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HomeMy WebLinkAboutNASWAC MeetingMinutes_12.08.05 North Andover Recycling Committee Meeting Minutes –December 8, 2005 Attendees: TinaKlein, BillHmurciak, KarenKline Minutes I. a.Accepting of October and November minutes continued to January meeting when minutes for the last three months will be on the agenda for acceptance. b.Action: Karen to send Tina draft of October minutes by 12/15/05 c.Tina spoke with Joyce Bradshaw about what happens to the committee minutes submitted, and was told that minutes get printed and filed in a binder for our committee and becomes public record. Old Business II. a.Virtual Town Hall. Tina attended a presentation arranged by Lisa Belfiore, on the service offering from Virtual Town Hall. This company focuses exclusively on designing websites for municipalities, and has been contracted by approximately 70 of the 351 municipalities in Massachusetts. Examples of their work: North Reading, Marlborough. They know what municipalities need and have many examples for organizing information. Many communities are moving toward what is referred to as ‘intention based’ design. The whole design cycle can take as little as 8 weeks and begins with a strategy meeting with a core group of people that design the look and feel that will permeate the site. DPW and Recycling can most definitely be included should this project move forward. The cost of getting the site up and running is approximately $6000. This includes design, formatting all pages, training ‘users,’ and some level of initial handholding (maybe 90 days). The ongoing maintenance user fee is $330 annually. Hosting the site and ongoing support is included in the annual fee. Most communities have approximately 10 users. Permissions (update access) are given by user. Next steps: The Town has to come up with the funding. Lisa Belfiore is following up on this, and I’m sure could use support from the community. It did not sound as if MIS was planning to pay for this from their budget. It sounded like the cost for implementation was Tina going to be split among departments.will write a letter of support and send to the Town Manager. b.Updates to recycling pages discussed at last meeting are on hold while Deb focuses on the remaining weeks of her pregnancy. Send your good energy to Deb! c.OPT Distribution –After the committee meetingTina confirmed delivery of our next th edition on Tuesday December 27and scheduled distribution with Damon Dyer, Eagle Tribune Advertising, for Thursday Jan 12 and Friday Jan 13, 2006. We do not have any time sensitive announcements in this edition. d.YardSale update. Paul Stuart has volunteered to design our flyer. Action: We need to Tina design the registration process so that we can get a registration form on the website. is looking for someone to help me think through this, as Margaret is not available in the short term. We will need to explain the process in the next OPT which we will be drafting in January rd Bill did not have a chance to look into this, but Saturday – e.Scrap metal collection on 3 took the action to do so before the next meeting . f. Waste ban compliance –reports from residents are a bit more promising, but we really do . Could each committee member put out need more people testing the system cardboard, on a non-recycling week, or whole boxes with your trash barrels on a recycling week, and report results to Tina . g.Committee Charter will be scheduled for a Board of Selectmen’s meeting in early January. Tina may need to meet with the Town Manager if he has any questions about our proposal. III.New Business a.Compliments from Town Manager. Tina received a very nice letter from the Town Manager acknowledging all of our efforts and the great result from the waste ban Tina will distribute copies at next month’s meeting. enforcement. b.Waste characterization of aluminum rolloff. Tina followed up with Steve after the meeting. Due to snow and lack of material in the rolloff, the waste characterization was postponed. We will reevaluate in a couple months. Tina had discussions with Lowell Bottle and Can(LBC). They allow standard bags of redeemables to be turned in to them; Steve has the action to see if this type of sort would we would not have to flat them. also be possible at the Lawrence facility(closer facility therefore preferable). It is Tina’s understanding the at the Boy Scouts work with the Lowell facility when they do their bottle drives. The Boy Scouts have the sorting boxes/frames that hold the LBC bag. A case of 200 bags will cost $30. Each bag filled with redeemables (240 cans) yield $12. Non-redeemable cans could be bagged andweighed --$0.20 per pound. c.Reminder: Middle Moment exhibit 12/22 at 7:45am continued to next meeting. Karen to bring sample d.Yellow pages –Karen– e.Other new business Tina needs to get it to Joanneand discuss i.Green Team kit has been delivered. next steps. ii.Just prior to this meeting, Tina received a call from Jim Xenakis expressing his interest in recycling at his business on Salem Street. Tina told Jim that unless the business fits the commercial exception written in our by-law it would be difficult to open this curbside service up to him. J&M most likely generates more than 8 bags of trash per week so they would not qualify. Jim said that the Recycling drivers are at his shop every day getting lunch so it would be easy for them to collect his recycling. Tina mentioned the concern voiced by the DPW that this level of service could not be maintained for all business that might want to participate given current DPW staffing and truck capacity. Jim also mentioned that he’d likely need weekly service which then raises additional concerns about giving a higher level of service to businesses than residents. Jim would like for the Committee to keep him in mind should we ever be looking for a pilot location for business recycling. Perhaps we should think about estimating the additional resources (personnel and vehicle capacity) needed to provide this service to residents, and present the information Discussion for future meeting. Mr. Xenakis and then potentially the BoS. IV.Meeting adjourned at 8:30pm Next meetings: January 12, 2006 and February 9, 2006 Respectfully submitted, Tina Klein, Chair and this month’s Recorder of the minutes