Joint Budget and Public Works Committee.

On item number three, the civil service motions, we'll start with item three N, M2640, health EMS revised special rates of pay for EMS. Great. Chief, you want to come on up and explain what this is? I'm sorry. Which one was this one? N, special rate of pay for EMS. Was that one on eight or four? 2640. 2640. Oh, 2640. Yeah, so this one really is a cleanup of the current civil service rule to add advanced practice paramedic under the special rate of pay to receive a stipend. So basically, if you have a certain credential within our department, if you are a rescue swimmer, if you are a urban search and rescue tactical medic, rescue hazmat medic, you get a $1,500 stipend per year if you have those credentials. We're adding advanced practice paramedic to that list as a credential. And so those that receive the additional training to perform those advanced procedures will now be on the list to receive that stipend. You do not get multiple stipends for multiple credentials. If you hold one of these, you get one stipend per year. And so we're just basically adding the advanced practice paramedic into that list. Second is going to be we are expanding who can work within our rescue division and receive the 5% over their pay, and that's we're adding EMTs, advanced EMTs, and emergency medical coordinator assistance, which is the captain position. Currently, that position only is for paramedics, and so we are expanding who can work in that unit. We don't have enough paramedics, and so we wanted to expand that and to allow other levels to work within that unit, and this will allow us to do that. And it's budget neutral. It's budget neutral. Yes, ma'am. Great. I wish everything was. Any questions? Hearing none, can I get a motion? So moved. Second? All in favor? Aye. I'll be a minute. Any nays? All right. Thank you very much. You can stay right there. I think the machines are up now for you guys to actually vote. Okay. They are now, but. All right. Okay. The next item is M26198, which is the health EMS emergency medical service series. This motion is a pay increase in the base pay for all of the uniform positions. So right now, since our last salary study, we are about 7.5% to 10% off the mark when it comes to our pay. We are lower compared to other EMS employers in the region, and we're not able to recruit folks into these positions because of the low pay, and also not being able to retain folks because they leave and they go other places for more money. And so we are asking for this increase to better retain and recruit. And this equates to, for the EMTs and the advanced EMTs, a 2.5% increase, paramedics is a 7.5% increase, and then coordinator assistant and coordinator are a 5% increase. We are tying this directly to revenue. Right now, we are using the Acadian AIM balance, which gives me anywhere from 6 to 10 AIM balances a day because I cannot staff New Orleans EMS AIM balances right now with my staffing situation. We're losing about $9 million a year in revenue to Acadian AIM balance. We need to be able to pay our folks more to keep them here, to recruit more people to fill vacancies, and to add positions that I can put at least 10 more AIM balances on the street to wean off of the Acadian contract so we can capture that revenue again. And Chief, those are ambulances that we have already, is that correct? Yes, ma'am. We have that in the fleet. Yes, ma'am. So we're looking to staff up using these pay raises in order to shed Acadian AIM balance and that $9 million cost. Yes, ma'am. Any questions? Councilmember Hughes? Thank you, Madam Chair. And look, thank you, Director, for your great work. I certainly fully support, you know, getting this department fully staffed. Just last week at a high school in my district, there was a medical emergency with a student. Fire department arrived immediately. It took over 30 minutes for the ambulance to get there. A student could have died on site. So I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but it is imperative that we get properly staffed and get these ambulances on the ground. So thank you for your leadership and your great work. Thank you very much. And this isn't only a revenue thing. Obviously, we need to get more AIM balance on the street to improve our response times and get out to where we need to go and serve our patients the way they need to be served. Okay. Councilmember McCarron? I just want to, is this increase going to be sufficient enough to make EMS competitive with our outside service providers? For now, yes. So we are going to do an annual salary study to make sure that we remain competitive. And just like all the other markets, too, I may raise a salary a dollar and then a service across the border is going to do $1.25 or $1.50, right? And so we're constantly trying to keep up with other employers in the region. And so every year, we're going to continue that salary study to make sure we are remaining within where we need to be at. That's a great question, though. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? All right. I've moved. I need a second. Seconded by Councilmember McCarron. All right. Council Vice President Willard. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any nays? It passes. Thank you very much for your support. Thank you. The next item is 3U. Item M26355, which is an amendment to the Civil Service Rules Annual Merit-Based Payments. Good morning, members, or afternoon, rather. This is something the administration has put forward to better help with evaluation of all employees. Right now, the system has exceeds, meets, or doesn't meet review standards. That's like being able to award people only an A, a C, or an F. And so all we're doing is asking to be able to give essentially those intermediate grades either more positively or in the other area that doesn't meet expectations and is slightly above that. This has been approved by civil service. The administration supports it, and we appreciate your support as well.

Any questions from the dais? Councilmember Hughes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. CEO, I was thinking about this. I know we had a chance to talk about it briefly. Is there going to be a rubric for evaluators to determine how they get to A, B, C, D, or F, or are people just going to be able to wake up and give their favorite students an A and their least favorite students an F? Yeah, I think what we're going to try and do, Councilmember, is explain what we think an A student is, a B student is, a C student is, and then let the evaluators decide what fits within that regard. Something along the lines of your A student is a superstar and that you couldn't do business without losing this person, B is exemplary, somebody you want to keep for sure, C is meets expectations or doing fine, D needs work, but we want to provide some criteria so people can evaluate. Yeah, I think it's imperative that there's a clearly defined rubric so that A, the employee knows what they're striving to get to and that this is a fair process and the evaluator can't just wake up and determine, well, I like Susie Mae so I'm going to give her an A and I really don't like Jason Hughes so I'm just going to give him a D. So we want to ensure fairness within the system. I agree and also, Councilmember, it's to also help people out too. There's probably people who aren't quite meets expectations but they're also probably quite doesn't meet expectations either so you get put into a category where you can improve as well and also try to obviously make sure that people know what they're striving to and so there isn't just abject subjectivity too. Thank you, CAO. Thank you, Madam Chair. Of course. Any other questions? All right. Claude, you're up. Good afternoon. My comment is I can't leave well enough alone. My name is Claude Schlesinger. I represent the Fraternal Order of Police in New Orleans. We represent about 95% of the active New Orleans police officers. So a little bit of a history about the merit pay for those on the Council, several of you are new. So back in 2017, 18, and 19, we started advocating for merit pay. At that time, there was a rule that said the chief administrative officer has not declared that the city possesses insufficient funds for merit increases. So every year when there was a budget surplus, the CAO would come to the civil service and say we can't afford a merit pay increase. So there were thousands of disciplinary cases. There was no reward for any police officer or city employee for meritorious service. That has changed. Even today, we now have an awards ceremony today, thankfully. So Mark Supernant, civil service commissioner, was instrumental in getting this changed so that it was mandatory to get it. So the furlough wording in this proposed ordinance change is really not clear. I had an officer send me an email, and I want to quote what he said. I've been forced to take furlough twice in my career, and it wouldn't surprise me if a third time is right around the corner. To say that I'm not eligible for merit pay because the city decided to force me to furlough is a pretty bad signal to send. A furloughed employee is already getting a pay cut due to no doing on their part. And essentially being told that even though we cut your pay and you continue to come in and be an exceptional employee during these difficult times, we're not going to allow you to get merit pay. That's wrong, and it sends a bad signal. To chisel away at these benefits is an insult and a disservice to the police who have mandatory working requirements. Crime is down significantly. Why mess with success? Retention and recruitment have turned the corner again. Morale is decent in the department. Why mess with success? Thank you. Thanks, Claude, and thank you for keeping within two minutes. Wait, I have a comment for you, Claude. Yes, sir. Just because I think that some of the council members don't get the context. I think what you're talking about, and you and I have had this conversation on numerous occasions, during the Great Place to Work initiative, there was an effort where a prior administration decided that they would go through an evaluation process, a very extensive evaluation process, and the carrot that was put out during a previous budget crisis was that if people were able to demonstrate that they did an excellent job on the job, they would be entitled to a pay raise, correct? Yes. And essentially, in particular with NOPD, at the time, every year, the trigger for that was that the CAO had to say, we have enough money to afford the pay raise. Yes. And for about a decade, NOPD officers went through the exhaustive exercise of being evaluated as employees and never actually got any of the pay raises. That's correct, because the CAO, despite having increasing revenues year after year, and even a budget surplus in some years, said we couldn't afford it. Right. And I know we've had this conversation before, because one of the biggest complaints we get as a department is that there is really no salary differential between a 15-year officer and a five-year officer, correct? Yes. Because basically, once you get that, what is it called, the veteran police officer position designation. Senior police officer. Right. That is the only pay raise you get unless you get promoted and ranked. And there were several on the list to be promoted, and because of budget constraints, they have not yet been promoted. We've had a discussion with Chief Kirkpatrick three weeks ago, maybe, about just promoting. There's only, I think, three or four officers on that list whose eligibility would expire. I'm trying to paint the picture for the new council members, Claude. So what everyone stepped into when we came in, our first term is that we were hemorrhaging officers to various departments across the country.

Retention was upside down, and part of the challenge at that time, which has not been resolved, is that whereas most departments, if you're a 15-, 20-year patrol officer, there is a path to get pay raises to retain someone. In our police department, if you are a five-year patrolman or a 30-year patrolman, your base salary is the exact same, correct? Yes. So I think you're highlighting something, which is kind of an ongoing problem, which is that we have to find a way to reward veteran officers who want to stay on the job and stay on the beat, because at the end of the day, everyone can't be a sergeant, everyone can't be a lieutenant, and so on and so forth, so if you don't provide a path where someone who wants to actually still respond to calls for their veteran status to be recognized for their years of service, they leave, which is what they've continued to do, correct? Yes. All right. Thanks, Claude. I'll just add, because I've been coming to the Council for years, at Hurricane Katrina, which is now 20 years ago, we had 1,742 or 46 officers. We're down to about 900. That's a huge decline in the number of... officers. The calls to service are way up, their report writing requirements and overhead that they have to do is way up, and so their free patrol time is way down. We need more police in the city. So merit pay was one of those issues that was really important to police and it should be important to all of city government. And we think now that we have a handle on retention, recruitment is up, we're not hemorrhaging 100 police officers a year as we were, and merit pay being funded thanks to Mark SuperNet was one of those things that helped us. So thank you, and we appreciate you giving me the opportunity to talk to you. Thank you, Todd. Yeah, I'd like to respond to Mr. Schlesinger's comments, police counsel. Since I was at civil service, one of the points that I made to them was the widespread misuse of merit pay by a number of departments, including departments that had people exceeding expectations 98% of the time, 94% of the time, 92% of the time, 90% of the time, 86% of the time. If any department wants to get up here and tell me that 98% of their employees are exemplary, I just think the public isn't going to believe that a department is filled with that many superstars and when he uses the word chisel, it's a two-way street. And I think what we're trying to do is be fair to each other, and that is a point that's being missed right now, is that Mr. Schlesinger is right that in the past, the money may not have been awarded, but what he neglected to say is departments abused this too and awarded far too many people merit-based bonuses on the subjectivity that you were talking about and did so as incentives to really turn the program upside down. All we're trying to do is right-size it again. Any other comments from the dais? All right, I've moved. Can I get a second? Seconded by Council Vice President Willard. All in favor? Any nays? All right, it is passed. And then the final item under number three is V, motion M2644, which is the Central Adjudication Bureau Administrator. I'm looking at the council because I think all seven of you all have asked about this at various points. As you know, Central Adjudication Bureau is a one-stop shop for hearing different adjudication proceedings from a variety of different departments. It lived before in separate different places. Department of Public Works did something, Safety and Permits did something, Code Enforcement did something. It has been run by a lawyer for the past year or year and a half. When I was on the council, I asked that it be a lawyer who did it. Now Civil Service has created a position to do that. The expectation is CAB, Central Adjudication Bureau, will generate its own revenue to pay for this position and for others. So it should not just be revenue-neutral, but revenue-generated. Any questions from the dais? Council Member Hughes. Thank you, Madam Chair, and Mr. CAO, thank you. I know we're trying to generate revenue, but I really want us to set, you know, benchmarks and expectations. And I don't, you know, respectfully want the expectation that this is going to generate revenue. I want it to happen. And when we're sitting, you know, approaching budget season a year from now, I want us to be able to say that this is actually generating revenue. If we're going to create this position, there needs to be some meaningful structural change that the residents can feel and that we can see visibly in our city coffers. Yep. I couldn't agree more. And this is a step. And candidly, I'll say this out loud, when I come back in a year, if we haven't done it, hold me accountable. Yeah. And we need to see far more consistency when we're having these hearings, because there's just a lot of inconsistency across the board. And I know you and I have had that conversation. I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Any other questions from the dais? All right. I move. Can I get a second? Seconded by Council Member McCarran. All in favor? Any opposed? Okay, it passes. At this time, I will turn this meeting over to Chair Hughes. Before we do that, just for the record, the civil service motions that we did not vote on, A through M, as in Mary, and O through R, as well as T, as in Tom, will be deferred to October 22nd. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. We're going to stand at ease for just a moment, so bear with us. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank Council Member Harris for allowing this to be a joint meeting. The Budget Committee was already scheduled, so I really appreciate you, Madam Chair, allowing the administration to make this presentation. We will not take a vote on this today for the public's benefit. The administration will present. We will take public comment, and the Council will be allowed, obviously, to ask questions. So with that, Mr.

CAO and administration, the floor is yours. Well, thank you. I'll start with left to right, introducing everybody for the millions of people watching at home. John, you want to start? Yes. Council Members, my name is Jonathan Wisby, and I'm the Chief Innovation Officer for the city. Joe Jeruso, CAO. Kevin Ferguson, Chief of Staff to the Mayor's Office. Matt Tory, Director, Department of Sanitation. Chris McGee, Data Analytics Manager, Louisiana Legislative Auditor's Office. Roy McDougal, Senior Data Analyst with the Louisiana Legislative Auditor's Office. I want to begin the presentation, Council Members, first by thanking all of you. We appreciate very much all of your input and review into all of this. It couldn't be accomplished alone. I also want to thank the LLA, because they did an exhaustive amount of work, which is represented in the report that they produced to us, and acknowledge also the contributions of Adam Swinczik, who was significant in drafting the proposed legislation, as well as Matt Tory and John Wisby, who have participated in this significantly as well, to try and streamline this as much as possible. The presentation is only six slides. I'll be doing the first two. Mr. Tory, the next two, and Mr. Wisby, the last two. We're obviously happy to answer questions along the way, but I'm going to kind of set the groundwork. Matt will talk about... We're going to let you get through your entire presentation, and then we'll just take questions at the end. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Get through his presentation that deals with the ordinance and proposed rate, and then also talk about the issues that remain to be resolved that Mr. Wisby and others are working on. Although lengthy, the LLA, the legislative audit report, can really be distilled to three separate points. Number one, the sanitation fee in the City of New Orleans has not been increased since 2011. Within that is implicit that Orleans Parish is not alone in having sanitation as part of a fee service. Number two, sanitation fee, as currently delivered, is not making the prices match. In other words, you cannot deliver 2026 services at 2011 prices. And simply, we do not have alignment between services and the cost for those services that are being rendered. And that's what you'll see on the next slide, which I'll go over in detail. And last, the addresses in the city systems need updating to ensure the correct household. As you can imagine, Councilmembers, between the fact that you have databases living in different places, multiple agencies, including the city and Soojin Water Board, touching and intersecting on this, it is more complicated and nuanced than it might otherwise appear at first blush. This is a slide about where we are in terms of the city and when it comes to the sanitation fee. And quite simply, members, you can see beginning in 2023, continue through 2026, that the cost continues to escalate. Now, the reason why is beginning in 2023, and Matt, correct me if I'm wrong, that is when the city began to enter into new contracts and service areas two and three. And then over the next few years, that we started to enter into the new contracts for areas one, four, and five in addition. As a result of those increases, which are because of the fact that the public was clamoring for sanitation employees to be paid more, to ensure that quality services were delivered, to ensure that the machinery being used was state-of-the-art and had GPS, those costs rose as a result as well. You look at 2023, the costs went from 2022 to 2023, went up by about $1.6 million, which is the beginning of the uptick. But in 2024, the number went from $5.4 million to $17.1 million, in 2025 from $17.1 to $21.7, and in 2026 from $24.7 to $21.7 the year before. If you do the math between all of this, what you can see is between 2023 and 2026, the city of New Orleans lost nearly $70 million. I'll stop here for a second because I think one of the things we commonly hear and what you commonly hear is that the city or a city should be run as a business. Let me be very clear about one thing. We are not here trying to make a profit. All we're trying to do is stop the bleeding. And if you look at the red on the slide and the amount of money the city hasn't been able to use in order to cover other expenses, there's been a lot of bleeding. And that's what we're trying to stop. Good afternoon, Council. Great to be here with you all. As CAO Girousseau said, the guiding principle here in resetting the sanitation fee has simply been to balance the cost of service with the fees assessed to rate payers currently by Sewage and Water Board. Nothing more, nothing less. We're not seeking to offset any additional cost outside of sanitation or cover cost of service for rate payers that are currently not being assessed a fee by Sewage and Water Board. In addition to the sanitation fee not being adjusted for inflation since 2011, we also are aware that the litter abatement fee has also not been adjusted. So the litter abatement fee is that fee that's assessed to locations that are not eligible for sanitation services by the city code and require private collection service. But that annual fee that they remit to the city goes towards offsetting those common services that are received by all residents in the city. services like litter removal, illegal dumping, remediation, public litter can servicing, street sweeping. And the cost to provide those services by city employees has gone up as well over the past 15 years as wages for city employees have increased as living wage guidelines have been introduced. So, um, fairness and equity has been at the core of what we're seeking to do here. Our goal has been to provide the most favorable rate to rate payers by while covering that cost of service, as we said.

So they're everyone here and in the public has at least been made aware of the work that the legislative auditor has done, and we've worked in in collaboration with them. And there's still some work to do on the city side and with our contractors on validation of units that were identified as potentially ineligible. We want to be clear that the cost of service that was included in this new rate fee calculation did not include cost associated with those locations that are currently under review and validation. So we're only seeking to cover the cost of service for those locations which are currently being assessed to fee by sewage and water board. Our service delivery model will continue to include curbside solid waste and recycling services. The new enhanced service that we are hoping to introduce as part of this fee adjustment is our sanitation strike team. So this is a dedicated group of sanitation employees that will be able to focus and provide immediate response to illegal dumping and litter in targeted areas throughout the city of the direction of stakeholders. So instead of being having to submit 311 requests and wait in the illegal dumping queue until we're able to get to it with our stretched resources, this is a group that would be able to almost immediately respond to your priority requests to your public health hazards and make an immediate impact in neighborhoods before the issue could expand and have a greater impact. So the fee that is the ordinance, what is before you would raise the residential fee by $8.25, taking it from $24 to $32.25 on a monthly basis. The non residential fee would increase by $16.50 going from $48 to $64.50. Again, these fee increases are only sought to cover the cost of service for those rate payers paying currently paying a fee via sewage and water board. Uh, in conjunction with this ordinance, we'd like to take this opportunity opportunity to reinforce and bring awareness to some existing and new features of this law. Um, with the inception of these new contracts over the past several years, a free second card has been available to all eligible households in the city. We know, based on 311 data that only 3% of households have taken advantage of that free second cart. That's an extremely valuable service that we want to make sure people are aware of. Not only does it provide additional capacity and containment for people to facilitate their solid waste collection, but it's a free service. And we're keenly aware that in other parishes in Louisiana and elsewhere across the country, municipalities charge for this second card either, uh, you know, up front for the card itself or on a monthly service fee. So this is a very valuable service that is included in our contracts, and we'd like to see more residents take advantage of it. The sanitation strike team, as we talked about, will immediately provide dividends in being able to focus targeted services in neighborhoods and clean up illegal dumping and litter on a very timely basis. This ordinance will provide for stronger enforcement of the litter abatement fees, both by clarifying who falls in that ineligible ineligible, uh, classification, but also providing the city with a recourse for those, uh, locations that don't file their litter abatement fee on an annual basis. So this ordinance will allow the city to provide services to locations that don't comply with the litter abatement ordinance and then recoup those cost of service for those households until they come into compliance. In addition, this ordinance provides options in the future for weekly service. Um, it also provides for the annual adjustment for inflation, which is embedded into all of our curbside collection contracts. And lastly, this ordinance will modernize and provide clarity to the code once again for those locations that are deemed eligible or ineligible by the city. Council members, I want to talk now through sort of what some of our goals in the upcoming months and next steps are. First, I think it's really important to give, uh, full credit to the LLA, to Chris, to Brenton and their teams for all the work that they did over the last several months to help us get to a place where we are closer to a comprehensive database reconciliation than we have been at any point in the recent past. However, there's still a substantial amount of work that we need to do to make sure that we establish a central database where there is a one-to-one relationship between every billing address and every service location. And so that is part of the work that we are undertaking in the coming months. Um, we also need to establish very clear, uh, measures of operational accountability, putting in place policies, procedures, and automated processes where available to ensure that this single source of truth continually is updated and that it reflects changes that may occur month to month. Um, there's also really a need to improve some of the billing functionality of the sewage and water board system. Recognizing that earlier this year, sewage and water board did go to RFP to replace their long-time billing system. Uh, they're currently starting the, the, I believe they received, uh, proposals last month from vendors and they're starting the vendor selection process now. So that's something that we anticipate working with them closely as they go through selection and implementation of that. And then finally, even the best system that we create is going to need some amount of manual review and auditing going forward to make sure that all of the connections are functioning properly and that, that information is being updated in a timely fashion. And so we're going to have to be able to detail in, uh, clear policies, responsible entities for conducting that type of review. So those are some of the top level goals.

Wanted to now kind of walk you through some of the concrete steps that we're taking, uh, that we've already taken that we're currently undertaking and that we're going to do in the future. So I think the first thing that's important to know is, uh, early last week on Monday of last week, the city sent to its, uh, solid waste collection contractors, a total of 12,915 addresses. These were identified in the LA report as one of a couple of categories, duplicate addresses, retired addresses in potentially ineligible service locations. Uh, we've asked those contractors to confirm if they accept those deletions or if they have any concerns with individual addresses and to provide us proof that those are valid service locations by September 30th. Uh, and then we'll go through and obviously verify anything that they submit where they say we actually have some disagreement with LA's, uh, addresses on, on these handful of, uh, properties. Um, what we are working on while that is underway is really trying to reconcile the addresses that generally match but have some level of discrepancies. This might be, uh, a parcel where you have two service locations but only one billing flag. Uh, you, we need to look at it and understand is that because we need to add a billing flag or is that because we actually only have one service location, we need to remove a service location. Working through those types of, uh, discrepancies is really what we are focused on now. Uh, and in that same process we're creating a unified table structure and techniques to automate some of that reconciliation going forward and developing the policy apparatuses around that process. Uh, and really the last step here is we think we can do a lot of this through a lot of automated processes because of how technology has advanced in recent years. But there are some addresses that are going to be tricky, right? Because LA was unable to match them up between a service location and billing address. In many cases we believe this is because these may be located on, uh, corner lots that may have a street address on one side and a meter address on the other that compose different street addresses but are reflecting the same unit. Um, and so that's going to require a little bit more of manual review most likely to determine what the correct solution is to those items. Uh, and the goal is to have this single database created along with the, uh, support of policies no later than March of 27. However, we're also targeting October and November as the dates where we are due semi-annual updates to our contractors to remove service locations to make sure we remove as many ineligible service locations as possible prior to those October and November deadlines. I guess in closing numbers what I would say is, um, we inherited a system, all of us, that collectively needs a great deal of work that has not been risen in a rate in quite a long period of time and want to make sure that the city of New Orleans continues to provide top level services to people while at the same time recognizing the financial realities of where we stand as opposed to 15 years ago. We stand ready for questions. Thank you. Thank you very much. Um, Council Vice President Willard is recognized. Thank you Chairman Hughes. Thank you guys for joining us today. I have a few questions. Um, so in the ordinance it talks about ineligible entities, um, and that they have to enter into a contract with a private sanitation provider. Um, a couple of questions on that. Are they, are restaurants and bars currently required to do that? Yes. By code, hotels, bars and restaurants are required to do that. But like a stand-alone restaurant, a stand-alone bar, they're supposed to have a private contract? Yes. Okay. Um, the second part to that question, are they required to have a dumpster? No. There's no requirement to have a dumpster, just adequate containment. So maybe some locations just don't have space conducive to a dumpster. Okay. Um, the next question on the additional trash cart. Um, you know, we hear from people in the city all the time. 311 is not always a smooth process. And so I do have concerns about people requesting an additional cart directly through 311. Um, I guess I would tell people if, if you're having trouble, reach out to the council. But beyond that, once that request comes through, how long will it take for a resident to receive that second can? Yeah. So the service level agreement on all cart requests and new contracts is five business days. And we look at those metrics weekly with each collection contractor. And I can tell you affirmatively that it is extremely rare that they're going beyond those five business days on a cart request. So I can, I can say that with confidence that residents requesting a second cart request would receive that within the five business days. And that's after they make the request through 311? Yes. Okay. So five days. All right. Um, the litter abatement fee. Um, I wanted to know how that's collected for those properties that don't have, you know, um, a water bill, so is that added to the property tax bill for the property? How do we recoup that litter abatement fee from those properties? So my understanding of the process is that currently, Sewardsville Water Board is assessing litter abatement fee, and so if there is no active customer to that site, they will not assess it at that point. When an active customer turns on a meter at that site, they then do often do a review to determine if there are other charges applicable, but I am not aware of a process to collect it from sites that have no active water meter or water service. Alright, so it's probably safe to say we haven't been collecting that across the board. What about for those service locations that aren't eligible for service? How do we collect it? Is it still through Sewardsville Water Board? Yes, that is correct.

Just because they're not eligible for sanitation service, they are still, in my experience, overwhelmingly have water service at their locations, and those fees are assessed on their sewage and water bill. Okay. The next one is on the strike force mat. I'm excited to hear that being worked on. Any idea of how large that force will be? Yeah, it's contemplated as six labors, four equipment operators, so that would provide us with a team. Our general legal dumping team is four equipment operators, generally three dump trucks, one front end loader to pick up large debris and tires, and then the folks on the ground to assist with aggregating material, pick up litter, and so on. So that should be a very valuable addition to the city and the department. Are those going to be new hires? Is that their sole responsibility to work on this strike force? So they will be new hires, and they will be dedicated to that effort. I can't guarantee you that on every single day those specific people will be working on the strike team. I can tell you that the strike team comprised of those people will be working. It may be a different person in sanitation who's a labor, if someone's out on labor, something to that effect on that day. But we'll be able to expect this strike force to essentially be working every day throughout the city. The strike team is expected to work five days a week. Five days a week. Perfect. Okay. That's great to hear. On the numbers, Jonathan, I wanted to know, so we have 12,915, I think, that we've provided to the sanitation vendors, and they're going through the validation process. What is that like? What do they have to provide to us to challenge it and say, no, this is a legitimate address? Yeah. So again, I would reference the three categories he's fallen into, right? So one would be we might have provided an address and say the reason we're moving this is because this is a retired address. To that, it means it's a legacy or historical address. We do not believe it's an active address right now. So they provide us proof that was incorrect and that there is an active address at that site. That would be a validation. A picture of the house or something? Something of that nature. A mailbox? Yeah. Duplicates, I think, would be more difficult for them to prove, but certainly if there's some reason why a duplicate is invalid, we'll accept the argument and validate it. And then I think the final item is assessment. The assessor has certain use categories for buildings, and what we've done is basically run those use categories against the ineligible use list, and so if they provide us with evidence that we have something labeled in the assessor system, let's say, that qualifies as a restaurant, but they actually provide us evidence that it's not a restaurant, it's in fact a valid service area, a residential dwelling or something of that nature, that would be acceptable proof for us to reevaluate. We would obviously still have to validate that if it's residential, it has the four or fewer units, but that would be the type of evidence they provide. Okay. And then for the 8,000 that needs to be reviewed manually, is that included in that 12,915? No, that is a separate data set, yeah. So the total's roughly 20,000? And I think historically when you've looked at sort of the delta between service locations and billing locations, it comes to around 20,000. Now there's a complex set of data that goes into what composes that 20,000 at least, but I think that's a reasonable sort of number to use for the discrepancy we're working to close. I'm going to ask you, is there any way we'll be able to claw back additional monies that we've paid over the last few years for pickup at locations that weren't supposed to be on the list? I think that's sort of a question that we're, you know, continuing to look at, but I don't have an answer for you. Okay. I think it's worth looking at. Yeah, I mean, I think we need to look at, you know, the other point, Councilmember, too, is like, are we at a point where they paid us for things or understood? We want to make sure, obviously, if there's anything that needs to be offset, it's done correctly. Yeah, totally agree. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Council President Morrell is recognized. Thank you. I've got a couple of questions, but also a little bit of a back and forth I want to have to start. So I think it's important to kind of talk about the history of the trash contracts. The original trash contracts between Richards Disposal and Metro are from 2006, right, Mr. Tory? 2006, 2007. Right. That was originally negotiated by Mayor Ray Nagin, and then that was renegotiated in 2016 by Mayor Landrieu, correct? I don't recall the year, but we did a new ITB right around then, yes. I'm sorry, just so the public, ITB is Invitation to Bid. Thank you. Just making sure. And essentially, at that time, part of the announcement when we did that ITB in 2016 was there was $4 million in savings in regards to the contract. Is that correct? I would take you at your word, but I don't recall precisely. Well, it's important because part of the issue, and this is where the LLA really was helpful, is that the rate for the contract, the rate that ratepayers paid, has not changed since 2011. So it has been a consistent rate that has been the same. And when taxpayers, ratepayers see things like the city had $4 million in savings in 2016, your rate didn't go down. And part of that's because, as you know, Matt, the city has always been paying above what the fee is, correct? So that $4 million in savings wasn't to ratepayers. It was towards the general fund allotment that was going on top of the rate. Correct. Right. Depending on, there was always different lenses about how people were evaluating the deficit, what went into the calculation, but your assumption is correct. Right.

And there's always been, from my perspective, and at that time, as a senator and as a ratepayer, there was a disconnect between the inability for the city to communicate with the public as to what the rate was and how the rate translated into payment to the contractors and what the difference was between the two. And I think that has been kind of a fundamental miscommunication that has existed almost since the original contract in 2006. Now I want to add another wrinkle to this, because this is where, under the prior administration, I think it might have been at one of Joe's budget committees where I lost my mind, where the prior CAO suggested at one point, as one of the avenues to raise revenue to bond out the trash fee, at one point was one of the very multiple cockamamie schemes that was floated to try and generate revenue. And when that was suggested, I lost my mind, because as you know, when we have a fee structure towards residents, the fee has to be for a service. And in almost every instance, whether it be a fee for a permit, whether it be a fee for parking, every fee is tied towards that specific service. And what has been lacking, candidly, up until this point, is there was no direct correlation between the fee that was being charged for trash service and how much trash service cost. Correct? Correct. And I think no more was that more evident that after Ida, when our local trash companies kind of imploded, when we went out to bid to do the current service contract, which is one day per week plus recycling, the amount the city pays for those services went up exponentially because that was the 2023-2024 rate for that level of service, which kind of blew the lid off the fact that we've been underpaying, under-feeing for that amount to that point. And I think what's important to note, Joe, you were on the council, when did living wage pass? I think it was 20, well, I think it's actually before us, I think Councilmember Percet maybe passed it 15 or 16, and then we dusted it off again. So we passed living wage. When living wage was passed, it required that everyone pay a new rate for every, not just city employee, but every contractor that was contracting with the city of New Orleans, right? Am I correct? Jonathan's not, is that correct? Yes, sir. All right. So in 2016, when the mayor announced the renegotiation of the, sorry, when Mayor Landrieu announced the renegotiation of the contracts with Metro and with Richard, he announced that they would be paying all their employees a minimum of $10.75 per hour. Yet a year later, by council ordinance, we actually almost doubled the minimum pay that had to be made to that contractor, correct? To his employees. Correct. But we didn't change the rate. So when we did living wage, and we had a contract with Metro and Richard, where in that contract they produced, they would generate savings based upon paying their employees a lesser amount, then we, by council, a previous council by council ordinance, raised the minimum rate for those trash haulers from $10, essentially, to $15, $16, and we did not change the rate, it kind of makes sense that fast forward to Ida, everything blew up. Because when you buy, have a contract that says $10.25 is the rate I'm supposed to pay my employees, then you change that contract by council ordinance to $15 a rate, which they now have to pay their employees, while not altering the underlying contract. I support the living wage, I think people should be paid more, but I think that when the city does that you have to have the flexibility to renegotiate with your contractors because otherwise they implode. And when those new contractors came in, in 2022-2023 when we re-bid those contracts, those new contractors are paying the living wage, correct? Correct. Which is partially why those contracts are so much more expensive, correct? Correct. Okay, now all of that is to be said because the reason why I'm the sponsor of this ordinance and the reason why I support it is because the prior way of doing the trash fee was completely non-transparent. If we are going to collect a fee for trash service, the fee should be reflective of what it costs for the service. The city should not be playing like a shell game where the money comes in, the money can be moved around. It needs to be, this is how much it costs for trash service, this is the amount of people that are paying into it, this is the amount per household based upon whether you're a commercial or non-commercial customer. And that level of transparency, obviously, as Jonathan said, we're working through March to get to the right rate because there is a lot of problems with several addresses. And as the city uncovers which addresses should not be on the rolls, that will result in a savings to the city between the haulers. And when you have the ability of the city to consistently audit the addresses, if you have a transparent sanitation fee, when there are savings, the rate payers will see the savings. Because, for example, if hypothetically in any given year when you come before us, I think the way it was envisioned, Joe, is that you would come before us in the summer before budget and say, here's the rate, here's how many houses, here's what the fee's going to be. When you have people like the innovation team who go and find out maybe we're overpaying for a certain amount of households, when you're calculating that rate, if there is a savings on that direct rate, that could impact lowering the rate in a given year, correct? Absolutely. But that's the difference in what we're proposing now versus what's been proposed. So I want people to know a couple of things. The first is – oh, also, one more quick question before I go to this little bit of a rant. When you're talking about households, one of the big things that you guys are working on with the auditor is when we have apartments that have one meter but multiple residences.

Because right now, if you have got a double with one meter, you're paying one collection fee. Now, if you have one meter and you have three apartments, those apartments each call 301 and get a can, right, Matt? Yes. But they're paying one fee for three pickups, right? They shouldn't be, but that's potentially what they could be doing. There are instances where that's the case, but I will say there are – the way the sewage and water board billing system does work, you're able to add additional flags so that there are situations where there are one meter with three sanitation fees attached to it. So that's part of the difficulty we're working through is figuring out which falls into which category. Right, because part of what we're trying to do as stewards of your money is trying to figure out how we can build in different protections and different checks and balances to make sure that when locations are added, it's not just a hauler saying a new can appeared in front of this house, I'm adding them to my list. It's going to require now that not just they say it's a new can, sanitation will now double check to make sure that can is tied to an actual bill that is tied to an actual fee. And that is going to be – it's an additional onus upon the city to do that verification, but it will prevent in the future 12,000, 20,000, however many thousands of households getting trash pickup at the expense of everyone else currently paying the fee. So this isn't just about raising the fee. That is certainly part of it and not to be buried in the process, but it's about putting all these different mechanisms in place to make sure we don't have to be back with the LLA going and doing these audits, these expensive audits on an ongoing basis. We want to make sure this doesn't happen again where we have to go back and renegotiate, as Councilman Willard said, three or four years later to figure out we've been overpaying for three or four years. And, Councilmember, to that point, I leaned over to John just now. There's a member of his team, Chris Ard, who works on mapping. Part of his responsibilities coming up will be make sure we're counting right for the census. But then part of his responsibility will be making sure we're doing the counting correct because you're exactly right that we can't go through this whole process, allow the LLA to point out all these problems, have John and Matt and all these other people spend all this time, and then backslide. So there will be dedicated in-house staff at City Hall to monitoring just that. And two last points. The first is I know that we have received tremendous emails and outreach over a two-day-a-week trash pickup while we don't have it, so on and so forth. One, Matt, I know you probably know this off the top of your head. What is the current rate for trash pickup at Jefferson Parish? Almost $27. $27, right. And they do two-day-a-week trash pickup, correct? Two trash collections, yes. And they do no recycling, correct? Correct. So I want to first begin with the direct correlation is apples and oranges, not apples to apples. So if we were to get rid of recycling, recycling is about $10 million, as I understand it. Is that about right? Yeah. About $10 million. So we are going to be in constant communication with our constituents as far as what their preference is. If the preference is that we do two-day-a-week and we be like Jefferson, then that puts recycling on the table. And additionally, when you talk about the $27 versus the $32, the amount we pay for enhanced services in Area 5, which is the French Quarter, is roughly $5.5-$6 million, correct? Five. Five, okay. And that's on top of trash collection. That is for the cleanup on Bourbon Street, the Lemon Set, all of those different things. So when you talk about, like I said, the apples to oranges, apple to apples comparison, there is no French Quarter in Jefferson Parish. So that is not something that's being borne by all ratepayers. Now, I mention that not to necessarily have everybody with pitchforks, you know, picketing the quarter, but I know in communication with the CAO, with the mayor, with people with French Quarter Management District, we are looking at ways to try and recapture additional revenue from those areas to offset that $5 million. Because there are different options available to us, and we're working through those to see how we can get the French Quarter, potentially, especially our tourism partners, to contribute more money against that $5 million to potentially also lower the rate. The last thing that I want to say is that I appreciate that we have to go through this exercise. I appreciate that it is going to require a tremendous amount of messaging to the public about what is actually happening. And I just want to be clear with everyone. If we were to go to two-day a week trash pickup, I know that you've been in communication with our contracting partners, Mr. Tory. They said that if we were to do it today, when would it start? We don't think operationally Choice Week Trash Collection could start until 2028 at the earliest. Right. So if you're questioning why the council isn't jumping in with both feet into two-day a week trash pickup, it's because even if we wanted to do it two-day, we could not deliver that service to you until 2028, based upon our contracting partners saying how they would have to change the way they deliver services. So speaking for myself, what we're working with right now is, through March, figuring out how to get to the right number of households, how to figure out what the rate's going to be. Under this new process, during the summer, we will have what the actual rate is based upon those households being corrected. And we will know from you at that point, Mr. Tory, what the rate will be based upon what we're paying in these contracts as a pass-through.

I think it would be the appropriate time between now and then to communicate with our constituents, communicate with the public and say, hey, if you want two-day a week trash pickup, here are the paths we have to get there. Here are the things that would have to be cut, moved around within the contract to get to that point, and to have a conversation with the public if that's where they want to go. Because even if we wanted to do it, whether we do it now or whether we do it in the summer, they're saying an eight-month lead time, you're looking at 2028 regardless, right, Mr. Tory? Yes. Okay. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to jump in here, and I know we have several more in the queue. Let me first thank all of you at the table for your hard work. I know this is a very complex issue, and we're all doing our best to just put the city on a path to thrive financially and be her best self. And to my colleagues, you know, we all represent very different constituencies, and we're not a monolithic body. And so I'm going to do my best, as I've done over the last seven months, to represent District E. With that, let me go through some questions. Director Tory, how long have residents been able to acquire a second cart free of charge? In areas two and three, and since the new contracts went into effect in November of 2022. In areas one and four, when the new contracts went into effect in April of 2024. Okay. So if we have seen that an abysmal 3% of residents have taken advantage of this, and yet this service has been available for so long, what are we going to do so epically different to get the word out to residents that this is available? Well, I don't think we've done really much of anything as far as making the service available or aware to residents. So many residents simply don't know that a second cart is available to them, let alone for free. So I think just simply getting that information out through various channels, through social media, through newsletters, public meetings, I think we would see a significant uptick in people requesting that second cart, which is valuable to them. Yeah, so that begs the question, when are we going to start? Because we most certainly don't have to wait for this amendment to pass. I mean, we could start today, we could start tomorrow, we could have started on January 12th. So when are we going to start getting the word out? I don't have an exact date for you, but I agree with your sentiments that it could happen sooner rather than later. How many years has sanitation been running a deficit? I don't know the answer to that question off the top of my head. Has it been more than four years? Yes. More than five years? Probably. More than eight years? I don't know. Yeah, the point is, you know, when we talk about the bleeding, we've probably been bleeding for a long time. I guess the point I'm making, this deficit is not new. You know, so I just want to put that on the table. This fee increase is scheduled to take effect October 1st, is that correct? That's correct. Okay. If passed. When should residents expect to see the fee increase on their water bills? I think for October 1st. October 1st? Yes. Okay. So when this fee takes effect, will it immediately end the furloughs? Oh, that's a good question. I just spoke to the mayor about that. I don't know that it will immediately end, Councilmember, because one of the things the L.A. has consistently told us is to look at all fee collections. We know that there are a number of matters pending before the council, and the recommendation to the mayor is to lift the furloughs as the council continues to pass fees. So thank you today for passing CAV and EMS. We're looking forward to that passage on Thursday. I think also at the meeting is going to be sales tax amnesty for this and for other measures. And I think as we get that, then we're prepared to look at lifting it in the last quarter of the year. Here's what keeps me up at night, Mr. CAO. As I traverse this building, you know, city employees constantly ask me, why are you going to get me off furlough? They're pouring their hearts out that they're hurting. I literally ran into a city employee Monday in Walmart that expressed how it is just becoming so increasingly complicated to buy groceries. And so we've already asked the majority of our city's workforce to take an involuntary pay cut. And now to say, we need you to pony up an additional $8 on top of that, I know for some parts of the city, $8 is not a lot of money. But if you come to District E and talk to the senior citizens on a fixed income, $8 a month prior to Thanksgiving, prior to Christmas, it's a lot of money for a lot of working families and a lot of people who are on fixed incomes. Let me just say another thing about the residents of District E. You know, every home in my district was wiped out during Katrina. Not a single home was spared. And you know, insurance companies didn't make majority of my constituents whole. So many of them depleted 401ks and savings accounts to rebuild and reinvest in this great city. The point is, they don't have a nest egg that they're just sitting on. They don't have a windfall of cash that they can rely on. And I'm not telling you all what I suspect or I conjecture. I'm telling you all what they tell me on a pretty regular, frequent basis. So I just want us to be mindful of that. Let me talk about the strike teams for a second. Will this require new people and new equipment? It will require new people, not new equipment. Okay. What is the total cost to the taxpayers for the strike team? The cost for the 10 people identified is approximately $575,000, loaded employee costs. $575,000, and that would be recurring? Annual. Okay.

When would the strike team take effect? When will the residents see it implemented and stood up? What's the date, day one? Assuming the council passes this ordinance, we would begin immediately hiring the strike team in September and October. So you would probably see the strike team start to operate at the end of September, beginning of October, realistically. Okay. All right. How will the strike team specifically improve the city's response to illegal dumping, particularly in areas where dumping is persistent? So right now, residents' only avenue to have illegal dumping remediated is to call 311. Those requests are added to the queue, and then we're addressing the queue and the order received. And with limited resources, right now our average age of our pending request is right around 28 days. So you're waiting at least a month, usually, for your request to get fulfilled, which is an extremely long time. Now that's down significantly from where it's been over the past two years, but that's still longer than we would like. The strike team would be dedicated to people that would be able to provide immediate and focused attention to public health or hazards at the direction of stakeholders. So if someone called and said, there is a large pile of debris in this area, the strike team could, within 24 to 48 hours, mobilize and then go clear that debris from that area. Thank you. Mr. CAO, let me ask you this, because I'm going to be doing two special town hall meetings next week to interact with my constituents, and this question is likely to come up. Why are we allowing this fee to take effect in October, basically giving the residents, I guess, about a month's time to prepare, rather than January? Well, I think there's a couple answers to that, Councilmember. One is, we have been talking about trying to do this fee much earlier than we were able to. As a result of all of the information that Councilmember Morrell spoke about, we were delayed in having it because it was more important to get the right answer than get a rushed answer. And so, as a result of the fact that we wanted to make sure that the fee was being done correctly, that we needed to make sure that we had the appropriate amount of time. Number two, I would say, is also to the point you raised earlier, which is, we are trying to seek additional revenue in ways that we can. Obviously, some of that is through cost savings. Some of that is through raising fees, which will be before the Council, or at least get introduced on November 3rd. And then some, I'm sorry, on September 3rd. And then some of that is also through additional raised new revenue. So again, the goal here in trying to both talk about how to make the city whole financially, trying to get through the cash crunch at the end of the year, trying to get people off of furlough are dependent on all of those things happening, and this is part of that. All right. Well, again, thank you all. I really mean that sincerely for your work and to the LLA team. You all have been just spectacular partners, and we really, really appreciate you all. And I really thank my colleagues, you know, for, we're all trying to do our best to tackle this. I'm going to say again, we're not monolithic. I don't know where I'm going to land on this when we vote on this next week, but I look forward to engaging with the residents of the Lower Ninth Ward on Tuesday at 6 p.m. And the residents of New Orleans East on Wednesday at 6 p.m. And my vote will be guided by the people that I serve. If I could answer your question on communications, I check with the team. So their city communications will begin to roll out about the extra cans in September. So next week we'll get those communications out, and obviously would appreciate your support and the support of the council in messaging that to your constituents as well. Absolutely. I'll start messaging that at my two town halls next week. Thank you. Council Member McCarran is recognized. Thank you, Chairmember Hughes. I just have a couple of things. We talked about, you know, some of the things that residents are interested in is what you will do annually to review the sanitation costs. Can you kind of talk about what kind of evaluation of services versus costs and versus the needs of residents? Any benchmarking that you are going to be doing of other comparable cities, evaluating whether the contracts still meet competitive or whether they are competitively priced, looking for a route, technology, operational efficiencies, and then sort of identifying opportunities to reduce costs without reducing services. Is that something that you'll be doing on this annual basis and then coming to council and explaining, you know, what the new costs will be and what residents can expect? So at its core, we'll be communicating what that cost of service is comprised of, right? So you have the collection costs across the five service areas of the city. You have the disposal costs that's associated with those collections. In those service areas, the administrative fee associated with collection of this sanitation fee through a sewage and water board, and then the strike team, right? So we'll talk about what the makeup is and how those fees are changing year over year, right? So there's various components to that. Largely, they're driven by consumer price index inflation adjustments. All of our contracts include those on the collection side, on the disposal side. They are set to different benchmarks. The collection contracts are very specifically set to a subcategory of garbage and trash collection within the CPI index. So we will provide what that was year over year, how we came to forecast the upcoming year and provide information on that. So just folks have at least confidence in what that cost basis is, and again, that we're only including the cost of service as we've committed to.

But to your point, certainly, I mean, right now, we meet weekly with all of our collection contractors to review performance metrics. It is one of the most important tools that we have at our disposal to see how our contractors are doing. So in their contracts, they have those service level agreements for the 311 requests. We're looking to see not only are they fulfilling requests within those prescribed timeframes, but what does the volume of complaints look like? Are we seeing trends there? Are we seeing increases in certain service request types that would lead to issues potentially being present? So that information will be incredibly helpful, and we'll certainly share that with the Council. I can tell you all, as Councilmember Morrell alluded to, the journey we've been on over the past years, that data has been extremely beneficial in shaping our new contracts and evaluating those contracts. So many of you all remember the hard times after Hurricane Ida, when we were receiving over 1,400, 1,500 miscollection requests a month. And it was overwhelming, not only 311 and the sanitation collection contractors, but also your offices, because you were receiving many of them. Right now, we receive less than 300 miscollection complaints a month, so down 80% from that peak in 2022. And of those miscollection complaints, many of them are invalid, and we're able to discern that because we have technology that's required in these contracts for GPS, cameras, and route management software that allows us to actually see what's happening at a point to know, did a resident actually put their cart out before the truck passed, or did it pass and the cart wasn't there, and therefore, of course, it couldn't have been picked up. Taking in all of those inputs will certainly be a part of assessing the performance of our contractors. Looking at our peer neighboring parishes in Louisiana and around the country, around rates to see what they're looking, what they are and how we compare will be a factor in it as well and we can bring all that information to bear at the annual submission of what that fee is going to look like. Great. Yeah, I think that would be helpful for transparency for residents to understand what strenuous process you guys do go through when you're reviewing and what data the haulers are providing for that annual contract review. That was a big topic on one of my email threads with residents of talking about the mistakes of the past and how we can move forward to correct that. I want to briefly touch on the strike team. I know we've talked about it a lot and sanitation rangers, but are we also going to review the effectiveness of that team on an annual basis to see if that needs to be revised? I know in the Carrollton area, we're dealing with two universities that have a significant amount of trash. Students leave their trash carts out. There's a lot of trash left over and the trash haulers do help us a significant amount, but also at some point we need enforcement over there. Are you guys going to be making sure? What kind of metrics are you going to be using to measure the effectiveness of the strike team and whether or not you need to add additional folks on there or if you need to mix it up per district? We all have similar needs, but I think everybody has a certain specific need to their district. As an operational team within the Department of Sanitation focused on illegal dumping and litter removal, we will look at metrics around responsiveness, the turnaround time on requests and the volume of requests that we're able to fulfill. Those will be our primary metrics that we'll look at. Certainly, as we roll this out, we'll communicate what that plan is as far as taking direction from stakeholder groups. We've all talked about the council being one of those stakeholder groups and individual council offices being able to have periods of time where they direct the efforts of the strike force to specific neighborhoods, to specific areas of the city to work and do that. So yes, I think as with anything that we stand up, it is prudent to have some type of audit and review and evaluation process each year. Great. Can I just jump in here for a second? I know when I sat in your chair that I always feared move-in dates in particular. As we're thinking about this, there's always going to be annual times that I think we need to be more sensitive to. So I think just, again, to bootstrap to Matt's point, obviously looking at volume and what the needs are is really important, but we also know move-in is always going to happen at this time of the year. So therefore, we ought to be deploying the strike force to that area at that point to try and make your job easier. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I would appreciate that. That would greatly help some neighbors in that area. I mean, look, I've been talking about this. We've been talking about this for several months now. I've been talking with residents in my district about it. No one is ever happy to have to pay more. I think it is helpful that we had the legislative auditor, and I appreciate the work that you all did to help us get these numbers. And I know we still have some work to do, but I appreciate you, Jonathan, for having to sift through all that data. It's not something that I would want to do, but I appreciate that. It is helpful that we are able to have the tools to explain to residents exactly what happened in the past, and then how we are correcting that and not making the same mistake that we have made year over year in the past to be in this deficit and to be in this situation. So I do appreciate that. And like Councilmember Hughes said, I'll spend the next week continuing to talk to residents about this and just kind of give them a heads up on what's happening. But I appreciate all the work that has been done on this, so thank you. Councilmember Harris is recognized. Thank you. I have a couple of follow-up questions sparked by this discussion.

First, on the illegal dumping, are we going to increase any signage or cameras to try to capture people who are actually illegally dumping? I mean, I hope. I hope so. I can tell you that I participated in an illegal dumping task force called by the state on Friday. It was the first meeting of the task force that's comprised of members of DEQ, sheriff and enforcement agencies, members of our DA's office. And the majority of our conversations focus around enforcement and what can we do to improve enforcement. I know the DA is hosting a training next month, which many members of entities that deal with illegal dumping, sanitation, police, and other groups, code enforcement will participate in. So to answer your question, yes. I think there will be improvements when it comes to enforcement and figuring out what that, those enhancements look like will be determined. I would rather, in many ways, increase our enforcement of illegal dumping of households that have overflowing trash cans of businesses that we know are chronically putting trash out, doing illegal dumping, than have all of this money fall on the backs of our residents. So I would hope that you take a hard look at how we can increase penalties and actual prosecutions for illegal dumping around our city. That brings me to my next question. I asked you this when we met on this, again, 825 increase for residential customers, 1650 for non-residential customers. Where do short-term rentals fall on the spectrum of commercial versus non-commercial? Council Member, I can address that if it's okay. So we plan to use the comprehensive zoning ordinance as our guide to defining some of those trickier areas. The way that short-term rentals are listed in the CZO, there's two categories. One STR non-commercial, one STR commercial. Oh, where? The STR commercial, to our understanding, would be assessed the non-residential fee. The STR non-commercial, to our understanding, would be assessed the residential. So we need to take a look at our CZO in amending it so that we can assess a higher fee to short-term rentals. So we're trying to get this cost off the backs of our residents and onto, quite frankly, our visitors and where we know that there is illegal activity happening. Our offenders of illegal dumping, but also if you're visiting our city and you have an overflowing STR trash can, I don't want to have to call Sidney Torres and ask him to come get it. There should be an additional fee assessed. So we will work with you on amending the CZO on that. Yeah, thank you. And Councilmember, in fairness, if you're operating a short-term rental, you are essentially operating a commercial endeavor in a residential place. So therefore, it makes sense that you're paying a commercial price for using the property in that way. Absolutely. I want to go to our conversation about our constituents are not a monolith. I know that recycling is very important for the residents of District B throughout the district. Certainly, I do not want to get rid of recycling, but maybe we explore an option where recycling is optional and people who want to opt in pay more of a price for it. But I do think that we need to take a look at our, as we're doing campaign comms or comms around this, we need to do comms around proper recycling. We also need to do comms around our partnership with Glass Half Full, which Kevin, you and I talked about expanding glass recycling to Nord facilities. And I want to really dig into that before I vote on this, because I think we need to make sure that glass recycling is an option for the public at Nord facilities. Look, I agree. We're fortunate. I know in your district, you've got the Mardi Gras Indian Council headquarters. I dropped my glass off there. Councilmember Hughes, in your district, you've got Glass Drop-Off as well. Those are great assets that bring a lot of people out, and we certainly want to find opportunities to expand that. I think looking at this, the goal was to try to keep the increase as minimal as possible, but know that we're committed to the messaging and I'm committed to finding some resources, whether they're grants, to allow us to do those expansions as well. To the point about recycling, I know we can get an additional trash can, but can we get an additional recycling can under this rubric? Not currently, no. The city still covers the cost of recycling carts, so we're limited on being able to provide one recycling cart to each household. So if my household is one that is magnificent at recycling and I need two carts for recycling and I would need to call and pay for one? Currently, yes. I can tell you as well, compact as much as you can. The cardboard especially, which is voluminous. You can even break down large cardboard boxes and put it next to the recycling cart to give yourself some additional space there, but unfortunately, yes, we are just constrained financially right now in being able to offer more than one recycling cart per location. Okay, let's get into that. To the LLA, I want to thank you for your work. I read your report backwards and forwards. I do want to focus on page six of this. Baton Rouge does twice a week trash collection and weekly recycling collection at a cost of $35.23. What is the difference between Baton Rouge and our city? Chris McGee, legislative auditor. It's just that they offer those services twice a week and recycling services once a week. I believe that there's one contractor for the city for the services, so there's a slightly different delivery model, but in terms of the delivery of the core services, it's the same. So, Baton Rouge, around $35.23 gets twice a week trash pickup and once a week recycling? That's correct. That's as of calendar year 25. As noted in the column to the far right, that likely increased based on inflation this year to $37 something maybe, but you're correct.

Have you guys dug into tonnage or the amount of trash that they pick up versus New Orleans? We did not look at tonnage in that manner across the parishes or cities. We looked at tonnage only for the city in our previous report. Did you look at tipping distance? For example, I think that Baton Rouge has a closer place to tip versus us. No, we did not compare how the tipping fees are applied nor how far they are from it. It was just the fee itself. Right. I mean, look, if I'm an average citizen looking at the Baton Rouge model versus our model, I'd want to know why they pay the amount that they pay and get the services that they get. And so, to the extent that you can dig a little more into Baton Rouge versus what we're doing, I think that would be helpful to explain to people why we can't get twice a week trash pick up and recycling like Baton Rouge does. Thank you. Council Member Green is recognized. Thank you all for being here today and your presentations are greatly appreciated. I know it's a challenging set of circumstances, especially when we've had fees remain the same in certain areas for so long. But I'm going to ask you about two things. One, first off, I want to start off with a positive, which is what I like to do. Thank you for the sanitation cleanup crews, especially on yesterday. We did a massive cleanup on state-owned property on the I-610, which is something that we do on a very regular basis, and people don't recognize that that is something that we do as a city. So, thank you to your sanitation crews. They did an outstanding job and even worked with a couple of the people who were in need. Well, that also brings me to concerns that people have. We talked about increasing the number of strike force members and teams, and to many members of the public, especially those who are in areas that are beset with illegal dumping, especially in the 7th Ward, under elevated expressways, to them that seems to be an invitation to the criminals who come in now from other parishes to continue to dump, or to those who have no regard for their own communities and others to do more dumping. Can you talk about the strike force and let the public know that should this come to pass, and there's a lot to be done, I'll be attending meetings myself, that we are addressing this illegal dumping in a larger manner? Yeah, certainly, Council Member Green, I know this has been a major issue for you to advocate on, but the holistic view of illegal dumping, certainly, continuously just picking up debris from the same locations over and over again is not solving the problem. We need to come up with a way to deter people from dumping and then enforce violations against the perpetrators who are doing it in our communities, often at the expense of not just paying the cost of doing business, as you know. So I am optimistic that this task force that the state has convened, this is the first time of recent, for me, that a task force has been convened by the state, the stakeholders on it are the folks that actually can affect change, DEQ, and changing regulations. There's talk of changing fine levels, and the folks that are actually our partners on the enforcement, whether that's NOPD, Sheriff, the DA, are at the table of this task force and coming up with real solutions to bring that enforcement to bear. So while, as envisioned, this strike team will be able to provide some immediate relief in removing illegal dumping from neighborhoods and improving the direct quality of life of residents, which is, of course, of importance, we do need to focus on making sure that that debris doesn't just quickly come back to those neighborhoods. Thank you. So the message to the constituents that I'm going to be seeing over the next few days is that should this come to pass, we're not just going to have strike forces that are going to go out and pick up this incredible amount of illegal dumping material that is deposited by these criminal elements, that we're working with the state of Louisiana, we're going to be working with New Orleans Police Department to enhance the level of services that stop this illegal dumping. Yes, absolutely. I think that's our goal. There's a lot to do in this city. And I think we all agree that we spend a lot of time in the same areas picking up repeated amounts of debris. Right. The second issue that I have is relative to the changes that have taken place in terms of services since we initiated some of these contracts and since we had those rates established in 2011, in our new set of contracts, there are features that many times people don't see. Could you talk about some of those features? What is different? What level of service enhancement may have been, may have taken place since we had the initial fees that were established in 2011? Yeah, the overreaching goal of these new contracts was to provide an enhanced level of service to residents. And it came in a couple different ways. I mean, the most visible way to residents is the equipment that's out there on the roads. So this contract required new equipment, brand new equipment for this contract, and different equipment types. So not just rear load garbage trucks. It introduced automated trucks that operate in Area 3. All service contractors operate what we refer to as grapple trucks, which are trucks that have a dumpster on the back and a claw with an operator that's able to pick up large pieces of equipment. So they're able to pick up mattresses, furniture, large piles of vegetation, eviction debris, things of that nature. And on those pieces of equipment, it required certain pieces of technology. So GPS, 360 degree view cameras, as well as route management. So all of that coupled together provided a significant improvement in the level of service as far as reliability. As I mentioned, we've seen an 80% reduction in miscollection complaints since our peak in 2022. But also, our contractors pick up everything that's on the curb.

And we know that people in New Orleans put things out outside of car. If you put a couch out and two mattresses, that will get picked up. If you put multiple chairs out and 10 bags of grass and leaves, that'll get picked up. If you have white goods, appliances, if you have four tires, if you have e-waste, that'll get picked up. So that's a huge change, that nothing is being left at these collection points, and that we have the equipment that does it, the equipment does it efficiently. We're not leaving debris behind. The folks have bad memories of leaving liquids behind trash collection throughout the city that had odorous smells there. We had trucks that were emitting pollution into the air as they collected throughout our neighborhoods. We're not having that happen now. We're only operating five days a week. When we were in our previous collection contracts, we operated Monday through Saturday. We only operate Monday through Friday now, which means no trucks are in neighborhoods on a Saturday. No carts should be out on a Saturday. That's not only a benefit to the residents of those neighborhoods, but also the roads, because we have less trucks on our roads, causing damage to them, resulting in repairs. Outside of the physical equipment, the other major priority was around the actual people providing this work. So providing a living wage, ensuring that comprehensive benefits were provided, ensuring that PPE, protective equipment, was made available to them, and uniforms when they were working. We've seen all of that happen. The annual adjustments that are made to these contracts through the consumer price index adjustments are reinvested both into assets and people. So people are seeing raises, and we see a very competitive workforce with high wages at these companies, which is exactly what we want to see, is people being rewarded for the hard work that they do on a daily basis. Feel free to take what you just said or copy it and share it on social media. I have a two-page document that I share with people when they ask about what is the difference between 2011 and now, and it mentions some of those features that you just mentioned. So I just think that when people are looking at issues such as living wages, fair wages that are being paid to people now, the lack of pollution that exists now relative to what happened previously, and also just some other factors that they recognize that some sort of change is necessary since then. But those factors that you mentioned would be great in a one- or two-pager that came from the Department of Sanitation that I could direct people to and say, here are the differences that you need to feel and understand. But thank you for that. And once again, I want to go back to where I started. I'm appreciative because I represent a district that includes a lot of areas that are almost remote in certain areas, the Ninth Ward, near bridges. It includes interstates that drive through at I-10, I-610, overpasses, Almonaster, France Road overpass. The Department of Sanitation crews come with the right attitude, but they also respond pretty well. And I just want to say to them, especially those who are watching, such as who were out there yesterday doing a tremendous job in the midst of needles, in the midst of unfortunately bodily waste, getting the job done, it's appreciated. Thank you. Chairman King is recognized. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. I know it's been a long day, a long presentation. I have two quick questions. Can you explain why the deficit that the Sanitation Department, the sanitation fee our department is running, it continues to increase since 2023 until now, it's almost $20 million, gone from $5.5 to $24.5 million. But the population is steadily decreasing. People are having a hard time understanding that. Can you explain it to anyone? Yeah, absolutely. So as CAO Drusso alluded to, the cost of service to provide by these sanitation services to residents has increased as the new contracts have come online. So we saw the first two new contracts for areas two and three going from the lakefront all the way to New Orleans East started in November of 2022. Right there at the tail end, you start to see some additional costs coming in in 2022. We also had additional costs that we were incurring as we were trying to wrap up the old contracts and supplement the work that was being performed there. So if you look, you see some additional costs here on disposal and other things that we were incurring. You see those new contract costs when we saw the adjustment and right sizing of those started right there at the end of 2022. And then the new contracts for areas one and four, which covered the East Bank and the West Bank started in April of 2024. So you see that come on midway through 2024. 2025 is the first year we're seeing the full contract cost of those new contractual services and the benefits and enhanced services that I talked about. And then each year, we're seeing an annual CPI adjustment to those contracts. And historically, that's been, you know, above 4% based on the rate of inflation. So you're seeing a 4% adjustment to those contracts each year, which explains when we look from 2025 to 2026, now that the contracts are all in place, why we're seeing an increase in collection costs there. Okay. Thank you for that explanation. Not a question, but I just want to give CAO Jerusalem the opportunity to explain if we continue to go the same route with the deficit growing, like, just give us the scenario of what's going to happen in the future. Well, I mean, Councilmember, I already presented at the last meeting, but it's stark. You know, we found a lot of one-time money collectively between the council and the administration to make up for this year. But the bottom line is, for the last couple of years, expenses haven't met revenues, and it's not been a balance where it's been close. It's been completely out of whack.

Almost think about it like a scale, and it's not even close. One side, the expenses are way higher than the revenues. The unfortunate reality, as I'm listening to everybody up here, is this. These should have been changed earlier, and now this council and this administration has to deal with that. The fact is, you've had other taxes that haven't been increased in probably 15 or 10 years. You've had fees that haven't been increased in 10 or 15 years. You've had the sanitation fee that hasn't been increased in 10 or 15 years. And so, Councilmember, while we know that there's going to be cuts in this budget coming up, I think what we're all concerned about is when we have a series of tough choices to make collectively, how to minimize what those tough choices are. And unfortunately, part of that minimization, not elimination, but minimization, is raising additional revenue to make sure that services are being provided. I think Councilmember Green also made a really good point, too, which is, you know, I was here during and after Ida with the trash, and I can't tell you how many emails I got. And at the time, I got so frustrated that I copied the deputy CAO on all of them because there was no response to what we were doing. and the outpouring from residents, you know, the hard part is if you want good quality service, then you've got to pay for what you're getting. And we have not managed the total number of addresses as a city the way that it ought to be. We have not made sure that things have lined up the way that they ought to. But when you have good partners, you need to treat them like your partner. You need to make sure that people are being paid appropriately, you need to make sure services are being delivered. And I would just argue, I think for all of us, that when you talk about public safety and quality life services, sanitation is at the top of the list, and we've just got to make sure that collectively we're doing better. And I know, I'll say this for you, I know it is a burden for this council to have to undertake this decision. You did not create it, you got it. And the reality, unfortunately, is as we are so far apart in our revenues from meeting expenses that now we've got to start doing the very difficult things together. And while I don't presume to know what the council is going to do, I do want to thank you all for taking this up because it is a challenging issue and not one constituents are rooting for. So I do appreciate the fact that collectively you've taken so much time and effort in bringing this forward. Thank you. As the saying goes, heavy is the head that wears the crown, and leadership isn't easy, so we have a tough decision to make. My last ask is, explain the $1.2 million sewage and water board fee. As if I'm a third grader, like what is it for, what are they doing, can we scale that back some? Please explain. I got this one. Council Member, I can address that question. So sewage and water board includes the sanitation fee and all the bills that they're pushing out, so that's about $140,000 a month. They help to deal with customer issues, so if someone has a concern, they feel like a sanitation fee has been placed on their bill, but it should not have been. They call sewage and water board to figure out whether or not that is the case and to provide the evidence they have to contest that charge. And then they also upkeep the system as they get additional information from the city and they provide information to the city regarding litter abatement certifications. So they do the ongoing upkeep and maintenance of the system, they send out the bills, they collect the funding, they remit that funding to the city, and they deal with the customer facing complaints. Those are sort of the main duties. I don't understand it. So it's essentially, Council Member, it's an administrative fee. So in other words, because the city right now doesn't generate monthly bills, we generate the yearly bills for property tax, sewage and water board has their water and their sewer fee that goes out monthly. So as part of what they do, they also collect the $24 from residents for sanitation. That means sewage and water board has to collect all the money, sewage and water board has to reconcile all the money, sewage and water board has to transmit the money. As John is saying, they have to go through a complaint process. So there is a cost in fairness to sewage and water board, and trust me, I'm no sewage and water board apologist, but there is a cost in fairness to the utility for the work that they're doing, and they're charging us for that. Now I think what you're also getting at is, is a $1.2 million commensurate with the work that's being done on behalf of the city? And I will tell you, I had the exact same question, and Adam Swenzik's working on that right now. Well, if Mr. Swenzik's on the job, I feel very comfortable. I'm not being callous, I'm facetious, Mr. Swenzik, I know you're on it. Thank you. If I could maybe add one thing to that, I know, and this answers a question from Councilmember Willard earlier, about those addresses that do not have a sewage and water board meter. John's team and Chris Hart are looking at that database of addresses, and one of the things that we've talked about, is there any possibility to get away from transmitting these fees through sewage and water board, and having something that is an in-house tracking on that, which would obviously also reduce some of that cost, but to make sure we're capturing fees from people that may not have an active water board meter as well. Quick question, Kevin. Does every property in the city pay that litter abatement fee? No, if you pay the sanitation fee, you're exempt from the litter abatement fee. You pay it if you're exempt from the sanitation. So, pay one or the other. But every address is paying one or the other, though? That's how it should be. It's supposed to be? Yes. Okay.

Again, that's all through that sewage and water board meter, which is why I think the work they're doing to kind of explore what another option could look like, is really important as we move this forward long-term, so we're not in this situation in the future. Well, I mean, it actually is, though, but what if it's a property that doesn't have the meter? How do you collect that litter abatement fee? That's what I was trying to get to originally, and that's what you're working through? Right. A property without a meter potentially also doesn't have a customer associated for them to bill, so we have less logistical ways to do it, but that's something that we can certainly work through. But if it doesn't have a meter, it's probably vacant, and they're probably having blight and dumping, and certainly that property is exacerbating the problem that we have, chronic problem we have in the city. So I think there's a strong argument that they should be paying at a minimum that litter abatement fee. That's all I have. Can I just jump in here, Chair, for one second? Sure. Vacant lot fee, Council Vice President, I'm happy to work with you on that. That's exactly the thought, is there are all these vacant lots that are overgrown, have litter on them, have no meter, have no trash, and so we as a city have to take the cost of bearing and upkeeping those, so let's do that. Thank you all. Thank you all. The board is clear. We have two members of the public that have been waiting very patiently, Chris Lang, followed by Morgan Clevenger. And thank you both for your patience throughout this hearing. Good afternoon, Council. My name is Chris Lang. I live at 2500 Dauphine Street. God, there's so much to say. I want to start with I don't unequivocally oppose a sanitation fee increase. I was working here, and I knew that that was the case since 2011, and I knew that that would be an inevitable situation. The way in which it's being handled right now I think is also inappropriate and concerning, the fact that it's being pushed explicitly onto this additional expense and budget deficit renegotiation, being pushed onto just residents without also looking at the waste contracts themselves, is doing a disservice to the people who are overpaying. I'm looking explicitly at the recycling portion. For technical proposals, each waste contractor submits both a trash and a recycling collection. They are paid on a per-household basis, as if the 164,000 households are all opting into that, right? So for trash, this is not really as relevant, but for recycling, that is about $6.1 million that we lose each year out of contract inefficiency. We could have resolved that. You guys decided not to take free funding to bridge that gap by providing people with recycling carts who haven't yet opted in. I would say for communications, you could have easily, you can resolve this. The mayor has every influencer on either payroll, or she's best friends with everybody, so you could easily be able to make a mass effort to make recycling, make the trash cart available. With the additional 20,000 resident households that we've been paying for as a city that the waste collectors are not actually collecting for, it sounds like, that's another about $5.7 million. So that's basically $12 million of inefficient waste contracts through bad data and through a lack of providing recycling cart access. There's so much more to say, but I have two minutes. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lange. Ms. Lynn Clevenger. Good afternoon. A lot has been said here today, and I want to thank some of our council members, Jason, member Hughes, especially for really being proactive about your constituents to the point where you're going to have town halls. That's very meaningful, because I think the biggest fear here right now is that we have not had enough community engagement to see this fee come out on October 1st of this year. And this information that we've received today brings up so many questions about, as you all have asked, and that the public, I'm sure, has many, many questions about in terms of – I have to just start with – there's so much here – I start with what happened in 2011, and we haven't had a fee increase. But we did have a reduction in services, and we can't keep saying we've had increased services because we had a reduction in services. And after Hurricane Ida, our neighborhood, we actually went and organized and picked up the garbage that had been sitting for weeks in the Seventh Ward, and we picked it up for a week after Ida. So we understand what picking up garbage is about, but we didn't get credited for our $24. But we also know that there are way too many questions and unresolved pieces of information, and I think until we have those answers, until we understand what the profits are with these contracts – because for most of my life in New Orleans, garbage service was a municipal service. It was in-house. And what are the profits of the contractors? We said, oh, we don't want, as a city, to make a profit, but the contractors are making a profit. Are they making money on each of these, do the contracts say? All these addresses, these $20,000, have you been making money on that? Even though you're not picking up over there, or you are, they can life me. But I think we need to push this. Don't do it October 1st. Protect yourself. Thank you, Ms. Clevenger. The board is clear. Gentlemen, thank you all for presenting today. Really appreciate it. And to our auditors, again, thank you for your partnership. We send our best to Auditor Wagespat. This will go to the September 3rd regular agenda of the City Council. So with that, I will move that we adjourn, seconded by Councilmember King. We stand adjourned. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.