i'll coulter ordered the santa barbara city council finance committee meeting for november th is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak in any item that is not on our agenda but is within the jurisdiction of the committee seeing no one we will go directly to the one item we restructuring the solid waste rates and we are seeking approval today to move forward with this proposal to bring a part as part of the rate setting process for fiscal year two thousand and twenty it's essential for several reasons the solid waste system generates approximately twenty six million dollars a year and a predictable transparent rate structure is needed as the system has evolved over time new complexities and services and how to charge for them have led to a complicated billing system and an imbalance in the allocation of costs among customer classes that we're looking to correct so today i'll go through the goals driving the proposed rate structure some of the specifics around the current versus the proposed structure changes and how it impacts customers so there are four overlying goals driving the rate structure the first is equity the proposal upgrades and simplifies the current rate structure for all customer classes single  family multi unit and business it's intended to ensure that the rates charged to each customer class recover the cost of service attributed to that respective class additionally with a few changes to the classification of customers themselves the city can increase the consistency of the types of services offered and how they are charged each customer class by service level and frequency the second is revenue predictability the proposed rate structure establishes a system to calculate a base rate for fixed cost in the operating system and includes a variable cost for container size so this is a first step of several that will be applied in applying consistent costs across all the family and five or greater as multi unit so the proposed sector redesign aligns the city with state classifications and increases our ability to demonstrate compliance with it and the fourth is the integration into the utility bill ing system the system is slated for an update and simplifying the solid waste structure enables charges to be billed without the extensive custom program meanness is now required so this table is a summary of the realignment of the customer classifications and the rate changes so i'd also like to reiterate as part of this process in the rate structure that will continue to incentivize recycling across the board for all of the customers and one of the underlying important pieces of this restructure is that we'll have a per container charges that become consistent so if you look at the second c labeled smr for small residential the rate restructuring will create a combined sector called this smr to include both the multi unit residents with four or fewer units and current single family customers so small multi unit residential services tend to be similar to single family and merging them into one category also aligns with the current state wastes laws as i mentioned earlier so this will create a simplified base charge and container charge generally matching current service and also offer unlimited recycling and green waste at no additional charge for the current five plus multi unit residence the new rate simplification system will define them as large residential that's the third column again to align with the definitions in state law as their services are commercial in nature this also aligns them with the business sector in service offerings and pricing and while recycling services are not free for the large residential or business as they are for small residential they are offered across the board at fifty percent less than the rate of trash service and again this is a restructure is a first step in a series to address the equity and the cost of service issues within and among customer classes so just to highlight some of the changes by sector that i went through just a minute ago for the small multi unit residents these will be included with the residential single family for rate purposes they will receive essentially free diversion as before and most of their bills will stay essentially the same for the large multi units the the greater than four units as a group some of them are not paying for all of their overall services there's some subsidizing that's incurring so this will help address that and the pricing of the containers will match the business sector again in alignment with a type of service that they're receiving so we'll be adjusting the base price of the trash container and eliminating the free or no charge first ninety five gallon of recycling which is in the current system but again across the board they will all be able to have a fifty percent rate for recycling green waste or food wast so the mu ars that are between five to ten units are the ones that are going to see the primary increase in and costs and those vary from about eleven to twenty eight dollars for in the entire complex i'll go through that a little bit more in a minute and this is a function of an impact on a percentage basis that's greatest to them maybe because they're undersubscribed partly because some of the subsidizing that's happening within that class and also because of these smaller facilities have a greater proportion of what's now free diver compared to their overall service that is of a charge so for example if you had one hundred and ninety five gallon of garbage and one hundred and ninety five of recycling and that recycling is now at no charge versus a facility that had three containers of garbage that they're charging for and three containers of recycling two of which are already being charged at the fifty percent rate one is now free but in with the new structure that would be charged fifty percent so it's a less overall percentage change for and then finally for the businesses the majority will be unaffected or actually will see a small decrease in their rates about seventy percent of them and like the mu ours the impact is mainly to the smaller so this table is an example of the inconsistency that exists in the current rates for equivalent levels of service we're very looking by row particularly looking between the mu our bill and the business equivalent bill you can see that for a similar level of service there's a different price point for them additionally if you read down this column if you read down the the mu our bill column or the business equivalent bill column there's not a set percentage or per unit escalation of those prices and so these are the elements that we're looking to address with the restructure i mentioned a few minutes ago while the proposal will keep the solid waste fund revenue neutral some customers will see changes in their bills and primarily the the smaller multi unit buildings and about a third of them will see this chain and we've estimated that to be right around a thousand and that's that's about a third of the customer base and in addition close to a third of the of the small businesses that's around about a hundred and fifty will see a small increase as well so if we use the again the first row as an example this is a four a five unit multi unit where a current bill is at about seventy dollars per month it would be increasing at a total of close to twenty nine dollars and spread across the five units in that in that facility of and seventy eight per unit as the apartment building gets larger obviously these the rates that they're being charged or more in alignment with with what they're actually for a level of service for all for all of these units so that would be the total for that facility for that month so to get the individual unit price you would divide that by five and what is the last number the sixty one seventy three the sfr equivalent bill that would that's an example of what you might what we might see at a larger home perhaps with a lot of space maybe more residents there and that they've required an equivalent sort of level of service so so that's really at the upper range of what a single family home would see in terms of a monthly bill sort of like a sixty five sort of like gallon part well where did that number come from they may be on fray frays the question that way what sixty one seventy three that would be that would be generated for that individual customer  in our billing system sort of like based on a series of codes applied to that property okay and then under this on slide nine this is the new system that's correct this is an example of what the new would look like so the current bill of sixty nine forty one that would be for five units so it's really divided by five so much that's much cheaper per unit than the single family residence and thirty seven bucks for the household but these five households will be paying what is that fourteen dollars each that there abouts that's correct and that just reflects because it's still one stop for the truck even though they're hauling away a larger volume you that's part of it you raise you raise some good questions around around the cost of service and in addition that with the large residential they will also now be paying just for the first ninety five currently for the first ninety five gallons but for the proposal across the board any level of recycling services would be at fifty percent cost of garbage for your second even for the first one forward okay so there's goals on page four this is where we are currently this is a summary of current conditions for that's the goals that's the goal that's where we that's where we would like to okay so it is it's no charge for the first ninety five gallons what is the base charge that's the thirty dollars the base charge for four residential is thirty dollars that's correct and in that so that this is this is single so small residential is single family and then the the four or less multifamily units facilities so if you live in just a single family unit your trash bill will be thirty dollars unless you go over the ninety five gallons if you  so you're bait yes so as you're adding on addition thirty two gallons then yes you would have an additional charge of five dollars okay and then the  on slide nine the current bill of sixty nine forty when it goes up to ninety eight thirty three so it's a forty one percent increase or twenty eight ninety two and that's because the there 's no increase in the base charge so where does that increase come from the increase is because the recycling in green waste now we're charging it now it's a charge for the first time yes and how much is the recycling for one container thing or is that going to be based on codes and it would it would yes dustin rebecca environmental specialist so the the cost of the recycling is going to be tied to the cost of trash and whatever the cost of trash is it's going to be half that amount and so in current and you are it's going to be something in the neighborhood of twenty dollars for every thirty two gallon increment for trash and about eleven dollars for every increment a thirty two gallon increment of recycling show the the goal in in having the the simplified system and how it enhances our revenue predictability and this is an example of using some of the business sector service levels to show at that based on the content container price so anywhere in that first table in picking the frequency of that price times the number of containers that are subscribed to that service level within the city that we can quickly and easily generate the amount of revenue predicted from that service level this is the simplified version yes it is yes we do aim for this one  and in by comparison here's a flow chart showing what our current billing system calculation looks like and why that that chart that i just showed you is really quite simple and predictable and transparent so currently if you read this flow chart from left to right the top row is for single family residential the the middle is the multi unit residential the bottom is a business you can see that our rates are calculated by system of interdependent steps with bill codes that charge for services differently for each customer within each of those service sectors as you can imagine that's the programming behind this is very complex and it makes it difficult to change one rate without affecting the others and the level of predictability is also an oversight is increased because about the decision making logic within the utility both billing system also is slower and more inefficient because of this process and it adds a lot of time to the generation of bills just from the on the back end and then by comparison if you look at a flow chart this is again what we're aiming for in terms of that transparency and and simplicity simplicity in this more straightforward calculation using a set per unit price and it's dependent only on the size of the container the number of times service per week and based on the type of service whether that's trash recycling green waste or food scraps so as you might imagine our outreach team has been  working for several months on an implementation plan and being able to reach out to the impacted customers as i mentioned we're looking to make contact with about a thousand of mu ours and about a  hundred fifty businesses so we have them all identified and we would work over the spring to do site visits to waste assessments help them to adjust their service levels as possible ahead of any  changes in rates and provide additional education on waste reduction as well to try to right size their services in addition we'll do some media and direct mailings to them to give them more information about services available and the potential rate change is coming and then as part of our proposition two hundred and eighteen noticing we will highlight and have a separate section specifically around the rate structure as part of that notification separate from the the standard language and examples that we use for the across the board rate increases as well and so with that i like to thank you for hearing the report and recommend that we be directed to incorporate the proposed new rates into the structure to bring forward the spring as part of the rate setting dominguez we will overall for the the enterprise fund we will stay revenue neutral what we're and what we're looking to do primarily is to start in this first phase to make the adjustments within the sector it's the class itself so that for example so that the the larger mu ours aren't unduly subsidizing that the smaller m urs i think partly like over time as we look at the the rate structure overall do an additional and analysis on among the classifications and and how they're balancing out would be an important part of our work great thank you just mister spar kind of concluding comments so this coming july we have as you know we have a consolidated utility bill so we'll have water wastewater in trash within that and there'll be some increases for that we know that for for trash already we're going to see some increases because of the implementation of the new rates for the resource recovery projects so we know we're going to see some increases just in that portion of it waterwastewater will see their traditional increases as we typically see you're fighting the five to six percent range that's why we wanted to get kind of a sense from you a kind of a get get a pulse from you as to how you're feeling about these changes because for a group a group of a thousand or so mu ours they're gonna see in terms of percentage even though the dollars may not be significant but the percentage base is going to look extremely don't know to what extent these dollar impacts are gonna be spread to the actual tenants because these are really on the unit on the complex the landlord will be paying for this to what extent they pass it on we don't know but he be divided by the number of units it's not a big dollar increase but it's still you know where's a lot of this perception and in percentage basis it's gonna look like a significant increase but we just wanted to get your sense of that we think it's important to do because it's an equity issue and we really are seen the small mu r is the ones really in the five to ten unit know we do a lot of that we're good at that and so we'll do whatever we can in most cases they have opportunities to offset those impacts by doing some more adjustments to the trash container maybe downsizing some and in favor of more recycling containers and right sizing that side of the equation  but just wanted to make sure you're aware of this and then if you're okay we weren't planning on going to council with this we were just going to look to you and then if we and then you know they'll know once we get the noticing dada weed or normal normal budget presentations we'll talk more about that with council but we're gonna be looking at you noticing sometime in february and according to prop two hundred and eighteen and then half of course are hearing and june as we are always doing each year so that's we read looking for some feedback in direction thank you for that so and just focusing on like the five you didn't mu are because that has the bigger percentage difference so that nine thousand eight hundred and thirty three so that looks like you could have three thirty two gallon trash cans for sixty dollars and then five green waste and or recycling for another fifty five dollars is that kind of i guess maybe for forty four and sixty to get you to the hundred dollar range i'm just trying to see how you came up with a nine councilmember dominguez and that's part of i think some of our overall assessment about adequate service levels particularly for some of the smaller mu ours and one of the other opportunities in in diversion containers i have a family of three we have thirty two gallons of trash so theoretically it's possible but we're also concerned that maybe there should be there just under subscribed and trash and you know so where's that x is going and the so then a four unit mu are they're going to be paying the base charge of thirty dollars yes it's correct for unit or for the full complex that would be for the full complex and then any and then that variable rate on any additional thirty two gallon equivalent of service that they needed for traffic sure they did a ninety five trash a ninety five recycling in a ninety five green waste the base charge works as is presented there is exclusively to the what will be the small residential which is four units or less including all current single family residential current single family residential has a trash package system at that we are essentially splitting apart into the base charge which just covers the included recycling and green waste service as well as the additional services bulky item pickups that sort of thing and then the five dollars  every thirty two gallon increment of of trash including the first one and what's do these charge for that package so the sort of base so the total charge for the lowest package under the new proposed system would be about thirty five dollars thirty five or thirty in the report it says thirty and that's because there's a mandatory five dollars yes report there on that if you're referring to that table it's thirty dollars for the base the base does not include any service and then it's five dollars for every increment of trash above that so for thirty five you get a thirty two gallon trash can you've got a thirty two gallon trash can and as much recycling in green waste as you need okay included and that's true one unit single family home or a three or four unit apartment building yes but not five units and then at five units are above you're paying for every container that you have ok great thank you do we have any anyone in the you know ms raisin would you please push the button to get that green light on thank thank you where there not a lot of propositions on the recent ballot i mean it seems to me i mean will the public recognize what they have approved as i mean are you going to explain it to them with your noticing and your billing it seems there's going to be a additional outreach to the customers who are affected specifically by increase in price somebody will come out to the property and talk through the trash collection system that they have in place now and what the changes would mean yeah in addition to that there's going to be mail and media information out look who aren't affected but are actually gonna benefit by lower rates and then we're gonna have a prop two hundred and eighteen hearing two in the spring of next year to the regular council session go through all this again and then the council will adopt the rates as part of the budget so there's going to be a long transparent public process i appreciate that because i the ballot was very confusing and i think that for probably a lot of people the language of some of the propositions was obtuse so i appreciate your  explanation and your willingness to make sure the public is educated as well as renters thank you you're welcome thank you very much for the question  further clarification on that point so single family residences or duplexes the tenant won't actually receive any information if they're not getting the bill if the landlord is getting the bill the tenant won't really know but that's kind of balanced out by the fact that it says most renters so they're not going to be aware of it and to the extent most of its below the surface or their bills won't change it's probably fine will there be something like in the city newsletter or other public outreach that maybe have a link to a page that describe this for people who are curious even if they may not notice a difference we do typically include information in the the city's outreach and on our web page and certainly as part of the outreach that we're doing to the affected complexes and we can make efforts to make sure that the tenants are notified as well along with the property owners great thank you if there aren't any more questions would you mind making a motion so you're saying that this won't we don't need to refer this to the city council when would this be brought to the city council with us come up in budget next year yes it'll be brought back when we do our finance presentation of the solid waste fund we'll talk about it then the notices that go out as mister hart indicated and then we'll have a prop two hundred and eighteen here and in early june before the rates are adopted okay so i would move that we incorporate the proposed new rate structure into the annual rate setting and the notification process for fiscal y