ORDER-2020-20 : Amending Melrose Revised Ordinances Chapter 198-2 refuse receptacle(s) as set forth herein.

Transcript (~21 min @ 2:05:30)

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▶ 2:05:25 Francis X. Wright Jr.: second second by uh counselor madero seconded by councillor zorco members of the committee all in favor aye aye aye opposed this matter will be held in committee item three on our agenda is

▶ 2:05:39 Francis X. Wright Jr.: order 2020-20 amending melrose revised ordinances chapter 198-2 refuse receptacles as set forth here

▶ 2:05:58 Michael P. Zwirko: and councilor Zwirko thank you mr chairman um this order here and the um subsequent uh following order 2020-21 i just wanted to let folks know i have no intention as the lead sponsor on both of these orders to do anything dispositive this evening what i'm really looking forward to is a good discussion on the orders before them what i would ultimately like to do is to take that feedback to get some answers and some if need be amend accordingly so with this i would like to talk about this particular ordinance and i'd like to also thank my colleague counselor mcmaster for joining me and sponsoring this particular order essentially as we've heard over the past couple of years and it certainly occurs more so in the spring we have a rodent problem here in the city of melrose we have thought of various ways to address this issue and um i've noticed just in my own neighborhood and certainly throughout the city on various trash days that we allow for a trash bag to just be placed on the curbside generally speaking folks tend to put their trash out the night before which in my opinion you are just leaving a food source available for raccoons and other types of rodents to eat and um we're not helping us we're not helping ourselves in order to mitigate the influx of a rodent population i thought that it seemed like a very common sense change to amend the ordinance on refuse to mandate that trash be placed in a container with a lid for pickup and then disposal hoping to keep rodents from entering the trash bags that are left by the roadside and also to hope to in some way help attack the the rodent problem this is a really simple approach I'm just kind of shocked especially in June July and August when it gets quite hot you just have bags of refuse in the Sun certainly is a quality of life issue and it could just be easily put into a container so that's really in essence what we're trying to do here with this ordinance there is a fee structure excuse me a fine structure i did have a red line document that is attached to the order so it shows what was either deleted or added but i would like to also state that i heard from the i forwarded this language to the city solicitor and the response that i got was the language looks okay he did not opine on the ordinance itself so i put this before my colleagues this evening for their questions and their comments i'm hoping to make this a little bit stronger and without going on any further i just wanted to say this is really just at the end of everything that's before you this is just seeking to put trash bags in a container so that rodents can't get to it um and we're taking a food source away from this this this problem it's just one way that we can help address it thank you mr chairman

▶ 2:09:15 John N. Tramontozzi: thank you counselor any discussion oops just briefly i i think um counselor has worked off of putting this forward uh i think it's uh admirable to in light of the rodent population we are having there has been complaints but i'm not a voting member of this committee but i just want to share one thing and that is if the intent is to um prohibit placing trash

▶ 2:09:46 John N. Tramontozzi: out on the curb the day before the evening before on section e you might want to consider this refuse containers and receptacles for collection shall be placed at the curb no sooner than

▶ 2:10:03 John N. Tramontozzi: 7 a.m on the scheduled collection day that's assuming that the intent is that it not be put out sooner because the the way it's worded now by 7 a.m leaves it open for a possible interpretation as to when somebody could put it out just a thought

▶ 2:10:30 Monica C. Medeiros: council Medeiros thank you i guess as more of a night owl than a uh early bird i'm like don't make me uh have to get out and put out the trash at 7 00 a.m um i was wondering actually why we eliminated the 5 p.m. the night before I think obviously we need that sometimes the the trash pickup comes very very early in the morning sometimes it really is right there at 7 o'clock in the morning and I think if we we made the proposed change that Alderman Tramontozzi sorry counselor Tramontozzi had suggested I think that would probably be a little bit too too short of a window but I

▶ 2:11:14 Monica C. Medeiros: would suggest actually adding back the that containers should be 5 p.m. may be considered to be too early but at least to maybe add back that state that sentence or add something that says after I don't know 9 p.m. or 7 p.m. the day before maybe 7 p.m. the day before and but not but by 7 a.m. or something so at least there's some time frame the night before that people just don't put the trash out at 2 in the afternoon and leave it I'm also a little bit I'm

▶ 2:11:50 Monica C. Medeiros: wondering and I would like to hear some way and maybe from DPW on how many people are putting out their trash just a bag without a barrel I think I see most people put their trash with the barrel but I do see quite a few with just the bags and I'm not sure how I'm not sure how many of those bags are being gotten into by rodents for instance I know certainly if you have a problem you you take action and it doesn't stay just in a bag for very long but how would we communicate this to residents and how many people are we really affecting with

▶ 2:12:36 Francis X. Wright Jr.: this ordinance so thank you counselor any other counselor butra thank you um so i think my

▶ 2:12:39 Manisha Bewtra: questions would be around kind of how you arrived at the particular i saw you uh um this is through the chair uh not asking the question directly at this time but i think if we're holding this in committee um arriving at the question around um materials uh tight-fitting covers of metal it does say or other durable rodent proof material but um just curious also if there was research done on kind of uh cost of these containers um whether i mean right now we have city provided recycling open containers and i imagine sometimes even though we should be cleaning our recycling recyclables i imagine that sometimes those could also be a source of the challenge and um and i think i mean i i appreciate the intent of the order i i just have questions around sort of like what is the future of our waste collection in the city anyway um if we're talking about waste reduction and how this might mesh with um future trash collection might mesh with our current contract with jrm where i feel like we already have some challenges with trash receptacles being left out in the street and the sidewalk and i realize those concerns are a little bit extraneous to the order itself but but i do think that those are concerns that maybe residents would bring up particularly knowing that some of these larger tight-fitting cover trash barrels can be costly i know for my personally um we've my family's invested in two large um i don't remember how many gallons but they're quite large plastic trash barrels with tight-fitting lids and we've definitely seen the benefit of that both from a kind of just an odor standpoint but also from raccoons so i can see the purpose of this order but it just brings up a lot of questions for me

▶ 2:14:51 Francis X. Wright Jr.: at this time thank you thank you councillor council of mcmaster thank you chairman wright

▶ 2:14:54 Shawn M. MacMaster: i'm a non-voting member of this committee but i did co-sponsor the order with councillors rocco so i just wanted to briefly comment on it and i wanted to give my colleagues who were members of the committee an opportunity to speak before weighing in as a co-sponsor this to me is an important order and I hope that we eventually will move it out of this committee. Over the last year and a half I've been contacted by numerous residents from my ward who have raised concerns about this issue especially relative to rats which we know present a public health nuisance and if you look at my ward in terms of the different areas within it it's a very natural area for rats to borrow and for other rodents including raccoons and opossums and whatnot you have the fells you have pine banks you have the culvert and you have west wyoming the train tracks to oak grove so there are a lot of natural areas where we are seeing this problem where residents have reached out to me so i think this is a common sense solution and i think It's something that we can work with the next administration to operationalize But I'm also looking forward to the conversation tonight and even after tonight And I'm hopeful that we'll be able to eventually get to the point where we can pass this order again Thank you to consulate work go for all of his work on this For the research that he's done and for the opportunity to co-sponsor with him. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Thank you

▶ 2:16:35 Scott M. Forbes: council of forbes thank you um i appreciate the the merit of the order i i think that it's something i think that we could all get behind when we come to uh in terms of how we leave our waste by the curbside uh the couple of concerns i have through the chair um the lids uh on a windy day those things are frisbees and they they they fly all over the place and when you're home late at night and you don't know where your lid is and then the next day the next week if you're going to get a violation for losing the lid in a windstorm who's responsible for that and is that a valid complaint to the city the second part that i would sit there and and and determine is if uh the the fine structure uh not to exceed a hundred dollars but we consider a sliding scale uh for first second and third time offense and then the third question that i would have would be the timeliness of the cleanup will be determined by the board of health and the department of public works are they going to be keeping the data for repeat offenders and is that going to be a burden on them as far as their personnel are concerned so i'm not sure if that has been done or that research or those questions have been asked but those would be the the items that i would be focusing on um and waiting for response to determine whether or not this is something

▶ 2:17:54 Francis X. Wright Jr.: i could support thank you thank you president uh anyone else for the first time i would like

▶ 2:18:02 Francis X. Wright Jr.: to come my comment is uh similar to council of forbes um i appreciate the intent of this ordinance and i think it's got great merit the goal certainly is but i am concerned about it being an unfunded mandate on the residents of this city and if you are in a situation where you don't have those barrels now you're gonna go out and buy them or if a lid blows away they have to go out you can't just buy a lid you gotta buy a barrel with a lid um perhaps a a way to address this which not necessarily by ordinance but um by contract is the way other communities have addressed it which is when you're when your trash collection contract is up that you approach the vendors put on rfp and if you give them a long enough contract then perhaps you can find them in a position where they will fund the purchase of uniform barrels which are those large 60 gallon barrels with the con the lids that flip back so they don't they're not going to blow anywhere and then you'll put them out and they can come along with a truck that has an arm that comes out reaches out grabs them so you have a one-man truck as opposed to a two-man truck And Melrose I would think we would have the benefit because we have no overnight parking Unlike cities like Medford and Somerville where the guys have to guys to get out of the truck Sometimes has to move the barrel on the park car and then pull the truck up and then grab the barrel in Melrose it might be truly cost-effective for a Holler to come in to Melrose. He'll see that the parked car issue isn't as great as in other communities and and if they can get a long enough contract to make purchase of those barrels worthwhile and the city through the through the contract could supply the barrels to its residents and and then we could address this problem in

▶ 2:20:09 Francis X. Wright Jr.: that manner that that is not an immediate solution to the problem I i clearly recognize that and i don't know off the top of my head when our contract for trash hauling expires i also i don't but perhaps it has a termination clause that we could look at but um certainly i think the next administration should consider looking at that as a as a way of dealing with this situation because i know i believe medford spent like a million dollars on those barrels but i think it's through a contract with the hauler and i see them when i drive through medford in the morning that they're just going down the street flips up grabs the grabs the barrel with the the arm and it flips it up into the truck puts it back down goes on to the next house so i would like to you know ideally see the next administration explore that alderman uh counselor liberal garabedian i apologize sure um thank you and thank you to

▶ 2:21:18 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: the makers of the order um our colleagues have have given some good feedback just a couple things that um for your consideration it always helps me to put it in context to know what other communities are doing and what types of requirements they place on residents so i'd be interested to know how our language would compare to some of our neighbor neighbors i'd also be interested in the decision to limit this to residential receptacles to count i think counselor futurist point the city has a good number of public trash containers and recycling containers around parks and commercial areas it strikes me that if we were to suggest that our residents are financially responsible for improving the way in which trash is stored we should put the onus on the city to do the same thing and possibly also better understand what is response what commercial enterprises are responsible for in terms of their trash containers like the restaurants which i think are probably a huge attraction for vermin the other i think the last thing that hasn't been raised is just the level of detail around what these containers are required the requirements for them um in terms of what they can be made of how large they can be and need to have two intact handles um that's that's really detailed and it is sort of it suggests to me that those are probably best practices one concern is many people may already have what are reasonable and good containers and what we're essentially asking them to do now is throw those out and buy something new and that sort of flies in the face of sustainable practices because we also want to look at how we're using uh materials that we we have um in town already um so those are just some quick

▶ 2:23:18 Monica C. Medeiros: thoughts thank you thank you council Medeiros for the second time sorry for the second time here um yeah and i think sort of going a little bit off of uh counselor liver gary obedience comments and and sort of back to chairman wright way back when i had done a ride along with the recycling company and we looked at those those big bins and you know they were quite a cost that was wrapped in i think initially with the initial service but ultimately the consumer ends up or the city ends up paying the cost of those those bins I know where we are trying to get away from throwing so much stuff out I think in Melrose we the smaller sized barrel is probably allowing people to have smaller sized barrels is probably a better option because there are many you know I couldn't fill up one of those big trash bins for instance at my house so it would just be a lot of extra plastic and maybe an invitation for people to have more trash and fill it so I wouldn't necessarily go towards that route however in thinking about this a little bit more I think it would be hard to have the the bins covered right before trash pickup and I wonder if the hauler would have a problem with having to go through the effort of opening these bins I think the lids moving around could be troublesome and ultimately I think it's this is looking at what happens once the trash goes out to the curb but I think the times where rodents are probably more apt to to come

▶ 2:25:09 Monica C. Medeiros: around is in the you know the five or six days before trash pickup where the trash is kept somewhere and to make sure that while the trash is being kept that it's kept covered and stored and I I think you might see some regulations for instance in the city of lynn because i know they've had a quite an issue and they've tried to do various things to address this problem so i have not looked at it recently but i think that that might be a good option to look at and to think about maybe changing this to be kept covered until trash day rather than just on trash day itself thank you counselor any other counselors

▶ 2:25:53 Speaker 8: we have a motion motion to hold in committee mr chairman second motion from councillors

▶ 2:25:55 Francis X. Wright Jr.: work out to hold this item in committee seconded by president forbes all in favor opposed matter will be held in committee fourth and last item on our agenda this evening is order 2020-21 amending melrose revised ordinances chapter 198 by adding articles roman numeral Article 7, sustainable food containers and packaging. Further add section 198-13, use of sustainable food containers and packaging as set forth herein.