Be inspired.

-————————————————————————————————————————— Public Service Department

MONTHLY REPORT

April 2018

___________________________________

Professionalism

Integrity

Reliability

Quality

Pride

Inside This Issue:

Department Highlights 2

Project Planning Updates 3

City Construction Projects 4

Public Service Projects 5

Requests for Service Statistics 6

Seasonal Statistics 7

New Albany Smart Ride 8

P a g e 2

P u b l i c S e r v i c e DEPARTMENT HIGHLIGHTS April 2018

MUNIS Training Last year, the city signed a contract to purchase a financial software management system called Munis from Tyler Technologies, a Maine-based firm that specializes in public-sector software. Tyler representatives, along with the finance department staff, conduct-ed training on the new Munis purchasing software. Trainers provided step-by-step in-structions on varying Munis applications, including setting up the Tyler Dashboard, menu setup options, toolbars, web parts, eLearnings and navigating and testing Munis applications. City Street Lighting: Alternative lighting fixtures and LED conversions The director and operations manager met with company representatives from Lighting-Unlimited and The Stresscrete Group to discuss alternative LED lighting fixtures and pole designs for the city’s existing street lighting system. The city is currently weighing the costs of replacement poles and LED conversion bulbs for future projects. Professional Development Department staff members Dennis Munsey, Steve Kidwell, Justin Anderson, Nick O’Neal, Chase Loughman, Kenny Geiger and Tyler Ashcraft attended the Roadway Work Zone Safety Training seminar in Dublin. Topics included: Preventing Runovers/Backovers, Traffic Control Plans, Internal Traffic Control Plans, Night Work Safety, Flagger Safety, Electrical Safety (including Overhead Safety), Speed Manage-ment and Falls Safety. The training included an outdoor demonstration of blind spots around equipment and classroom exercises relating to: Traffic Control Planning, Inter-nal Traffic Control Planning and Night Work Visibility. City Forester Chris Ellwood attended the Asian Longhorned Beetle Workshop at the Dawes Arboretum. The workshop focused on the dangers of Asian Longhorned Beetle (ALB) as it pertains to urban forestry, it’s history and how the USDA, ODNR, and ODA are managing for ALB in Ohio. Chris also attended the City Forester Symposium in Reynoldsburg. The symposium featured a variety of current topics and threats to Ohio urban forests. Fleet Mechanics Eric Umbleby and Steve Saunders attended the Heavy Duty Air Condi-tioning Class held at the City of Columbus fleet facility. The class covered the topics of Safety and Regulatory Measures. The training was based on an ASE study manuals to prepare them to take the MACS 619 certification test. The city forester and several maintenance employees attended the Effective Safety Teams training held by BWC in Pickerington. The seminar included topics on: What makes an effective safety team, what a safety team is and how to work corroboratively toward safety goals.

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P u b l i c S e r v i c e PROJECT PLANNING UPDATES April 2018

Tree City USA Awards Event This year, the Tree City USA Awards Event was held at the Aladdin Shrine Center in Grove City. Mayor Stage, Urban Forester Jodee Lowe and the Grove City Tree Com-mission and staff hosted. The director, operations manager and city forester attended. The morning was filled with engaging topics and speakers and included local historians sharing about the history of Grove City. The presentation of the Tree City USA awards were made in the afternoon by Lisa Bowers, ODNR State Forester for central Ohio. The Tree City USA program is sponsored by the Arbor Day Foundation and provides na-tional recognition for communities with their urban Forestry programs throughout the country. Throughout Ohio there were 241 communities that received the Tree City designation for 2017, with Ohio once again leading the nation in the most Tree City USA communities! Central Ohio Watershed Partners - Be the Change Working with other Central Ohio Watershed Partners, New Albany is promoting a clean water initiative called Be the Change. The program promises to be a strong pub-lic outreach tool for increasing public awareness of water quality and the adoption of simple actions people can take. For more information about ways you can help to im-prove the quality of stormwater in your community go to: https://newalbanyohio.org/answers/stormwater/. Franklin Soil and Water Conservation District - Stormwater tree project City staff met with representatives from Franklin Soil and Water to discuss a proposed project that studies the promotion of tree planting to improve stormwater runoff. Working with OSU graduate students, FSWCD staff would use Community-Based So-cial Marketing (CBSM) techniques to implement the project. The CBSM method is based in social psychology and draws from the idea that sustainable behavior change is most effective when it involves direct contact with people and is carried out at the com-munity level. Franklin Soil and Water representatives are currently forming pilot study groups in New Albany, Gahanna and Dublin. The pilot study program in New Albany would include approximately 300-400 neighborhood residents that will be asked to par-ticipate in the stormwater tree project. A portion of the New Albany Links subdivision, was identified as the pilot neighborhood. A city letter explaining the stormwater tree project, would be distributed to piloted residents by OSU students wearing Franklin Soil and Water clothing.

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P u b l i c S e r v i c e CITY CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS April 2018

City Sidewalk Improvement Project

Decker Construction was the low bid contractor for performing sidewalk replacement as part of the city street improvement project at a cost of $263,226.

Upper Fenway and North of Woods are planned for the improvement work.

Sidewalk improvements will begin in June and be

completed by September. 2018 City Street Improvement Project

The low bidder for the construction contract is Decker Construction at a base bid price of

$ 911,909.

Work includes ADA curb ramp improvements, pave-ment overlay, curb repair and crack sealing.

Construction schedule is June 1, 2018 to September 30, 2018.

Market Street - Traffic Visibility Improvement Project

Decker Construction was the low bid contractor for removing the existing concrete curb and asphalt park-ing spots at Market Street at a cost of $13,772.

Decker will enlarge the green space area, where previ-ous parking spots were and add new concrete curb.

Work improves the sight visibility on Keswick Com-mons and will be completed by September.

Resurfacing will occur at the Johnstown and Thurston Hall intersection.

Future sidewalk replacement on Ogden Woods Boulevard

Removing on-street parking on Market Street to improve traffic visibility.

P a g e 5 P u b l i c S e r v i c e

New Albany celebrated Arbor Day on April 27th at the newly recognized arboretum at Swickard Woods. Fifty five trees were planted and seed balls were thrown to further strengthen New Albany’s urban forest pro-gram. Arbor Day Celebration Video Spotlight can be found on: https://newalbanyohio.org/ and on our Face-b o o k p a g e : h t t p s : / / w w w . f a c e b o o k . c o m /NewAlbanyOhio/videos/1899784660053231/ . The service department’s annual Spring Roadside Cleanup Project was successfully completed. Mainte-nance staff was actively involved in picking up trash along the State Route 161 roadsides, within New Alba-ny, to prepare for the mowing season. A total of 92 bags of trash equaling 3220 pounds of waste was col-lected during the day long event. Maintenance worker Shaun Bush installed flag pole brackets on all of the downtown streetlight poles. In past years the American flag was placed on every other pole during the spring, summer and fall months. This year the Sate of Ohio flag will be added to the alternat-ing empty streetlights. Therefore, residents will see an increased number of flags on display in the Village Center over summer.

The Public Service Department, in an effort to im-prove green initiatives, is using recycled wood chips from our urban forest to help maintain Safety Town. The recycled wood chips are being stored at the ser-vice department for special projects in lieu of sending them to a yard waste facility. The wood chips maintain soil moisture to support healthy tree growth and keeps poison ivy from growing.

PUBLIC SERVICE PROJECTS April 2018

Spring trash collection prepares roadsides for seasonal mowing.

Council member Matt Shull spoke to New Albany school children at

Swickard Woods.

Crews install additional flag brackets on the Village Center streetlight poles.

Worker Chase Loughman places recycled

wood chips at Safety Town.

P a g e 6 P u b l i c S e r v i c e REQUESTS FOR SERVICE STATISTICS April 2018

Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec YTD

2016 12 9 18 19 12 32 23 24 16 18 21 13 217

2017 15 9 11 14 36 25 31 28 22 11 13 13 228

2018 8 28 14 31 81

0

10

20

30

40

Nu

mber

of

Requ

est

s

Community Requests

Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec YTD

2016 29 21 32 27 29 31 43 40 47 52 34 32 417

2017 25 26 33 22 33 37 34 39 16 26 38 13 342

2018 17 29 24 20 90

0

20

40

60

Nu

mber

of

Requ

est

s

Staff Requests

SEASONAL STATISTICS April 2018

P a g e 7 P u b l i c S e r v i c e

New Albany Smart Ride

April 2018

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Blue Route 24.9 27.6 28.4 28

Red Route 12.8 17.2 11.7 12.54

Green Route 55.1 48 53.1 54.8

0

25

50

75

100

Average Passengers per day

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec YTD

2018 2041 2042 2052 2099 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8234

2017 1356 1353 1485 1177 1303 1185 1162 1884 2133 2367 2013 2128 19546

2016 2454 2921 2827 2055 2168 2667 1969 2778 2677 2725 2691 1828 29760

2015 1092 1157 1346 1318 1199 1679 2059 2250 2710 3305 2635 2669 23419

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

Total Passengers

P a g e 8