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• FALCON HEIGHTS CITY COUNCIL MINUTES _5_ October 13, 2004 Solid Waste Commission Report on Organized Collection (continued) Ms. Jones thanked the Solid Waste Commission for their many months of very hard work and long and patient deliberation. They have done a very thorough job. She utilized the LCD projector to do presentation of the Solid Waste Commission's report and it is outlined below: Background: The Solid Waste Commission (SWC) began looking at these issues in 2003, long before coming to the City Council in January, 2004. They had the benefit of the study done by Ramsey and Washington counties in 2002 and studies done by a number of cities. On January 28, 2004, the SWC came to the City Council with a list of goals outlining the kind of system they were recommending and requested the City Council to consider going forward with the process outlined in Minnesota Statute 115A.94, which is the State mandated statutory process that a City or County must use in order to implement organized collection. There are very specific steps that are to be followed: • 1. Hold a public hearing 2. City Council passage of a resolution of intent to organize collection 3. 90 day planning period 4. 90 day discussion period 5. At the end of the discussion period, if certain additional conditions are met, the City may organize collection The public hearing was held on March 24, 2004. At that time the City Council made it very clear that a final decision was not being made with the resolution of intent, but that it was to let the process go forward, and they authorized the SWC to do an in-depth study of the issue so the City Council and residents would have more information in order to make that decision. The study took longer than the SWC expected. Ordinarily, the 90 day period would have ended in June, but the SWC requested more time and the City Council granted their request. During that time, the haulers met with the SWC twice. The State statute requires that they be included in the planning process. There was one public information meeting on May 20. The Commissioners visited the Resource Recovery Facility in Newport and some of the Commissioners visited the Elk River landfill. Everyone did a lot of reading and had contact with people from other cities. There was a lot of study. The SWC was aware, when they made the list of sixteen goals that was approved by the City Council in January, 2004, that most of those goals related to service standards and they were included because they wanted to assure the residents that this plan fully intended to maintain the high standards of service that they are used to, if not improve them. But there were, imbedded in • that, several big questions. S