The North Richmond Waste and Recovery Mitigation Fee (NRMF) was established by the City of Richmond and Contra Costa County in 2004. NRMF funding is subject to the joint-control of the City and County. This Mitigation Fee was originally identified as a mitigation measure in an Environmental Impact Report as a means of addressing the impacts of illegal dumping as a result of expanding the Bulk Material Processing Center in North Richmond. The requirement to collect this Mitigation Fee is a Condition of
Approval in the Use Permits issued by the City and County, which allowed Republic Services to expand their waste processing operations at the Bulk Material Processing Center, located at the closed West Contra Costa Sanitary Landfill site in North Richmond. Since 2006, this Mitigation Fee has been collected on a per ton basis and paid monthly, directly, to the County.
The City and County entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in 2004 agreeing to establish a City/County Committee (known as the North Richmond Waste & Recovery Mitigation Fee Joint Expenditure Planning Committee) to prepare recommended spending plans subject to final City/County approvals for the purpose of jointly administering this funding. These recommended spending plans are known as Expenditure Plans, which must be approved by both the City Council and County Board of Supervisors. The Expenditure Plan for the 2018/2019 fiscal year was approved by the County on June 26, 2018, and by the City on July 24, 2018.
The first Interagency Agreement between the City and County went into effect on January 16, 2007, and was amended four times. A new Interagency Agreement with a contract limit of $1,080,055 took effect on June 30, 2015, which was estimated to be adequate to allow the County to share the proportion of NRMF revenue needed to cover the City's costs associated with the City's share of Expenditure Plan implementation and Committee co-staffing for the period through June 30, 2017. Since entering into the second Interagency Agreement in 2015, the amount of NRMF funded reimbursement requested by the City has been steadily decreasing each Expenditure Plan cycle. The remaining contract limit was sufficient to allow for three subsequent amendments which together extended the contract term through September 30, 2018. This new Interagency Agreement is intended to provide for continued issuance of NRMF-funded payments to the City of Richmond to facilitate on-going joint administration of funding and reimburse the City for costs incurred to implement Expenditure Plan strategies through September 30, 2020.
If the recommended Agreement is not approved and executed, County staff will not have the authority needed to issue NRMF funded payments to the City of Richmond, which would make it impossible to jointly administer this funding as agreed upon in the MOU between the City and the County. This would also compromise County staff's ability to reimburse the City for the costs they incur for co-staffing the NRMF Committee or the costs incurred to implement the strategies assigned to the City in the City/County-approved Expenditure Plan.