PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT

The City of Ashland’s Public Works Department plans for, preserves, and enhances our community infrastructure assets through responsible stewardship. We strive to provide the highest quality public infrastructure and municipal core service to the citizens of Ashland in a safe, efficient, and fiscally responsible manner that is protective of our environment. The department is committed to delivering services in a courteous, efficient, and professional manner. The public works department employs sixty-five (65) full-time equivalent (FTE) staff across nine (9) divisions. The Public Works Department and its employees are responsible for regulatory compliance across all divisions within the department.

The Department includes Water, Wastewater, Streets, Facilities, Fleet Maintenance and Acquisition, Cemetery, Airport, Stormwater, and Administration/ Engineering. To ensure regulatory compliance and appropriate public services, Public Works engages in long range planning efforts for all major divisions. Long range planning ensures regulatory compliance, develop capacity requirements for future growth, recommend maintenance activities, capital improvements, staffing levels, and associated financial plans strategies for the associated enterprise funds in order to provide core services to the community. Divisions within Public Works perform construction activities, provide internal and external customer service, develop, and improve physical asset and data management, staff commissions, permits activities in the public right of way, and provides project.

• Water Sharing Intergovernmental Agreement was formalized and approved by all Partner Cities
• Storm Drain, Wastewater Collection System and Talent-Ashland-Phoenix (TAP) Master Plans were all approved by the Council as the current planning documents
• Coordinated with Stracker solar and received a million-dollar Oregon Department of Energy grant for installation of solar at the service center
• Awarded a 1.3 million dollar grant for improvements to Briscoe School
• Awarded a 3 million dollar grant for improvements to the Talent-Ashland-Phoenix (TAP) water system benefitting Ashland, Talent and Phoenix
• Awarded a Safe Routes to School – Project Identification Grant by the Oregon Department of Transportation

• No Oregon Health Authority Violations for Treated Water Annually
• No Department of Environmental Quality National Pollution Discharge Elimination System Permit Violations for Treated Wastewater Annually
• Prepare 100,000 square yards of asphalt for the biennial slurry seal project

• Fuel: changed the fuel line item to account for inclusion of electric vehicles in the fleet, changing work habits (hybrid/work from home) and keeping the overall fuel cost on the high end for a certain level of protection.
• Technical: shifted some cost burden that was previously placed in the technical line item to small tools and have increased the small tools line across the board to account for what operations staff are actually purchasing for their job requirements.
• Licensing: updated the licensing to tie in with actual expenditures for cartegraph and other related software expenses.
• Small Tools: increased this line item to account for actual expenditures.
• Infrastructure: increased this line item to account for inflationary impacts on all system maintenance related items that come out of this line.
• Chemicals: increased due to increased chemical costs and we expect it to only increase because of supply chain/delivery related issues over the next two year period. Vendors are only quoting costs for a few months at a time, when before we can get locked in pricing for a 12 month period.
• Uniforms Other: have essentially left this line blank and put all uniform related expenses in the “uniforms” line and the technical line for flagging equipment and reduced the uniform line because the boot allowance is now part of a payroll expenses and not a reimbursable.
• Training: increased the training line item for most operations because of the cost for obtaining a CDL is now around $5k and we have put at least one annual training for CDL in this line on top of just the general training everyone participates in as part of their job.
• Rental (Street Operations): increased the rental line because Street Operations no longer owns a few different pieces of equipment and rent them when needed for operations/maintenance.
• Utilities: updated natural gas and electric to be more in line with actuals.
• Disposal: increased this line in most funds to account for the actual costing of disposal at Dry Creek Landfill, they have been raising their rates pretty consistently and will continue to do so.
• Transitioning from four temporary employees to two full-time employees.
• GIS moved to Innovation Technology.

• Resolve staffing related issues within the Public Works Support Division
• Research and coordinate on grant opportunities for the Enterprise Funds - Water, Wastewater, Storm, Streets, Airport, Facilities
• Develop and prioritize facility related improvements to be completed over the next three (3) Biennium’s