FY26 Proposed Budget

already headed to the landfill, allowing staff time to add more appointments, and saving miles and fuel. • Staff has visited multiple facilities in the Midwest to consider options for diversion and recycling programs, equipment and infrastructure, including compost turners, construction and demolition processing, recycling transfer stations, materials recovery facilities and a mattress recycling facility. • Staff is creatively planning to address the need for additional trash routes some days of the week. Administration expects multiple retirements over the next few years. Succession planning, retention, and hiring and training new employees are regularly discussed. • Equipment costs have gone up, increasing the cost of replacement for equipment. • Multiple projects are in the works, including the landfill equipment building replacement and the compost pad improvements and expansion. This adds stress for staff on top of the daily and seasonal baseline stress levels. • Spatial restraints at the landfill limit potential new or expanded waste diversion, recycling and composting options. Grant funding will help ease restraints in the compost programming area in the short-term but more space will be needed for all programs t o meet the City’s greenhouse gas reduction goals. • Construction and demolition waste in our service area has a significant impact on the lifetime of a landfill cell and volumes are anticipated to increase with multiple large buildings in our community anticipated to be demolished in the coming years. Expanded and new diversion programs are needed to reduce material volume entering the landfill, but few outlets are currently available for the materials. Staff continues to explore ideas and possible partnerships to address this challenge, specifically for shingles, building rubble, lumber and metals. • Future required monitoring for and subsequent regulation of PFAS may be financially significant. Staff continues to learn about and stay current with potential changes. • Customers from other service areas appear to be increasing, which is stressful to staff and unfair to our service area customers; ie, others are using programs subsidized by our customers (primarily wood waste and composting). • Wood waste and wood chip volumes continue to remain a challenge. Staff continues to explore options for wood waste other than wood chip mulch. • Increased compost production will necessitate diligent efforts and outreach to ensure we can sell the finished compost. Compost certification and creative partnerships will likely be necessary, incurring significantly more staff time than currently allotted. • The Recycling Coordinator’s time is stretched thin with the growing demand for compost-related duties in addition to all recycling program management. • Aging infrastructure at the East Side Recycling Center will result in more expenditures in maintenance, repairs and replacements. • Costs for single stream and plastics recycling increased over 40% with a contract roll over from FY23 to FY24, and costs are not anticipated to decrease.

Upcoming Challenges: •

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