Karl McCollester (00:00.674)
Hey, welcome to Mighty Municipalities, the podcast about small municipalities and how they can punch above their weight. I'm your host, Karl McCollister, and along with my co-host, Mark Parton, and our guests, we take you through the highs and lows of working in a small municipality. Whether it's the hardship and frustration that's holding you back or the progress and wins that are propelling you forward, we're here to share the lessons learned and give you strategies to help improve your community. Well, hey, Mark, how's your day going?

Mark Partin (00:27.225)
It is going very well. Glad to be sitting here in South Carolina in January and although it is a little bit cool outside, it could be a lot colder.

Karl McCollester (00:37.942)
Yes, yeah, well, while it was quite chilly last night, it was quite chilly for South Carolina and not quite chilly for many other places in the country. So we will definitely take that. Well, if you are brave enough to be here listening to our first episode, welcome. We love having you. As I mentioned in the intro, one of my goals is I think there's a lot of interesting things that municipalities are doing.

Mark Partin (00:45.322)
Exactly, yes.

Karl McCollester (01:07.79)
that are not necessarily just the things that the, you know, the Atlantas, you know, your multi-million population cities or even your 100,000 population cities are doing. But really the smaller ones, even down to whether it's 200 or 20,000, or in the case of where Mark and I originally met in a city of 45,000.

There are lots of opportunities for smaller municipalities to be scrappy and do some things that enhance the quality of life, enhance the economic development capabilities of other municipalities. And so I was looking forward to having a way to share that. when I was talking with Mark, he was game to go along. Mark, what's your take?

Mark Partin (01:54.864)
Well, much like you, part of it is practical because I do live and work in a smaller community of, like you said, about 45,000. But also it's interesting to me because the vast majority of communities across our nation are smaller communities. Even if we say the threshold of 50,000 or 75,000 or 100,000, we're still talking about a vast majority of municipalities.

And they often get overlooked. And so we need to celebrate them as well as learn from them because, you know, not just communities, but smaller organizations, whether they're for-profit, non-for-profit organizations, oftentimes the smaller ones are the ones who come up with the most creative ideas or the most, well, just that, the most creative ideas that we can learn from. And they have to be more.

creative in how they approach things because they don't always have the resources, whether that's people resources or financial resources. So there's a lot of opportunity there. That's what really interests me, the everyday living in a smaller community.

Karl McCollester (03:03.458)
All

Karl McCollester (03:10.062)
Yeah, you just brought up and so, you know, of course I use the clever AI search and it says about 95 % of municipalities have less than 50,000 residents. that's exactly to your point.

Mark Partin (03:22.746)
Yes.

Mark Partin (03:26.254)
Yes, and if you think about our state of South Carolina, we don't have any cities in the incorporated limits that are a million, you know, at all. So we're small all over the state, even if you do factor in our larger communities.

Karl McCollester (03:36.352)
No, not at all.

Karl McCollester (03:43.714)
Yeah, very cool. Yeah, so and I think some of your graduate work is even on that, right Mark?

Mark Partin (03:49.594)
That's correct. Yeah, I mostly focused on smaller communities in the HR side and people side, employment side of research, but I also get into local government finance in the smaller communities. And again, that was a niche that was largely untapped. So I try to do my part to tap into that area.

Karl McCollester (04:14.382)
Yeah, that's great. And I've been in my line of work, of course, working with small municipalities through software. I've been hitting a lot of the financial side as well. In fact, let's just talk a little bit towards that. Mark, why you talk a little bit about the angle of your expertise towards municipalities.

Mark Partin (04:32.944)
Okay, yes. I currently serve in a role as a chief of staff of the community I live in. And in that role, I'm able to work with all of the different departments in the city itself. you know, working with you and IT directly, you know, while I'm not educated in IT, I do get to work with you and other people in that area, your colleagues. And so I'm not looking at

that particular department on how do you, you know, program this machine or that machine or connect these two facilities together, but how can you take that technology and make it useful for the employees, for the city to exponentially make their jobs more effective? So I also do that through all the other different departments. My job is not to

work in every department, but it's to help other people in those departments get better. So that's really what my expertise is, is going in and working alongside of people to get the most out of the resources they have and to help them get better because when they get better, we all get better. And then hopefully we can share with other communities and they get better as well. Because ultimately as public servants, we're here to serve.

Karl McCollester (05:34.583)
Absolutely.

Mark Partin (05:58.584)
serve well, serve as the best stewards of the resources we've been given.

Karl McCollester (06:06.19)
Absolutely. And you know, when you were saying that I was thinking of the word, you know, a lubricant, you know, and I think from the process side, you've kind of been a lubricant for the city. Whereas, you know, from a technology side, you know,

I help supply that technology lubricant to the process of the municipality. And while, you know, I'm not a public servant, while I'm in the, I have worked with the city for many years on a consulting basis and I work with the municipality.

Mark Partin (06:24.791)
Absolutely, yes.

Karl McCollester (06:39.864)
from a software standpoint as anything else with the work on GovPossible. I consider myself as much a, well not an employee, definitely a servant of the public and a servant of the municipalities that I work for. And that's what makes me passionate about trying to find these ideas that hopefully we'll be talking about over the seasons about how...

you know, municipality the size of Sumpter, a municipality the size of, you know, of a population of 500 can take some of these things and make themselves just that little bit better, which is what really excites me. But yeah, yeah, I've been, yeah, from my standpoint, you know, I've been working with municipalities now for, you know, 24 years, think is what it is. And most of that, you know, was from the technology side, but as part of that, you know,

Mark Partin (07:15.499)
Absolutely.

Karl McCollester (07:32.94)
Before even GovPossible, I was working with municipalities helping, you know,

even select their municipal ERP systems. And as part of that, you know, we're looking at the working with the department head or working with the clerk that's there or the utility billing supervisor or clerk to figure out what the process is going to be. So how can I do what I'm doing today and how will this new software make that easier? And what do I potentially need to adjust so that I can go faster with this new piece of software, with this new piece of technology? Of course, all while keeping secure, all while figuring out all of this.

Mark Partin (08:08.386)
Yes.

Karl McCollester (08:08.524)
other things that we need to do as well. But in the end it is all about we're doing those things in service to improving the service that we provide to our residents as cost-effectively as possible.

Mark Partin (08:23.0)
Yes, and I think far too often people think of government agencies and nonprofit agencies as a little behind in how they execute things. And we don't have to be that way. We can be innovative and lead the charge on how to do things differently, do things better, use technology in a better way, in a different way. And so I think that's part of what I hope we get out of these conversations is

sharing some of those innovative ways and creative ways local governments are making a difference and leading the charge towards a better future.

Karl McCollester (08:59.47)
Absolutely. So starting with today, of course. And so one of the things that Mark and I thought we'd start doing on a regular, semi-weekly basis, just throw that out down already. Not even a little bit ambitious, but to call it out publicly. Our goal is to try to do this every two weeks. And for many of these, what we thought we'd do is there are a lot of great stories that are out in the news.

Mark Partin (09:13.07)
Yes, be patient with us.

Karl McCollester (09:28.8)
about things that small municipalities are doing that we think are a little bit unique that might give you an idea of something that you could try to implement and potentially talk to those municipalities. And hopefully as we go along further, we'll have more guests and we'll be able to talk to them directly about what they're doing. But even on those days where we don't, there's a ton of great ideas that we'd love to share. starting with that idea, there were two that we want to talk about today. The first one, Mark, if you're good, I thought we'd start off with the Bedford

Massachusetts composting program. What an exciting way to start. But this one was interesting in I think first of all of course if there is a utility service that gets provided

Mark Partin (10:02.053)
Yes.

I'm not a trash.

Karl McCollester (10:18.67)
a lot of times it ends up being trash is one of the first ones. It doesn't take as much infrastructure as water, which may already be supplied by county or water sewer district. It's one of those things that, along with maybe police, are one of the first two things that a municipality ends up doing. Even back to Roman times, frankly.

Mark Partin (10:37.624)
Yes.

Karl McCollester (10:40.302)
Bedford's interesting, they're a population of 14,000 and they've started this composting program and of course we'll have links to all this in the show notes as I figure out how to do that today. But they've done a pilot outsourcing this to a company.

And the pilot has gone well enough that they were able to take some measurements back in that there was a cost reduction of about, I think it was $25 per...

resident per month that was participating in landfill savings. So instead of having to pay for the local landfill or the county landfill or whatever to place that in and pay for that weight, they were actually reducing that much tonnage. And so they've decided to open this up to the entire municipality. But it is a service. instead of it just being a service that's part of solid waste, which I know

my hometown of Columbia has done recycling and has struggled with the costs and things like that. They're doing this as a, we will manage the subscription process basically for you with this third party contractor to do this work. it's not where the municipality itself is making the money or providing the services in this case, but as I would almost even consider it a phase two of a pilot where they're using this outside.

sourced, you know, composter to do the collection and to do the management of it. And so they're passing the cost on to them. But what I think then gets further interesting is not only the idea of using this as a model where the municipality is basically an intermediary of services for

Karl McCollester (12:33.646)
for residents that residents want, but potentially the municipality is not in the position itself to staff up and logistically provide. So that itself is interesting. But then also, again, because they've decided that they are seeing some cost savings from this potentially, they are giving a rebate back to the residents who participate towards their solid waste cost. So they're obviously paying a solid waste fee. From what I read, they also then pay an additional

for any overages above a certain amount of weight or bags that they're putting into their trash cans. And so this comes back as a rebate to them twice a year for the amount they saved.

Mark Partin (13:17.57)
Interesting,

Karl McCollester (13:18.51)
Yeah, then in addition to that, are also some volume savings that they're going to pass back on if they get to a certain subscription level. So they'll be able to reduce the cost. So I thought that was interesting. Mark, you've probably been a little bit more involved, especially recently, some of the solid waste stuff. What's your take on that kind of process and what you've seen?

Mark Partin (13:33.776)
Yes.

Mark Partin (13:41.74)
Well, maybe not in any particular order, but first of all, I think this is an interesting example of a public-private partnership, you where they are using that third party to come alongside and help make a largely private, I mean, largely public function, a partnership with the private entity. I know in the Northeast a lot of...

sanitation is a private industry, but at least in South Carolina, they're, you know, largely residential is done by municipalities within the municipal borders. Of course, there are some private entities doing it as well, but the cost of sanitation continues to go up and up and up. And the limitations are becoming stricter for good reason. You know, what can you dispose of and not?

Karl McCollester (14:21.538)
Yes.

Mark Partin (14:37.338)
how much, where. Some municipalities have to ship at other places because they don't have a suitable site. So anything that can be naturally handled and processed, going literally back to the earth, is only better for everyone. Not just for the sake of not having piles of trash everywhere, but it goes back to the earth and is...

Karl McCollester (14:57.112)
Yeah.

Mark Partin (15:06.202)
created into new soil or whatever the case may be. So I think it's an excellent program and I like the way they're using the financing of it to where you opt in but you also benefit from it as well. You make an investment but you're going to get a return beyond just doing your public duty of saving waste from increasing over and over and over because you know it's

Karl McCollester (15:32.61)
Yes.

Mark Partin (15:34.446)
It's just good for everyone. We're all in it together. We're all going to benefit together. So I like that model very much, as well as it's fiscally responsible for the individual, as well as the municipality, you know, in this case, Bedford, Massachusetts. I noticed they also have an option where they will help you do this on your own at home. Yeah. So it's, you know, they'll give you, or there's a cost for getting it set up, but they will.

Karl McCollester (15:56.971)
I didn't see that.

Karl McCollester (16:02.2)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Partin (16:03.778)
allow you to use their know-how, use their knowledge, and they'll give you compost bins and teach you how to do it at home. So that's interesting too.

Karl McCollester (16:12.492)
nice. Yeah, Columbia has some of those classes as well.

I've noted, you know, that they do that and do have a program where can buy the thing and then take the class with them as well. So that's interesting. I actually compost at home using a there was a and there's here in case they want to sponsor us to the future sub pod. Yeah, it was a fantastic or is a fantastic composting setup. And, know, we have a family of four and pretty much everything that's not everything that's a vegetable goes in there. And we certainly have reduced our waste, probably at least 20 percent.

Mark Partin (16:32.933)
Yes.

Karl McCollester (16:48.512)
You know, just from dinner scraps and bread and stuff like that. And you can also put your shredded paper and things like that in there as well.

Mark Partin (16:48.698)
Yeah.

Mark Partin (16:54.572)
Exactly. Toilet paper rolls and paper towel tubes and etc.

Karl McCollester (16:59.746)
Right. Yeah, it works. Yeah, that works great. So, you know, at least I've personally seen a significant reduction in my my the waste I'm putting into my my roll card, you even without a rebate. So it does, you know, from a public from a shared public interest, it definitely helps the municipality. So people haven't tried it. Definitely recommend it. And then I think the other piece that's interesting to me and, you know, I think, you know, knowing thinking through

Mark Partin (17:11.46)
Yes.

Karl McCollester (17:28.78)
know, our customers at GovPossible probably may be down to that population of 5,000, maybe not, maybe not more, lower than that. this idea of the municipality as intermediary or, you know, billing manager, especially if you already have some of these existing services that you're handling.

Mark Partin (17:46.586)
Right, yes.

Karl McCollester (17:52.95)
You're already doing the bills. This is basically as long as you can figure out how to add that extra thing onto the bill. You're not incurring a lot of overhead, but you're then supplying a benefit to your citizens. And so again, if you don't have that expertise, and I definitely worked with some that don't have that in place right now, and then trying to, if the mayor came up and wanted to do this, it could be a very painful thing and, you

Mark Partin (18:05.754)
No.

Karl McCollester (18:21.986)
potentially overload the already, you know, very few staff that they already have if when we're talking about places with staffs of, you know, one to three. But for those places where you maybe have a dedicated utility clerk or two even better. Maybe that's like at the starting level where you have if you have at least a couple of people doing utility billing and utility payments, this is something where adding on this type of service where we're all you're really doing is modifying your bill and managing the collections and passing that information

Mark Partin (18:29.71)
Yes.

Karl McCollester (18:51.92)
back and forth to the provider where this could be very useful whether this is composting or internet service or you know what have you within the municipality according of course that you're allowed to by your within state limits absolutely absolutely we do not condone that so great anything else you want to add on this one mark

Mark Partin (18:59.919)
Right.

Mark Partin (19:04.812)
Exactly. That's right. We want to follow state laws. Yes.

Mark Partin (19:14.308)
Yes. Just in general, not necessarily about this program, but about sanitation overall. You always like to give a shout out to the different sanitation departments because they do play a vital role in our communities. Not just in keeping it clean, but it really is a public health issue because the worst thing you want to have is to have garbage piled up everywhere. And so many municipalities as well as private

Karl McCollester (19:35.096)
Mm-hmm.

Karl McCollester (19:39.159)
Is it?

Mark Partin (19:43.566)
sanitation companies, they just do an outstanding job that we take for granted in many cases. So just going to give a shout out to them in addition to this program.

Karl McCollester (19:48.514)
Yes. Yes.

Karl McCollester (19:53.038)
Yeah, absolutely. yeah, I definitely support that. made me, while you were talking about it, it made me think of and what may be an interesting idea in the future. I know there are some sanitation departments slash groups that are solid waste groups that really...

are able to nail that sense of pride for their folks, whether that's, you know, and I don't know whether that's just the circumstances or a team, but it would be interesting to see what they do that really helps seal that because they're, as you said, it is an essential service. It's an incredibly important service from a public health standpoint even that often gets overlooked. But I've met those groups before where they're like very prideful. They're aware of that and very prideful of that.

Mark Partin (20:14.202)
videos.

Mark Partin (20:40.825)
Yes.

Karl McCollester (20:40.912)
And as a result those jobs are much easier to fill and keep and you know are much more competitive than Than if you're in a situation where that's not the case where? No

Mark Partin (20:49.264)
That's right. And it's not an easy job. It's very physical, know, oftentimes at odd hours of the day in all weather conditions, but they do it with pride.

Karl McCollester (20:56.172)
Yeah. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Cool. Great.

Well, with that, the second story I want to talk about today was there was an interesting one for Pittsfield, Illinois. And what had happened here, and again, we'll have the link in the show notes, but what happened was they had a situation, their population of 4,200, and their primary child care facility closed up and closed up apparently rather suddenly, which...

anybody who's had small kids and have both parents trying to work, it's fairly hard in any municipality to find decent child care.

And so this became a really acute issue here in Pittsfield. so what they decided to do is they had an existing program for for businesses to help fill in vacant business properties, especially downtown. And so they and that program was basically a new business incentive. As long as you were hiring, as long as you had two employees, they would rebate the your utility bill 100 percent for the first six months and then 50 percent for the second six months.

I decided to do is for in order to help incent people who maybe had the know-how and had the even the space in their home where they could you know obviously still pass whatever laws they still need to from a child safety standpoint and everything else if they could start a home care business and even just take care of a few kids they would waive the employee requirement and but still give them that same rebate on the utility bills. I thought this was interesting for

Karl McCollester (22:38.993)
from a few standpoints. One, again, kind of that same idea of the Bedford, Massachusetts, where you were, they're already billing utilities. So it's a relatively...

relatively easy left to add in one more thing doing the exact same process. This is taking a an incentive program they already had in place. They already knew it, you know, we're comfortable with how it worked and they were just modifying the the eligibility requirements to address this acute need and so by doing that they were able to act fairly quickly. Now, of course, who knows how quickly people will come up and do those kind of things, but the ability to act quickly by by creatively looking at hey, what do we already have here?

Mark Partin (22:52.536)
Right, yes.

Karl McCollester (23:20.532)
that is encouraging things like this, in this case a business, what can we do, maybe, you know, can we try doing something with that that will help us, you know, solve our issue, need right now. So I really liked it from that standpoint. Mark, from yours?

Mark Partin (23:37.044)
It's a creative use of the resources to tackle what is in many cases a private problem, private sector problem, but they were able to address it using public resources and not just a dollar or cents, but through a policy. The municipality didn't have to go out and open.

a child care facility, but they were still able to address the child care issue, which is, you we're hearing more and more about in the media that child care is a growing issue. Good quality, affordable child care, especially is a growing issue with people being able to go to work. And especially if you're a single parent, it can be extremely difficult. So this is just a unique way to quickly, I think,

Karl McCollester (24:23.416)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Partin (24:32.441)
quickly address a problem that didn't require a lot of outlay of time or resources.

Karl McCollester (24:41.164)
Absolutely. And then the other part that I was fascinated by was this idea of leveraging the municipal utility system to help with economic development. Now, obviously, there's the idea of fees in lieu of taxes, things like this. this was, at least for me, a relatively new thing. Mark, don't know about that. Have you seen this before?

Mark Partin (25:02.638)
I have not, not like this. Usually it's on a big scale about a new business or new industry opening and we provide incentives, but not ever at this level that I've known.

Karl McCollester (25:09.314)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Right. I mean, especially even the original program of this being used to.

you know, if you're moving into a vacant building, you know, in a downtown or something like that, because the utility bill, the utility department is already 99 percent of it, if it's an existing building has a tap in there that's now being unused. The infrastructure is already there. You're still having to maintain it as a municipality. And it's just being underutilized. So the idea that I can help encourage a business in there, you know, obviously take some risk potentially of, you know, of a volume of water and wastewater in return.

Mark Partin (25:48.016)
That's right.

Karl McCollester (25:49.808)
that around for that first year but in order to fulfill and fill back in and get my capacity on that segment of line back into use. What a, I think a fantastic way to help the utility system do better for itself so they can maintain the lines in a way that also then helps with economic development of places within the municipal borders that you you

need jobs, you need more economic activity. I thought that was a pretty creative way to leverage that.

Mark Partin (26:28.066)
Yes, and the municipality is using a resource they can use to help this problem get better. And it also sets up the businesses, the childcare facilities for success because they do have a certain level of security for that first 12-month period.

Karl McCollester (26:33.964)
Yes.

Karl McCollester (26:39.566)
Mm-hmm.

Karl McCollester (26:51.65)
Yes, yeah, that at least helps manage their costs while they're trying to figure things out and setting up, which is usually the, you know, you know, some of the most volatile periods for a lot of these businesses while they're trying to figure it out. And so if they can avoid some of that expense for the little bit, that at least increases the chance of them being more stable and lasting for a little bit longer. Yeah, very cool. So yes, anything else on that one, Mark?

Mark Partin (27:16.516)
No, think again, that's very creative use of municipal resources that I found very interesting.

Karl McCollester (27:24.684)
Yeah, I really did like it. with that, our fellow listeners, who may be one or two people more than our wives, we welcome you joining us and talking through and learning a little bit more about some of the interesting things that are happening. And we look forward to talking to you in about two weeks. Thanks, Mark

Mark Partin (27:33.656)
Yes.

Mark Partin (27:46.116)
Yes, and thank you, Karl Look forward to the next conversation.