Sharing Equipment, Saving Money...

It turns out that mom’s advice to share our toys and play well with others is also full of good business logic.

Cities around our region have jumped on the bandwagon and started partnering at unprecedented levels.  From sharing equipment to sharing revenues, there’s a new attitude towards our neighbors which should have benefits for all of us for years to come.

On an intellectual level, cities have talked about the value of partnering for years but it took a good dose of fiscal distress to finally prompt actions to back up those words.  There’s nothing like a genuine sense of urgency to inspire bold steps and in the world of political organizations reaching across-jurisdictional boundaries represents a sea change.

It might not sound like all that much to share a bucket truck (which is what the City of Kent and the City of Aurora have done for the last 2 years) but when it comes to equipment purchased with public funds in one community potentially being used in another community, you can just see the hair on the back of political leader’s necks stand up.

Local elected leaders take their jobs as stewards for their community and its resources very seriously, which historically meant what comes from Kent stays in Kent.  Drawing that line makes a lot of sense, and is very defensible, but it also can leave us short at the worst possible moments.  Fortunately, in areas like Police and Fire, cities have been able to step outside their jurisdictional boxes for some time under the auspices of mutual aid — and that’s worked extremely well.

Communities understand that in a disaster or catastrophic event, everyone rallies to support those in need regardless of political boundaries.  However, that spirit of collaboration stopped at the border of everyday, routine services that cities provide.

Whether it’s turf issues, community pride or a sense of rivalry, it’s been an uphill battle to step across city borders for non-emergency functions.  The silver lining to the less than friendly economy over the last 3 years has been knocking down the size of that hill, and slowly we’re seeing sharing of resources trickle down to everyday services from pothole repairs to tree chipping.

Cities have realized that emergency services aren’t the only expensive operations we run and if there’s a way to cut costs in non-emergency services cities are ready to act.

After 22 years in City government, it’s exciting to see these doors with our neighbors opening up.  The good news for all of us is that with each new partner experience we learn something, we see the value of it, and most importantly we get better at it — which means we there should be more where that came from.

Sometimes transformations are dramatic but other times a lot of little steps can add up to something big.  We are in the midst of one of those quiet transformations for how cities do business and I’m proud that Kent has been at the forefront of this wave.

Kent Public Service Director is spearheading an effort to apply the mutual aid model from Police and Fire to public works operations — and he’s got the attention of local leaders in Portage and even in Summit County that are anxious to improve service delivery without increasing costs.

The Mayor’s of Streetsboro and Stow have hosted meetings over the last 6 months to chart out areas where we could all stand to gain from better cooperation.  The low hanging fruit has been public works functions, e.g., street repairs, brush chipping, etc.

Step 1 was the creation of a new region-wide database that allowed each City to upload their equipment inventory, equipment operators, supervisors and contact information so that in the event of an unexpected need in the middle of the night one community can know who to reach out to for help.  Creating such an inventory sounds like it should be a relatively simple task but I can tell you, it’s not, and despite good intentions for years, no one was able to pull it off.  Until now.

In a stroke of genius, Kent’s Public Service Director created a public service wiki page that allowed each City to upload their respective information which could then be accessed by any of the partners using a mobile phone from the job site, which is usually in a ditch at 1 am or some equally unconnected location.  Smart phones and tablets have changed the way we can do our business in the field and this new application is exactly the kind of simple solution that we’ve all been waiting for.

Here’s the sort of information that the site contains.

That doesn’t mean we’ve left emergency services partnering behind.   We recently reported to City Council on the efforts of  six local dispatch agencies that have collaborated to submit a grant application for a project that is intended to bring about improvements in the coordinated call receipt and dispatching of 9-1-1 and other emergency calls for public safety services.  These agencies are the City of Ravenna, the City of Kent, The City of Streetsboro, the City of Aurora, and the agencies of the Portage County Sheriff’s Office and Kent State University.

This is just a sampling of what’s going on and we should all expect more to come.

Good News On Kent Senior Housing...

One of the lessons learned from the private sale of the Silver Oaks property, and the subsequent new owners announcement that they were converting the property from senior housing to new student housing, was the obvious conclusion that we needed more senior housing in Kent.

In hindsight it shouldn’t have been surprising that a developer would look at the senior housing property adjacent to the Kent State campus and recognize the opportunity to build new student housing at such a prime location — but it took most everyone by surprise, and the City along with many others in the community (including Kent State University) rallied to try to buy the seniors some move out time and to ease their transition into new housing.

It was a stressful couple of months but once everyone was relocated and things settled down, the City started knocking on developers doors looking for a little help to back fill behind the loss of the affordable senior housing units that Silver Oaks provided.

The key word was “affordable” senior housing — it turns out that there’s a fair amount of mid-upper end senior housing around our area but there’s precious little affordable housing for seniors that are on tight, fixed incomes.  I learned that’s because in order to have affordable rental rates, they have to be affordable to build — and those complexes are not particularly cheap to construct, so as a result developers will only venture down the senior housing path if there’s some significant outside tax breaks or compensation upfront that essentially subsidizes the construction which in turn allows the developers to offer those elusive affordable rents.

The good news is that there are Ohio tax credits out there to help stimulate/subsidize the senior housing market — the bad news is everybody and their brother is trying to get those credits so each year about 1 in 4 project requests actually get funded.

Following on the heels of the Silver Oaks closure, we started working with the builders/owners of the 4 Seasons property in Kent, the  NRP Group, and a local developer who owns property adjacent to the Kent Ridge at Golden Pond property to plan a new senior complex adjacent to Kent Ridge.  The plans fell in place quickly, partnership agreements were signed, and a preliminary site plan for the project was approved by the Kent Planning Commission.

The only thing missing was the make or break Ohio Tax Credit.  The tax credit application cycle worked to our favor and we had the time we needed to put together what we thought was a highly competitive project proposal, including a $250,000 investment by Kent City Council out of our Community Housing Improvement Program (CHIP) to demonstrate the City’s commitment to the project.

This morning (April 11th) the State sent word that our efforts paid off.   NRP got the tax credits they needed, in the amount of $1,188,595,  in tax credit reserves from OHFA.

The State noted that the City’s willingness to make available $250,000 in our Community Housing Improvement Program (CHIP) to help underwrite portions of the project was a key factor in the award of the tax credits.  It turns out that there are 4 different tax credit allocation pools and the “Four Seasons at Golden Pond” project received its tax credit allocation under the “Maximizing Outcomes Pool” (MOP).  The tax credits in this pool are allocated in part based on evidence that the project has “substantial participation and commitment of resources by multiple long-term partners” and it achieves “multiple public policy goals.”

To that end, the City’s participation was instrumental in satisfiying those requirements and directly contributed to the award.  Out of 102 applications only 37 were awarded, so we’re thrilled to be on the receiving end of this good news.

Now we can re-group with the developers and plan a path forward to build seniors in Kent quality, new, and most importantly affordable housing.

Water Improvements...

Last week City Council held a spirited community discussion on fracking.

The standing room only crowd was testament to the level of interest in the prospective economic and environmental impacts from this rapidly growing industry in our region.

No doubt Ohio is poised to benefit from the kind of economic resurgence that Texas enjoyed for the last decade — the question everyone seems to be wrestling with is can the drilling boom be done in an environmentally safe manner, particularly as it relates to protecting our precious water supply.

Big question, high stakes, and unfortunately no easy answers.

We’ll keep working with the State (since they regulate the oil and gas industry), local businesses (who are seeing job numbers grow to support the demands of this rapidly growing industry) and the residents (that want more jobs, just not at the risk of sacrificing Kent’s water supply) to come up with the best answers we can, but in the meantime the City will keep doing what it does best — protecting our water resources and delivering great tasting water to your home every day.

I know Fracking is a big news story, and for good reason, but I’d still argue that some of the most important water protection work goes largely unnoticed every day by the Kent City employees that operate the water plant, test water samples, repair pipes and pumps, and guard our raw water aquifer at all costs.

Anything that gets done well 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, is easy to be taken for granted, and for me, the whole discussion of fracking serves as a reminder for how important and how well the City employees manage our water system.

Taking care of the City’s water gets done every day but there’s nothing routine about it.  If commitment is judged by what people do, not just what they say, I can make a good case that no one is more committed to protecting and preserving Kent’s water system than Kent’s employees.  We spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours as the stewards of Kent’s water resources and the fact that we consistently rate as one of the best tasting water in the U.S. is a real point of pride to our employees.

And it should be for all of us that drink it every day too.

So, as boring as it might sound, we’re getting ready to begin the Middlebury Road Waterline project this month.  It doesn’t have much drama but its arguably very important to anyone that turns their faucet and expects safe, good tasting water.

Here’s a few project details:

The City will begin construction of the Middlebury Road Waterline project in April 2012 and be complete by November 2012.  The waterline work will include the replacement of an existing 6″ waterline with a new 8″ waterline on Middlebury Road from Akron boulevard to Longmere Drive.

The project will also replace an existing 2″ waterline with a new 8″ waterline on Munroe-Falls-Kent Road from Middlebury Road to Roosevelt Avenue.

It turns out that the City of Kent Service Department has recorded 17 total waterline breaks along the existing Middlebury Road watermain since the year 2000. The City’s Central Maintenance Department has been responding to the frequent breaks and here’s a map that shows the locations of the trouble spots:

Approximately 3,800 feet of water main replacement is proposed.  This project will tie into the new Middlebury/Cherry water main and continue northeast along Middlebury Road, terminating with a connection into the Longmere Drive watermain.  The new 8 inch ductile iron pipe will be wrapped in plastic to protect it from corrosive soils.

Boring but effective.

That’s our motto.

Sorry About the Traffic Detours...

We knew it was coming but it still pains me to say it – nothing says Spring has arrived better than traffic detours in Kent.

Even though it’s all in the name of progress, I was definitely feeling some guilt over the traffic tie ups that emerged last week when we reduced 4 lanes of traffic to 2 on SR43 to start the next phase of the Fairchild Avenue bridge project.

Any time you cut the number of lanes in half, the results are not going to be good, and they weren’t.   The first day is always the worst and as I watched the traffic congestion grow during the evening rush hour I could feel everyone’s pain.

It took me back to my days as a Public Works Director in Kingsport Tennessee when a well meaning street supervisor closed a lane of a local highway to repair a broken sidewalk and inadvertently caused a major traffic jam during rush hour.  After realizing the error the lanes were re-opened that afternoon.  Discouraged by his mis-judgment the new supervisor asked if he could post a traffic sign apologizing to motorists — I said sure.

This small act of contrition was picked up by the local media and then by the national media with stories run all over the nation about the city in Tennessee that cared so much about its citizens that it actually apologized for causing a traffic jam.

This situation is different — because there’s no other choice than to reduce the lanes – but just the same I was getting ready to go into the closet and pull out the old sign.

So on behalf of your City please accept my apologies for the abundance of traffic detours these days.  I figure the least I can do is offer some explanation with why were doing what we’re doing to you as you try to get around town.

1.  SR59 Signals — In case you had not noticed the great new traffic signals on SR59 aren’t playing together so well.  It turns out that we lost communications with the traffic signals on E. Main Street from Willow to Horning Roads when a contractor accidentally crushed the conduit and fiber-optic line that connected the signals with our control center. The end result is that the signals on E. Main Street from Willow to Horning are running independently (no progression capabilities). Therefore we are seeing more traffic delays as traffic traveling the corridor will not move as freely as before. We are still working with the contractor to temporarily repair the line and then permanently replace the line but it will likely be weeks (possibly months) before we can regain computer inter-operability and optimize the timing to better coordinate traffic flow in the corridor.

2.  Fairchild Bridge/SR43 — As noted above, on Monday April 2nd traffic was reduced from 4 lanes to 2 lanes on SR43; 1 northbound lane and 1 southbound lane from Fairchild Avenue to Stinaff Street, in order to allow the bridge contractor to resume work on the street approaches to the bridge on SR43.   With only 2 lanes of traffic the Engineering Division had to prohibit the southbound left turn movement on SR43 to prevent southbound traffic from coming to a complete stand still.  With that restriction in place, the Engineering Division was worried that motorists would try to jump through the adjoining neighborhoods to get around this new congestion so they closed Cuyahoga Street and Stinaff Street.  The Engineering staff has been on site watching the see how the traffic patterns respond to the changes and they have made adjustments to the timing of the signals to better handle the new patterns.  For the first couple of days, the Police also stayed on site to warn motorists to not make the probited left turn movement .  The motorists seem to be settling in to the new pattern but this congestion will continue through the summer as the work on SR43 progresses.

3.  S. Water Street –  With the brick nearly completed on the east elavation of the new Davey Tree building, Premier/Fairmount will move the brick masons to begin the west elevation that fronts on Water Street.  The brick masons are planning to begin to install the brick facing on the Water Street side on 4/9/12.  The brick contractors will be using scaffolding and a large piece of equipment that will extend partially into the street and occassionally block traffic when it is moved in and out at the front of the building.  The contractors expect to have to move the equipment an estimated 5 times a day and each time they move it, they will impede traffic flow for about 5 minutes.  The contractors will have flaggers on site to maintain traffic flow and the work is expected to be completed by 4/27/12.

4.  Depeyster Street — At this point, with construction underway on both sides of Depeyster Street, there is too much heavy equipment moving in and out from both sides of the street and the Engineering Division felt that for motorist safety reasons, Depeyster Street should be closed to thru traffic.  This closure will likely stay in place for the next 4-6 months until the street is rebuilt as planned for the redevelopment project.

5.  Redmond Bridge — If you don’t have kids in baseball or softball, the closing of the Redmond bridge into Kramer fields might not mean that much to you but if you do, it probably means a lot and you wondering why is it taking 2 years to get this small bridge replaced?  The bottom line is that we had a chance to get nearly $1 million in Federal dollars to replace the bridge but the Federal process takes 2-3 years from funding application to construction so we are unfortunately at the mercy of the Federal timetable.  Here’s more details from City Engineer Jim Bowling:

Federal Process:

First it takes years to go through the federal process to fund, design, complete the environmental studies, right-of-way acquisition, permitting and construct a bridge project. When federal money is received for a project, this one received $968,000 in federal funds, municipalities are required to complete the project according to the federal process listed in Chapter 23 of the Code of Federal Regulations. This includes numerous studies for cultural resources, hazordous materials, ecological studies and section 4f studies. For this project in particular a recent snag was encountered with the potential designation of Category 3 wetlands around the bridge. Category 3 wetlands are the most sensitive category. We have had representatives from Army Corp of Engineers and ODOT Office of Environmental Services do a site visit in an effort to help determine the category of wetland. This alone has gone on for several months. In addition to the studies, there are numerous permits required for work in a waterway like the Cuyahoga River, these include floodplain permits, Army Corp of Engineer permits and OEPA permits. The floodplain permit requires a detailed study of the floodplain and the impacts the proposed structure will have on the floodplain. This permit and study analyzes whether we will be increasing the flood elevation by the construction of the new bridge. All of the above studies and results are then summarized with public comments and input as part of the Categorical Exclusion Document that will be completed and approved by ODOT. None of this includes the actual design, bidding and construction of the project. Replacing the bridge will cost approximately $1.3 million dollars, funding this without federal money is simply not an option budgetarily.

Work in the Background:

Typically all of the above studies, permits, design and bidding are done well in advance in preparation for the construction of a project. All the work that we see currently going forward in downtown and throughout the City was started years ago. The most obvious is the Crain Avenue Bridge Relocation that started in 1994. John Idone and the engineering division had begun the process of replacing the bridge before it was closed when we obtained municipal bridge funds for the bridges replacement. However the bridge simply deteriorated faster than we could get the funding for it to be replaced.

None of this may bring the satisfaction you lost from having detours all over Kent but perhaps you can take some solace in knowing that these are not capricious or random acts of unkindness.

If all else fails, please remember that we’re also sorry.