hi i'm chuck all maplewood city manager and we're here today to do the spotlight show it's a new venture we're trying something new today you'll have to let us know whether you like it that new platform to kind of share the city happenings and  with you our viewers trying to get that information out one of the things that we're trying to do is make sure we tell our story and so this just a new way to do things keep citizens informed on what's going on in our community first on our program today we're going to talk about the highway thirty six an english project and kind of a once in a decade type of thing and for those that had to go through the traffic problems that certainly hopefully it's only once in a decade but  the city took the lead on this project and you're going to hear from michael thompson our director of public works and city engineer who is the lead and put is time and effort into it for that making it a successful project and also engineering technician jason krieger and there are the ones that are out there obviously goals of safety an improved traffic flow and economic vitality are are all part of that but it's really about a quality of life here in a city and so let's take a look at the project and hear from michael and jason and then have them tell us a little bit about the important part of this this project hi i'm michael thompson the maplewood public works director first i wanted to talk a little bit about our highway thirty six in english street interchange project and the collaboration that we went through with our residence partner agencies it's truly an effort where we we had open forums we listened to people the project design changed and morphed over time good example as we had to neighborhood citizen committees who helped influence design on making road connections and instead of a noise wall we heard people wanted i burned with landscape on the north side of thirty six in the neighborhood so we took that input and we really found a good way to deliver on those expectations and our great partnerships with other agencies such as many federal highway administration ramsey county ramsey washington metro watershed district all of these agencies helped move this project forward ramsey county regional rail was actually even involved so with everybody's help it really moved this big project forward it  was sixteen and a half million dollar construction project so a very large scale project and that's unique for the city of maplewood because we actually jumped in and led the project to help look at some of the things and focus on areas like how can the design promote and economic redevelopment how can we improve connections for our fire safety and response so we took a lot of things into account not just moving people quicker on highway thirty six i mean certainly that's a big part of it the safety and mobility reducing rear end accidents but it's also how does it affect the city of maplewood in our residence and that's were we stepped in and it really helped guide this design we listen to residence and we feel we have a really great product out there our business is you know truck utilities mattress factory smells countryside menards those are just a few of the many that we worked with and we had great inspectors out in the field jason kreiger was one of our lead inspectors randy  supplemented that but also i want to give a shout out to mendota they did all of the the lead inspection work and coordinating that so again it kind of comes back to everybody partnering together to make a successful project so a unique thing about this project is we built everything on highway thirty six in a very short timeframe only about seventy five days and that was to minimize the impact to the public just get in there and get out and that's what we heard from our open house the neighborhood meetings is we'd rather have you close highway thirty six and get it done quick than drag the construction out over two years sell there was a unique project delivery in helping reduce user costs and reduce some of the impacts of the traveling public so that's a quick overview now we're joined by one of our senior engineering technicians jason craig or who has been our lead city inspector on the highway thirty six english street interchange project and jason's here just to talk a little bit about working with the public so jason maybe you could just tell everybody what your role is out there solving problems maybe a few things michael as a city inspector it's imperative for us to forge working relationships with businesses in the area such as truck utilities second harvest heartland regional mattress factory as well as our residents the neighborhood surrounding the interchange project to make sure that they feel comfortable and informed during the construction process we typically go out of our way to make sure that any questions are answered in a timely fashion that any problems are handled quickly and we work closely with the contractor to resolve the issues that residents and businesses might have yeah yesterday i was in the office and i got a phone call from a lady who there was some work going on out there and she was a little hesitant about backing out of her driveway so i called j out in the field and he actually went and met with her and talked her through some of those issues so maybe you can talk a little bit about you know going out and responding to those types of things are people have questions on their grass or side are those things you deal with yes yes so yesterday michael called me and asked me to go visit a lady on one of our city's streets and she was concerned about getting over the the new curb and gutter that was constructed earlier this week i met with her in her driveway and her husband was there and we kind of talked about the timeline on when she would be able to drive over that new curb and gutter and in the meantime took some gravel that was piled in her driveway and made a walking ramp for her because she had some difficulty walking she uses a cane and we typically deal with things like that i'm it's not a daily possibly a weekly basis and in most of those instances once we know that there's a resident who has special needs or concerns like that we offer them our cell phone number so they can reach us directly without having to get routed through the office to the field that comes back to customer service jason he's he's done an incredible job on working with residents in these things do come up daily and he's out there helping people but in addition to that one of his biggest responsibilities is to make sure he's watching if the construction is built properly and maybe you can talk about what you do out there with some of the oversight of construction certainly so at the onset of a job or head of a set of plans in the construction contracting that's our job to understand those plans and that contract and make sure that we understand what expectations we're going to have of the contractors they're constructing the new roads the new storm sewer water main backfilling curb and things of that nature  there's quite a few standards in construction that we need to follow and we also have to be aware of how the construction is going to impact our maintenance crews future travel in the area possibly future problems down the road  so we work closely with the contractor to make sure that they understand what we're looking for as things are being built our inspectors are a key part in responding to public concerns issues out on the project in our real goal with this overall project isn't just to build and make great access for our businesses and you know part of it a big part of it is you know how do we successfully deliver the project during construction make sure people are comfortable with getting around during construction and so jason has a number of tasks out there and he's done an excellent job when you're out in the field i know there's a lot of demands can you maybe talk about all the different entities and personnel you work with out there certainly on a very regular basis we have to coordinate with the series of private utility companies six such as xcel energy excell gas comcast centrelink and other governmental agencies such as st paul regional water services the water district ramsey county and a whole variety of other agencies that kind of come and go once in a while such as d n r and p c a because of that time so jason has a number of tasks out there and he's done an final last word i'd just like to think for us like contracting in their subs for working with us so closely to make this a successful project thanks michael and jason that's very good information really exciting stuff for us to hear also part of the project that michael alluded to a little bit was the public safety side of things we hear from since all the time about how important safety is and while we give you a little perspective from our fire chief  got some history with the project but also one of these types of improvements while they're there say for the traveling public public how do they help us deliver service and so on let's hear from chief lucan about the project and the impact our fire an e m f services steve lucan fire chief for the city of maple with one of the real advantages the fire department both fire and e m s will be receiving out of the changes that have been made on thirty six and english street will be a safety aspect in the past we've always had to enter on to highway thirty six from hazelwood at a non controlled intersection which is very very unsafe to both the firefighters and the trucks or the ambulance as well as to those motorists on the street sometimes not being able to see red lights during the day and even hearing a siren becomes very difficult and so this will be a real safety feature the other big safety feature will also come at the corner of thirty six an english that in the past has been a very dangerous intersection  of the opportunity of fewer accidents anywhere within that area which is a real plus to us as in the past we've always had across the east bound lane of traffic which is always very very dangerous even though we had the optic coms a lot of people didn't see him and sometimes they didn't change quite as fast which could provide a very serious situation regarding an accident the other part of that is with those both of those intersections is the high rate of speed now that the vehicles were going so if there would have been any kind of an accident they would have been quite serious so the changes that were made at thirty six in english will be a real plus to us at this point time we will not have to worry about crossing on to a major highway as well as crossing moved or highway which is a real plus to us as well as a real plus to the motorists themselves thanks chief lucan that's very important information and something that we always think about is our public safety and how our projects impact that and so the delivery of service for for the police and fire and e m s that is enhanced with that project so let's transition into our next segment and that is from police chief paul schnel to talk about keeping our community safe and that's always important the next system that now is going to talk about is called tip for one one and it's a new tool that we're rolling out and is already available to the public but the chiefs going to tell you about it it's not just police department it could be potholes a code problem but let's hear from chief snell and have him tell you about this new program hi my name is paul snell i'm the police chief for the maplewood police department i want to talk to you today a boat the issues around communication and efforts that we're making to reach out to members of the community and provide mechanisms for members of the community to better communicate with us are some new developments that are on the front and i want to cover a few of the old standbys that we're all used to one of the tools i want to talk about is one that we all are very familiar with and that's nine one one one nine one one is a tool that should be used in times of emergency we would also encourage people to think more broadly about the use of nine one one in other circumstances let me give you a couple for instances let's say that you happen to observe some suspicious persons probably around in  cars in a neighborhood and a given night you aren't sure if they belong there or if their purposes are legitimate or not we would certainly encourage you to utilize nine one one to call and request that officers get sent to check that out now this is important to us it's important because we want to make sure that we are getting there to to check out and investigate whether or not these people are doing things that are illegal and number one it also sends a very strong and powerful message about the fact that this neighborhood this community is watching and going to readily report areas or issues of concern second we want people to know that the maplewood police department non emergency number can be used during regular business hours monday through friday eight am to four thirty pm this is a great way to talk about just issues of concern that you may have about things that are going on your neighborhood but they are not in progress they're not occurring immediately in those situations when people call us we will oftentimes assign those issues or concerns to one of our officers or one of the staff from the police department to work on investigate and hopefully problem solve so that level of communication becomes a really important way for us to connect and address problems before they become really big issues third as a department we have been committed to trying to find new tools to allow us to get messages out to our members of our community and to get feedback back from them one that has been in place for a short list of short period time last several years is the maplewood police department facebook page and we would certainly encourage you to friend us on the facebook page the facebook page is one of the ways that several times a week we try and put information out about issues or things of importance to the community we may highlight an incident that occurred or some new developments for instance we recently added a new canine we introduced our new canine on our facebook page third we just launched i mean we are have very few followers at this point but we just launched a maplewood police twitter account and we would really like to get people to use that we are hoping in the long haul that twitter might become a way for us to communicate with people on a more immediate basis of both things that are actually occurring in a given neighborhood in a given location right now and as a department we would hope that we can use twitter as a vehicle to get that information out to people  who may be interested or impacted are affected by a situation that may be going on for instance a section of road is closed due to a crash or something like that twitter could be a great tool for getting that information elf third we always have e mail options for people to contact us if you go to the city of maplewood website and tab into the police department section you can find my name email address and phone number and i would always encourage people to reach out to me or any of the members of our staff that are identified on that website but the web it also provides links to these various options like our facebook page like our twitter account and we're really excited about the launch of a new development that is a tool called tips for one one and tips for one one allows people to enter a tip anonymously from a smartphone or any type of cell phone that has text messaging capabilities where they simply type in tip for one one eight four seven tip the keyword which in our case will be maplewood followed by a space and whatever information that they want to share and that information gets sent anonymously to staff within the police department now tip four one one well it's an incredible tool should not be a replacement for one if there is an emergency nine one one is always the mechanism to get assistance what tip for one one can be used for a variety of community concerns or complaints or somebody had information about a crime that occurred but they were afraid to call and report that the text messaging system allows them to send that information another great use of that is a problem property that may exist within a neighborhood you're concerned about out of control young people or possible drug activity the text messaging system can be used to provide that information anonymously and what we then do is provide that to our investigators or officers to work on address assess investigate and take whatever action is appropriate and given situation so these tools become ways that people in the community can connect with us and provides a mechanism for us to connect with them we know that a safe community is based upon in gage community and engaged community means that we are actively communicating in addressing issues and concerns that we collectively share is our goal to maintain the safety and wellbeing and quality of life that maplewood has enjoyed for many many years and it is through these tools that we will be able to better do that and position ourselves into the future it is through the use of these technologies that we can be more effective and connected in creating sound and save communities both now and into the future thank you thanks chafed and thank you for taking the time to listen to our program it's exciting for us to be able to tell our story and we're interested in you telling us what you want to hear about your city and information you have if you've got ideas we have a new director of communication karen guilfoyle she used to city clerk role and citizen services director but she's expanded that and so best way is to contact her and her informations on the screen if you've got ideas for future programs otherwise we'll be back in a couple of weeks with some new information for you