“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak, Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen”
Maintenance of City Infrastructure
Background: Maintenance of city infrastructure, including roads, sewers, storm drains, parkland maintenance (weed-abatement/fire suppression) and street medians was also rated as having high importance by survey respondents. According to the HR Green report commissioned by City Council at the recommendation of the Financial Advisory Committee, we have a backlog of City Infrastructure Projects (CIP) that will cost as much as $60M over the next 10 years, AFTER taking into consideration revenue from other sources besides the general fund. Of this, $20M is just to cover minimum improvements required for safety ($13.4M) and regulatory compliance e.g., ADA, ($6.1M). Another $25M is to cover preventive maintenance, forestalling bigger investments later. The rest is “best practice.”
If we cover only the first $20, that’s an additional $2M needed per year. If we do only half of the preventive maintenance, another $4.5M per year is needed. This does not include any needed retrofitting of City Hall to meet ADA and safety requirements.
Question: Do you see a difference in priorities across various types of infrastructure in terms of importance? Can you reconcile the need to do this while maintaining fiscal stability? If not, what might have to be de-emphasized?
Responses:
Gayne Brenneman
“GAYNE BRENNEMAN
”Infrastructure is critically important, and we would need to prioritize certain items (certainly safety, above all), as #1, and de-emphasize prevention, until we ‘balance our budget’.””
Sanford Davidson
“SANFORD DAVIDSON (incumbent)
(Councilmember Davidson declined to supply answers to any of the questions posed)”
Dawn Murdock
“DAWN MURDOCK
”Our financial solution needs to be fully inclusive of city maintenance, fire abatement, and all city services, including policing.
The HR Green report serves as a starting point for identifying and prioritizing city infrastructure projects and merits a second set of eyes to validate the recommendations. This vetting must be undertaken by the new Public Works Director and should include:
• Ensuring items are appropriately categorized in terms of Safety, Regulatory, Preventive Maintenance, and Best Practice;
• Ensuring there are studies or data to support the need, scope, and categorization, and to determine which items are urgent versus not;
• Validating cost estimates are reasonable, not based off gross assumptions.
Based on the vetted report, I would support a plan for addressing truly urgent needs, those that create a verified safety risk, and projects exposing us to regulatory or legal risk. I expect our attorney on retainer to provide a legal assessment of the risk. This plan should include bids for completing the work. The bids must be from multiple vendors and cover a well documented scope of work, timeline, and quality assurance/review.
The resulting plan will need to factor into the full range of city needs, priorities, and long-term plan. Trade off decisions are needed, aligned to resident priorities. This requires transparency and engagement of residents for clarity and alignment. Resident input will be required in determining the trade offs, and ultimately, residents will need to vote on what they want and what they are able to pay.””
Jim Roos
“JIM ROOS
”The study conducted by HR Green has revealed significant deferred maintenance of our City’s infrastructure. I support the development of a long-term plan to address preventative maintenance and safety.
The HR Green study was comprehensive in its scope and detailed a large number of possible projects. Our City Council will have to evaluate each of these projects and the estimated costs carefully. In my review of the study, I identified many projects that were estimated at 3 and 4 times the cost I would expect. There are many factors that contribute to making public works projects more expensive than other construction, but our City Council must be prepared to challenge the assumptions in the HR Green study and negotiate with any contractors.
I do not support plans to replace our City Hall unless funded through outside donations.””
Bill Sewell
“BILL SEWELL
”Yes. I recently retired as Senior VP of one the world’s largest infrastructure companies where I learned the differences in priorities among the infrastructure types. Safety generally has the highest priority as a class, but care must be taken to ensure that the projects classified as safety truly are safety. Mandated projects are often a close second. Sometimes, depending on budgets over time, mandated projects may move ahead of safety if there are specific deadlines for completion.
Preventive maintenance can sometimes, under the right circumstances, become a safety issue. Something as simple as preventive maintenance on an HVAC filter, if not performed, can lead to air quality issues inside the building.
Best practices are generally things like studies, trail improvements, automation of master plan segments and the like. While these items are important, they are generally “nice to have” and failing to implement them would have little or no adverse effect on ongoing operations.
The CIP must be reviewed and made current and each project reviewed to determine its priority regardless of class. Each budget cycle, certain projects will be “above the line” and will be funded and implemented. If during the implementation there are savings, those savings can be reprogrammed to the next project in line. If there are overruns, some projects on the list may slip below the line. This method makes sure that all funded projects are tracked and when priorities need to shift, it is relatively easy to assess the impact.””