21-04-28 EMC minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Commissioner Cardwell questioned whether we need to go through entire budget or it this only one line item of it. Maybe the Council doesn’t know much about a Life Cycle Analysis so it could get easily overlooked. To her, it’s one item in the budget. Is that something we could do to look through the entire budget? Commissioner Olson said probably not. The appropriate agency has looked through it and said, this is what we need to get the job done, and this is what it’s going to cost. And we have supported that analysis, and therefore we should be going to the Council and we support their analysis of what needs to get done. And it’s their job to figure out how to do it. Chair Adams noted that the revised draft the budget is coming out May 5, and there will be a public hearing on May 18. As she understand it the Life Cycle Analysis study is within the DEM’s education budget, and she would be amazed if it were a line item being sent to the Council or budget approval. Mr. Hayducsko said that is correct that it is coming out of DEM’s education budget. We know how important education is and how we haven’t been doing the job that wewanted to do because money has been taken away from us for multiple years. The education budget is currently $100,000, so the LCA would take half of that, or $50,000. LCA 50K. What would be great is if we had $50,000 to do the LCA and the education stayed. Unfortunately the Solid Waste Division Chief is not present in the meeting to provide comment. Chair Adams wondered whether there is a need for a letter or whether this commentary is sufficient to emphasize that we would like to see the Department conduct or prepare a LCA format for thinking through the alternatives of how they do waste management, and that it be adequately funded, and where it happens to come out of the pot that DEM gets is less of an issue to argue with the Council. It’s more for DEM to prioritize. Having been on the SWAC, education is Number 1. And part of the education is giving information on the context that a Life Cycle Analysis provides on what are the true costs behind the way we do what we do on waste management. We’re 50 percent of the education budget; are there other things that we can do? That kind of makes her wince but we’ve got to take the money somewhere, and forward it. She is struggling a little bit about what actions the Commission should be taking. She is more skeptical about need to send something to Council, because Council will looking at the big number and everything that the Department is doing, and $50,000 is not much by comparison. Or do we need to go to the Department and say there were priorities set in the ISWMP and education was No. 1, and the LCA was in the top six list – do it, and give some money toward it. But she thinks they know that, and she is not sure that we need to put it in writing. We would need a motion for that, and what would we put in writing? Commissioner McIntosh said that because it’s coming up for a public hearing it might be better if commissioners individually contributed testimony in support, because usually the way it works is that the Department submits large number to the Finance Committee and they leave it up to Departments to figure out how to divide it out, unless they specifically request line item 13