Page 49 - MCAG - RWAD - AMB 09 10 19

Peter Holtzclaw

Thursday, September 5, 2019 2:30 PM

Why are you interested in the Regional Waste Authority Director position with Merced County
Association of Governments? Tell me a bit about what you know about the Association.

I mentioned in my cover letter that I was offered an Executive Director position for the Sonoma County
Waste Authority. The position itself in terms of answering to a Board and working for a County interests
me. It's more than a curiosity - I feel that I have all of the skills necessary to operate at a Director level.
That interests me as well as the possible venture with Merced. That's the primary reason. I've been here
with my job for about 4 years now - it feels like a good time to look for other opportunities. In my current
job and my prior job I was running recycling plants and the recycling is undergoing massive shifts.

Please describe your most recent position and day-to-day responsibilities.

I am the Regional General Manager for Greif incorporated. It is a large fortune 500 company based in
Ohio. It acquired another company previously that I was working for. I have four plants on the Westcoast.
We are now part of a department within Greif. About 75 employees with drivers, plants in Stockton,
Commerce, and LA. Export material to China or down into Mexico. We handle rolls and roll processing.
We handle papers and do commercial recycling. We are fiber oriented. All P&L responsibilities and
safety responsibilities.

I report to a Vice President of a group.
With City of Berkeley
Please provide any insights you might have about managing solid waste divisions within the
public-sector.

I have experience with the City of Berkeley - I was a division head there. They had a 500 tons per day
transfer center and a roll off for garbage and organic waste. They subcontracted out curbside recycling
to a local non-profit. The City managed commercial hauling operations. We also transferred that to a
compost facility. There were about 110 employees - recycling managers for the City, infrastructure for
operators and drivers. It was an integrated solid waste operation within the Public Works department. I
think there are less than 10 statewide that run their own operations. I know how something like that runs
within a city or public architecture in an enterprise fund type of system.
Please describe your experience in evaluating technology and operational procedure utilized
in a department and your approach to implementing change, if needed.

I've executed or implemented plenty of analysis in program change within solid waste and recycling
operations. For instance, in San Francisco - when I was the recycling program manager - in all of these
instances it's not just me, it's teams of people - but in San Francisco we evaluated a lot of different
curbside programs before going to semi auto collection. We worked with Ecology to find the best cart
size and what was possible with green waste. Now it's all kind of standard, but in 2001 it was not. That
sort of approach. We did a direct pilot program with feedback from neighborhoods as well as the
MRF'ing - putting 20 tons of recycling - 20 trucks with 5 tons each. of the materials. Another example in
Berkeley, again, using technology, the most immediate example is using sorting technology - did that in
waste management - automated the sorting of recyclables. A different program that I did in Berkeley was
implement a C&D program - I new that they merged in the general facility so we can haul it out. We
figured out that the shipping cost of the C&D - we got good bang for the buck for the hauling costs.

Please describe a project in which you played a major role in creating pathways for
improvement for those in your community.

I used the C&D example already. We implemented a program without raising rates with the City of
Berkeley - so we went from a service to every other week to an expanded service that was weekly