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Managing Tomorrow’s Resources Today Mr. Gary Wolff October 4, 2013 Page 10 of 15 service to businesses and residents at the same time. Having these services scheduled for different days will avoid some inefficiency associated with the need to transition from one type of service to the other during a given service day. Program staff note, and we concur, that with PaintCare the need for drop‐in hours will diminish. Painting contractors, the primary constituency for the drop‐in hours, will be able to dispose of paints for free at participating retail PaintCare locations instead of paying for the service through the Program.6 We recommend that if the Proposed System Expansion is selected, Program and StopWaste staff should monitor how effectively the new format is serving business customers and should determine whether any modifications are warranted. In the long‐run, the growing availability of retail drop‐off locations has been an important step towards creating the infrastructure for various forms of extended producer responsibility (EPR). As StopWaste staff have discussed in other contexts, it is hoped that EPR will provide the ultimate solution for much of the HHW problem with PaintCare being one of the first steps towards that goal. However, PaintCare (see section below on PaintCare), as well as other EPR policies that may be instituted in the next five years are unlikely to be adequate to prevent most of the impacts of the Austerity option. Finally, with regard to the problems that Program management staff anticipate may occur, we are generally in concurrence. The need for further restrictions stem from the difficulty of anticipating and managing public demand for a popular, but diminishing service. With reduced funding and a rapidly shrinking Fund balance, there will be little or no available margin. A return to an appointment‐based system would not be popular. There seems a reasonable risk that the possible spillover effects identified by Program staff may occur as the reduced service levels shift costs back to the public sector and to solid waste collection ratepayers, directly or indirectly. Finally, to the extent that a viable HHW program helps reduce the liabilities associated with improper disposal with solid waste, these liabilities are likely to grow over time with the Austerity option. Program Size, Productivity, and Cost Efficiency Staffing and its associated costs (“fully loaded”, including benefits) is the largest single category of cost for the Program. In addition, staffing is a key area in which Program management can exercise a relatively high level of control. In general, greater efficiency comes with increased Program size, resulting in large part from savings for staffing. A useful metric for relative staffing efficiency is the ratio of personnel to management staff, based on the data in Table 2. As a program grows, the ratio should increase, with more work achieved for a given level of supervision. Obviously, it is not desirable to have too high a ratio either. As provided in Table 2, and relative to the current level of staffing, the Proposed System Expansion adds 3.2 FTE’s of staff and one additional management position.7 The ratios of staff FTE’s to management personnel for the Proposed System Expansion and the current system are both 3.23, or 12.9 to 4 and 9.7 to 3.0, respectively. The System Expansion maintains the same relatively efficient configuration of staffing that has proven to be effective for the current system, but with enhanced service. The Austerity option 6 See further discussion of PaintCare later in this report. 7 We have assumed that “management staff” includes the Supervisor and Senior Hazmat Specialist positions.