Good evening.

Um, welcome to the public work committee meeting.

Um Mr.

Hanan, please do the roll call.

Ms.

Ortega.

Ums Moda here.

Uh Mr.

Ms.

Safa.

And Mr.

Pengo is absent.

Thank you.

Um before we begin tonight, uh, public works committee meeting.

I first want to wish everyone a happy national public work week.

Uh this week is really about recognizing the people who keep our city running every single day.

Often behind the scenes and without a lot of recognition, public works touches every neighborhood and every resident daily life.

As a chair of public works, um, as the chair of the public works committee, this past year has honestly been a really uh valuable uh learning experience for me.

I have the opportunity to better understand just how much this department does day in and day out.

I especially want to recognize the director Mark Shatter.

Mark has been an incredible leader for this department.

He's passionate about the work, supportive of his staff, and always willing to collaborate with council.

I have appreciated working alongside alongside him this year and learning more about the challenges and the opportunities within public works.

His leadership and energy have really helped uh move important projects and conversations uh forward for the city.

So again, thank you for all that you do.

Um, and although the employees in public works department, your work matters and and your help makes our street cleaner and safer.

I also would like to invite uh my colleagues on council to join me at the public works picnic this Thursday.

I think it's gonna be a lot of fun.

Uh it's an opportunity to thank the staff personally and celebrate the incredible work this department does for our city.

So again, happy national public works week, and thank you for everyone in public works for all that you do for Allentown.

Ms.

Mrs.

Ortega, uh we have two bills.

Uh Bill 35.

Bill 35 amends the 2026 general fund budget to accommodate the upgrade of the part-time clerk three in the office of compliance and the upgrade of two part-time MW1 custodial positions in building maintenance within the Department of Public Works.

The part-time clerk three, currently M8 would be upgraded to an administrative assistant at a proposed pay grade of S7 to better align the job duties and responsibilities of this position.

The two part-time NW1 custodial positions will remain in the same pay grade, M6, but be upgraded to full-time positions to to better align job duties and allow for consistent staffing and building maintenance.

Okay, Mr.

Shada.

Thank you, uh Vice President Mota, and thank you for those kind words.

Um I really appreciate it, and I really appreciate the good work and relationship that we have with city council.

So thank you to the council as well for the support that you provide to the public works department.

Um, but it's really about the men and women, the men and women of the public works department.

Um major kudos to the to them to our employees.

I mean, they're the ones behind the scenes doing all the hard work day in and day out.

And oftentimes, you know, some of sometimes you know their work isn't recognized or appreciated.

So during National Public Works Week, I just really wanted to take some time and take a day where we could celebrate our employees and really commend them for a job well done.

And that's what we're doing tomorrow, tomorrow at Bucky Boyle Park between 11 and 2.

Uh it's just a small picnic that I'm hosting for our employees, and it's just a way that I could show our employees some gratitude and some appreciation for everything that they do.

So it's a small token of my appreciation to our employees, and I'm hoping that you all could join us tomorrow for just uh for something to eat and just some spend some time with our employees.

So I'll look forward to seeing you all there tomorrow.

And I'm looking forward to seeing you guys there too.

But I also would like to know about the menu.

So you know that will motivate us a little bit more too.

There's gonna be some really good food.

We got hot dogs, hamburger barbecue, some some homemade cupcakes and other delicious sweets.

So uh there'll be a lot there for you guys to choose from.

Got Lisa, we're in half hours.

You got me at the house.

Uh so getting into this bill here.

What we're doing this evening is a small reorganization within the public works department.

Uh, we have over the years, we've just been struggling to fill some of these part-time positions, and our departments have been structured this way for many decades, and it's time to kind of restructure and move in a different direction.

Um, in today's challenging economic times, it's very difficult to fill part-time positions.

Um, so what we're doing is as these positions become vacant, we're proposing to upgrade them to full-time positions.

Uh, we spend a lot of time in terms of training and administrative time bringing employees up to speed to only lose them a couple of months later to another full-time opportunity that becomes available within the city.

Um, there's really no additional cost to doing this re-org this evening.

Uh, we're offsetting the additional costs within our operating budget, so we're not asking for additional funding to upgrade these positions.

Uh, one of the positions that I'll quickly get into uh is in the office of compliance, where we're upgrading a part-time clerk three position, and uh we're upgrading it to a um an administrative assistant.

Um the position has been we've had three vacancies within the last three years.

Um Brian and Jenny Chamberlain, who are with us this evening are the compliance auditors, they spend a lot of time in training these personnel to only have to lose them.

Uh so we're trying to streamline things, and uh, one of the main reasons for this upgrade is also it's gonna help us with succession planning.

Um, Mr.

Chamberlain and Brian and and Jenny McKenna are really on the verge of retiring at any moment's notice.

So, in terms of succession planning, it's very important to stabilize this position and be able to hire somebody and and start transferring that knowledge.

So when either one of them do decide to retire, that we we're in a position to set ourselves up for success and promote from within.

So that's the office of compliance.

Um, the other reorg that we're doing is within the building maintenance department.

We're currently we we have nine nine total custodians that are responsible for 350,000 square feet of city buildings that they're responsible to maintain.

When you take a look at the industry standards, um, on average, each custodian in eight-hour work shift should be able to cover 18,000 square feet.

Um when you do the math there, that equates to 19 employees that you should have according to industry standards, and we're only at nine.

So, what we're doing this evening is we're not asking for additional personnel, uh, but we would like to uh upgrade the two part-time positions and make them full-time positions, and we feel that that's gonna help us cover ground more quickly, and it'll help us account for the additional square footage that we're expected to inherit in the future.

Uh, one of the things that we've um we were responsible for was the addition of the Max South fire station.

Uh, when we built that trailer, that was all additional square footage that we just didn't account for.

Um, so we've absorbed that, and we're in the process, hopefully soon of um breaking ground on the new police station.

That's also additional square footage that our custodians are gonna have to account for.

So upgrading these positions for part-time to full-time is gonna help us in the future and be better prepared to take on additional responsibility.

Okay, thank you.

Um there's any comment from Daday's.

Yeah, but I would like to also say thank you.

That's it.

You're welcome.

Any other comments from the Dayers?

Any comments from the uh from the public?

Okay.

Um, I need someone to make a motion to move this forward.

It's either you or Ms.

Appha.

She needs a motion.

You need a motion.

the comments from the day is any comments from the uh from the public okay um i need someone to make a motion to move this forward it's either you or miss appa she needs a motion you need a motion um no i i need someone to make a motion to move this forward i make a motion okay all in favor say aye okay so this will be this this is gonna be moved forward in front of full council bill 36 bill 36 amends the 2026 capital fund budget to provide for an increase of one million six hundred and fifty thousand dollars to fund the reconstruction on Lehigh and Union Street as part of the congressionally directed spending grant the city was awarded this grant is partially reimbursable and requires match funding okay so what we're doing with this grant here is if as you may recall a couple weeks ago we're before you to appropriate funding from the LSA grant that we received so we received a total of two grants the LSA grant and the congress and the CDS grant and what we're doing this evening is we're combining the money into one bank account so we could start the project uh between the two grants that we secured there's still a shortage of funding and that's 300 thousand dollars uh so what we're doing this evening is we're putting we're consolidating everything we're receiving uh we're consolidating the monies that we received through the two grants and we're appropriating money from the capital borrowing that's going to take place to cover the shortfall of this project so um let's do the numbers what is the matching um again the match required is 225 thousand dollars that's a 20 percent match as part of the uh grant requirement okay thank you any comments from the day is okay go go ahead it's real quick thank you um regarding the the capital fund that we're borrowing from what what is could you speak to that just a little bit just I'm understanding is that where's that coming from so the the funding was already approved as part of the the the budget the 2026 budget so when we go out when the finance department goes out to borrow um the funding for the capital improvement projects that borrowing will be part of that plan okay thank you you're welcome any comments from the public so no comments from the public um i need someone to make a motion okay those are in favor say aye aye okay i guess uh uh bill 36 will be uh we're gonna move this forward for the full council um any other comments or questions anything else um mr shada that you would like to share with us no i'm just really looking forward to celebrating our employees again and uh hope to see you all tomorrow at the at the picnic uh go ahead president thank you um i just want to quickly mention uh this morning I was uh an MLK and your team was out there doing um brush work and I just want to thank you for not using Roundup and actually doing it the right way um I've seen in other municipalities where you can tell they just spray it with poison and roundup and it's all brown and your team was out there doing the hard work and doing it the right way and I just want to say thank you.

You're you're welcome thank you.

And before we adjourn um I I also wanted to take a moment to thank public works um and you know and the team for the incredible work they did this weekend during and after Fiesta I believe that we had like around 40,000 um people there and uh you know it was it was a great celebration music community spirit and and it was something very special um but the events like that also requires tremendous amount of work behind the scenes and before during and especially after everything wrapped up by the very next morning the street were clean I was read that was that was amazing the street were clean um barrier were removed in downtown was back up and running like if there was no fiesta and that doesn't happen by accident that happens because of the hard works and because of your hard work and also your staff in public works so again thank you for all that you do and tomorrow we're gonna be celebrating you're welcome thank you for the acknowledgement and uh that means a lot to the men and women of the department and uh just to hear that you know for them to hear you guys um give this support publicly it means a lot to them so thank you for so much to all of council thank you I'll see you tomorrow thank you okay so this meeting is adjourned