City of Bloomington, MN Council Minute 2021, 6 Oct 2021

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From YouTube: Council Minute October 6

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Mayor Tim Busse provides a recap of the Monday night Council meeting, including an update on the tobacco ordinance, bulky item management and an invite to fire station open houses.

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Hello bloomington, I'm mayor tim bussey, and this is the council minute for the week of october, 4th.

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At our council meeting on monday night, the city council heard an update on the new plan.

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To manage large bulky items in a way different than our current curbside cleanup program.

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You may remember, we talked about this back in september on a council minute, but here's.

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Some details of the plan, the new program, will include a reimagined curbside cleanup.

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Event that will take place every other year and small items that could fit into a large.

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Garbage cart would no longer be accepted during the new cleanup program. It will also include a.

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Regular pickup of reusable and recyclable items, an annual drop-off event for recyclable items.

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Swap events for the exchange of items like sporting goods or gardening tools and additional.

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Information about where and how people can reuse and recycle items throughout the year.

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The reason behind these changes is pretty clear: we want to reuse and recycle more and landfill.

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Less now, I know full well that the curbside cleanup program is very popular, but it also.

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Costs a lot, the haulers are having a harder time getting the equipment and the people.

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Necessary to do the program and it is not at all environmentally sustainable. The program generates.

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Tons of garbage literally tons of garbage, listen to this for reference in 2020, the city-wide trash.

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Pickup program throughout the entire year totaled about 19 900 tons of trash collected also in 2020.

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In just five days of curbside cleanup activities, it generated 1, 900 tons of trash. That's almost.

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Nine percent of the city's total in just five days and the bad part, is all of that tonnage.

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Goes to landfills. We're not allowed to take the garbage collected during curbside cleanup down.

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To the hennepin county garbage burner downtown, it all goes to landfills and landfills are the.

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Least environmentally acceptable way to deal with trash. Bloomington has come out in opposition to.

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The expansion of landfills, like the one just south of the river in burnsville, these changes have been.

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In the works for some time now, back in 2019, the city council asked the sustainability commission.

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To look for ways to make the curbside cleanup program more environmentally sustainable, while.

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Maintaining a service that I know a lot of people in the city really appreciate so after thoroughly.

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Studying the issue and putting out recommendations generating a lot of feedback and suggestions from.

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Members of the community, they reviewed what other cities were doing very successfully.

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They looked at the literature, they brought it all together, so it would fit within the values.

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Of the city of bloomington- and they came forward with these new proposals that I think will reduce.

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And reuse more and landfill, less, basically, a win-win for all of us. The changes will roll.

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Out next year in 2022, so be on the lookout for more information very soon. Also, on monday night.

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The city council received an update on next steps regarding the tobacco ordinance that the.

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City council passed back in april of this year. If you recall, the council banned the sale of flavored.

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Tobacco, including menthol, and put a sunset on tobacco retail licenses effectively ending the.

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Sale of tobacco in the city of bloomington over a number of years, one of the things we did do.

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Was delay the implementation of both of these policies in order to give retailers time to plan.

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We asked city staff to work with retailers to come up with alternatives and ways to ease the.

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Transition into this through those meetings, a number of conversations with the retailers.

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A staff put together a matrix of different options about possibilities about how the city could.

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Ease this transition for retailers. Unfortunately, none of the options presented in the matrix were.

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Acceptable to the city council, a couple of options were already in the works. For example, retailers.

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Asked about food trucks, that's on the work plan for the city in 2022, so that's already underway.

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We also talked about business assistance, that's already available through the city and.

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Retailers asked about the possibility of electric vehicle charging stations at their.

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Retail establishments, city staff is investigating federal funding options that would help retailers.

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Install electric vehicle charging stations at their place of business bloomington has had a.

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Long history of being at the forefront of health initiatives in the state of minnesota, especially.

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When it comes to tobacco, this is another example of a forward-thinking, innovative policy that will.

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Keep tobacco out of the hands of our youth. Finally, today, I'm here at bloomington fire station number.

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Three because it's fire prevention week, which means that each of the bloomington fire stations.

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Will be hosting their fire station open houses this saturday from 10 a.m, to 1 p.m? There will.

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Be gatorade there will be cookies. Firefighters will be on hand to hand out hats and stickers.

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And other goodies, but the best part, of course, is you'll, be able to crawl around on fire trucks.

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And bonus snow plows, because our firefighters are very safety, conscious, masks and social distancing.

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Will be required, but please do join us saturday, ten to one at all of our fire stations. It'll be.

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Great for kids, but it's also important for adults, make sure you come as well we're going to have.

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Some important community-wide discussions about bloomington's fire department in the coming months.

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Come to a fire station, look around put your eyeballs on exactly what we'll be talking about.

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In terms of facilities and equipment, the more you know the better that will do it for this.

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Week's council minute, thank you so very much for joining me until next time stay safe, bloomington,.