good morning good morning I want to thank everybody for coming out and being here together on this Bright Beautiful Morning this exciting morning that we get a chance to announce this next Evolution this next iteration of our Citywide hauling program uh I'm Melvin Carter and I have the pleasure of serving as mayor of the city of St Paul uh today has been a long time coming and it's another exciting step in our efforts to modernize our Residential Waste Management program in our city we are thrilled to welcome FCC Environmental Services to St Paul eight years ago there weren't too many people who looked at trash as an equity issue but we had a group of neighbors who started a big conversation in our city that said wait a minute I I I it's not safe uh for us to have a handful of different trucks going down every alley in the city every week uh it's not good for our roads uh it's a have sort of uh u a wild environment with regard to competition when it comes to garbage collection and all these big rigs it's not efficient for cleaning and clearing our city uh and it certainly doesn't meet our environmental goals we learned that we can do a whole lot better very specifically it's one area maybe the only area where the city requires every resident every household in our community to participate in a private Market so it makes sense for the city to participate in organizing and and and addressing quality concerns with regard and consistency with regard to that market we were the only the largest American City without organized hauling and so that meant our streets and alleys were overcrowded uh we had inconsistent service and a documented bell curve of cost uh across the city so in 2018 we kicked off a brand new era of trash in St Paul launching an ambitious City wide residential garbage program to better facilitate organized collection at a fair unified cost across the city in our continued engagement with community members we refined our processes heard a lot from Neighbors and explored recommendations from our garbage advisory committee a few of whom are here today with the members of our garbage advisory committee who are here today wave your hands so we can clap for you thank you for your work uh on how to effectively reduce waste and set us up for long-term success ESS today we're excited to announce that we finalized contracts for the next evolution of our city-wide residential garbage program which provides a more unified and responsive approach to recycling and waste collection our continued partnership with Eureka Recycling and our new Venture with FCC is a two-fold victory that addresses the concerns shared by our residents and advances our sustainability goals for a cleaner St Paul by coordinating our garbage recycling uh and uh and and litter services will be better equipped to address illegal dumping and public litter throughout our community we'll be able to focus on alley routes and properties that have historically been challenging for collection we have the ability to respond and deploy resources faster and more efficiently most importantly we'll create a standard level of service that our residents can depend on further with FCC investing $25 million in a new compressed natural natural gas station we are pois to create over 60 new high-paying jobs right here in St Paul uh I always talk about how running a city uh is a team sport and I'm fortunate to have a number of our teammates with me here today uh who are just as passionate about the topic of Citywide hauling um I'd like to thank first our city council president Mitra jalali thank you for your leadership and thank you for being here In Absentia I'd like to thank Russ Stark our chief resilience officer at the city and our resident climate expert um I'd like to thank uh director of Public Works Sean Kershaw thank you and the entire work public work staff please and specifically our solid waste and recycling program manager Sarah hos uh who has worked tirelessly uh with residents and haulers across our city leading Us in designing and updating and organized trash system that works better for every home in St Paul Sarah thank you for your work most importantly the work we do in St Paul can't happen without the direct engagement and involvement of our residents I already mentioned uh the members of the garbage advisory committee who are here with us today but it's important to note that the concerns that we've heard across the city over the past few years uh the loudest concerns that we've heard uh concerns about the ability to opt out or share carts for folks who are uh who who who work hard to reduce their waste the concerns about how our program addresses multi-unit properties and certainly the concerns about inconsistencies in customer service are all addressed in the recommendations that our garbage advisory committee brought to us and for that I'd just like to thank you guys one more time and class for you one more time with that I'd like to welcome Dan Brazzle of FCC Environmental Services a Minnesota native who will not only help us accomplish our Citywide sustainability and waste diversion goals but will also help invest in our city and ensure that we have dedicated essential Waste Services for our residents Dan thanks for being here well thank you for that introduction mayor Carter and and well said uh good morning my name is Dan Brazzle and I'm the CEO of FCC Environmental Services I'm honored and excited to be here with you all today as we celebrate and officially announce the beneficial partnership between the city of St Paul and FCC to bring him our sustainable collection approach to Solid Waste as a CEO of this company as mayor Carter just mentioned uh this has special meaning to me is I'm a Minnesota native born and raised uh and also a former resident of St Paul with we consider the mission of both our company and the city this contract aligns with many factors such as waste reduction beneficial Reuse Recycling diversion and so much more our operations and Engineering teams spent countless trips hours and efforts to analyze the city all the intricate Alleyways the tea Alleyways to ensure that we made the best decision in terms of Staffing uh Fleet for this contract to ultimately provide the best service to the residents we currently operate in Omaha Nebraska and have been providing service there since 2020 to more than 150,000 homes so this is not our first Midwest Venture our Fleet is custom designed for St Paul including four-wheel drive small rearload trucks to ensure tight Alleyways can be collected appropriately as well as wintry conditions uh as well as trucks fueled with compressed natural gas and lastly but certainly not least several fully electric vehicles in our Fleet FCC will invest nearly $30 million into our operations this investment will be fully dedicated to the city of St Paul in this contract it will include more than 30 trucks a facility and maintenance yard and our own compressed natural gas fueling station we will employ 60 people uh to ensure services at the highest level here in conclusion we are grateful for the opportunity to partner with St Paul and look forward to serving the residents of the city thank you thank you and uh and thank you mayor uh my name is Sean Kershaw I'm the director of Public Works and I get to talk about the incredible work that the team did to get to this point I want to Echo some comments i e want to Echo a huge thanks to the mayor and to council president jalali I mean we joke about trash Wars in St Paul they have the battle scars from that um and that with this is something that's incredibly important in people's day-to-day lives just this morning as I was leaving the house I leave the house really early I noticed near the Excel Arena that there was a lot of trash out that had been left there on my way back from the gym our team was out there the folks behind me were there picking up that garbage with the police part of an Enterprise approach so a city that the mayor talked about you know we talk about Equity we talk about sustainability we talk about safety we talk about Prosperity Solid Waste and Recycling are how that becomes real every day for all the residents in St Paul as the mayor mentioned this is a small change for the city to take on 10% of the service but it has a huge impact uh we were going to have we going to have six trucks this one of them is behind you we're buying five more um the drivers that we have this with a CDL and congratulations to the folks who have CDLs behind me um one just got them um they're going to be available in the winter time to drive plow trucks for us um we're going to be able to Service as Dan mentioned and the mayor mentioned the parts of town with the worst alleys and the most difficult um places to reach um because if you have a bunch of salt trucks if you have a bunch of pickup plows you're also good at getting there in the wintertime um as we learned a couple winter go winners ago when it gets um really tough this capacity will help us understand what the residents need you know and make systematic improvements if there's ever a natural disaster you know God forbid we will have the capacity to come in and be a part of the effort to help clean up from that um it will we're going to reduce conflicts with other activities that happen in public works um like street sweeping and Street Maintenance by having this capacity internally um I do want to thank again uh Dan for his uh leadership at FCC Eureka um for their long-term partnership and um everyone from uh the team that's been involved in making this possible chief of which is Sarah hos and she's going to go next all right well thank you director kha I get the exciting role of sharing all of the changes that we're going to be bringing to the city of St Paul um the many of these Echo the feedback that we've received from residents over the Last 5 Years and are supported by the recommendations of the advisory committee I'm so happy that some of them were able to make it here we spent hours and hours and hours talking about garbage and I'm really excited to say that the majority of their recommendations will be implemented the first change that residents will see will be on November 1st and that will be to recycling we'll continue to partner with Eureka for our 1 to four unit collection and FCC will be taking on five plus units we'll begin uh communicating with those residents impacted over the next couple months um and everyone will be notified if they have a new hauler with garbage most of the changes will be rolling out April 1 2025 mayor Carter s uh mentioned that we'll be offering uh cart sharing I'm very excited to share this opportunity because we hear about it every single day um and the uh what we'll be doing at April 1 2025 multi-unit families will be able to uh apply for uh cart sharing there will be minimum requirements for capacity and if they are if they go over we will revoke privilege but it is something we're excited to offer especially for those that don't need the service um we also will be offering opting out starting in January of 2026 this will be offered to Residents that are able to provide verification of an alternative disposal Source we often hear from mixed use uh Residential Properties that maybe they have a small business and they have a dumpster for it but right now they're also required to have trash service and we'd like to help them out by allowing them to opt out and just use their dumpster service there are a number of changes that will now be handled by the city of St Paul um these are again things that we've heard from residents we heard from the advisory committee uh bills bills will be issued by the city of St Paul the last bill that you'll receive from your current holler will be January 5th for the service period of January through March the first bill that you'll receive from the city of St Paul will be July of 2025 and will cover the period of April May and June one of the things we heard from residents is they want to pay after the fact of service they don't want to prepay this helps with home ownership changes and service level changes really excited to be able to offer that and we have a great team that's working on um implementing that system right now we will also be handling all customer service requests so it'll be a One-Stop shop if you need to contact the city about your garbage and recycling we took on the customer service calls in May of last year for uh Recycling and we'll begin taking the garbage calls starting in April along with that we're also doing currently doing the recycling cart uh maintenance which includes repairs deliveries service changes and guys back here in hi Vis are the ones that are doing that for you um and we'll be doing the same for garbage we're also proactively repairing those carts when we're out in an alley and we see a broken cart the guys are taking care of it um even before the resident is aware of it there'll be um some services that won't have a significant impact in change and that'll be our uh walkup service people will still be able to have walkup service if they have it now as well as service holds however those service holds will be um managed by the city for both short-term and longterm we're really excited about the changes in St Paul and our partnership with FCC our continued partnership with Eureka and this amazing solid Wast and recycling team that's going to support these efforts thank you if you have any questions I'm happy to facilitate Sean Dan or Sarah responding to them wants to speak to the negotiations go ahead okay um it actually was not a lengthy process but that's largely because we took the recommendations from the advisory committee and put them right in our request for proposals we set what our service expectations were ahead of time so anyone responding knew what they were getting into so it was a pretty easy process FCC shares many of the same values the city has which made it a a pretty seamless process some of the challenging well I I sure can because the 10% we're taking is the hardest 10% in the city so um they're all over um we do see a lot more on the east side due to the hills and the tight alley conditions um we often struggle you know te alleys hooked alleys are difficult um so those are some of the more difficult uh areas to collect now where we've seen collection problems in the past and that that that's a component of the program that we're really excited about the opportunity to purchase the hauling trucks ourselves uh and take on 10% of the city those that are hardest to uh to to to collect uh that gives us the opportunity to create entrylevel city jobs for folks in our community uh it gives us the opportunity uh to um negotiate a different contract by taking those hardest service routes out of the uh out of the the the contract with FCC uh and it gives us an opportunity to ensure that to to create um uh synergies with like I said our Citywide uh litter program and dumping program uh while bringing on more uh CDL trained drivers to our city uh to help us clear the city in in a snow emergency there's an enormous number of uh synergies that that creates for us uh and so um I I I could spend the rest of the time trying to describe to you just how excited I am for the uh trucks that the Ci's purchasing ourselves a of yes what's that process talk that through um so the process for opting out you'll have to provide verification of an alternative disposal uh source so the number one um request we get is from those that have the mixed use uh so there's a hair salon that I know about and she's got a little salon and an apartment above it she has a two yard dumpster she'd like to use that instead of the cart she'd be able B to provide to us the verification that she has an alternative disposal source and then we would let her opt out there would still be the annual service fee which uh would be applied but there would not be the collection cost um we will also be um monitoring that and if this you know there's any abuse over seeeing a excessive litter around the area then we would revoke that uh opting out second chance to okay um I'm glad you're about for legal dumping because I forgot to share one of the greatest things that we have in our new contract is that we're going from two to three bulky items collected per unit to 12 per year so um and you will not need to schedule that unless it's an electronic so you'll be able to just set that out with your trash that will help our city staff as well as FCC will be looking and working on a legal dump our on our routes we will be collecting illegally dumped items as we see them um and with FCC we'll be partnering four times a year to do community cleanups those cleanups will be identified by the city city will organize a litter collection and FCC will collect the litter bags as well as illegal dumping um we're currently working um in the downtown area to collect illegal dumping uh three days a week with our Solid Waste crew they they love getting up at 6 and doing that and um we're also partnering with Second Chance recycling right now um any resident in the city of St Paul can have a mattress collected and recycled at no cost and we're going to continue to grow that uh relationship with them and look uh to explore opportunities for uh Furniture recycling as well so ultimately the goal is to run those routes more that we're collecting things that are dumped in the city more but to also reduce the need reduce the the the reasons why people do IL dumping in the first place if I'm going from three bulky items to 12 bulky items in a year uh then I don't need to go take something out the alley in my backyard you know in in in the back of my truck uh if I don't have to SK if I don't have to schedule it in advance then it sort of takes away uh the the any incentive to be to to do that in the first place so the combination of those two things and and I think that'll require uh an education campaign uh to make sure that people understand uh that they have the ability uh to cycle that mattress they have the ability to put uh their bulkes out on the curb uh and um I I think this will make a make a big difference over time where's the facility going to be built secret undisclosed location um both the city um and FCC are finalizing those details they're not finalized but they you know they will be both of them a significant investment in the city of St Paul in the trash B cave that's you again yeah that's you again yeah we're excited about the cart sharing and one of the advisory members that could not make it here was kind enough to let bring me out to uh 15 of her uh properties to show me exactly what the problem is and where the need is and that was really helpful to get that visual um but for example a 4unit uh home could have two carts or a 96 gallon capacity we're still working out the details on the capacity minimums um and then we'll be exploring single family it's a little bit more complicated for the single family because of the way that um the program is paid for through uh property tax assessments and and getting an agreement between two neighbors to pay but for those that are in the two to four units it's a single property owner and something that we'll be able to implement April 1 2025 again we we're really excited about this uh you you you both have uh written uh the media members who are here have covered extensively some of the concerns that people have had which over and over and over again over the past several years we've heard concerns about the the desire uh for op for an opportunity to opt out we've heard over and over again the desire uh to be able to share a cart we've heard over and over again the frustration uh that a Triplex has to have uh three different trash bins instead of being able to consolidate so one and we've certainly heard the frustrations around uh lag times around customer service uh responses uh being inconsistent across the different companies uh by uh allowing the options that we just described by bringing the uh the the customer service inhouse at the city again creating a significant number of uh union jobs of public sector union jobs not just with the driving but with the customer service responses uh it it it helps us to respond to literally every single one of the concerns that our residents have voiced most loudly over the past several years we're excited to get to work under this new contract and we're excited to demonstrate what this partnership can produce for our city thank you so much [Applause]