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Minutes - Regular Meeting <br /> Solid Waste Advisory Board <br /> December 3, 2009 <br /> Approved January 11, 2010 <br /> members had a concern about fit and price tag . So we did a survey and launched it in <br /> October and I ' ll share the results of that. <br /> Our objective was to first get input from rural residents about waste services . That is <br /> kind of our mission as an organization . Our focus is only rural residents . We don' t <br /> get involved with Chapel Hill, Carrboro or Hillsborough issues . We wanted to know <br /> what [rural] residents' preferences were for garbage and recycling services and <br /> understand their usage patterns, needs and priorities today and a little bit about <br /> tomorrow . We wanted to see if we could get a pulse on new services and fees from <br /> these residents . <br /> We also wanted to test some of the ideas . We couldn' t say do you want to do waste <br /> franchising because they wouldn' t know what we were talking about. We tried to <br /> formulate questions that would try to solicit their interest in certain kinds of services <br /> and fees . We wanted to test the specific things that the solid waste department is <br /> looking at and hoped to get a sense of the bigger picture . What do these things mean? <br /> We know the county is under a lot of pressure to cut cost and to improve recycling <br /> rates, so we wanted to see if there were anything in the survey results that we thought <br /> could have implications for that. <br /> Here is who responded to the survey . Josh [Katrinsky] is here from the News of <br /> Orange . The News of Orange and other channels helped up publicize the survey . We <br /> got about 900 rural households . The rules were one survey per household, we kicked <br /> out any surveys that had two surveys from the same address, and you had to live in <br /> rural Orange County . If you lived in Town - Hillsborough, Chapel Hill, or Carrboro <br /> we kicked it out. We kicked out about 40 responses because they failed those tests of <br /> the rules . <br /> What we did to get people to participate, we publicized in the News of Orange, sent <br /> out notices on our own website, and because we were trying to go to the rural <br /> community, we went to churches, fire departments and a couple of convenience stores <br /> throughout the county . We went to stores that rural residents frequent, the Cedar <br /> Grove library and some other places to actually get the survey out to people . There <br /> were 881 people that responded after we were done . About 12 . 5 % use garbage <br /> collection, 86 . 5 % have dirt or gravel driveways, 40 % have driveways longer than 250 <br /> feet and there is a group of folk that like to recycle . We think this is a little different <br /> from the sample of folks you would see if you went in town or the folks the solid <br /> waste department is dealing with on a broader basis . <br /> That really excited us because I think you know that we started as a Bingham group <br /> opposing an airport in Bingham Township . Each dot is actually a survey respondent. <br /> You can see that we got people from all over Orange County including the way most <br /> northern part of county . That to us was extremely exciting . <br /> 2 <br />