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• FALCON HEIGHTS CITY COUNCIL MINUTES -12- January 26, 2005 Organized Refuse Collection (continued) Council member Kuettel said this, of course, does not discount all of the information collection by the Solid Waste Commissioners. If organized collection does not pass this evening, a suggested role for the Solid Waste Commission might be to help neighbors who wish to organize; to continue providing information to our residents in regard to best purchasing practices by informing us of the proper disposal of our refuse; and by continuing to explore alternative methods of protecting our world. She thanked everyone for their participation and said this has been an interesting period of time. She will not, however, be voting for organized collection this evening. Council member Lamb said to the audience that they can count votes and so can he. He thanked the Solid Waste Commission and said they did a heck of a job in providing a lot of valuable information that will help, regardless of which steps are taken going forward. One thing that he has learned in this process is that if you want to encourage citizen involvement in this community, all you have to do is put hauler in front of it. So, his first proposal is that the name of the City's annual Dead of Winter event be changed to the "Haulers' Ball". • He said that, for the record, he supports organized collection, but he is a realist and recognizes that its time is not here, and we have already heard a declaration that we are not going to vote for organized collection tonight. Lacking that, he wants to support the next best option, which is basically what Council member Lindstrom read, and what he read is a series of discussions that have been going on between the Solid Waste Commission and the haulers; the staff and the haulers; and various City Council members and the haulers. It does advance and start to correct some of the problems we have with broken curbs, with trucks in the alleys. It will help to bring empty trucks into the community. We certainly need some education here. The caveat that he would put on this proposal, which is essentially proposal #2 that was part of the overhead presentation seen earlier in the evening, was to leave this open for the time being and negotiate a letter of agreement with all of the haulers. The distinction he is making here is that the Hauler's Association does not represent all six haulers who serve the city. It represents three of them. He would recommend that the City Council take the basic outline and add to it the use of the NRG, which he thinks most of the haulers are using, instruct staff to negotiate a letter of agreement with all of the haulers and, assuming that the letter of agreement meets everyone's individual criteria, that is the best we can work on right now. Even though this, in his mind, is a compromise, at the same time he has to say this is very solid progress. The Solid Waste Commission identified twenty-two goals, some of which we were already meeting, all of them legitimate. What this represents, where we are now, as opposed to where we were a year ago, is that we are making some solid progress in addressing some of the issues that the City needs to address -that all cities need to address. The City is not at the point where organized collection is going to fly. He supports the next best thing, and the hauler agreement, as long as they all agree • to it, is the next best thing. ~3