This study session covered a public works department update, multiple funding applications, land use proposals, variances, and financial reports. Council discussed and received staff presentations on these items, which are scheduled for formal action at upcoming regular meetings.
Alright, we're gonna go ahead and get started with this evening's study session. The first item is a presentation from public works department. Mr. Borton. Good evening. Evening. So I have an update here from public service. Next slide, thank you. So I don't plan on going into much detail. I primarily put a couple of these slides in here so you guys have them for reference so you know how our org is set up. Next slide. So our main tasks. I moved these on to just one slide because public service is basically split between two main divisions. You had development and engineering services and you have public works. So I put the majority of our main tasks we do on both of those. Once again, I'm not gonna read through the slide, but maybe I gave it to you guys so you have it for reference. You know, primarily what our main functions are. Next slide. As you know, it's probably not gonna drastically change each year, but it gives you what the current ones are. Um main thing of note I kind of wanted to put on there is just the EPA requirements we have for water, wastewater, and storm. Uh and water were required to exercise 25% of our valves every year. So that's to confirm that they're operational when we need to use them for main brakes, and if they're not to have them on a list, then we need to start replacing them. Uh for wastewater, uh, we have to inspect 20% of our sanitary mains, so that's making sure that uh they're in good working order, there's no blockages, uh, and then if we have um notes basically of different areas that potentially need to be repaired, or there's a potential blockage starting, we can start focusing on those. And then the storm, we're supposed to be catching twenty uh inspecting 20% of our catch basins we have every year. So you see we have a couple of those. Um that a lot of times is what catches when we start to have uh sinkholes in the roadway. Usually they're a lot of times they're near catch basins, and it's because especially lately we've been having lots of rain. Uh, and that'll um if there is any opening or just uh offset joints in our pipes, especially usually happens near catch basins, though they will start pulling in material around, which then causes a sinkhole. Um but also just to make sure they're cleared out so they have the capacity there that they were designed for to be able to get the water flows off when we have rain events. Um next slide. Uh primarily we had uh one retirement this last year in our uh department. It was retirement of chief building official Chris Mistrino. He had worked for the city for over 35 years as a uh chief as a um building inspector, and then in the last couple years as a chief building official. Um with his retirement, we promoted uh Robert Martin, uh who was one of our building slash electrical inspectors up to chief building official. Uh we appointed uh Ryan Mallant as uh public works technician supervisor, which we have two of those to fill a vacancy we had, and then we also had uh three hires, uh new hires, um uh building inspector Roy Dagley. Uh sorry, I didn't want to point out if you go across the list. I'm going basically across the line. So Chris is the first one, then Robert, then you have Ryan, and then now uh Roy is the first one there in the second row. Uh he's our new uh building inspector to backfill the position we had open when Robert moved up. Uh and then we had uh new public works head mechanic, uh Choy Fastbinder, uh, which you guys were introduced to actually at the last meeting, and then new public works tech's Aiden Griffin, which you were introduced at the last meeting, and then uh Colin Sloan, you'll be introduced tonight actually too. Uh just started recently. Next slide, thank you. Um so here's a list of uh completed projects we've had in the past year since the last update I have uh done here in front of council. Uh we have three different water main projects we've completed. Uh we did a sanitary sewer slip lining, or uh which actually is a CIPP lining project, like we've been doing other times. Uh the Vandalia Bikeway connector was finally completed, um and it's been uh actually quite heavily used, at least from what I've seen driving through town. Um, so I'm happy to see that in use. Uh the uh the annual uh concrete curb and sidewalk repairs are completed for this year. The sidewalk trip hazard removal, and that's the uh the grinding or uh saw cutting of the um differential joints on the sidewalk to remove trip hazards. We had that didn't have truncated domes for ADA compliance.