On-Line Accident Reports...

Being involved in an accident can be a harrowing experience, and we take our job as first responders very seriously.  In less than 2 minutes after you find yourself in trouble, we expect to be at your side, providing whatever help is necessary to get your life back on track. 

The focus at the accident scene will always be ensuring the safety of everyone involved but once we get that covered there’s still plenty of work to be done documenting and reporting the incident so that insurance companies can get busy on your behalf to fix or replace what’s been bent, broke and damaged.

One of the key pieces that the insurance company needs to do their job is the Police Report for the incident.  That’s where we come in again. 

The Police Reports outline the details of what occurred based on the investigative results noted at the scene.  From that data, the insurance company will make the call as to what is or is not covered under existing insurance policies. 

Getting those Police Reports into the hands of the insurance companies is a critical first step on the road to recovery — and I’m pleased to report that the Kent Police Department has now begun to make those Police Reports available on-line.  No more driving down to the Police Station to request copies — your accident reports are only a couple of mouse-clicks away at any time. 

We’re hoping that the convenience and timeliness of online access will reduce some of the administrative pain that can follow an accident.  Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for you to put the incident behind you as quickly as possible. 

Here’s the link to the Kent Police Web Site for Accident Reports: http://www.kentpd.org/Accidents.html

Stay safe out there.

Discarding Drugs...

Cabinets full of expired or unneeded medications?  Not sure what to do with them?  The Portage County Sheriff’s Office can help. 

It turns out that this Saturday, October 29th, the Portage County Sheriff’s Office, in collaboration with Portage County Water Resources Office and the Drug Enforcement Administration, is giving the public an opportunity to safely discard unused and unwanted prescription drugs.

Fairchild Bridge Opening...

It’s official, the new Fairchild Avenue Bridge will go into service at 8:30 am on Thursday, October 27. 

The engineers sent word around on Tuesday that the final touches should be done on Wednesday so the bridge could be opened on Thursday.  Being engineers, the bridge opening was just another task on the work schedule that followed after item 5,643 (remove the barricades on the bridge) — so when we heard the good news we intervened and added cut ribbon and take photos to their task list.

The bridge opening has been a long time coming, and as the largest bridge project in the history of Portage County, it seemed worthy of a momentary celebration, a few snips of the scissors and pictures for posterity. 

I know, it sounds a bit dramatic — yes, it’s just a bridge after all — but if you knew how much work went into getting to this point, you’d raise a toast to the engineers and everyone involved in this project.  We can’t do that on company time so we’ll settle for some ribbons and pictures — saving the bottle popping and toasting for a little later. 

Technically, the project still has a lot more work to go.  Most immediately we’ve got some more signal work that needs to be finished before the Crain Avenue connection can be re-opened, so at least until next Monday the new bridge will only be open to Water Street.

Then the old bridge will come down and we’ll build a new hike and bike bridge in it’s place.  The roadway alignments still need some work and all of the green space, including the park like landscaping and the stormwater features all have to be built next year.  

But those are tomorrow’s worries, today we celebrate the bridge opening.

Portage County Streetwork in Kent...

Streetwork In Kent...

I realize that with all the construction going on around Kent these days, every day feels like it’s national street repair day, but actually the City’s street maintenance program is just now gearing up for the Fall push before winter arrives. 

Admittedly, we’ve thrown in a fair amount of street resurfacing and reconfiguration with some of our big projects, like the Fairchild Avenue Bridge, but the Annual Street Program continues to have a life of its own and is managed through the Public Service Department and Engineering Division. 

The Annual Street Program is the product of an engineering based assessment of the relative condition (safety, rideability, potholes, etc.) of all of the City streets that results in the allocation of funds to take care of as many of the worst streets as possible.  Like most things, there’s not enough money to do everything that needs to be done, so we rely on the independent evaluation performed by the engineers to determine which streets rise to the top of the worst list. 

The list of streets that show up at the top of that list for 2011 are as follows:

Ideally we’d like to resurface City streets on a 15-20 year cycle but unfortunately City revenues don’t support that level of re-investment so we do our best to handle the biggest problem spots each year, stretch our dollars, apply for grant funds, and as a last resort defer the rest until next year.

The Rider Rumble Event...

I posted yesterday about the efforts of the Kent Police to forge stronger relationships with the community and it looks like their efforts being returned in kind — community memebers have announced the inaugural Rider Rumble Nature Race in support of the Kent Police and Kent Fire Associations.  Read on for the details of the event: 

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Greetings!

Please join us on September 17th as we launch our inaugural Rider Rumble nature race to benefit the Kent Police and Citizens Association and the Kent Fire Fighters Association!

This 3+ mile race will provide an exciting, challenging and competitive event all for a great cause.  This is a family friendly event as kids ages 5-12 can compete on their very own adventure filled race course.  A variety of checkpoint challenges await each runner on the main course as you navigate your way around this beautiful horse property. 

This will be a festive day with food, drinks, entertainment, prizes and a special Ohio State vs Miami Hurricanes viewing party later in the evening! 

Register

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Details:

Date: Saturday, September 17th, 2011 – multiple heats beginning at 10a.m. until 5p.m.

Fee: $50 per person/$35 student/Team rate/$15 kids rate - each racer will receive a “rider rumble” t-shirt – Enter before September 1st and save $10 for individual and $5 each team member!!

Contact: Matt Campana at 330.524.3047 or mcampana@corporatemotivation.net or Damon Lewis at 330.715.0517 or damonmlewis@yahoo.com

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Inaugural Kent Police Academy...

For all the high tech wizardry that’s available to fight crime these days, the Kent Police have been working hard on one of the oldest tactics in the book – building stronger relationships with residents.

It’s easy to get caught up in the latest and greatest technology advances but at the risk of sounding too old fashioned, the Kent Police are investing more time than ever before in the people that they serve. 

There’s some exceptionally powerful new surveillance equipment on the market but we’ve found that nothing beats the pairs of eyes of neighbors, motorists or dog walkers. 

Call them old school, but with each step up in technology, the Kent Police are making sure those advances are balanced with stronger ties in the neighborhoods.  The technology is a tool to serve people, not the other way around. 

From the monthly Kent Public Safety series, hosted by the Kent Police, offering residents an inside look at specific public safety issues, to neighborhood meetings and increased foot and bike patrols, the Kent Police wants to get to interact more with the public before problems arise so that when public safety is at risk we know how to work together to keep our community safe. 

The latest initiative in community building is the Inaugural Kent Police Academy. 

The inaugural Kent Citizens Police Academy began last week with 20 area residents in attendance.  The classes are held from 6 to 10 on Thursdays for the next 11 weeks.  The academy will introduce participants to a wide variety of police practice, tactics and operations in order to garner trust and understanding of what the Police do each and every day, and equally important, what we can do to help them help us.

Kent is small enough (“right sized”) in population and geography that relationships can make a difference in preventing crime.  The key is knowing how to work together to do that well — the Police Academy is the latest effort to practice the work of community.

Kent Police Web Site...

The Kent Police staff have been working for some time on updating their web presence to offer a little more insight into who they are, what they’re working on, and who to contact if you need help.  It turns out that they’ve officially launched their Kent Police Web page today and I’m happy to promote it.

Here’s the link:  http://www.kentpd.org/

In light of these not so friendly economic times, much to my chagrin the City hasn’t been able to find funds to hire an IT staff — not even a staff of one — so we all do our best to take advantage of the free-ware on the web and learn by trial and error how to plug in and represent on the internet. 

As a result, we’ve got a couple of different web sites that relate to City business, and while admittedly that may not be the best way to have a web presence, it turns out to be the most practical and in this case, we figure good is better than best since best isn’t particularly possible right now. 

Critics could point to the lack of branding on our sites and our less than leading edge navigation tools, but considering in just about every case employees taught themselves (often on their personal time) how to get the City to join the ranks of other cities on the web (who usually have funds and staff dedicated to web support), there’s a part of me that’s proud of our hodge-podge. 

That doesn’t mean I don’t aspire to pull them all together under one roof and have a wow-site for Kent (which I actually have beta versions of in development), but I’m practical and patient, so until we find a golden goose wandering the streets of Kent, I’m pleased with what our employees have been able to do on their own by their own computer bootstraps.

CSX National Gateway Project Through Kent...

In the last month the Wheeling and Lake Erie railroad tracks that run behind (and serve) the Star of the West Mill in downtown Kent were raised about 4′ as part of the Crain/Fairchild Avenue bridge project.  This makes for a little roller coaster effect at the existing Crain Avenue bridge but that will go away once traffic is turned over to the new bridge and the old bridge is in turn torn down and replaced with the new hike and bike trail bridge. 

As the transition from the old Crain Avenue bridge to the new Fairchild Avenue bridge work continues, the raising of the tracks was a critical milestone that is good example of  how many moving parts there are to this large and complex project.   

At the risk of oversimplifying, follow me for a minute:  the City’s bridge design engineer had to gain the support of Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad to lift their (upper) tracks 4 feet so that the superstructure of the new roadway bridge would be high enough over CSX’s lower tracks to allow CSX to progress with their National Gateway Project which commits to having double stack capabilities for the rail that runs thru downtown Kent all the way down to Wilmington North Carolilna.  

Wheeling and Lake Erie had to be assured that their business clients that they serve along those tracks — particularly Star of the West Mill in downtown Kent — would not be adversely effected, so the City had to design around some very specific rail transportation needs for Star of the West while assuring the neighboring businesses around the mill that raising the tracks was going to work for their business as well. 

Then, the City first had to coordinate the construction of these plans with all of the utility companies that criss-cross below the bridge and use the rail corridor as conduits for their utilities, and then with ODOT and their bridge contractor (and don’t forget all their respective sub-contractors) to make sure that everybody hit all the elevations at all the right times so that the of their individual pieces of the project line up and come together within the very narrow space allotted to each element of the project.  There’s nothing worse than a blown elevation and this project had Himalayan-esque elevations to deal with.    

Throw in the fact that this is perhaps the busiest traffic intersection in the City, and it runs above the busiest rail corridor in the mid-west, and you get a flavor for how unbelievably constrained the project was for the folks tasked with making it happen.  That’s why there was a collective sense of relief last week — at least for 5 minutes until it was on to the next 6,547 milestones (my number, not the engineers) left to hit before this project will officially be complete. 

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As noted above, one of the main drivers of the engineering behind the new bridge was accomodating the CSX National Gateway Project.  The Project is touted as one of the most significant transportation investments in decades.  I’m fairly certain that there were many headaches added to the City’s bridge project because of the CSX project but admittedly, long-term, the Gateway project will significantly increase rail capacity that serves Kent, and to that end, a few headaches in the name of progress is probably worth it. 

The impacts of the CSX Gateway project isn’t limited to the Crain Avenue bridge, it will also be seen in the Middlebury Road railroad corridor, and further up the Lake Street/Riverbend rail corridor, as CSX and it’s contractors will have to elevate additional structures along the tracks that currently limit overhead clearance.  Here’s some more information from the CSX National Gateway website that gives a description of all the work they plan to do from Ohio to North Carolina to complete their $700 million investment (approximately $21 million in Kent).

Background

Fairchild Bridge TEMPORARY Closure...

Given the high traffic volumes that use the Fairchild/Crain Avenue bridge we knew from the start that the key to success of the project would not just be ending up with a shiny new bridge, it would also be how we got the shiny new bridge in place, which is why we made a commitment to do everything we could to minimize the traffic disruption.  

Easier said than done on the largest bridge project in the history of Portage County.   

There’s no doubt that traffic has been impacted during construction as lanes have been shifted, reduced and moved around over the last 12 months of the project, but hang on to your hat because starting Wednesday, July 20th and running through Monday July 25th the bridge will be closed. 

C-L-O-S-E-D…as in no traffic at all…as in how the heck do I get across the Cuyahoga River to head north out of town?

The best answer is to just stay and shop and eat in Kent this week and forget heading north but if that’s not a realistic option you’ll have to use the Haymaker Parkway bridge to access State Route 43.  It’s admittedly inconvenient but it’s probably less than a quarter mile out of way so hopefully for 5 days we will survive. 

The bridge closure really was an option of last resort.  Our City Engineer lives and breathes this project and after the first 12 months he knows exactly how frustrating the whole detouring thing can be for everyone, and the last thing he wants to do is to give everyone inspiration to call him up and share their insights into his latest decision on this project — but some decisions are unavoidable, so here we go.   

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In his defense, our City Engineer offers the following explanation for the bridge closure: 

During this closure the contractor will raise the upper tracks (A.B.C. Railroad) to its final elevation. Since the rail line crosses the existing bridge, the bridge must be closed during this work. A detour will be posted and emergency vehicle access to all areas will be maintained. Businesses along Lake Street that receive truck shipments have been coordinated with to allow them access without driving through residential neighborhoods.

The original plans called for incremental raising of the rail lines without shutting down the Crain Avenue Bridge. However, due to numerous factors including coordination with the railroads, underground utilities, hazardous materials and weather delays the method of raising the tracks required changing.

The raising of the tracks (approximately four feet) is required to open the new Fairchild Avenue Bridge, which is scheduled for this October.