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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2025-09-02 TranscriptionIowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:00:21] [MUSIC] Well, welcome to the City of Iowa City Work session for September 2nd, 2025. We are going to go with Agenda Item Number 1, clarification of agenda items. We'll move on to Item Number 2, information packets, August 21st. [00:00:51] 1 actually wanted to ask members of the economic development committee to speak just a little bit. It's IP4 for August 21st, just to speak a little bit and share, um, what that meeting was about, because as I read the letter, it looked or the notes, it looked interesting. [00:01:09] Sure. Do you want to know about the, um, presentation by I think or the Arts advisory commitee? [00:01:16] The Arts advisory. [00:01:17] Okay. So, please, fellow members of the Economic Development Committee jump in if I misspeak. Um, but the city of Iowa City has in the past had an arts Advisory Committee, and, uh, it can serve a variety of functions. It can be a sort of, uh, a way to get people together to talk and to also promote arts in our community, um, as well as maybe come up with opportunities for collaboration. My understanding is that- that was a really important part of the arts community years ago, and now there's a desire to reconstitute that and do more work. I believe that Rachel Kilberg Barley of Economic Development is the city liaison to that. I've since had a couple of conversations with people since that meeting, and I think that the purpose of that meeting is- or that organization is still information for what the members might want. Is there anything else to add, Councilor Burgess, Councilor Whitlin? [00:02:12] Just from reviewing the minutes, my recollection of the meeting, yeah, I think, uh, the presentation that we got was about a feasibility study, um, that's underway now, so a consultant was engaged to, um, study whether or not it would make sense for there to be this more formal arts alliance. And, um, I think, you know, some of the things we discussed at the meeting included the concern about, like, how fundraising as an arts alliance might impact individual arts organizations and making sure weren't being cannibalized. Um, I asked how this might impact the annual arts organization support that comes through the Economic Development Committee, and that is a well, let's see what the study says and kind of go from there. But that's what I recall. [00:03:01] Okay. Thank you. [00:03:05] Page 1 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. Any other items from August 21st? Moving on to August 28th. Yeah, I just wanted to highlight the memo that I put in IP4 about the Iowa River and developing a master plan. It's on, uh, our city's action plan or strategic plan. Um, and I'm very excited about this. I know I've said that to all of you a lot. So I have actually had a conversation now with a city Councilor in North Liberty, as well as Think, at this point, Think Iowa City is the organization that would most likely bring all of the organizations together to develop, uh, what I would hope is to be an actionable master plan because because it involves not, uh, several cities, but also the University of Iowa, the Department of Natural Resources, the Army Corps of Engineers, it's kind of a difficult thing to wrangle, uh, as well as the scope where exactly the Iowa River starts and ends is also maybe an open ended question. Does it involve the reservoir? Does it go past Hills? We don't really know that yet. So I would love to stay engaged with this, and my intention for putting this memo in here is to let you guys all know that I'm not speaking on behalf of Council, other than saying it is a strategic action item, and also ask your permission to continue to stay involved and invite any of you who want to participate in this as this group develops to be a part of it. So, um, I guess, my first question, does anybody have any problems with me participating as a liaison or find any need to have a formalization of this effort or just I'll continue to provide updates. I think maybe is this group, a formal group? At- at some point, do we need to make it a formal liaison? It sounds like it's not there yet. I don't think it needs to be formalized because Think would be the contractor, as I understand it, who would actually, um, generate this regional master plan. So, uh, they can bring in who they want. [00:05:06] There could be a time in the future in which there's a financial request of the city, right? If there's going to be a consultant brought on board and that cost is going to be shared beyond, I think, Iowa City budget, um, there could be funding that's requested of all the participating cities in the university. Sometimes with that funding request, we'll establish a more formal board just as kind of stewardship of those public dollars. But at this point, it's very informal, and, um- uh, I think informal participation is fine. [00:05:36] Sure. And if you have thoughts about, I think, specifically scope or vision, please share them. I think that's being formed right now. So I want to make sure nobody feels like this is being developed behind the scenes. So please keep us posted. Thank you. [00:05:58] We have IP6. I just wanted to acknowledge that this is a proposed calendar for next year. The reason I bring it up is not to kind of finalize some of the dates, but if there is a date that sticks out to people as maybe as a- a holiday that we're not aware of or that's reflected here that we acknowledge that now, um, next year is an election year. Um, and so we have our meeting on Monday and not Tuesday, that type of stuff. So if there's something that sticks out to people, certainly can bring it up now, but we'll have opportunities in the future to kind of finalize these dates. I wouldn't worry too much about them at this moment. [00:06:48] Page 2 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. Okay. [00:06:48] All right. If nothing else from August 28th, IP. [00:06:58] Mayor. [00:06:59] Yes. [00:07:00] Tentative schedule for, uh, the joint work session with the county on the, um, it's the ninth? [00:07:10] The joint lawn. [00:07:10] Not anymore. [00:07:11] Oh, 16th. [00:07:14] The ninth was not- we weren't able to get full attendance on the ninth, so, uh, in front of you on a hard copy, or is that just yours. So there's a few dates that we were hoping to check just to save some time. The county has been good at sending us some times in which they know their full board can be there. So if everybody has their calendars, we'd like to just take a minute and check that. If you don't, um, hopefully we can circle back, uh, tomorrow. Everybody has, and I'll just start going. So the first date they offered was September 8th at 5:00. It's a Monday, September 8th at 5:00. 1 mean If anybody's not available, just say, not available. [00:08:04] I'm not available. [00:08:05] Okay. September 8th there, September 10, which is a Wednesday, uh, with a start time of four or five or six. I could start at five, but not six. [00:08:19] Plan, but not four. Page 3 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:08:21] How long have you meeting? [00:08:22] How long? [00:08:22] About two hours? [00:08:23] 1 have a 7:00 P.M. Commitment on the 10th. [00:08:26] But yeah- but for between five-. [00:08:29] Five to 6:30 with a hard stop is a okay. Five to 6:30 hard stop. [00:08:35] Are there any other? [00:08:38] There's September 11th, which is Thursday, uh, 7:30 P.M. That would be after a board supervisor meeting. [00:08:49] 1 have a committment. [00:08:52] 1 saw a no on September 11th. The last date that they were able to provide is September 29th, which is another Monday, and that would be a 5: 30 or 6:00 start. [00:09:06] That's doable, but it's so far out. What if we tried to just what was it that? [00:09:12] September 10th at 5:00-6;30. [00:09:15] Jeff, John had two dates with him in the low. [00:09:18] Page 4 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. I'm sorry. I did miss, uh, a couple other dates. Uh, let's see September 11th at-. [00:09:27] You said the 11 is not good. [00:09:29] Eleventh is not good. Okay. And then September 23rd at 3:00. [00:09:39] That would not work for me. I'm sorry. [00:09:41] Okay. Those two are out. So I believe September 10th, 5: 00-6:30. [00:09:47] That's what I am. [00:09:47] And it would be-. [00:09:50] 1 will con- we'll confirm that via email, uh, with you tomorrow. We'll check with them and see if they have a preference on who's hosting. They might have a meeting that runs up against that, so I just want to make sure, but we'll get that out. Thank you for doing that with us September 10th, 5:00- 6: 30. [00:10:08] All right. Sounds great. All right, we're going to move on to Item Number 3, University of Iowa Student Government USG Updates. [00:10:17] Oh, welcome back. [00:10:19] Yes- yes. [00:10:21] Hi, everyone. I'm glad to be back. I hope you all had a great summer. Uh, today is not only my first Council meeting back. It's also the first USG Senate session today, as well. So big day. We're all very excited. Uh, my main thing over the summer is that we had a very, very successful year of the Lease Gap Program with the graduate. The graduate Hotel has been a phenomenal partner to us. Uh, it's been amazing how supportive they've been and how much they've been willing to work with the university and our students. That's great. Page 5 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:10:51] Um, I currently am working. My new projects are going to be working primarily with the downtown district. First and foremost, I would like to kind of do an appreciation post, uh, maybe tabling event. I don't know, something. Appreciation information post specifically for the downtown ambassadors. Uh, at the last downtown district meeting, I spoke to their operations director who was so kind, so nice. And they do so much work for us. Like, I know the students definitely don't make their lives easier, especially with the Barcral that just happened. So I really want our students to know what they do, who they are. And just show some appreciation there. And then also with the downtown district, I would like to kind of put some more publicity on the student side regarding a lot of the events downtown. We have so many great events that the downtown district puts on, and oftentimes suents don't know about them until the day of. So I would really like to kind of come up with a, uh, Comms plan between them and us, uh, so that we can get more students engaged in the community. And then- finally, I don't yet have a deputy. I probably will not get one until the end of this monthish. Um, I'm not entirely sure why the current Admin decided to do it like that, but it's how it is, and I will, of course, let you guys know when I get my deputy. So I think that's all I have for you guys today. [00:12:06] All right. Thank you. Welcome back. We certainly feel it. The rock star parking is gone. All right, we're going to move on to Item Number 4, information on presentation from the resource management superintendent. Jennifer Jordan. Welcome. [00:12:22] Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I feel like I should start with a caveat. I can get really excited about trash and recycling and compost. I don't expect you all to be that excited, but if there's something that you can get excited about within everything I'm going to throw at you in the next 20 minutes or half an hour, I'd love that. [00:12:37] Great. [00:12:37] So let's start with- if we can get started. There we go. Okay, so the backbone of our programs is really the staff people that work for us all, and they do a phenomenal job. We jokingly say all the time that teamwork makes the dream work. Staff sang it pretty tongue in cheek, but you can see at these various events that I've shown here, a few different ones and some other stuff going on over the next few slides that we have a pretty amazing crew. So we have together we have 37 or 38 people depending on the number of seasonals that we have and transitions, of course, like everybody has. We have three office people primarily at the landfill. Uh, also at the landfill, we have an assistant superintendent, uh, a senior operator, eight operators, and maintenance worker, and then 1.75 full time equivalents at the scale. Curbside, we have an assistant superintendent, 18 drivers, which you'll see across our community on any given day. So we um, single family homes up to four flex apartment. So we're picking up trash, Page 6 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. recycling, organics from potentially all of those. And then at East Side, we have a maintenance worker or a recycling coordinator who many of you are probably familiar with out of all of our staff probably most, Jane Welch. She's shown there on the far right with her always smiling face. And then we have a seasonal worker at East side right now, who's helping us so much on the weekends. He's working 10 hours over the weekends and really has allowed us to book more events there. So if you're seeing more use of that site, that's why we have more staff to help us get that cleaned up and keep it tidy. So that's been really nice. A couple more pictures. We were fortunate to receive an award at the Fal coomm for the Recycling and Solid Waste Association conference last year in Dubuque for a brick recycling project that you may have heard a little bit about. We actually recycled 60 tons of bricks from the downtown project from years ago that were stacked down at the, uh, streets lay down area south on the south side of town. So we did some really cool work with that. Um, the picture on the bottom, I have to smile because this was so long ago. And all those people are No, one person's retired. If you recall back in 2017, when we switched over to curbside recycling carts, uh, we had a lot of questions about what to do with 18 gallon bins. So we hosted several events across the community to take those back, and staff was great about showing up to take those back from the community. And then you may know the face on the right, Mary Pomberg. We call her the Queen of recycling. She has been instrumental in many of our recycling programs and helping spread the word. She helped us get rummage and the ramp started many, many years ago. She still volunteers at stuff. She works very closely with Jane on several of our programs. So she's always a great great face to see at those events. Okay, so a quick down on facilities and locations. Quick rundown, excuse me. So I think many of you have probably been to Iowa City Landfill. That's on the far west side of town. We have some recycling programs there and our compost facility. Uh, we have our curbside collection building at 13:06 South Gilbert Court. If you haven't been there, it is right beside the bike library with a really cool mural that we did maybe four or five years ago. So that's a great kind of place for that space. We have the Eastside Recycling Center, which I think most of you also probably have been there, we have the relatively new Sturgis Ferry recycling center on South Riverside Drive, and then we have multiple drop off partner sites across town. And those are everything from Ace Hardware where we have some bins for collection four batteries and some bulbs, to the three drop off locations, the closest one being just in the parking lot across the way at the Rec Center. So we have multiple different facilities across town that multiple staff are keeping an eye on at any given time. Okay, so going into a program over you, I'm going to talk just a little bit about each of these things. And then I want to make sure we leave time for questions. Okay, so starting with rate reduction, some of you may recognize the person in to up there. We like to pull in retired city employees to help us with our outreach campaigns. So that's Marsha Bollinger. She was the neighborhood services coordinator for many years and retired, probably. Eight years ago, seven years ago. So she and Jane have remained close, and we pull her back in for things like the leaves campaign. So that is one of the things that we do to encourage people to not- to not use our programs that we offer either at the Curbside pickup or at the landfill, but to think about what's one step further that you can do to deal with this on your own and have less environmental impact. So I jumped around a little bit there, but we do a lot of education and outreach. Jane, by far does the most of our education and outreach. I think she does 50-60 presentations a year. So on average one a week, that ranges from tours to little little kids all the way up to I think she goes to Oak Knoll pretty regularly. That might be her Mary connection there. Um, across the board, probably about 1,000 people a year attend those presentations. Uh, she's also done I'll jump Page 7 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. a little bit here. She- during COVID, also, we, of course, all had to pivot. She did a really phenomenal set of education- of educational videos and put those online, and those are still being used regularly. So if you google Landfill education, oftentimes our stuff will pop up first because of that. So that's pretty cool. Uh, we have a program called Speaking of, and that's I think- I think that's on hiatus right now, but that was with climate action where Jane would talk with different people around the community and talk about just kind of have random conversations about some of the things that we could do to benefit the environment. [00:17:48] She just finished a plastics reduction effort kind of modeled on a program called Plastic Free July and she did a bunch of pre surveys, did- had a bunch of people sign up to agree to take some actions, including things like using your regular water bottle every day instead of a single use plastic bottle, using your coffee mug, things that a lot of us already do, but encouraging other folks to do the same. So there'll actually be a press release coming out about that tomorrow and some of the, um, impacts that that's had on the community. And then one of the bigger ones she's worked on over the last few years is called Love Food Fight Waste. That's a really cool partnership with table to table. That's really getting people to think about food waste. And it's really important because 25% of what goes into Iowa landfills and actually landfills across the country is food waste. So any amount of time that we can take to get people thinking about recycling or composting your banana peel, but first, eat the banana. So things like that are the conversations that she has with the food or excuse me, Love Food Fight Waste outreach. Um, and one thing I want to highlight kind of in this and on the next slide, the number of partners that we have, and I know this is important in the Council strategic plan, too. We have a phenomenal number of partners across the community, and I didn't take time to write them all out, but I should have. I will just highlight, um, one event that we've had recently. So we did- this is the first time we've done this. We were approached by Dreamwell Theater do, uh, to try and figure out some way to recycle art supplies. Ah, and we ended up working with about 30 different partners for this event and both stuff coming in to do- be donated and then to give it out to different partners as well, and also members of the public. So we had, I believe, 30 different partners involved in this event. So Jane does a phenomenal job of that. So that one's mentioned on here. Of course, we have our regular partners in the restore and salvage barn at the East Side recycling center. We have the swap shop out at Iowa City Landfill, and this is getting into reuse here, not specifically partners. Um, we have a bicycle recycling program out at the landfill. It's actually the one thing that people can take from the landfill, other than the swap shop materials. There's definitely a misperception that, you know, there's a pile of appliances or a stash of appliances, and there's all these things, there's computers. Once they're there, they're not open- the- the public cannot take them. So we have that customer conversation regularly that the only thing you can take are bikes. So, um, the donation drop offs, that's an event that we've been doing since just post COVID, where I mentioned rummage in the ramp earlier, if anybody remembers that. We had a giant 10 day garage sale in the parking ramp that was wonderful and chaotic and exhaust and exhilarating and we were not able to revive that after COVID, simply because we didn't have the volunteer groups and we couldn't get the volunteer group involvement. The individual volunteers, we get a lot of, but not group involvement, which we really need for that giant 10 day event. So this was kind of the- the pivot for that. So we do a one day donation drive through where we have multiple partners there. And at the end of Page 8 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. the day, Resource drives away with their donations, and Crowded Closet drives away with their donations, and Table -to -Table drives away with a truckload of canned goods and toilet paper. So rather than staff having to clean stuff up at the end of the event, the event just goes away at the end. It's brilliant, brilliant. Good stuff. Um, and it's much more efficient, if you think about the fact that with rummage, we recycled about 20 tons of material over 10 days. This is recycling about- or reusing recycling, about- I believe it's about four tons over four hours. So the numbers are much more- it's much more efficient for use of staff time. And it's, uh, again, Jane's brainchild and very well done. [00:21:07] Can I ask, how do you measure that? How do you approximate that weight? [00:21:10] There's lots of checking stuff off paper. Like we have paper checklist when people donate items. So we have random weights assigned to, like, a couch or to a lamp or to a box of books. So we tie stuff pretty regularly. They're estimations, but they're pretty good estimations. Yeah, thanks. [00:21:24] Thanks. [00:21:24] Uh-huh. [00:21:24] Um, the consignment and resale directory is something you can see here on the bottom right. So we put this together years and years ago. And this started out as a- as a project with local secondhand stores, and it was a paper pamphlet probably almost 20 years ago. I think Brad Newman may have started it, if that name rings a bell to anybody. Uh, we have gotten it online and this last time I looked had 72,000 hits. So, um, I won't necessarily say it's an economic driver for secondhand stores in Johnson County, but that probably wouldn't be too much of a stretch. So you get a chance to check that out. Bricks, I already mentioned, again, we did about 60 tons of diversion into- to the restore. Those got donated to Restore, and they were able to sell those for their programs. And then I mentioned the pop up craft and school supply event which was new this year, and we'll definitely be doing again based on that success. Okay, um, the next slide is getting into more traditional probably what we all think of as recycling. And I'm going to jump back and forth here a little bit. As a landfill, we serve all of Johnson County and Cloona and Riverside. Some of our recycling programs obviously are just curbside Iowa City. So I'll talk about this kind of interchangeably, but if you have questions about what service- which programs serve which community or which population, please let me know. Curbside, as I mentioned, Steve serves single family homes up to four plex apartments. I just have some numbers on here from tonnages from year to year. These stay relatively consistent, which I have some longer term numbers here at the end. But, um, so curbside- curbside recycling is one of our bigger recycling programs. Drop off- the drop offs. So we have, again, drop offs around the community for glass, and we have one at the landfill for books- now working with the library for book recycling. So that's well over 1,000 yeah, 1,000 tons there. I had to Page 9 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. pause from them there. Appliances, tires, shingles. Those are all landfill recycling programs. Electronics, we recycle both at the landfill and at the East Side recycling center. Scrap metals, the landfill, bicycles, at the landfill, I mentioned that a little bit. Mattresses is a new one. It's just over the last couple of years. We work with the Willis Daddy Shelter in Cedar Rapids, and we've really helped them- I'd like to think we helped them anyway, kind of get that up and running. And they've done a phenomenal job. They work with Cedar Rapids Solid Waste agency now as well, and they do a lot more. So the mattresses that we're recycling currently are the ones that are scheduled for special pickup at the curb. So we're setting those aside and taking those out there when we have a full load. We'd like to get to the point where we're doing events for those and then have a permanent recycling program for those. Weight wise, they're not a lot, but they're really hard to deal with in the landfill. So those are the types of things that we look at. What's going into the landfill in mass quantity. So food waste and then also what's hard to deal with at the landfill. How can we get that stuff out of the way, essentially? So those are a couple of them. Batteries are another one we really want to keep out of the landfill. We've had 18 fires, um, in the last, uh, was that last fiscal year? Last fic- fiscal year, we had 18 fires, which is terrifying from a staff perspective, from an environmental perspective. Most of them are relatively minor. Staff has done a phenomenal job of seeing those, learning how to deal with them and taking care of them. And most of the time the fire department isn't even needed. I think they were called out maybe on two of those fires, but it's some- really something that we've worked hard to expand our battery recycling program. We have found batteries in about 50% of those fires, and we're pretty sure most of the rest of them are from fire- from batteries, as well. So recycle your batteries. We have eight drop off sites around our service area, and we're looking at adding a couple more in the more outlying communities. So that - that's really important for- for a lot of reasons. And then some of the smaller programs that we don't talk about a whole lot, but they're- they've been in place for a long time, bulbs, so CFL bulbs and, like, the comp- compact fluorescent CFL tubes, those types of bulbs, corks and then holiday lights. So that's been a really neat partnership with the city of Coralville and Peterson Iron and Metal in Coralville. We've been recycling holiday lights for many years now, and actually, City Hall is a drop off location. We have those out usually between mid November when people maybe start putting up holiday lights and then take them, you know, right after January, we pick those from around the community. [00:25:15] Mm hmm. [00:25:17] Okay, moving into compost. We have some photos to start that's fun. This is a pile- an old picture of a pile of the compost facility. This is pretty typical. You can see there's some leaves in there. There's some old still city of Iowa City paper yard waste bags from back in the day. Again, this photo was pretty old, though some yeah, grass clippings, leaves, just random stuff that goes into the pile. This is what we make compost out of at the Iowa City landfill. So this one's a little bit grosser. Hang tight. Okay, so this is pulped food waste coming from Hillcrest Dining Services, the University. So this is how it comes to us. It looks kind of like a popcorn. Um, they've run it through a process where they're getting most of the liquid out so they're not paying someone to haul that liquid. This is really good stuff to have in the compost. It- it increases the, uh, nitrogen. It increases moisture, and it makes really good compost. So Page 10 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. what we do with all that stuff when it comes in, we mix it up in a giant grinder, which some of you have seen probably in action, if not, we have some great videos online. Our City Channel 4 does a lot of really good stuff for us, including some really cool drone footage. So we grind it up, and then we put it into long wind rows, and we turn it once a month. Um, I'll talk a little bit more, I think, in the next couple of slides about kind of where we're at with composting. And then these are my raspberries from three or four years ago. And if you drive through the alley now, they're about eight feet tall and very happy. So, um, the- the compost we make the IoC Landfill, obviously, I'm biased, but it's really good stuff. We're one of about six or seven commercial compost facilities in the state of Iowa, and it's- we're one of the very few of those even that take food waste. So we're really proud of that. And we move a lot of material through. So, um, the next few slides, I will throw a lot of numbers at you. So I probably won't go into all the details, but if you have specific questions, please let me know. Um, so this is overall incoming yard waste and food waste at the landfill. So these numbers actually include what we pick up at the curb. They include the city of Tiffin picking up their yard waste other communities. So it's all going into the- the compost facility at the landfill. We are permitted currently for 15,000 tons per year, and we bumped up against that very closely in fiscal year 2023. We've since come down a little bit more, and we've attributed that somewhat to the drier except for the summer- the summer has been wetter again, but we had a couple of drier seasons there, so the material coming it doesn't weigh as much. This is all by weight. So it's- you've seen that come down a little bit. Then on the other end, the tons of compost sold has actually bounced around kind of similarly on the same trajectory there. We have sold out, I think, four of the last five years. Um. this past year feels like it was maybe a little bit contrived. We didn't really sell out. We held back everything we had for internal use at the landfill to put it on the side slope at the landfill to seed it. We were having some problems getting grass to grow there, and we thought, Well that better product to use than our own. Unfortunately, that meant the public didn't get nearly as much as they wanted last fall. So we do have- oh, this spring actually was, I think. We do have a good supply now, and I don't anticipate running out this fall. Okay, so I mentioned we're bumping up against that 15,000 tons per year capacity that we have both space for and what we're permitted for. So as you probably know, a few years ago, we, uh, Jane, the recycling coordinate and I worked on an EPA solid waste swiffer- solid waste infrastructure recycling, something grant. And we were one of 20 1 believe, 25 communities across the country to receive the grant. Um, we got four million dollars to recover the facility and expand to another two acres and to purchase a Winrow Turner, which we now have on site. We have training this month. We're very excited about that. That should allow us for about 5,000 tons more per year on this- the footprint that we're going to have. So we're pretty excited about that. Part of that will be education and outreach to get people to hel- try to help people understand to divert more of that waste, not only households, but also commercial and industrial locations, too. So part of that will be expanding some draft part- a couple years ago, we did a pilot drop off at East Side recycling center where we had the yellow top carts and where folks from the rural areas or that lived in apartments could drop off their material since they don't have curbside pickup like we do in Iowa City. So we'll be expanding that pilot program, and we'll be looking at kind of strategic places to put those carts around the community where we can keep them clean, not be bad neighbors with them, as you can imagine, the food waste portion of your garbage is a sinky stuff, right. So if we're separating that out, we want to make sure we're taking good care of that. And then the site design is moving. Hopefully we'll, um, hopefully by the end of this year, we'll have a site design in place, and then we'll come before Council Page 11 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. with the construction plans for that maybe at this year. Oh, and then I threw in some just the greenhouse gas connections there. This is some of the language that we use in the APA grant application. So looking at what that means to reduce that- to pull that much more material out of the landfill, we're looking at some pretty significant tones as for the metric tons of carbon dioxide saved. So we're pretty excited about that, too. It's not something we talk about at the- the landfill on a daily basis as far as the compost or the recycling, what that's really saving environmentally. This just what we do every day. But these numbers are pretty cool to see, so we're pretty proud of that. Always have to make it happen. Okay. [00:30:09] Before- [00:30:10] Yeah. [00:30:10] Sorry, before you move off of the food waste. [00:30:12] Uh-huh. [00:30:12] You mentioned commercial and industrial users. Can you talk a little bit about that? That's a question that I think we receive relatively regularly since there's not a city haller shit for that. How does that work? [00:30:24] Yeah, so we have a couple of hallers in the community who do relatively limited pickup. So, for instance, there's a hauler- a well known hauler in the area that picks up from the university from three or four locations. Um, I believe New Pi is still diverting food waste. There's really just a handful at this point. Given that we have been kind of pushing up against our permit limits, it's not something we've really been working hard at. Once we have a permit expansion, we'll be out pounding the pavement to local grocery stores and restaurants to help them understand what services are available. But the missing link is the private hauler. So we don't pick it up. Um, again, there are a few, but I think there's a few more who are- I know there's a few more who are aware of this, and hopefully we'll kind of step into that section of this industry, too, and provide that service of picking up food waste. There's some going on, but there's definitely room for improvement, yeah. [00:31:10] Can I- can I add on to that question? Because I had the same one. Um, is the reason that we don't offer pickup for commercial sites because the equipment the city has is the wrong size or why don't we offer that for the whole city, like downtown or our restaurants? Page 12 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:31:25] Yeah, that would be a great question. I would love to run the world. My understanding this goes way back. I believe it was set up that way in city code in the late 70s, where the city would pick up single family homes to four plexes and the commercial hollers would get access to everything else. So do you have anything to add to that? That's my understanding. [00:31:46] Yeah, as long as I've been hearing well before, that's just been the demarcation line, but we would not have the equipment to serve dumpsters or- [00:31:55] Yeah. [00:31:56] We're really set for the tote pickup. [00:31:59] Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, we- th- the city trucks don't have dumpster service at all. So we moved to the carts, which serves 99% of our customers. But if you look at, like, waste management, ABC Disposal, LRS, which used to be Johnson County Refuse, if you look at all the trucks they have running around town, we would need to expand to that capacity to be able to take over at that level. So it would be a huge leap for the city to be able to pick all that up. [00:32:22] Sure. As far as capacity, though, with expanded capacity, encouraging more participation is in the future. More composting participation from- [00:32:32] Definitely. yes soon as the Yep. [00:32:34] Yes. And that- that's the whole reason. Well, one of the many reasons for the grant application is to expand the footprint so we can process more material faster. Yeah. Thanks. [00:32:41] Yep. I would also ask if, ah, selling the compost in terms of recouping the cost. So if we picked up more, we would get more money from selling the compost. I have no idea what that cost relation is like. [00:32:56] Yeah, great question. So one of the things that we've been really cognizant of over the past decade or so, is really to help our recycling and composting pr ograms try and be financially sustainable on their Page 13 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. own. They're pretty heavily subsidized, well. I should say, some are heavily subsidized by landfill tipping fees, which is problematic. If you're trying to reduce what's coming into landfill and your money's tied to that, you're having less money to spend overall. So compost is probably one of the most heavily subsidized. We do have money coming in on the front and more money now since July 1st- since we do charge a minimum fee now at the landfill. So we charge on the coming in and coming out. But if you think about the outgoing compost, if you think about- if we take in 15,000 tons, we're only able to make four or 5,000 tons of compost because of the process itself, and so much of that's water weight and carbon dioxide evaporating off, it's kind of a losing business proposal. Which, just personally speaking, I think that's probably part of the reason we see communities, um, like cities and counties running these facilities because we can afford to subsidize them? And private businesses don't tend to do that unless they have lots of other programs that go with it, like, you know, colored wood chips and kind of the fancier stuff that we don't get into. So but yeah, great question. Thank you. [00:34:06] Sorry, I'm going to ask one more. Kind of stepping back then to recycling, can you answer the same question about recycling? Like, how expensive it is for us to offer a recycling program and, um, what needs to be subsidized to make it work versus what actually has a secondary market to purchase waste plastics? [00:34:22] So I'll speak to the curbside part of that first. So the curbside recycling program has a fund on- on its own in the budget, and that's actually self it covers its costs. So that's a good, good one. Um, the appliances at the landfill could more than cover costs. Electronics do, and we haven't raised prices on either of those material streams for probably five or seven years, if not longer. I don't- I don't remember a time when we've actually raised prices on appliances. [00:34:50] Hazardous waste is one of our more expensive programs to run because we fully subsidize that, but that's really important to keep that material out of the landfill. Um, those are a few. Do you have specific streams that you're wondering about? [00:35:03] 1 was just curious about plastics and metals and- and papers and whether or not- I feel like we've probably all seen articles where some of these materials don't always get recycled. There's not a secondary market for them. They sometimes end up in a landfill after they've been recycled and I wasn't sure how much fluctuation there is from your perspective on the sort of input or in- income that comes from these and, um, what's happening today, I guess. [00:35:26] Yeah, that's- thank you for following up on that. That helps me understand better. Um, and it might help to describe where our materials go. So everything we pick up at the curb and most of the stuff at the drop off site with the exception of glass goes to the Waste Commission of Scott County. So we a- we a Page 14 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. have a contract with a hauler who takes stuff there. It goes through their material recovery facility or MRF, um, which has a really cool video. If you guys want to check that online. Scott County does a phenomenal job with their education outreach. But they are able to- they sort everything out through this giant sorting facility, and they have different markets for those materials. Plastic is probably the worst of it all. I mean, we have- we have a local- I'll circle back to that. We have a really good strong market for cardboard locally because we have one of the biggest recycled box boards in the country in Cedar Rapids. Um, paper has a pretty strong market, especially as we use less and less of it, what's left is relatively valuable. Glass is infinitely- almost infinitely recyclable as is metal. Um, but plastic is the real - the real kind of troublemaker in the recycling world. And that's probably what you've seen if you've seen articles about recycling is bad. Plastics in general are not great. So I think that's part of what led to the recycling coordinator working towards the plastic free July. I think we can actually technically use that term. Reducing plastic in July. So I think it's helping people understand that the less we use is better, the more we can use reusable stuff and avoid plastic environmentally and financially, it's probably better for the city. [00:36:48] Thanks. [00:36:49] Yeah. That was a really long answer. Thanks for being [OVERLAPPING]. [00:36:50] That was great. I enjoyed it. Thank you. [00:36:53] So along with that, talking about plastics, one thing I wrote down was just because of my ignorance and how recycling works, just soft plastics. And I've had a lot of people ask me, like, why- why don't- I think the- years ago, the state just said we are not doing anything regarding soft plastics anymore. And I just don't know the reasons or why. I don't know if you have any insight. [00:37:18] Are you referring to, like, plastic bags in particular? [00:37:21] Yeah. [00:37:21] Okay. So yes, so film plastic, including plastic bags, is a pretty good chunk of what goes into landfill. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but it's more than 10% of what goes into the landfill, by weight. So you can imagine that's a huge volume. Um, the city was working towards a plastic bag ban probably about 12 or 15 years ago. And yeah, the state preemptively banned that. Dubuque- the City of Dubuque was also working on a plastic bag ban at the point of sale. Um, so that is that both of those Page 15 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. were killed at that point, essentially. Um, I think that the- the bigger picture with recycling soft plastics, plastic film, is it has to be really clean, and it has to be totally separated from everything else. So we see a lot of it come in, like, on palettes or wrapped around stuff, um, and to separate that all out from either the manufacturer's standpoint or the consumer standpoint or the landfill staff standpoint, that's really challenging. So I think until we collectively agree to use less plastic or be willing to pay a lot to make it clean and just one kind of plastic, it's gonna be what it's going to be, which is not a great answer. [00:38:23] So would you have buyers for let's just say people- everybody in Iowa City decided, yeah, we're going clean our plastic bags, you know, put them in a box and then give them to you. And it's all great. Like, would there be buyers in the market for that? [00:38:40] Yeah, definitely. I mean, the- the commercial grocery stores in particular, like if you think about the local grocery stores that have the containers in their vestibules, those are relatively clean. My understanding is, uh, they basically haul that back to their warehouse and condense it into what you're saying, essentially, is having kind of one stream of material. And then because they have a large enough volume, they can actually sell that as a commodity. But it's- it's much cleaner than the plastic bag container for recycling that we had at the land or excuse me, at East Side Recycling Center years ago. Um, as you can imagine, unstaffed sites get a lot of stuff dumped in them. So. [00:39:15] 1 see. [00:39:16] Yeah, but, yes, it's a commodity. It can be a commodity if it's clean enough and if there's enough volume. [00:39:20] Cool. [00:39:20] Yeah. [00:39:21] While you're talking about plastic bags, there's still one question we always get asked about, and even in my own household, why can't we put it in the recycle on the curbside? Um, and if you can talk to some of the- the real issues, if it does, um, you know, get processed when it is on a conveyor belt, you know, and all that separation. [00:39:41] Page 16 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. That is exactly why. Yeah. So once- once it gets mixed in, it's going to this giant sort of facility at the Waste Commission of Scott County or wherever it ends up, um, post that if it's in plastic, it gets tangled up in the machinery, and they have to shut the whole facility down to clean that out multiple times a day. So things like extension cords, um, any kind of rope, garden hoses, those are really bad for equipment. Including at the landfill, we just don't see as much of that, like plastic bags. They tend to come more in mix loads, so it's not like one giant hose is gonna shut us down, but that could shut down a recycle facility for a whole day. So, yeah, keeping that [00:40:13 ] stuff- keeping the curbside material clean. [00:40:16] And- and I understand that the public probably sees what we take is pretty limited when some of this other stuff is recyclable, especially in mass quantities. But we just don't have the capacity or the capability to take all those different materials in and keep them sorted and keep it clean and not break someone else's giant equipment. [00:40:32] Yes. [00:40:33] Yeah. Thank you. Okay, can I move on to yard waste? Anymore recycling questions? Okay. Great. Um, okay. So this is specific to curbside collections in Iowa City. Um, so we added food waste in 2017 after a couple of years of pilot projects earlier than that, probably about 2012. So this is yard waste and organics at the curb. You can see it dips around a little bit. But generally, it's about 3,500 tons a year. So that's of that 15,000 tons capacity at the landfill. The city stuff is about- what is that about, 20% of that. So it's a pretty good chunk. Um, this is trash collected at the curb. So- and I should mention we have about 17,000 households that we serve the single family homes for fourplexes. It's about 17,000 households. You can see this jumps around a little bit, too. Um, if you think back to all of the negative effects that COVID had on our lives, it had a significant impact on landfills and recycling centers as well, because everyone was buying disposable items, and they ended up in landfills. So that's what that spike is. It started coming down a little bit after that. Um, you can see we're back up a little bit, too. But, um, those numbers, I think- it looks like there's a big jump between the last two lines there, but it's really only about 2%. So that's not giving me heartburn yet. Um, in fact, this is probably a better lot of numbers here. But if you look at the number of customers going up, and then I totaled the amount of material that we're picking up at the curb, the trash, the organics, and the compost and take the diversion over the garbage, we're actually increasing slightly from year to year. And that's one of the things that we use in the budget every year to kind of justify or um, to explain what our picture looks like. Sam 1/ 19 ITS 1 11 Page 17 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:42:06] Okay, so then this is taking a step back out. This is trash out at the landfill. So again, this is the bigger picture. The landfill serves about 160,000 peop- excuse me, people throughout Johnson County. So you can see this has remained pretty steady, um, the lowest number on there. So the hash marks- I guess you can see them pretty well. So the top one is 160,000, goes down by 20,000 pound increments, so they're all above 120,000 pounds. And that's been the case probably even further back than FY 15, but the really cool one that I like to share is the per capita. So even as our population at Johnson County is increasing and we're serving more people at the landfill, our overall per capita waste generation has continued to decrease in general. So I have a trend line there as you can see. Again, you can see 2021 was a huge spike because of COVID. Um, I'm not quite sure what the 2024 spike was about. Again, though, if you're looking at the- the grid lines there, there's- they're in 50 pound increments. So this is per pound per person per year. So I'd like to see the trend line going in this direction. So, um, and that's why we continue to do what we do. We're always looking to add more programs, if we can pull, again, more mattresses out, more food waste. Another one that I- I think about all the time, that's a huge waste is scrap metal. There's a strong market for scrap metal, even if the- the financial numbers aren't strong, people are always willing to take scrap metal. About 5% of what goes into the landfill is scrap metal. So the container we have out there is pretty small. It's pretty limited. We hear that from customers all the time. They would do more if we let them. So that's something that we've been working towards, trying to figure out a better way to handle. Five percent doesn't sound like a whole lot, but when you're taking in 130,000 tons a year, it's 5,000, 7,000 tons, 12,000 tons a year of metal that could be recycled. So these are the things that we look at to try and do better every year to keep this trend line going in the right direction. [00:43:42] Did you say that 25% is food waste? [00:43:44] Yeah. [00:43:45] Okay. Um, I was wondering if there's a way to discern who maybe the worst offenders at food waste are or if it all just goes into the same pile, and you can't tell. [00:43:59] That's a great question. So, um, back -stepping a little bit, the- a lot of the numbers that we have as far as what's going into the landfill, in fact, most of them are coming from waste sorts that are performed by the Department of Natural Resources, and they do waste sorts at eight or 10 landfills across the state every five or seven years. And we've participated in the last, I think, four of the five total and three of the last four, maybe. So we have really good numbers specific to Iowa City, and they break it out into residential based on the hauler loads coming in, we kind of do a survey with that, residential, commercial, industrial, and I don't know the answer to that off the top of my head, but we do have that Page 18 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. data. So I- I think if you press me for an answer now, I think it's pretty consistent across industrial, residential and commercial. I think it's pretty consistent. But I can definitely verify that and get back to you on it. [00:44:45] Okay. I was thinking about, you know, just, wow, this one factory or restaurant is- [00:44:49] Right. [00:44:49] -and then maybe just doing some, uh, education or something or just trying to work with them. [00:44:55] Yeah. [00:44:56] Uh, I- I mean, when I think of, um- you said that those three groups are pretty even? [00:45:02] That's my recollection, but I'll have to verify. [00:45:04] Okay. Yeah, I mean, I think about, you know, obviously, we should all individually be doing our best to sort our personal things and recycle in that way. I think a lot of people get frustrated and it's like, well, I'm just one person, but this giant factory down the road is putting a billion tons of food waste [LAUGHTER] or whatever into the system, and, uh, we don't really have a recourse to find them or to like to get to the bottom of that. Uh, and I think specifically, we'll go unnamed, I don't want to, like, put a restaurant on Blast and City Council. But, um, there's a particular pizza spot in the area that, uh, a bunch of teenagers that I knew would- they would- they would throw away their pizzas and neat little boxes in the dumpster, and they would just go and take them. Um, and they would actually, like, give them out, you know, it was like a robinhood thing to them. I don't know. But the- that restaurant found out about it, and then they started destroying all of the pizza and squishing it and then putting it in the dumpster, you know. So that type of stuff makes me mad- [00:46:04] Yes, agreed. [00:46:05] -um, when we're talking about food waste. Uh so stuff like that, uh, as opposed to just like us as individuals, recycling and sorting our food waste is important to me. I don't know. I'm just talking now, but [LAUGHTER]. Page 19 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:46:18] No, I agree. I think you're right, too, there's a lot of room for improvement across the board, but there are- I'm sure there are kind of heavy hitters that we will focus on once we have capacity to take more of their material. That's part of it. They need to understand what the impact is, and we can help them understand that. And then they need to know what their- their resources and opportunities are. So if we can take it at the landfill back to the point earlier, if we can take it at the landfills compost facility and they're willing to separate it out, they still have to get it to us, and that might cost double. So there's - there's lots of things that go into that conversation. But I think that's- there's a lot of business in town. I mentioned New Pio earlier. There's a lot of businesses in town who want to have that conversation just from an environmental perspective and a PR perspective, that they don't want to see their pizzas getting given out because it could be a liability issue. [00:47:01] Yeah. [00:47:02] Yeah, but if there's another way to deal with them more appropriately than putting them in a dumpster, first of all before someone else digs them out, then, yeah. And Table2Table I mentioned a couple of times, they're a great partner. They do a ton. I mean, literally hundreds of tons of food waste diversion every year from the landfill, and are expanding the capacity all the time, which is why they're one of our great partners. [00:47:19] Mm hmm. [00:47:21] Thank you. [00:47:21] Yeah. Favorite. I think that's all that I have. Thank you all. I'm happy to take any more questions or let you move on to the rest of your evening. [00:47:31] No, thank you. [00:47:32] Thank you. [00:47:33] My pleasure. Page 20 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:47:33] Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you [00:47:34] Thank you. Awesome. [00:47:35] Oh, one- one thing. I'm so sorry. [00:47:37] O kay. [00:47:37] Sorry everybody. Uh, I've had a [00:47:39] couple people reach out to [00:47:40] me specifically about, uh, in my neighborhood, specifically, because I live kind of over by Oasis, Linn Street, um, Emma Goldman Clinic area. And people- neighbors have just said, can you follow up, uh, in terms of how can we deal with all of, like, the vape cartridges on the ground? And that is something that I didn't really have a answer for them, and I was trying to logically think about it through my head, well, you could put like specific bins around, but then they just wouldn't use them because usually it's just like the horde of drunk college people that are [LAUGHTER] coming from the bars. But I don't know if that's something that's considered batteries or hazardous or. [00:48:19] Yes, both. Thank you for asking. This is- this is- vapes have been a thorn on my side since we got the first call from, I think, a school nurse saying, I've confiscated 30. What do I do with them? We technically can't take them right now, but we are working on a program for them. I may have told my director that I'd have a program up and running by the end of August, and I've not held true to that, but I am working on it. So hang tight on that one. [00:48:41] Cool. Thank you. [00:48:42] Yeah. Thanks for asking. [00:48:44] Um, quick question about wood mulch. Page 21 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:48:47] Yeah. I know people [00:48:47] like the city's wood mulch, [00:48:48] and the city uses it itself. Is that- how does that get separated from the compost stream, and is that profitable? And I'm also kind of the- the connected thing is I know that we are changing the way that we're collecting curbside yard waste, which includes woody matter, and, like, how is the city tracking that to see if we have a big drop off. [00:49:10] Yeah, I'll start with curbside because that's easier question. So everything we pick up at the curb for organics. So the food waste, the yard waste, and the woody waste, that's all going into one truck. So that arrives- that goes into the compost area at the landfill. So there's- if you haven't been into the landfill, there's essentially two piles to dump in for the yard waste. There's one for kind of that mixed stuff, and then one for more woody type material. So if a customer brings in just trees, we're going to set those aside or they're going to set them aside. They kind of self choose their pile, essentially. Um, and then we grind that up. Same grinder, but just a [00:49:40] different end product, essentially. [00:49:42] We do give those wood chips away. It is not profitable. And it's, um- the equipment to operate that in the staff time is very expensive, um, but it's certainly worthwhile to keep that stuff out of the landfill. [00:49:52] Okay. Sorry. Thanks for that. [00:49:55] Of course. Thank you. [00:49:58] Thank you. [00:49:58] Okay, if any more come up, you know where to reach me. [00:50:00] Page 22 Iowa City City Council Work Session of September 2, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. All right. Thank you, Jenn. [00:50:01] Thank you, Jenn. All right. We're gonna move on to item number five, which is council updates on assigned boards, commissions, and committees. [00:50:12] 1 think we already talked about the Economic Development Committee, so yeah. [00:50:15] Yeah. [00:50:16] Um, and there was a Paratransit Committee meeting this past week, um, more just they continue to operate, um, and people continue to use it. And there is an continuous increase in people using the program, which is good, um, but that also does have, um, financial implications, too, as we are fare free. So, um, that's, again, good for our community, but something to track that there is an increased usage and an increased cost. [00:50:41] Thanks. [00:50:44] All right. Here and nothing else, we'll be back for our formal meeting at 6:00 PM. [00:50:48] [MUSIC] Page 23