Public Works

The importance of public works is diminished only to the extent that expected service levels are maintained. Not many would care to debate the importance of snow removal when failure to efficiently accomplish that function could prevent citizens from getting to their places of employment, emergency equipment from reaching the site of the emergency, or commercial and industrial operations from conducting their daily business. The efficient provision of utility service to residential, commercial, or industrial customers is critical to quality of life and safety of a community. Economic development is made more difficult if inefficient utility operations or degraded transportation systems are typical in a community.
Currently, four different departments are responsible for ensuring that the City plans, develops and uses its infrastructure resources in the most effective way: Executive Department, Street Department, Wastewater Utility and Light and Water Utility. The City’s infrastructure and community planning are managed through the Executive Office with contracted consultants and this increases the opportunities for coordination required for “Growth and Infrastructure” because effective communication can occur across department lines. At the same time, cross departmental coordination can be limited by department designed projects, resulting in a lack of overall department responsiveness to potential opportunities and stakeholder needs.
The city has twenty four utility and street line employees. The street department structure has a superintendent, working foreman, mechanic, heavy equipment operators, semi skilled laborers and general laborers. The number of street department employees is structured or determined by emergency snow removal operations critical path modeling. The heavy snow removal operation of the city has nine (9) employees plus supervisory staff as required by the level of service the resident’s desires. The department has labor and equipment to support regular maintenance of infrastructure and complete emergency operations. The city street department has fewer employees currently then in 1990 even though the population served and street miles maintained has increased. Better equipment would also contribute to any crew’s ability to perform its tasks in an effective and efficient manner.