00:00:11,760	S1:
Welcome to Bismarck Insights with mayor Mike Schmitz, a transparent and engaging conversational dive into meaningful topics impacting local government and Bismarck, North Dakota Bismarck Insights is dedicated to removing barriers between the city of Bismarck and the citizens we serve every day.

00:00:31,600	S2:
Hello! Today we're recording Bismarck Insights with myself, mayor Mike Schmitz, and we have with us Steve Solway, the Public Works Service operations director. Steve, you've been with the city just about a year. I think about this time a year ago, we were going through interviews and and we selected you. Thank you for joining us. Give us a little bit about your background.

00:00:54,760	S3:
Well, thank you, mayor. Um, you know a little bit about me. I grew up in a small town in Zeeland, North Dakota. I grew up working for a family owned construction and farming operation. I graduated in the in the 80s. And, you know, at the time I would really have liked to stayed and farmed. But growing up in the 80s of the drought, it really wasn't feasible. So my dad kind of told me, he said, go to college and get an education so you don't have to work as hard as I did. So, um, after high school, not quite sure what I wanted to do yet with my life. So I, I went over to Wahpeton and I rolled in the civil engineering technology program. Um, a couple years later, I wasn't ready to join the working world yet. And I thought, you know, I should probably get my four year engineering degree. So I came over to Bismarck, went to BSc, got my math's out of the way, and then went over to Ndsu and I got my final degree from Ndsu. So after graduation, I took a job with the North Dakota Department of Transportation. Um, I started off in field construction doing Construction oversight of a large urban project. After that, that winter, I moved into the office and I worked in the urban planning area. And so I was writing environmental documents for some of the larger state urban projects across this, across the state. You know, the Dot like every organization, they go through reorganizations once in a while. And so I had a very strong analytical background. So they moved me over into the programming area. A couple of years later. And so that's really where I got my financial start. I was working with all the federal aid, with a lot of the emergency projects back in the late 90s. Um, we North Dakota was experiencing kind of a wet spell. A lot of the prairie potholes were filling up. And so I kind of over had overview of the emergency programs. Later on, I moved into the maintenance and engineering services area. Um, so down in that area, I, uh, wrote the specifications for all the road construction projects. Uh, special provisions, um, Taro agreements with the tribes. I oversaw the rest area in the section building reconstruction program. And so I did that for a little while, and then a position opened up in urban area in the local government area. And so I oversaw the urban reconstruction of the state highways. And so I oversaw the a lot of the construction of the consultant oversight projects and worked with the MPOs very closely. Um, several years later, the assistant planning director opened up and I was selected for that position. So I did that in there. I kind of oversaw the the traffic operations. The, um, assisted in the planning. I also administered the the program in the federal aid and the Stip development for the statewide. um, about 3 or 4 years down the road. Um, the Dot decided to split that division. They split the planning off from the programming, and I was assumed the role of the programming engineer. Um, about a year later, I. The office of Director of Transportation Programs opened up, and I was selected for that one. So in that role, I worked very closely with the federal legislation. Um, the state legislature as well. Um, I worked with a congressional delegation on a lot of the policies on the highway, um, development on the highway program development. And so I had the the planning, asset management, the cartography, the grant programs, the local government, which included the urban program, the county program, the um transit as well. And then, of course, the programming of all the federal leads. So, that kind of gave me, um, my, my background there. I did that for about 11 years. And then, of course, the service operations director opened up, and I put my name into the hat and I was selected. So, um, here we are today. So I really appreciate that opportunity.

00:05:15,120	S2:
And we're pleased to have you, although we kind of threw you into the fire like the day you started, I think we had a snow, snow event that you walked into. And certainly that was an interesting first year for us, for you and for me too, as mayor, to see how that went about. But what did you I mean, as you jumped into that role and with the city and figured out what struggles we had to go through during the winter with a major snow snow event, events actually, were the things you saw that we could do differently.

00:05:47,160	S3:
Well, um, with everything, um, I like to start and kind of observe how things are going, how the city operates before I make any major changes. And, um, yeah you're right. The the snowstorm hit on Thursday. I started on Monday and it never stopped until May. And so it was one continual snowstorm after that. But there's a lot of things that, um, the city does very well. Um, you know, it. We I think we had some learning curves on the first snow event that took us a little bit to work out the bugs and work out the kinks. Um, but after that, I think we kind of got into a groove, and I think we were able to move forward. We just had a lot of snow that we had to deal with over this, this past winter, and we did our best to try to accommodate things as best we can.

00:06:38,020	S2:
Yeah. And I think generally the citizens probably felt that that was the case. I mean, obviously there were some struggle points, but, um, removing snow isn't the only thing you do. And actually public works is divided into two different segments, so to speak. And you have the they call the dry side down at the building and the wet side, and you have the dry said, why don't you tell me a little bit about what your roles are, which departments you actually are overseeing.

00:07:02,600	S3:
Yeah, like like you said, we've got the wet side and the dry side. I take the dry side. So on what we call the dry side is, you know, the one of the areas that most people are aware of is roads and streets. And, you know, so they, you know, whether it's the, the street maintenance, the crack sealing, the pothole patching, um, you know, excuse me, the median mowing, um, sprinklers in all of the, you know, we take care of all of those types of things. Um, and of course, um, the, the striping of the roadways, the crosswalks, and would take care of all of that as well. And of course, the snow and ice control and with the roads and streets we also have forestry, and forestry is responsible for the urban forest. And so when I'm talking urban forest, I'm talking the, the trees in the boulevard areas. And so they um, of course the trees are living organism which grow and they need pruning. So we do a lot of the pruning. We make sure that the disease free, so we're continually monitoring them for various diseases. And of course as trees age, some have to be removed. And so we also do that for the forestry. They also do weed control. But I think we'll probably talk a little bit more detail on some of that. Um, I also have the electrical department. And electrical department is responsible for all of the traffic signals and the white way, the streetlights across the city. Um, we have 110 traffic signals across the city of Bismarck that we maintain. Some of those are D.O.T. owned, but we have an agreement with them that we actually do the maintenance of those. So, um, that keeps us quite busy. Uh, we also have almost 10,000 streetlights that we maintain. And those are continually. Um, they they need maintenance. And then in the summer months, they do a lot of underground wire locations. So when we have contractors working, we want to protect our infrastructure. So we locate that infrastructure and try to protect that as best we can. So that's kind of the main thing with our electrical department. One thing that I wanted to point out though, is we have like I said, we have about 10,000 streetlights and we have we've been converting them to LEDs. We have a really difficult time getting parts for high pressure sodium lights these days. And so we have a plan to convert everything to LEDs by the end of 2025. So we're well on our way to making that goal.

00:09:36,630	S2:
And we just kind of accelerated that plan through the budget process, didn't we?

00:09:40,910	S3:
Yes we did. We were actually had a had it planned out to go through the end of 2026. But through the budget process, we decided that it was worth to take some reserve dollars to convert those and expedite the the replacement. And so we should have everything replaced by the end of 2020.

00:09:59,370	S2:
Which hopefully will save us a little bit of energy costs in the process. That's the plan anyway.

00:10:03,730	S3:
That is the plan, and it definitely will, because the LEDs are a lot more energy efficient than what the high pressure sodium lights were.

00:10:11,530	S2:
So sorry, I just thought I should interject that. So we let our audience know there was a logical reason to that plan.

00:10:17,570	S3:
Thank you for that. Um, we also have the building maintenance, and we have 11 staff in the building maintenance area, and they really do exactly what, um, what their name says. You know, they they maintain all of the facilities for us. So we have a group of individuals that do the the daily cleaning. Um, they come in after hours or before hours and they get the buildings cleaned for everybody for, for the next day. We also have a group of individuals that do our routine maintenance. And so whether it's a door that's not operating properly, um, the HVAC system needs tweaking or maintenance or the plumbing. You know, some of the fixtures, they take care of all of that. So, um, and then another area that we have is, is our fleet area, and we have approximately 300 pieces of equipment. Um, whether it's vehicles, police cars, fire trucks, snow operations, um, there's about 300 different pieces of equipment that need maintain maintenance on a regular basis.

00:11:22,860	S2:
And the fleet services that servicing generally every department across the city or there are they're segments that you really aren't taking care of.

00:11:30,780	S3:
No. They basically service every aspect of the city, every department. Um, they kind of really operate as a service. So if someone has a piece of equipment that needs maintenance, they'll break it down. Um, we'll take care of it for them, and then we'll just kind of build their department back. And so, um, right now our hourly rate is about two thirds of what it is downtown. And so we're actually saving the city money by by having our own.

00:11:59,440	S2:
Thank you for pointing this out, because I think it's important again that, you know, we're trying to be fiduciaries of our, our dollars. And that's one way we can if we can internally do some of that and obviously take care of the equipment appropriately.

00:12:12,040	S3:
So like in like I said, we have our group of maintenance mechanics that do that. We also have our own fueling system. And so we we purchase our fuel in bulk and we make sure that we've got adequate supplies on hand for emergency type situations. So when that major snow event comes in, we've got our own fuel systems. We don't have to rely on going downtown and worrying about them running out. And, um, one of the things that we do is since we buy it in bulk, we sell it back to each various, um, agency throughout the city. We're able to give them about a ten cent a gallon discount over what it would cost them downtown. So we're actually saving the city money that way as well by by having our own fueling systems. Another thing that fleet does is they put together a kind of a 4 or 5 year, um, program, a fleet fleet plan. And so basically it lays out the type, the equipment that needs to be replaced in a time frame. So there's no surprises. And so as we work through with the commission on the budgeting, um, they know that, okay, in three years I'm going to have to budget for this replacement. And it works very well. Excuse me.

00:13:30,660	S2:
Yep.

00:13:35,620	S3:
And then as far also the the Fleet Division, they do all the purchasing of the vehicles and the equipment. And so whether they're putting the specifications together and actually bidding them out or if they're purchasing them off of a state contract or a source of contract, they've got the ability to go out there. and try to find the best deals for for the city. And then once we purchase new equipment for replacement, then of course they dispose of the the old equipment as well. And in the past, we used to place a lot of that equipment on the city auction and some of it we didn't. Excuse me, we didn't get a lot of money. For now, we've been putting it on kind of a gov deals website, and we've really seen that the the return on investment is very, um, is almost twice as much as what we used to get. So it's really been worked out very well for us. The, the waste disposal area. Um, there the, the group that you see out there doing a garbage collection for us on a weekly basis. And so, um, they're in charge of the, the collection, the disposal of it all, operating with all of the, the state and federal permits for the landfill. And then they also oversee the recycling programs. So that's kind of in a nutshell is the areas that I oversee as service operations.

00:15:04,490	S2:
And that's a lot if you think about kind of the behind the scenes workings of the city, there's a lot of things happening there and those are important. I want to roll back just to to make sure people understand a little bit about from the roads and streets. And you mentioned pothole repair and some of the street maintenance. It's a little different than what might, you know, somebody goes in and we'd go into a neighborhood and and do a mill and overlay. That's not the work you're talking about.

00:15:36,850	You're talking about like the routine pothole pops up maybe in the middle of the winter, and we got to fix it, right? S3:
Correct. Um, the excuse me, the overlay that you see that the Milan overlay. That is something that engineering takes care of. What we do is we take care of the the crack ceiling or the, you know, a pothole shows up in the middle of winter and we want to, you know, fill that in. Those are the types of things that we take care of along with, you know, the the striping and the crosswalk maintenance.

00:16:01,020	S2:
Just so everybody understands there's a difference. And that's that's part of our general fund budget. When you go take care of those potholes or striping or sealing the cracks, versus when someone goes into the neighborhood and we have the neighborhood have a more significant project done, whether it be a chipped seal or some form or mill and overlay. Those are then special assessed right now. And so just everybody understands that some of those works that are done, they're not getting an extra bill for exactly. Um, something else that's just recently been going underway is we have a new facility. Uh, we're not there all the way. It's in the construction process.

00:16:41,620	Correct? S3:
Exactly. And one of the first things I want to say is I want to commend you and the commission for your foresight, um, for looking into the future and, um, making that leap to expand our facilities. Our current facility was about 20 years old, and a lot of things have changed in the last 20 years. Equipment has gotten bigger. The city has grown and we're basically busting at the seams and we just didn't have enough space. And so this expansion really allows us to build a new roads and streets building. It allows us to store all of our equipment inside. Currently we have a lot of vehicles that are outside year round. We plug them in in the winter, hoping that they'll start in the morning when we need them. This allows us to bring everything inside, have it under one roof and we can maintain it so much better. You know, the the cost of equipment is increasing and we need to maintain that. So if we can bring them inside, store them inside and have them protect them from the elements. We're really protecting our assets for years to come. And so that is the, the one of the pieces of the expansion. We also added a new wash bay there too. Right now we in one corner of our shop we do some washing of our vehicles. This allows us to bring a couple of vehicles in at the same time. Um. We're on. Take the pressure washers, wash them off to make sure we get all the the elements off of them. So when we put them away that, um, we're going to protect them. They don't rust on us. We protect the belts and the bearings and everything. Um, we're also putting up a new salt brine facility. Currently, we have our brine making area in another corner of our existing shop, and this allows us to have our dedicated facility just for that. And so we can make the brine ahead of time. So if we have a major snow event, um, we're ready to go. We also have the mixing capabilities to put a little bit of beet juice in so we can lower the, the, um, the temperature of the the ice and melted off the roads a little bit easier. Um, we're also adding some new fuel islands. And so, um, currently when we have a major snow event, um, it can take us in excess of an hour to refuel our fleet. And so by adding some more fuel fueling islands, some more pumps and the high flow pumps, we should be able to cut that time in half, if not even more. And so we should be able to refuel our, our fleet, get them back out on the road much quicker. And so it's really efficiency, um, thing for us for there. And we also constructed what we call a controlled, um, facility. It's a kind of a storage area that will probably be utilized primarily by the utility operations. But we're it'll be heated, but only to maybe 45 degrees in the winter months, just enough so the equipment will still start. It's all stored inside, ready to go. Um, and then we're also adding on to the, the public works facility itself. So we're adding some new meeting rooms that the entire city can. Um, city offices can come and utilize. And so in that area is getting close to being done. And then in our existing area where, um, we're dividing our service operations from our utility operations right now, everybody's kind of intermingled and we're kind of having everybody have their, their separate areas. So it's really kind of looking into the future as this is community is growing. And it'll give us, um, be able to grow into it as the community continues to grow over the next 20, 30 years.

00:20:38,250	S2:
And we need to be forward thinking that way. Obviously, there's a lot of things that happens between now and 20 years from now. So, um, some of those larger items, like a facility, we have to look out as long as we can. Um, but we also look shorter terms, too. And one of the things that I know we looked at during the budget cycle was, how could we expand that fleet, especially snow removal, um, and the crew and, and we couldn't make the full leap. But we did make a partial leap and we're going to buy some more equipment. Hopefully to that we can get it in in time. May not be this year, but.

00:21:15,510	S3:
It may maybe not this year, depending upon the the supply chain. Um, but yes, during the budgeting process, um, the commission approved, uh, another, um, additional motor grader and an additional loader to the fleet. Currently we have um, seven motor graders, seven loaders with plows and seven sanding trucks that we, we have, um, across the, across the city. And so we're going to be adding the eighth unit for the motor grader and the eighths um, loader with the snowplow on it. And so along with that the commission also approved two additional operators to operate those pieces of equipment. So, you know, as if you look back 20 years ago where the city was and how we've grown. Um, not only to the northwest, but the northeast and the southwest. Um, the community is really growing and, um, it just takes us longer and longer to, um, to clean the streets when with those major snow events. You know, we can't, um, we can't always prepare for the worst case scenario. Um, but we know as the city's growing, we do need to grow with it. And the commission had the foresight to do that and approve that. And I'm very appreciative of that.

00:22:36,360	S2:
And we'll continue to monitor that as we go forward. Um, let's move over to forestry for a second. I know that, uh, there is a concern just in the forestry for the urban area about some potential diseases coming forward. And what are we doing to help manage that? I know, you know, Doug does a great job and and but he has to work with you to make sure we can fund that.

00:22:58,900	Correct? S3:
Yes. Doug and his staff, they do an excellent job. And they're they're out there monitoring our urban forest on a daily basis. We bring in some part time summer help just to do some extra monitoring for currently, our one of the diseases that we're looking at is Dutch elm disease. And so we've got an individual that goes, um, assesses various different trees. If they look they're like they're suspect of being possibly diseased. We take some samples, bring them back to the lab. Um, we'll do some testing. And if they test positive, then we'll have to take, um, take action, whether it be removal or a various, um, injection to kind of offset, you know, the disease. And so another thing that is on looming on the horizon is the, the ash beetle. And once those move in, it's very difficult to to save the the ash. Yeah. It's actually the emerald ash borer is what it is. And it's very difficult to to save those. And so we're planning for that. We're monitoring that. And if we do see that they show up we're going to have to do some injections and trying to save certain trees. Um, and hopefully we can, um, pro um, kind of sustain the, the urban forest as best we can. But the, the clue that the key to, to that is have different species out there. So you don't rely on just so heavily on one species. You have a whole variety. That way if a disease does come in it, it only impacts a certain percentage of your urban forest and you don't lose the entire urban forest. So, um, they do an excellent job of managing that.

00:24:52,440	S2:
And that's what helps keep our city beautiful. And my opinion is we have to have those trees. And even though we're all kind of in the prairie in the desert, sometimes it feels like not this year. We have a significant moisture, but we know of those trees. It becomes pretty barren in our community.

00:25:06,770	S3:
Then it does. And, you know, another thing that they do is, is they they shade the city streets and they, they kind of create that canopy. And so the if you don't have them, the sun hits the pavement and it warms up the, the temperature quite quickly. When you have the canopy, it shades it and you actually keep your temperatures a little bit lower in the summer months.

00:25:28,130	S2:
So you mentioned earlier briefly the the waste collection landfill. What are our struggles or what are we having to look at related to landfill with the EPA regulations is constantly changing.

00:25:43,730	What are your concerns with that? S3:
Well, um, you're right. You know, with the EPA, a lot of things are changing, and we have to make sure that we've got all our permits in place. And we recently went through a permitting process to permit a new site one. And so when we originally went through that process, we thought we planned out for probably 30, 40, 45 years, depending upon the amount of of trash that gets disposed of in the in the landfill. So right now we're in phase one of that. We've got laid out for seven different cells. And we're working very closely with our state regulators. And we do our monitor and we monitor the groundwater in the area. We have a leachate collection system. And that we we monitor that as well. And so um, some of the challenges is we're Bismarck has become more of a regional landfill these days. And so a lot of the smaller communities, um, they don't have the capability to, um, to work with all of the regulations, and they don't they don't have their own landfills anymore. So a lot of the smaller communities are bringing all of their, um, their trash to, to Bismarck. So we become this, um, regional landfill. And so, um, one of the things that most people don't realize is that only 30% of the trash that comes out to the landfill comes from city collection trucks, 70% is coming from the commercial haulers, who is who are hauling for the businesses and also for the surrounding communities. So.

00:27:30,290	S2:
Um, so we are a hub and we're certainly we are in our neighbors in this process, but it also means we have to take on that responsibility and be be wise to take care of that.

00:27:42,290	S3:
Yes, exactly.

00:27:44,530	S2:
Well, good. It's been a great discussion with you today. Thank you for joining me, Steve. And this is Bismarck Insights with mayor Mike Schmitz.

00:28:03,340	S1:
Thank you for watching Bismarck Insights with mayor Mike Schmitz. If you have specific topics or questions you'd like addressed in future episodes. Email Mayor Schmitz at Bismarck and Gov. Or call the City of Bismarck at (701) 355-1300.

00:28:21,300	S1:
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