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HomeMy WebLinkAbout25 New Stormwater Employee To: Honorable Mayor and City Council Charlene Stevens, City Administrator From: Adam Moshier, Management Assistant Date: 7/21/2017 RE: Add Full Time Employee to Stormwater Division Introduction The City of Cottage Grove has evaluated the existing condition of stormwater infrastructure: ponds (121), pipes (575,887ft), catch basins and manholes (4,766), skimmers (40), sumps (45), control structures (13), outfalls (102), and ditches (47.9 miles). The Public Works Department has discovered that various stormwater infrastructure areas of the city are deteriorating and need to be maintained to a higher level. In 2007, the Public Works Department hired its only full time public service worker that is dedicated to in-house stormwater repairs. Partial salaries from Public Works employees are also budgeted out of the Stormwater Division as well. The total salary for the addition of a full time employee would be $60,803.00. Staff is requesting an additional employee due to safety standards, availability of other employees, growing inspection requirements, ageing infrastructure and current contracting costs. Background Due to OSHA standards on confined space, when working in catch basins and manholes, there is a requirement of two employees with a recommendation to have three employees on site. With most stormwater projects requiring a minimum of two employees, the street division has been providing workers to assist with stormwater projects to assure they are done safely. Taking streets employees and moving them to stormwater projects takes time away from paving and other duties in the street division. Paving throughout the summer takes a full crew and a lot of time so the stormwater projects usually are put on hold or pushed back. There is not enough employees to get all of the duties done across all of the divisions. With the additional employee dedicated to the Stormwater Division, jobs will be done safely without having to take away from the duties and responsibilities of the street division. The City is also required by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to have a MS4 (Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System) permit. According to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, “The MS4 General Permit is designed to reduce the amount of sediment and pollution that enters surface and ground water from storm sewer systems to the maximum extent practicable.” “Through the MS4 General Permit, the system owner or operator is required to develop a stormwater pollution prevention program (SWPPP) that incorporates best management practices (BMPs) applicable to their MS4.” With this permit comes many required inspections. Ponds need to be inspected every 5 years, infiltration systems and sumps every year and outfalls twice a year. All of these also need to be documented and updated in our Infraseek program. This permit is updated every five years and will occur next in 2018. The new updated permit in 2018 will have more inspections/maintenance requirements that add staff time, since the stormwater requirements are constantly evolving and becoming more stringent. Sumps and infiltration basins are required in every new development as part of the 2013 permit. Those require annual inspections and will continue to increase in the future. This will require more manpower to inspect and maintain those sumps and basins. Inspection requirements were increased in 2013 and will likely increase again in 2018 as part of the updated MS4 permit. Going forward, more labor hours will need to be committed to stormwater to keep up with the permit demands. There have been many catch basin failures in recent years. Staff is recommending adding an additional employee to hopefully get ahead of these failures, start inspecting and catching them before they fail which will lead to performing preventive maintenance rather than a complete reconstruction. The cost to hire an emergency repair of a catch basin can be $10,000 to $12,000 for a local street and $20,000 to $25,000 for a collector/arterial street. Compared to an in-house repair of a catch basin of $3,000-$6,000 for a local street and $10,000-$12,000 for a collector/arterial street. Public Works does not currently have the time or employees to perform these emergency repairs of catch basins. Having the additional employee dedicated to the Stormwater Division would help in maintaining these structures before they fail. Cost savings and efficiencies could be realized if the work was done primarily in-house rather than contracting because time would be spent accomplishing the projects’ tasks versus managing a contract and not paying the markup for profit and overhead of a contractor. Staff also believes the workmanship of these projects will be much higher if they are performed in-house. The stormwater fund can absorb the addition of another full time employee with savings coming from contractor repairs and engineering costs. Staff hopes to save $65,000-$70,000 which is the cost of a full time employee. The stormwater fund would see no increase due to the additional employee. However, the current 5 year plan for the fund has increases in the fee each year to address some ongoing fund level issues, and those increases would continue to be recommended and wouldn’t be a result of this employee it if were approved. The specific tasks that the additional employee will be responsible for would be as follows: 1. Culvert repair 2. Culvert cleaning 3. Ditch grading 4. Add’l inspections of catch basins, structures, ponds, pipes, skimmers, rear yard drainage issues 5. Sump cleaning 6. Manhole cleaning 7. Mowing dry stormwater ponds 8. Minor structure repair 9. Flume maintenance 10. Pond depth checking for sedimentation cleaning 11. Repair infiltration of manholes 12. Grouting manhole rings to prevent infiltration 13. Cleaning and grubbing in pond and drainage swales 14. Skimmer cleaning 15. Manhole adjusting –raising of the castings 16. MS4 permit documentation Staff is requesting an additional employee in the Stormwater Division to keep up with inspection requirements, OSHA safety standards, growing maintenance needs, aging infrastructure and current contracting costs. Staff believes it is financially responsible and possible to add an additional staff member to address the growing needs of the stormwater system. The position will be funded by the Stormwater Enterprise Fund with wages not affecting the General Fund. The stormwater fund would see no increase due to the additional employee.