheless run
into the building columns and tie up traffic as an incident report is filled out. Some self-haul customers take up to 30 minutes to hand unload their trailer. Some bring two pillows
and complain about the wait time. The compactor loads from the commercial hauler on the other hand deliver 50 or more households worth of material with an average turnaround time of
10 minutes. And all those self-haul customers tie up the business customers like building contractors whose profit margins get eaten up as they wait for the two pillow customers to
exit.
I think limiting the hours for self-haulers is a viable option, as long as hours are reasonable and inclusive. Blaming the efficiency problem on people who only bring in very small
loads AND/OR never learned how to back a vehicle isn't going to solve the problem. Perhaps what you are seeing with this phenomenon is the result of the inflexibility of the policies
of the Waste Management company? I hesitate to suggest any further possible solutions since you seem very committed to batting them down like annoying flies. If you sincerely want to
solve the problem of extremely small loads creating an unreasonable volume of traffic, I think solutions could be found. I have several ideas that might support the goals of the facility
in the short-term.
5. Finally, reopen on Mondays so you are not concentrating traffic on the fewer days of operation. Stop making excuses about staffing challenges. Suffering from staffing shortages is
not an excuse, it’s been a crushing reality. Our dedicated crew has worked much harder over the last 2 years to cover for the missing workforce. Despite being down to almost half of
the budgeted staffing at some points we closed for all of 2 days since the beginning of the pandemic due to staffing shortages. We manage up to 100,000 customers and process 23,000
tons of material a year with less than 10 full time equivalent employees budgeted and we run that lean to keep the tipping fee as low as possible. We could meet all our staffing needs
now and reduce labor costs if we didn’t provide driver’s ed as part of our service like many facilities around the state which operate without tipping floor attendants. We still have
a key Operator out with an long-term injury and are backfilling the position next week on a temporary basis until this employee can return. And we have brought on two new Operators
who are quick learners but still pretty green. When we are fully staffed, trained, and skilled we will expand the hours of operations.
I am sure you will yell "liability" as an excuse, but when a customer takes 30 minutes to unload, what are your attendants doing? Is there no one who could assist these customers in
order to speed things up?
I will add two items for your consideration:
* The minimum fee hasn’t changed since 2014.
The rate of inflation since 2014 is roughly 28%. An increase of $2.80 is well-justified.
* The Kitsap County minimum fee is $41. And they take yard debris 1 day a week. And the avg. wait time is almost an hour.
I disagree with the approach that compares us to the lowest performers in the state. A small fee increase may be justified but doesn't preclude the need for problem-solving around the
traffic volume issue. Good analysis of the volume data that you should have access to could inform the public regarding recommended times to haul light loads. In my 8 years as a self-hauler,
I have rarely waited more than 15 minutes. My usual wait is 5 minutes or less, even since the reduction in operating hours.
Lastly, I have attached the brochure from Waste Connections with the different service levels and rates for curbside service and also the Issue Paper we reviewed with the County Commissioners
last month.
Looking forward to your response.
Respectfully,
Sharon Rader
970-903-3586