department or division the purpose of the spotlight is to inform empowered residents of the programs and services available to them and to explore the issues and subjects that are of interest to our citizens today's spotlight will focus on public on the public works department joining me today is michael thompson the department deputy director and awful city engineer welcome michel and it's great to be here jim oh you're more than welcome michael public works is certainly one of the most important functions of the city streets sewer water these are things that we all take for granted tell us a little bit about your department and what you're responsible for michael thanks jim a little bit about our department to public works is responsible for anything from city building maintenance to roadways and sanitary sewer lines are real goal is to maintain a strong network of infrastructure and to provide engineering services and solutions with an environmental  focus so there are a wide array of things that i'd like to talk to about today ok so what is the structure of the public works department exam how many divisions do you have the other five divisions  public works and they consist of the first division street streets and storm sewer division the sanitary sewer and fleet division building operations division parks made its division and what all public works provide sure i'll start out with the streets and storm sewer division how i like to look at that is that the division that makes the roads drivable unsafe and also keeps the city from flooding keeps the storm water flowing downstream the big areas are maintaining streets fixing potholes patching streets filling cracks within pavement also street sweeping is a big part of that division  one very noticeable area that residents are used to seen are the snow plows in the winter and also the plows on the sidewalks and trails another big part of that is maintaining the storm sewer and that is making sure the pipes outfalls and ponds are all clean and free of debris just to ensure there's no flooding within the city and then there are staff that do various things within that department a small drainage improvement fixes the do some overlay of some of our trail system next to the sanitary sewer in fleet division how i like to look at that is we want to keep the waste water flowing downhill we want to avoid backups make sure the waste is going where it needs to go how we can categorize that is is we clean the underground pipes that transfer that waste water to make sure they're clean and free of debris we also have a camera that we put in the line to assess the condition of those pipes to see if anything needs to be fixed and also within that is just maintaining the city's fleet the vehicles for all of the different departments the third division i talk about is the building operations and that is to ensure our buildings and grounds are clean and in a safe condition like i mentioned maintaining all city  buildings keeping them clean planning for any potential improvements and also doing a lot of assistance in the community center building with different types of projects the fourth division i'd like to tell klein is the engineering division and that is really planning designing and inspecting i can go into that you know that's the street reconstruction making sure streets are redesigned and fixed the staff does provide development review when people come in with submittals and also keeping the maps updated doing permitting and also just making sure the city's in conformance with rules and regulations that are required and then quickly to end is the park's maintenance division and how i see that is keeping the parks clean and safe making sure the ball fields are playable there are staff that assist with new park installation and fixing anything that vandalizing the park system and they're also a very big part in graffiti removal and those are also the people that act upon code complaints so they'll go out and mow the lawns in a vacant building or remove trash so they're very vital resource in that area so that's kind of a quick recap of the five divisions one of the interesting facts most residents may not know about city's infrastructure at the s sewer pipes many people don't know that all of the waste water goes underground into pipes and gravity flows downstream and all of our waste water actually ends up down in st paul at the pigs treatment plant and the city pays roughly a little over two point five million dollars to have that sewage treated another interesting fact is there are one hundred eighty miles of roadway in the city and one hundred thirty five of those are city maintained thirty two miles are county and then thirteen miles are state maintained a couple quick other facts there are six thirty six parks within the city with about four hundred acres and also geranium park recently we had pervious pavement installed in the parking lot so that's kind of a neat thing that residents can go out and see and how those parking lot sure are treating some of that storm water you know i think people take take for granted you know that you know what the sea of the city is above ground but there's a lot of lot of work that's going underneath and and how much of that two million how much for our sewer charges to  the city and all those lift stations are built with redundancy so if a pump does go out there is a second pump that would kick on so you know i've been here for over a year now and i don't think i've received one like that that does happen but is our system that redundant so that we have been able to avoid those problems i wouldn't say there are backups because a list station failures there have been a few backups here and there from the main line back or on tree roots are contributing factor to the problem that's correct in many cases the services are backed up and people need to call a company to actually cut the routes out of their own service on m and that's where the problem presented itself with remember with the home that exploded in st paul earlier this year where the had run the gas line through the the sewer line the people understand that from the very start of that michael has been on top of that dennis five the number of homes that we have in maplewood that now may confirm or may be subject to this problem and i know you've been working real hard with x l two to alleviate that problem here maplewood yeah that's correct very closely with excel and an important reminder for residences if they do get their sewer line televise are clean that they would want to call excel just to let them know that they do have a problem in most cases excel televised that if it's in a priority area no cost to get ready to no cost at other times the residents would sewers what's the difference between a sanitary sewer in a storm sewer i mean they're both sewers right mike yeah they're both sewers and they're both underground sanitary sewer like i mentioned before it takes the waste from the homes and storm sewer mainly takes surface water drainage from outside so like a rain storm or something to that effect it would take more of that clean water and transport it while the sanitary sewer is what you would call dirty water ok now we're on storm sewers and i know that you are the king of ring gardens in minnesota right public works department along with with the  parks and community service department those fine folks there have championed rain gardens and i believe maplewood has the most rain gardens in minnesota and is the leader perhaps in the country as far as  but yeah we have probably one of the largest programs in the nation we've had over four hundred fifty boulevard rain gardens installed as part of st reconstruction what's the definition of a rain garden in case some of the folks out there a treats it for pollutants so really what it does is it reduces the volume of runoff and it also helps clean the lakes and wetlands throughout the city and why is that important it's very important because a lot of the lakes throughout the match show are impaired water bodies so it's very important that we start making sure that our our valuable resources are clean our lakes are creeks so it's very those are all connected and those are the drinking water reservoirs for for st paul and ultimately us i guess since we're part of st paul regional water systems that correct i believe that's the the failing chain of lakes and i know st paul gets their head waters i believe from the river but that is part of the failing chain of lakes ok now we get to a really exciting part here but it's go through what happens when a sewer gets a sewer gets clogged and there's back up into a home the first thing would be to call a local company to come out and check and see what is in the line to see if it can be cleaned out so the problem is probably on their side of the line and probably not the main line of the sewer running in the street as i correct that is correct in most cases it is in the private service line so i would recommend that they call a company to come out and  situation if it's found that it's not then they should contact the city of maplewood and we'll actually go out and look in the mainline to see if there is a problem there and if it's in the main line that's our problem and not  homeowners is that correct that is correct that is something that we would need to take care of and clean out and make sure the water the waste water is flowing in the main line that we're going to be going to some video that we shot here talking about right go in there and take a look take pictures and we can do any part of the sewer that we need to see to that to find out what the problems are and also just for routine maintenance as well a camera can run up to probably twelve hundred feet there's this fifteen hundred feet o truck what you run into issues are are without the type of pipe dream if you're in a clay pipe you can probably go eight hundred feet without any hesitations meaning the camera just going to crawl out up there nice and easy if you're not a snore there are plastic contractor come in and try to do roughly about eighty thousand feet a year and then well four years ago we purchased our own unit now if we have an issue whether one no matter what the parliament a discrete department called so they would take a look at the storm so we come out within twenty minutes but the camera on the the biggest asset we have is our record keeping in our maintenance program we try to do about seventy five thousand feet a year of televising over several years we'd have the whole city televised then we'd redo that you know year after year just to just to keep up with the things that are going on underground keep everything flowing works out pretty well yeah well michael it that's really interesting i can actually see the sewer line looks like so hopefully it will make anybody to so michael what are some of the other current projects happening in the city and i know we're going to get to the streets next and stuff but what are some of the other projects you've got going yeah there's a large neighborhood being reconstructed just south of english and county road b area some people may have noticed stillwater ro from lakewood over to century is being rebuilt and also probably one of the largest projects that people are seeing is the mall area improvements white bear avenue and county road are being reconstructed and that's to reduce congestion we're also improving some of the pedestrian and sidewalk ways and this project will tie into the group's vento trail which is a north south major trail throughout the city and it will connect up with our link sleep trail so that will be very  nice also a couple county projects rice and highway thirty six there's a new interchange being installed and also many of noticed mynd out working on highway sixty one so those are a few projects and i know the question is going to be different funding sources so that the city residents are not are not shouldering the full burden of all these improve my costs could you elaborate a little bit more on that some of these projects involve  actually received stimulus funding in partnership with the county for county road by the mall a little over two point five million and then we received roughly eight hundred thousand in stimulus funding for for stillwater road and also there is dedicated tax dollars that go into these projects so people's gas tax and other fees throughout the state it's a mandate that the city receives a certain allocation so with those mechanisms you know that is that is where we can avoid using some of the local dollars to make these improvements happen i think it's astounding of the total cost of the white bear avenue project  millions of dollars and the city of maplewood shares how much roughly twenty percent the expected project cost is about seventeen million dollars but our direct share would be roughly twenty our share basically went down to a very minor amount almost to zero so what is a huge expenditure the city really has hardly any share to burden for them you know people are probably go oh how do you decide you know what streets get rebuilt and how do they get rebuilt then let's explore just take a few seconds to explore how we pay for those and what is the property owner's responsibility yeah well how we choose to rebuild the streets is we go out and assess the condition and give each street a rating so it's done scientifically to right that is done scientifically based on cracks potholes in the overall condition and based on that we have a program a five year reconstruction program where we're attacking the the worst streets first so we have of looking out five years typically one neighborhood per year that were reconstructing to really invest in those neighborhoods and bring those up to a brand new condition with streets curb and gutter storm sewer and you mentioned you know obligations of property owners there is an assessment policy of the city and that's a mechanism where properties that are directly benefiting from those improvements do pay a minor share of the overall cost i think i think that's important to know did that it's a minor share and that a good portion of the cost for all those improvements on the residential street are borne by all the city residents through the general tax levy so that we all share in in the streets  in the condition of them and that it may take a while but eventually if we keep with the program all the streets in maplewood that are the city's responsibility will be refurbished or rebuilt or whatever and that we all share equally in the cost yeah and that's the goal is really to get all these streets up to a condition where we really only have to do minor maintenance i know it's rated from one to one hundred where we had in well the goal was to have seventy five percent of our streets at a radius of seventy or higher right now we have sixty percent media that goal so we still have a ways to go but continuing with the the investment into the roadways with our street reconstruction program that standard will be raised and we will meet that goal in future years that's important is as far as you know the cracks in the potholes in the streets and and making sure that they're maintained so that they don't  fall into repairs where they have to be rebuilt and so that leads me to a question michel is i got a pothole in front of my house how do i go about getting that filled or maintained or have a big crack or what's my points or process  on responding to that yeah what i would say is call the general public works department phone number and that's six five one two four nine two four zero zero and our staff can help out we'll probably send somebody out jewel that we have in maple in that's our engineering department and i think we have five p ease on staff and it's professional engineers and that it ends up that through our general fund and our internal service fund that basically our engineers and engineering staff pay for themselves don't think yeah that's correct we have four professionally licensed engineers and we do a lot of the design in house so we try to minimize the use of consultants where we can actually do all of that in house so we're saving money by having our own staff design  some consultants or engineering firms that we contract with right that is correct when the workload gets greater we do use consultants on larger projects as you mentioned we don't want to dedicate our entire staff at one area and then we're lagging in other areas so it's a fine balance that we have to assess and i presume that these these firms go through some type of competitive bidding solicitation in the city has a pool of different qualified consultants so these are people that have shown that they have the qualifications to do the work and so that's the city has different people that they can draw from based on  qualifications and we actually go out and do background checks to on him on projects that these say they've done so that you know we're getting what we pay for  that right yeah especially with with contractors when we hire select a contractor to do prove minutes and fix streets we do about background check we check with other cities to see if they've done satisfactory work so we want to make sure we're hiring the correct people to do the job and they do have all the qualifications that we're getting down to the final few seconds and we haven't had a really chance to talk about park maintenance and some of those issues but i think that may be another spotlight in the future that we really need to devote to it so in closing michael do you have any other words of wisdom before we wish the folks a good night you know i would just say if you have any questions or concerns with any of the operations in public works there's the general phone number six five one two four nine two four zero zero and we're certainly more than happy to address anything that comes up and look forward to working with the residents within the city ok for another spotlight