Jury Duty

Not sure if anyone realized I never uploaded an article yesterday, but I didn't post because I was called for jury duty. So I had to take the day off to go to that. It was interesting – I got as far as being questioned as a possible juror, but the defendent's attorney said I wasn't acceptable or whatever the term is when you are rejected. The case was in criminal court, and the defendent was accused of possession and sale of a controlled substance. I figured they didn't want me because I work with police and attorneys all the time, but who really knows.

Driveway Paving

Anyway, when I returned today to work, I tried to catch up on emails. Then another engineer and I went out to inspect the installation of an asphalt driveway. Normally we don't get too involved in something like this. But in this case, we have been trying to help out with a drainage concern, and because the situation is not ideal, we wanted to be there to do the best we could to improve the situation. The contractor ended up doing a good job considering what we had asked him to do by hand with asphalt. One of these days I'll try to get a photo and put it up so you can see the end result. 

Road Project

That ended up taking most of the morning, so then in the afternoon I came up with a preliminary list of roads to resurface next year so the project engineer can begin measuring to calculate the quantities and cost. We still are not done driving all the roads, but we wanted to get started on something. 

Our intern was also in today so I started him on helping me calculate a preliminary estimate for another job. He did fairly well for his first time using an engineering scale and working with a set of old plans of the area.

Smoke from Minnesota in Illinois?

We also had a lot of people calling to complain about all the smoke in the city and the smell. I had noticed it when I walked home for lunch and just thought someone was illegally burning. But we eventually found out it's from fires that are burning in Minnesota. That's amazing that smoke can travel that far. And it makes me wonder how bad it must be in Minnesota for those people if it's this bad down here. I hope everyone up there is ok and safe. Here's the link to the weather report because it's just so unbelievable: NWS Special Weather Report Sept 13, 2011 Geneva

Tomorrow I will be at a seminar, but will still try to post something online about it at the end of the day.

Road Project

Now that our road project is substantially complete, we've been working on getting out a pay estimate. The project engineer prepared the estimate late last week and gave it to me yesterday. So this morning, I spent some time checking over the final quantities and comparing them to the original quantities in the contract. There was some additional work due to a bad base we discovered on one roadway, and we added striping. However we had also deleted some work that ended up not really being needed. So the net result is not too far off the original contract price, and we are defnitely below budget. It looks like there will be one final payout sometime in the next month after the contractor agrees to final quantities.

We also spent a portion of the day driving some more roads for next year. Unfortunately the ones we looked at had deteriorated quite a bit from last year. At this point, I wish we could fix all of them that are in bad  condition, but we just don't have the funds to do it all at once. I was thinking about this the other day after hearing about the jobs bill our president has been talking about. I thought, if only the federal government could set up significant funding for infrastructure in regular communities like ours for simple resurfacing or reconstruction jobs. And in order to spend the funds quickly, they could set it up so the money could be spent on engineering and construction, but  create a condition that the engineering must be done within a year and construction the next year. And if for some reason the engineering did not make the deadline, the construction funds would not be released. This would allow for engineering to be paid for, yet by putting penalities in contracts for failure to complete engineering on time, agencies would ensure the engineering would not be dragged out. Of course, the funds would have to be distributed through some funding mechanism other than FAU or STP funds. Perhaps they could follow what Kansas DOT does and have state DOTs "trade" their state funds for federal funds allocated to local governments. This ensures cumbersome requirements would not be imposed on the projects and allows funding to be used for any road in the city or county – not just federal routes. And this would put a lot of people to work fast. But they never ask us so I doubt an idea like this is even on their horizon.

Water Main Project

Later in the morning a few of us met with the owner of the property through which we'd like to run a water main. We discussed the project and where we would be interested in placing the line. Based on the discussion, I now will move forward to have the area surveyed to find out the exact locations of the property lines and find out any building setbacks that would affect any future construction on the property.

Parking Lot Project

Because the planning commission will meet tomorrow night to consider our request to build a parking lot in the downtown area, we spent some time getting together the necessary information and drawings. We also discussed the project and made sure we had the answers for any possible questions that might come up.

Development Project

At the end of the day, a few of us met at city hall to discuss a proposed development in our city. We discussed issues related to access and decided we will contact the county to continue discussions about potential solutions. 

Permits

Today an engineering firm also brought in some drawings for a project where they had already installed a utility line in our right of way and neglected to get a right of way permit. There's some concern over where they installed it, and it doesn't match the location shown on the plans they dropped off. Their indication of the right of way also does not seem to be at the location where we believe it to be. So we'll be working with them to resolve this issue.

Coding payouts

I started the day going through some emails. Then the other engineers and I went over some recent pay requests and the budget line items to make sure we were coding everything correctly. We wanted to do this because our finance department has gone though and organized our funds into a better structure so this year we have some new codes to work with. This is one part of the job that I think is only learned through on-the-job training. Everything we do has to be paid for and accounted for in some way, so it's important to track it all through the use of account numbers. Having worked for a consultant for a while many years ago, I realize this also happens in the private sector. However, in government, we seem to have more rules and restrictions placed upon the accounts. So we need to make sure only certain expenditures are paid for by certain accounts. For example anything coded to the Motor Fuel Tax account must be an IDOT-approved expenditure. (There's actually a lot to learn about MFT accounting that I couldn't possibly cover in one paragraph!)

GIS – Address and Building Layers

Most of the morning was then spent meeting with staff from fire and police. We discussed some GIS issues and worked together to figure out how to best handle addressing and building footprint layers and updates. Right now we don't have a program to track our address assignments or changes, but we are finding we really do need something that allows everyone to know about a change in an address. And we need something that allows certain people to "sign off" when they perform an address-related function or allows them to "acknowledge" that they've received a change. The staff person for the police department came up with an excellent and easily implemented suggestion to handle this: an Adobe Acrobat form that we can all edit. So later this week, I am going to work on setting this up. Then we'll discuss it at our next GIS team meeting and finalize the format.

Road Resurfacing

This afternoon we went back out to look at the roads. Most of the sections we drove today were in good condition, but we did find a few that look like they will need to be resurfaced next year. 

Day 25

Water Main Extension

Most of the first half of my morning was spent working on a cost estimate for the water main extension I have designed. I also filled out all the IEPA permits for the project and had our water superintendent sign them. 

Then I filled out the EcoCat to determine if there were any endangered species. This came back negative which is what I suspected – the area through which  the water main will go is an abandoned railroad and quarry that is now a park within our city. Next I will have to write a letter to the Historic Preservation to ask them to determine if there are any historic preservation issues with the site. But again, I suspect based on the previous uses on the site that this will also come back negative.

Storm Sewer Project

During the last part of the morning, I dropped off the legal description for the easement we will need to install storm sewer behind some homes on the east side of town. There's signficiant backyard flooding in this area so we will install a couple inlets and tie them into our storm sewer. But because the inlets need to be in the backyards, the city will need an easement. Our policy is that the homeowner needs to prepare the easement document so once we get this, I will submit it for council consideration. If they approve it, we will install the storm sewer.

Miscellaneous Resident Concerns

We also checked out  a drainage concern a neighbor had about some work that took place near their property. Then we checked out a report of someone dumping brush on city property and possibly obstructing a drainage way. We found the brush pile which was significant and told the people who had been dumping it that it needed to be moved asap.

Road Project

In the afternoon, we continued our task of driving the roads to determine road conditions.

Other stuff

A couple of us went out to lunch today with someone who had worked here earlier in the year as an intern. It was great to touch base with her and find out what she was up to and hear how GIS is handled where she works now. I was thinking earlier today, we have had five interns so far this year. They have all been great workers, and they helped us get a lot of work done.

Social Media/Communication/Customer Service Workshop!!!

Then at the end of the day, I spoke with the education coordinator for our local APWA chapter. We are planning a communication/social media/customer service workshop in October. We want to offer a fun and engaging day that helps everyone learn how to make the most of the tools that are out there. So if you know of anyone in the Chicago Metro area doing great and interesting things with social media/communication/customer service or public outreach, let me know. We'd love to have them participate in our workshop. We could even remote in people, so if you don't live or work around here and have something great to present, we could remote you in through Skype or other methods.

Hope everyone has an awesome weekend! and keep our public works colleagues who are handling the aftermath of Hurricane Irene in your thoughts and prayers!

Safety Meeting

Today was the first Thursday of the month and that means safety meeting day! The whole public works staff attends the monthly safety meeting, and the topic today was backhoe safety. If I get a chance I'll put up a post on it later this week because it was interesting and probably would make a good article.

Cemetery Maintenance

After learning about how to safely operate and transport backhoes, we met with someone who provides cemetery services. Right now we have one person who is responsible for all the maintenance in the two cemeteries we own. We do have some summer help, but there's still a lot of work to be done. And when our help goes back to school, we are back down to one person. Several members of the public have indicated they want increased maintenance services so we are looking at ideas for meeting their requests. One idea is to bid out the maintenance and see if it is cheaper to hire it out than use staff members. During the meeting today we learned about what services companies provide and what other cemeteries they take care of. At this point we are just researching. Our city council will have to make the final decision on whether or not we bid this out or continue to use staff.

Overweight vehicles

Something strange did happen during the morning. Someone called me to complain about getting a ticket from our police for having an overweight vehicle. He also wanted to ask me several questions about this. It was a little difficult answering all of them because our office only handles issuing permits for overweight vehicles. The police enforce the overweight vehicle limits on our streets. I did read him the ordinance explaining we do not allow any trucks over 6 tons on roads unless indicated otherwise and told him the ordinance was available online. So he paraphrased what I said to mean that he, as a landscaper, was not allowed to provide services to residents in our community. I tried to explain this was not what I said and that he could solve the problem by distributing his load between two vehicles to get it below 6 tons and that I've seen other companies doing this. But he did not seem to think this would be an option. I also tried to suggest taking his setup to a truck scale and working with the loading to get it below 6 tons. But he didn't know where a scale was and having only been here for two years, I wasn't sure where the closest one was either. 

He also asked many more questions that were more related to how the police ticket and how they determine when a load is overweight, but I could not answer him since we do not deal with that in my office. He was also frustrated because he must have called other cities and they gave him information that was different from what we were giving him. I tried to explain every city has different ordinances so that's probably why he was getting different answers from different cities. I offered to find out how we could issue him an overweight permit so he could legally drive his load on the streets, but he didn't want me to ask about the process. He kept suggesting we are only issuing tickets to drive up revenue, and he said it was a stupid law. Then he got angry and hung up on me.

Emergency Utility Work

Then right before lunch I received a call from a utility company asking for verbal approval to perform an emergency repair in our downtown. These make me nervous because it's difficult to quickly assess the situation and think of everything that needs to be determined in order to proceed with something like this. But the person said the work would only be in the parkway and was desperately needed because the whole area of the city south of the downtown had no service. So after he promised to be safe and use proper traffic control and restore the area within a couple days, I told him it was ok to proceed. After I got in from lunch, one of the engineers asked me who gave approval for a utility to bore under the railroad. What? I explained what I had given approval for. Then one of the other staff members and I decided to go visit the work site. Meanwhile the person who had asked for the approval called back and said he had no idea it was going to go under the railroad. So he agreed to meet us there. In the end, it all worked out. They ended up calling the railroad, and two guys from the railroad showed up to flag and assist. Our locator marked out what he needed to locate. And they started digging. Because I had to deal with all this, I ended up missing a meeting with a landscaper for our parking lot, but the project engineer was able to go instead.

Rating the Roads

Then we all finished up the day checking out the road conditions in the next area of town to be inspected. 

This morning we had our regular engineering staff meeting. It was a pretty typical meeting with GIS sharing what they were doing and then our engineers and technical staff letting us know the status of all the projects. After our meeting, we started driving the roads to determine their condition. We also spent most of the afternoon working on this. It's really helpful to get out into the neighborhoods and check things out. And since this is my second year doing this, I'm finding it helpful to go back to check things we noted last year as things to watch or things to follow up on.

We also got a new drinking fountain installed in our building today which was so very cool. I added a photo of it because it not only dispensed great city water, but it's got a place to fill water bottles. And even better, it shows on a digital read out how many bottles have been filled. What a great way to encourage people to drink city water!

I forgot to mention yesterday that our new intern started. He will be coming in two days a week for the afternoons. The internship was set up through his school. He spent his first day working with one of our project engineers marking out driveway removals for our alley reconstruction project. Tomorrow I plan to have him set up a summary of the invoices of where we have spent money for each of the accounts I help manage. So today I collected the information needed so he could begin preparing the summary. It's helpful to have this summary to refer to as we go through the fiscal year, and I usually like to start putting it together after we get a couple months or so under way.

At the end of the day, I really wanted to go to the social networking event our local APWA chapter was having, but I decided to stop home before heading over there. I guess it's a good thing I did because I walked into some major problems at home that I needed to resolve, but unfortunately it kept me from attending. So hopefully I'll be able to make the next one. We have a great group of members, and I always enjoy hanging out talking to everyone.

Parking Lot Planning

This morning a couple of us discussed the parking lot we are planning to build in our downtown. The project engineer for the job submitted the necessary documents to our planning department for the planning commission hearing we will have Sept. 8th. I also talked to a landscaper who will put together a preliminary landscape design for the lot and set up a meeting with him on site for this Thursday. The project engineer touched base with our lighting consultant to make sure we would have a preliminary lighting plan done in time for the hearing. And finally I reviewed the revisions we had all made to the agreement with one of the property owners from whom we will be getting easements for a portion of the lot.

Road Project

The contractor has been in this week finishing up some minor work on this year's road project. And the project engineer and our technician have been measuring quantities like crazy. But now is the time when our thoughts begin to turn to next year's road project. So today I set up some times this week for us to drive the roads. During this "road trip" we rate the roads, note the ones that could possibly be crackfilled, and check out any other issues or problems. It's the one time of the year we can really take a comprehensive view of all the  roads at once. I also updated the ratings in our GIS for the roads we improved this year and printed out maps to use during our drive.

Permit Review

I finalized the review of a small project someone had proposed for a commercial development in the city. Then I sent out the approval letter to the developer and a few staff members. Tomorrow I will work on another permit we have in that includes a stormwater permit application.

Water Main Project

During the morning, I also researched the property ownership for a parcel through which we would like to place a new water main. Then I contacted the business to set up a meeting with them to discuss the possibility of the city getting an easement.

Street Sign Upgrade Requirements Rescinded

Our city administrator also sent out a letter today that indicates we will probably not have to upgrade our signs to meet the new retroreflectivity requirements by the date that had been set by the FHWA. Instead we can upgrade the sign at the time of replacement. This will save a significant amount of money for many agencies. Here's a link to the press release by the U.S. DOT: 

http://www.dot.gov/affairs/2011/fhwa4311.html

But let’s look at what really happens in many cases when government decides to privatize:

Why do those in charge of our assets even consider something like this?

• Those in charge decide they need cash, and fast, without raising taxes. So they start looking around at what they can sell.
• Those in charge are approached by a private entity with a privatization proposal.
• The government entity might lose key workers responsible for the operation and maintenance of a facility and not want to bother looking around for new employees.

• Those in charge are trying to cut costs and start looking at dumping assets that require large expenditures.

Often these deals are set up with all the best of intentions. Government leaders are truly trying to cut costs and save money; private companies are just trying to make a living and see a revenue stream that allows them to offer a service.

So why is privatization so risky for government?

First of all, because what is being sold is usually vital to the health, safety, and/or welfare of the community. Let’s just look at two examples of assets that are owned and maintained by government.

Roadways
Major thoroughfares in our country were initially built for the purpose of helping the U.S. in times of war to allow for fast movement of troops and equipment across our country. They also allow for fast movement of goods and services across our country and as such have now become vital to the economic well-being of our country.

Water and Wastewater Operations
In the late 1800s and early 1900s our country lost thousands due to outbreaks of disease and sickness – much of it linked to poor sanitation and contaminated drinking water supplies. People today are so used to having safe drinking water and effective elimination of wastes that they might take all this for granted. But all of this is only possible because of strict regulations by the EPA, trained professionals who provide treatment and maintenance of our water and wastewater facilities, and continued investment in the systems by our politicians.

So let’s consider some of the risks that can occur in each of these examples if a community leases or sells government assets:

Example 1: A government entity approves a long-term lease to a private company for a major tollway that is designed with a 20 year life. After 20 years of collecting tolls, the company is now faced with a 40 million dollar road and bridge reconstruction project. If they were a well-run business, they would have banked a portion of their revenue to help fund this. The other alternative available is a bond for the project backed by future revenues.

But what if they didn’t bank this money or they do not want to or can’t afford to give up future revenues. Looking at losing millions, they decide to fold or go bankrupt? What is the government entity to do? Not fixing the asset is not an option. People depend on it; the economy depends on it. So the government is then faced with spending 40 million after not collecting tolls for all those years and having to pledge future tolls to the project. And in the end, the taxpayers have to pay anyway – they just put it off 20 years. The government must also spend money ramping up their road maintenance departments to handle the return of this asset.

And where is the money government got in the up front lease purchase? Who knows. Often these funds seem to be spent on non-infrastructure related expenditures. Many times used to shore up failed funds that were poorly managed.

Example 2 – a major tollway is sold to a private company. After about 10 years of little to no maintenance, the road starts to fail considerably or perhaps the traffic on the road increases to the point that there are increase accidents and travel times. People complain to the company, but why should the company listen to them. The road is a major corridor, and they know people will drive it. People have little to no recourse – there is no one to be voted out in this case. So people are forced to have to use a failed asset with no voice in the matter.

Example 3 - God forbid our country goes to war and fighting occurs on U.S. soil. We need to move troops and equipment across the land and provide vital services to our citizens, but the country we are at war with owns our assets: roads, water, wastewater. Even if we somehow secure these facilities, enough significant damage could have been done before this could happen. And now with many assets controlled over the Internet, who knows what damage they could do or have provided for in these facilities in case of this type of situation. Is this a paranoid outlook and extreme. Yes, but is it worth the risk? Just because some politician doesn’t want to work a little harder or better at managing the asset.

Example 4 - Now let’s look at an asset that might at first not even seem that vital to the well-being of a community: parking meters in a downtown. The community for whatever reason decides to approve a long-term lease to a single company. The company is ill-prepared to handle the resulting maintenance and user interactions. People are upset and complain to the government, but they have their money and have no further leverage to get the company to address complaints.

Because the volume of complaints to the government rise to a level that concerns politicians, the government decides to go ahead and perform the maintenance and repairs to the meters themselves using their own staff. And the company continues to collect revenues from the meters as they will for the next 50 or 100 years while the government tries to address citizen concerns. Oh, and by the way, shortly after getting the lease approved, the company raised parking meter rates considerably. And again, the government officials have no leverage to prevent this.

What happens now? In this case, the economic well-being of the community might be threatened if people decide against driving to this community and paying these fees. Local business loses out on sales; local tourism loses visitors.

(The example above might resonate somewhat with those living in Illinois.)

Example 5 - This example will only address privatization of a service – not even selling or leasing an asset, and this example is based on strictly on a real scenario that played out. A city hires a local hauler to provide solid waste pickup. The deal is the city pays the hauler a flat fee per household for pickup only. The city then pays the landfill the charge for the city’s waste that is dumped there by the hauler. This goes on for many years with the city paying both entities.

Eventually the waste hauler is bought out by another person who discovers the drivers of the garbage trucks have been telling the landfill that all the garbage they dump there came from this city even though the hauler picks up waste from other communities. This city ended up paying for waste from other cities to the tune of about $300,000 that could be documented. Fortunately the new owner agreed to pay it back over time. But now the city is obligated to hire this particular hauler for fear of not getting their money in the future. And even worse, the hauler will not divulge the amount of waste taken each day out of this community – there is no provision requiring him to. Nor can any citizen ask for it because FOIA rules do not cover a private entity.

I could go on and on with examples but will leave it at that since this post is already long enough!

So what is the answer? Is all privatization bad?

I realize some of these examples are worse extremes, but two of the examples relate what has already been experienced by at least two communities. Are there success stories? Yes, most definitely. But as the say, “the devil is in the details.”

So most definitely privatization can work, but not in all cases and not at all if the agreements are poorly written.

If politicians do not have an adequate business background to cut privatization deals, they need to find someone who does to ensure all the issues and potential risks are addressed. And if the risks do not outweigh the upfront payoff, privatization of the asset must not be approved. Because at the end of the day, the citizens are the ones who will be paying the tab for a failed or poorly executed deal.

The site offers users the opportunity to plot their issues using Google Maps. Problems are designated by inputting an address, dragging and zooming around an area on the map, emailing, or calling toll-free. Each issue allows for a title, description, photo, and comments.

People can also create watch areas and set up RSS feeds so that when new issues arise in a particular region, they are notified. This is beneficial for public works departments or city officials who might want to monitor emerging problems within their community.

SeeClickFix also allows anyone to create a widget of their watch area so the tool can be embedded on their own Web sites. I have pasted my watch area below along with an issue I reported:

This means that the only local roads eligible to receive this funding are local roads that were going to be built anyway with federal funds and a small portion of local funds. So how is the Recovery legislation funding going to help out immediately in this case? These local roads were going to be built anyway. This is significant because this means that the money from this legislation is not generating new jobs or new work. It is paying for jobs and work that would have been created and paid for anyway. And the small portion of local funds that are saved are not enough to make a major impact on job creation.

As an engineer who has been working in the civil engineering/public works field for 25+ years, I know I can get a significant road project for my community out to bid in a month or two depending on the extent of the reconstruction. However, this is only true if the roadway is not a Federal Aid highway because the process for getting a project out using that funding mechanism is lengthy and time consuming due to policies and regulations.

Now I also realize they are talking about another wave of funding, but that won’t happen immediately either, and again, local governments will not be able to prepare projects fast enough if they have to use the federal aid funding process.

I guess I had thought the desperate economic situation was going to allow our Federal government to actually award local governments the funds they need to rebuild their infrastructure without having to impose all these policies and regulations since the need to put people to work was professed to be the first and foremost concern. Now, I realize that this program, like so many that have been passed before is just throwing money out the door without really thinking about the mechanism and results.

Looking back what really should have been done to make this work would have been first to meet with local government people who understand how projects are designed, bid out, and constructed, and get input on the most efficient and practical method to get jobs out and put people to work. Unfortunately this does not seem to have happened, and now we are faced with not being able to receive significant funds to make much of a difference – at least at the local level.

I don’t have much insight on the other funding programs in the Recovery Bill other than the water and wastewater sections, and in those areas, they are talking about loans and only a portion of grants to local government so again, I am not sure there will be a significant impact. These projects were going forward anyway with local funds, and since the federal money will only be a loan, these local funds will have to go to pay off the loan and will not be freed up to go towards other projects.

With the Senate yet to make a decision, I suppose there is still a chance to fix this, but I have not seen any signs that the Senate will address this aspect of the Recovery Bill. I still believe that spending money on public works projects would significantly stimulate the economy, but first we have to have projects chosen and eligible for funding. And from down here in local government, I am very sorry to say the Recovery Bill does not appear to be focused on granting eligibility to all local projects that are sitting on the shelf ready to go to bid. Hopefully the Federal and State projects will be enough to make a difference.