the meeting of the infrastructure environmental management committee shall now come to order today is august seventeenth two thousand and fifteen and the time is approximately one thirty four in the afternoon before we begin please silence all cell phones or any noise making definition of sustainability and implementation of section eight fifteen point three pair and four of the revised charter of the county m o e nine hundred eighty three as amended i am twenty five highway beautif disposal of abandoned vehicles a revolving fund and i am eight naval air station called airport nasco sewage pump station fund at this time if anyone in the gallery would like to testify please sign up at the desk in the lobby and also if you're in the outlying districts please sign up there and we have you'll have three minutes to testify please state your name any organization you may be representing and please testify on what's on the agenda today so at this time mr molina do we have anyone looking to testify we have not signed up to testify thank you let me check in with our remote district offices in hot ms alone no anyone there to testify seen no one else approaching in the chamber no ok our faithful ms robinson here but she's doesn't care to testify today members without any objections i shall kno now close public testimony thank you very much so let's start with i am fifty five and this is the definition of sustain a billet t the committee is receipt of a miscellaneous communication dated may twenty eighth two thousand and fourteen from deputy county clerk transmitting the matter relating to sustainability how it is defined and its relationship to section eight dash fifteen point along and at this point i will turn the floor over to deputy director miyamoto a lot thanks for being here and before you begin let me introduce mr john boozman sustainability and what we what's happened since then this is the current language in the county charter as chad mentioned it talks about guide efforts to optimize opportunities for environmental natural resource protection sustainability conservation and restoration in the early two thousand and fifteen for part to budget we provide provided this organizational chart that identified some areas of sustainability and environmental protection that we were considering looking at cost of marine food resources environmental resources landfill diversion and environment energy sustainability in the two thousand and sixteen budget deliberations the council approved the landfill diversion portion of this org chart so i guess the rest of the chart is up for discussion and it's a good segue into the f y seventeen budget when we started doing our proposal for that year currently this is we have the recycling section and the metals and abandoned vehicles section in this portion of the landfill diversion recycling section has about fourteen diversion programs and grants that we provide the county specific diversion recycling roughly a little bit more than seventy five thousand tons per year we're working on we've had one household hazardous waste collection event and we're planning the next one sometime in november five to two hundred fifty vehicles each year we've been recycled over eleven thousand white goods by white goods we mean appliances removal in recycling of more than one hundred tons of material each year  hundred tons of material we do collect some at our center molly landfill we have special bins out there for people who have large pieces of metal that they want to get rid of so overall the sixteen budget for the landfill diversion section so far is a little over five point five million dollars that includes grants and some of the green waste every scene that they take care of so in summary the partner is still trying to fully defined  scope of services with the council's assistance we've provided the the organizational chart if there's revisions or additional details that we need to develop we can work on those you know the county vision should align with the states developing division the department collecting co leading a list of existing county environmental sustainability grants that we currently issue out there sustainability impacts many facets of government in the community all of our operational departments i can say that energy savings for us is prime because that's that affects our budget energy efficient equipment we've all looked to install that because there's energy at our waste water treatment facilities we're looking to install additional p v units elsewhere i know parks department has a great p v system at the key he community center provide shade and also provides discounted price appreciate what we're trying to do this afternoon from the committee standpoint i took it as being very more specific to the deputies own department i think what's missing is the more broad stroke for the moment perspective of the term sustainability and how the county wants to  in that there were no manner i get hollered this department to add to the update today just to see how their departmental role will be in that direction i think that's what missing is philosophy from what we got earlier i would say they have that three circle pyramid going to planet prosperity in people and i find it very attractive as a model  but i would say under the summary chair under point two i think the state would be a lot smarter and wiser if the l a in their state vision with the counties vision but i think we listen to the community a lot better and clearer than those that make the these things trying to make a plan for people from the state level and then have us try to implement their plan i think we allow it to the community  and they've issued be respecting our efforts in getting community input their vision should be more lane to our documentation is would be my position so seeing that you know i'm hoping that in the future either the department of management office of the mayor would give us something above the more broad stroke definition they want to see for this county under sustainability if that's what i thought  was tasked to this committee chair and that's my understanding so i look forward to their recommendations and how they perceive the greater direction or language that we need to maybe get gets greater weight to appropriate sufficient funding to make it happen know when we read what has come out of the charter is to guide efforts to optimize opportunities if i had to look at what the department is going through i have to  challenges i guess you face on a on a very simple scale since january till just recently i think we did a  up to what we call trying to sustain our environment that being said and as our community is working on our community plan at the present time guess the normal challenge would be as the notices go up for simple things like the landfill we lack manpower due to staff shortages and that's been affecting your interior lation with something like our landfills as far as it comes to sustainability or to sustain what we should be you know trying to sustain in our environment jimmy that's to provide us the opportunity to you know one of the bad things about landfill is wind wind tends to blow trash everywhere and as part of our operating permit we have to pick up all of that trash before we can close the landfill everyone leaves the property that's part of the requirement so we have to keep the land clear in and around our facility so that's been the challenge that we have and we're working with the department of personnel services to get that additional operate on staff so that we can start eliminating these early closures so that's one of the things we're doing at the landfill in a recent article at the magazine there was a great article about your for sitting county what they want to talk about what types of programs should they keep in scrap and so we're looking at that article and you know for like from we have that wonderful recycling we have the green waste contractor all the taking care of the green waste and we do event based type metals and when i do we look for additional sites for another landfill do we look for ways to conversion or waste to energy facilities or do we look at shipping shipping it off island two or whole there's always the energy so we're trying to develop those types a longer term goals like you're seeing for sustainability what we're doing on i will probably look at possibly what can apply there if we do some kind of always conversion or it's part of the evaluation i mean you know as we're going to as we're looking at the one on ma we we realize that you know some of the positions may be altered in what their job descriptions are instead of actually burying trash they may be in support of these waste conversion facility type things they may be in support of things that we yes thank you very much here i'm sorry i missed the earlier presentation but i just have one more question of course you know sustainability is very important and we all understand it we have staffing challenges but i don't know if it was discussed safety is always an issue for us i mean both for our staff and the public and in the rural communities generally we have right now we currently have three employees one which is the facility supervisor who also does double duty as the lone equipment operator and then we have an attendant and worked so one of the two attendants basically one watches for the public to make sure the public safe and the other one watches for the driver of the heavy equipment because you know we can see everything that comes out of these people don but the landfills and so that guy needs a spot in case he sees if he sees a propane tank somehow it got in the trash he needs to tell the the operator hey stop you're going to run o propane tank stop i need to take that out or if something were to happen to the piece of equipment and the driver needs to get down while that spot i need to make sure he's not jumping into something that has some hidden pieces of metal or broken glass that he could get hurt on so that's basically what we have at the three landfills we're trying to get you know working with d p s trying to get that fourth person in there so that you know if anybody any of those three people take off generally we have to do some kind of a closure while we get support you know whether we used to get public works but that's hasn't become an option for a time being parks department would support us with labor but now it's primarily we're on our own so we are generally trying to bring somebody from central valley landfill to support that type of function so we're working on that with the fourth person we should be good if we have planned vacations we can certainly make arrangements with the central mali to support them on this plan vacations i thank you very much for your comment you know i've been thinking about it ever since that accident you know and we don't want that to happen here so i think it's really important that we have this and i know that this is what you do you take the risk but i'm wondering if you into the other areas here that are on the chart i completely understand the landfill diversion aspect of operations but under the charter  it says under section eight fifteen point three the duties and powers and functions as in section four guide efforts to optimize opportunities for environmental and natural resource protection sustainability conversion sorry conservation and restoration which is you know basically stated here in your chart the different coast route food resources but explain to me your vision of guide efforts to optimize opportunities in these specific areas energy sustainability environmental resources food resources marine what exactly do you envision these these i guess subsections or subdivisions of the entire sustainability division what is their function what w are the specific issues that they will be addressing are there or are we looking just that dog and pony show here you know are we i want to see i want to know what are the issues the specific issues in what are the solutions or or you know findings that you envision that that those particular subdivisions to address yes mr miyamoto were actually when we developed this org chart about two years ago you know as we as we've had many discussion some of these things already exist in the ministration but they're under different areas for example you know the energy sustainability we had we have to there's two existing positions one the civil service and one's an appointee here and you know in the o e deal that does you know they helped for our department you know they helped us develop p v for our facilities and develop some kind of a p and provide that they help parks department so the thought is you know should they still be on there already or should they be moved into this estate ability so that they can start continue to work you know just beyond just their little area and you know just take a county wide you know whether it'd be for the various departments and everything and the same thing as far as like the course all moreno environmental resources i mean mr parsons is back there and he's in the he's out of what we did also now and he does a lot of like invasive species type work and so for us you know that's something we weren't we don't have the technical expertise so bringing that isn't under this umbrella to make it you know it's an overall goal that we do it county wide so you know that would be added in here with food resources there also is an existing ag person in the office of o e d bring him in to not only take care of you know like county type projects but like you're seeing expanded into the other areas for example like you know ways conversion you know one of the things we asked the people in the egg industry was if we develop organic compounds well what is your demand for that compost because we have an opportunity in the waste conversion to either develop organic composting which means no sludge in it or we go ahead and just develop continue to develop the regular sludge compos that includes the sludge in it so that kind of stuff would help us make a decision way we're going to go as far as providing compost so we would hope you know the person food resources could have that contact with all of the egg industry the egg societies and could give us an idea what is that demand then we can make a decision whether to further that development as departments and placing them into this sustainability division is there is that a lateral lateral movement or is something that there's some type of difficulty accomplishing or does is it hinder or does it increase economics on the part of the county by a unilateral movement i'm not sure because it sounds like to me that you're just taking different positions from other departments and placing them in a more specific division so under the my d s primarily appointed staff other than there's one person that does energy that would be he's a civil service so he could possibly just be transferred in regarding the other positions those would have to be you know a position description qualifications would have to be developed and then those positions would have to be given in e p and funding would have to be filled could be filled that way and whether those positions conditions continue on in or we d that would be a decision that's outside of our office would be decided upon so what would be the downfall of i mean the the negative the cons of moving these other bodies into this section  that for us you know the logical minded as far as you know the challenge i see is there are forward over other departments to implement things unless it's a law or requirement of some sort it becomes very difficult for them to say for example if they want to stay one another department to put in a lot of peavey's because they were the opportunity in the department says i don't have the funding to do that so i can't do it so they don't have that  ty to push them into that that area and make it a priority it's the that department director who's making the priorities that's the only real challenge i see at it you know from our side you know you're getting together we're always  comments or questions needed mr howe come up he had further yeah i think it's a good one brought up a good discussion point and i appreciate it  and that is far from it for me from an operational structure this is a plan i will see this working coming from this department i think this is something that  from an operational sense i would think is better to be placed in the department of management and i think they believe can be assigned to the deputy managing director to oversee how each department in program fits under the overall idea and direction of where the county wants it would sustainability because i would agree with those who brought up the pillars that we should consider but one of those pillars needs to be under prosperity finance and the ability to pay for generate funds to make it happen and that's a form of specific i think one of the key things on the sustainability we should be asking the deputy  to present to you chair is how is those special funds working out is it ever going to be sustainable is that if the answer is no and it's going to take annual general fund subsidies that is unless we can pay for it it's not going to happen so i think we need to be very aware in causing that there is a price and that we need to make information available what is going to take to make certain things happen and i would hope that planning would just because again one of my key thing in that you know wish to emphasize is we should be doing everything we can within our jurisdiction not the state or not the federal government we have our limitations on areas of governance and authority let us stay within those parameters but i don't think we can afford strictly from those  principle parameters of affordability so i just bring this up but i think under the chart provided to us i would hope planning the prime would give us come around a coastal and marine i would hope human concerns would give us under food resources energy and yet we and why many resources the county has responded i thought very responsibly and account was done through grants to specify groups that address specific environmental concerns we've done it recently through the budget for a specific funding to adjust specific environment the concerns so from one point i would say it's the same i think the legislative site has fulfilled some of the  things that were going to be looked into perhaps implemented and created and so for me the presentation today is hasn't really addressed any of that in county environmental sustainability grants we all kind of know a lot of what those are because we fund them annually so for me mr miyamoto there's i was hoping the department had gotten a lot further than what i see here today and i think the discussion as a couple budgets ago was to put this in department of management because as you stated the difficulty you feel and the challenge is to you know get different departments on board and to you know require them to do some take such actions and there are they'll be challenges but if it comes from the top dispersed down and that is the job or department of measurement to do there goes that shouldn't have a challenge there so i mean hopefully we're you're looking into that type of structure you know members we do have mr parsons who is current environmental reporter nader for the administration here i know he i think did he had out this she here i think you and it's about the whole what you twenty fifty sustainability and perhaps he has an update for us if anyone would like to hear what i would like to know if he does know though is that the other counties has started working on this and perhaps there's some they've made some headway they've you know made learn from mistakes or are gaining ground or not so anyways i'm just i think there's a lot more discussion here and i'm sorry to see that we haven't really gotten much from department but i'd like to restrain receive more of my intent today is to obviously defer but to bring this up closer to budget once again and throughout the year if need be but basically just to get us back in discussion mode about this because next thing you know budget will be here and we're going to have to figure out how this is going to be implemented so just some comments to folks yes thank you chair i think in all fairness to the department you know if i had to go back to serving on the charter commission when we came about this there were quite a few of us that was not in favor of this going with the it department because obvious i don't think they're quite prepared or this is part of their objective i have to agree and support mr hope karma as far as his suggestion is far too maybe we need to make an amendment that it not be part of this department but go back to maybe management or what have you because i guess as you call mr parsons you know is he part of this department it is is you know does he fit in here in this chart under the environmental management department or is it the separation as far as it coming part  of ministration or management but what have you and if that's the case and we're really not following what we're hoping that we would have charted some sort of chorus for for us to understand  what's going on with the objective of sustainability you know guiding efforts whatever but i i would hope coming from this committee maybe we can his reporting you know structure and be prepared the next time you bring this i don't back to be able to give us a position in comments that the ministry to be supportive on especially if possible to give us a more broader shore county perspective of the general direction of sustainability and then fit in how his role is has been so far here guiding fulfilling that direction i think  would be more constructive for us think ok ok that's fine and mr parsons is here and he heard so i guess the committee it's sounds like we're feeling that this isn't the appropriate department to sort of carry this through but you know the charter states what it does that it belongs here so in the meantime because the charter states it is  see something put forward something implemented in something to try and reach this end goal and that as they progress they mean we learn as we go you know we improve upon what we need to and some some trapper doesn't work in that kind of stuff but again i was hoping to see six months later a little more traction a little more movement of amendment this gives us enough time to make the consideration of that option and place it on the next general elections ballot enough time to make that change if they elect or if the community wants to make th change in the reasons why they feel it's more from an operational implementation standpoint the better option to make this revision because again i would hate for the department you go to exercises that within two  for your time and efforts to mr miyamoto i know it's a lot so i appreciate that and members like i said no action taken today this item shall be deferred without any and i intend to bring it back up as many times as needed prior to next budget and also as mr okama mentioned we do have a lot of time to do so a charter type initiative too so thank you for that so without objections this item shall be dated may twenty eighth twenty fifteen for the county clerk transmitting the matter relating to highway beautification and disposal of abandoned vehicles or about revolving fund and to day we may consider friendly this communication it looks like we have director boss here with us and also continue to have mr miyamoto to so this point i shall turn the floor over for opening comments from director vehicles the fundies basically utilize program for carcass removal community work it does a lot of highway beautification type activities the abandoned vehicle portion of it we have along with a band of vehicles you have towing contracts of which we work with  police department on tagging and identifying the difference between abandoned versus derelict vehicles we have a storage yard where we store the vehicle so that we give the only one last chance to pick up the the vehicle prior to us sending them out to auction we we hold an auction and whatever isn't sold we pay a fee for its disposal at our service provider there we also have through our  refuse section we have appointments for residents for us to pick up appliances alongside the road we we ask them to make an appointment so that they're not leaving their appliance on the road for an extended period of time we try to let that we'll let them know probably about two weeks before we're anticipating picking up of their plans we let them know to put it out to identify with address number on the house so that we know we're picking up the right appliance and not someone's appliance that they may have left out for some other reason and we go ahead and disposal dispose of those appliances and that's pretty much what we're using it for the good for kitchen fun for we do have some challenges with that with some we do have provisos in there specifically for certain items so access to the general pot of money is is restricted as he mentioned because of those items that moved into the new environmental protection and sustainability program that was developed this past budget session is was previously discussed this afternoon as well there's a grant to community work day for hundred seventy thousand dollars and a grant two teens on call for maintenance of the payee a bypass for ten thousand dollars so those are pretty much the the funding operations of that it also funds the tree trimming that  managed by the parks department in relation to roadways as well for us is that we can't toll it until the police department exit because they're the one that makes that decision whether it's a band in which means it can be moved someone could drive it away or whether it's derelict where it just has a major major parts missing that make it undriveable and for us that triggers different procedures if it's derelict we can go street you know contact the owner it goes straight and we can get rid of that vehicle if it's abandoned we contact the owner he's got thirty days to go ahead and come and claim that that vehicle and then if he doesn't claim it then we head towards auctioning off but there are like ones can go straight to scrap  i have to i have to see i have to check that i'm not one hundred percent sure i know the challenges that we have is having when i was in public works was that a lot of times people forget to transfer that title and we do it we end up doing we're chasing people down for example if you sell your vehicle you need to get that title into the d m v department of vehicles to transfer that ownership what i remember finding back in the run around two thousand seven time period a lot of those vehicles have sold and the people just didn't turn it in they would call us and say hey i sold that vehicle two years ago and then it becomes a challenge trying to find out who actually has gets the responsibility so maybe i wouldn't place me to make sure the people work is filed because if not i'm on the hook yeah that's what we did back when i was in public works you know we told people it was your responsibility to transfer that title and all we have is evidence that you own it and you're responsible for that vehicle so in that's how we approach it then and i'm just looking and we're used to using this fun but short the time it takes to get  we contract for and it should be removed i mean if the vehicle is not being removed we need to be notified so we can go after our contractors because we have contractors who are you know once police tell us that it's ok to told that because i think generally they do like a twenty four to forty eight hour grace period for someone to remove it once they see the tag and then we should be able toll it so i think it's two to three days after the police put it on that we tend to  looking at specifically does the removal of event of vehicles and either the recouping of the cars from the owner or the auctions that's not going to make enough but the money that we're getting in from the  we'd have to look the code up for that hold on i mean it's a good good question downs in a county road if it's let's say we're going to go see roger three point two five point zero three zero which is other related activities including but not limited to animal management program corpus removal community work they highly beautification fund concerning highways and of ownership control and your stiction of the county and to defray additional costs in th position and other related activities abandon vehicles as prescribed in chapter two ninety h r s so that's our code there may be overriding state laws that limit it as well but because it is a state law  know talking to public works they run around and they pick that up too so i mean are are different departments and humane society whoever are the reimburse from this like who is able is i'm not aware of any reimbursement of expenses for paid out of this fund to public works or animal management programs at all ok all jeff thank you and the other question is obviously this only pertains to as in a band of vehicles or what have you to county roads not state not private yes some we don't assist grants they can pretty much help the private citizens are and the state has their role their own system to take care of it but obviously we only have one metal provider it all goes to the same place because it's unfortunate our church has a property and people purposely abandoned vehicles on it and that's costly for nonprofit to go ahead and take care of it but you know i'm not saying for you want to do this but if it was drug ten feet to the company road them as a county who would do it at their costs and as everyone are taxpayers it you know so but that's just one of the hardships i think for private owners and large trucks a lot of people out of the way quarters dump things and now it's the responsible private land owner to go ahead and clean ultimately be responsible for it so it's really important you know for the public's information you're out there if you're selling your car there's that little thing at the top of the your title it's really important you fill that out and send that to v so that they have a good record of who the new registered owner should be and that you know i don't know if it's going to release you from my bottle completely but at least there's that notification there ahead of time that you're not going to be the owner anymore so those are important to fill out but you know state law does kind of override what we do with this thing thank you for those comments mr boz helpful for ourselves and the public so members any further need for discussion on this item if will air station airport as a k a nascar sewage pump station fund and this in particular is a county is a station is owned by the state and they pay us to operate and maintain it the money that the provide us is used to pay for what little little labor is involved in sort of maintaining that facility going some of that goes to vehicles equipment and minor parts for the pump station to keep it running recently we did have a challenge and we brought it to their attention and they've gone ahead and budgeted a major upgrade of their facility to make it even more of whatever repairs we did so it would happen to be whenever those repairs are active i'm just looking at the last two years with worth of transactions looks like we  repaired i don't know where the elevator is but i'm sure it has nothing to do with actual elevators we're right in the building it cost us about eight hundred dollars and then we got that was in august and then we got the reimbursement in is it manned by county employees employees there's no one really that's stationed at the facility generally what we do is on a daily basis we just do systematic checks of all the pump stations that feed into the call a treatment plan so we have someone who's on pump station duty just goes out checks everything make sure everything's working and there's nothing the problems the issue with the elevator was in you can imagine you have this canned facility and you're going down towards the bottom of the facility to check on electrical and pumping equipment and so that's basically the challenge that we had it wasn't safe to go down that elevator we told them we need authorization to fix this they said go ahead fix it in repaired it and build them for it so do we know in doing these  each generally i think it's you know it's under like ten minutes at a facility if if that at all i mean the drive up make sure the gates still shut then they open up go and check the facility everything so we're going to check the gauges and everything and periodically they exercised the backup generator to make sure that that gear that the switchover can occur when you shut the main power off that pump will the generator will come on so you can continue to operate the facility that's  maximum amount of time to spend but i think there's a ten to fifteen facilities throughout from kuala without the whale caller that they have to do the same thing  is there any revisions you would ask us to consider no none at this point i mean they've been initially they were kind of has a time when we wanted a new pump station but you know when we pointed out the safety issues and we told them we were no longer comfortable with sending our staff all their money came over able and they're renovating the facility so it's a little arm twisting we get them to do it so we're able to return terminations clause in the agreement we can initiate and terminate the agreement would need to take a look at the agreement itself and you back to you on that actual word but it is a acronym for a naval air station called the airport and i'm not sure but so was this just agreement who knows when it started kind of thing and just because county has this facility and state just thought it would be nice if we could just tie in with you when you folks just take care of us while you're running your rounds was at three decades ago i'm not sure what the intent of purpose of it was but it seems to have been working out fairly well over these last thirty years and can get them to replace it when they need to then that's a great thing push to get rid of cesspools if people would we can recall and that is why for us now the challenge is the planning to replace the thirty plus year old system yes it was the beginning of the conversion treatment plants thank you thank you very much for the historical insight mr hope calmer and so with that i know it's in another subject matter but in regards to the cali treatment facility we've discussed in relocation of it ideas with the state i know it's something that i would like to discuss further we haven't had that discussion with the state at this point for them basically the sewage is still going to come to that one location and basically we're going to replace that if should we move the facility we would replace it with a very large very well armored pump station that would then pump the sewage that's collected to a new location because you can imagine there are one two therefore forced means that currently pumping through that sewage treatment plant and if we were to try to relocate all of those forced me into the new location you can imagine the cost in the length of those for us to make a comeback after a disaster or anything else those are two key infrastructural transportation points that will help the county be able to rebound from a natural situation so it seems  on this thank you for the update and thank you mr o'connor you know it was across the board just submit all the revolving funds to purchase and standing committee and so this is a few of the revolving fronts have come into infrastructure environmental management so it's i think a good thing for all us to be aware of what these are what they're used for its purpose intent and how it's being utilized with that members if there's no objections this item to i shall defer thank you very much so ordered and also i looks like there's nothing else left not my agenda so members with that if there's no further discussion this meeting is a