Aviation Board - Regular Meeting

Alright. We're gonna get this meeting call to order at 10:02AM on Monday, 04/13/2026. All board of public work members are present. I'll now take approval of the minutes from 04/06/2026. Motion made by something happened. Council president Dickinson. There is an echo. Oh, is oh, okay. Is there a second? Second by director Trane.

Any discussion or corrections? Seeing none, please vote. Motion passes unanimously. Next agenda item twenty five one one seven five, bidders proof of responsibility. Director Gallagher.

Thank you, mayor. We have one for today, Zimmerman Plumbing Inc. From Portage, Wisconsin for $15,283,252 for plumbing work. Recommend approval.

Motion to approve by director Trane, second by council president Dickinson. Any other discussion? Seeing none, please vote. Motion passes unanimously. Next agenda item twenty five one four four four, presentation sanitary sewer utility and storm water utility quarterly update. Jared.

Good morning, board. I'll get set up here. Bear with me. Working on sharing my screen here. Always looks a little bit different.

As you're figuring that out, I'm gonna jump all the way down to the last agenda item twenty six zero three nine six. You you got it. You just let us know when you're ready, but we can approve this construction contract while we're doing it. So we'll move to 260396 construction contract final payment. Director Gallagher.

There is one for the historic Fish Control Lab Building Rehabilitation Phase 3. It should be attached to your agenda. Alright.

Motion to approve by director Gallagher, second by council president Dickinson. Any discussion or questions? Alright. Seeing none, please vote. And that motion passes unanimously. Unanimously.

Alright. I think I'm ready.

Alright.

Alright. Good morning, board. Sorry about the technical trouble there. So this morning, we're going to present and provide an update on sanitary sewer collection system. It seems like we talk about the wastewater plant and the upgrade and what goes on down there. What we don't talk about is the activities going on to convey sewage to the wastewater plant to be treated. You know, we have 20 MGD wastewater plant that has the ability to treat 20,000,000 gallons a day. We treat 10,000,000 gallons a day of sewage that is a regional wastewater treatment plant. We have 12 large industries. This

one?

Yep. So

what we wanna talk about today is the activities as it relates to sanitary sewer collection system. So we flow 10,000,000 gallons of sewage every day to the waste water plant. We have 205 miles of sanitary sewer pipe that we maintain and clean. We have 27 sanitary lift stations that we maintain that pump and convey sewage to the waste water treatment plant. But rarely, this is not talked about.

Right? It's just happening behind the scenes. Sewages flow under the wastewater plant. We treated the wastewater plant, end of story. But we have aging infrastructure where we have, again, 200 miles of sanitary sewer pipe in the ground, large interceptors that come from the North Side Of La Crosse that treat sewage from the industries, from contracted communities in the area.

And we do this by activities as it relates to miles of sewer clean, televising, root removal to to minimize any sewer backups that we might have. We have a number of projects that we've done and keep doing into the future to make sure that we have a reliable collection system. Some of these pipes as we've rehabilitated them haven't been touched from, you know, forties, fifties, sixties. It's been a while. And you have goals for yourself, but don't really talk about it how either replace, you can put, cure in place liners in.

We've done a lot of lining of sewers on the North Side and conveyance system from the North Side Of La Crosse to the wastewater plant. Bottom line is we do have aging infrastructure. Some of the things that we see and talk about, right, we talk about televising sewers, we talk about condition assessment, we talk about DOT projects that are going down main thoroughfares for the city of La Crosse. But what's that mean? You know, behind the scenes, we're televising, we're cleaning, we're assessing, which takes time, which isn't really talked about.

So these are just photos of some of the questionable pipes that we do see, and then we plan projects as it relates to maybe street rehab projects or street replacement as we place utilities under the street. As you can see, some of these pipes get in rough shape when we plan projects. None of them get any cheaper, but we plan projects to replace or rehabilitate some of these pipes instead of having failures. We have roots in the system. We have lots of trees, tree program in the sis you know, for the city of La Crosse, but then roots like to find water and where's the source of water, burning it burrowing itself, into a sewer main through a a joint or through a lateral.

But these are issues that we deal with. We have primary interceptor lines that takes place from Clinton Street, Riverside Park Division. So one of the goals I've had for myself now that I've been here eighteen years, will be nineteen years in December is making sure we have a robust collection system. So years ago when I first started, we lined Logan Street, which is our from our Moore Sanitary lift station. Moore sits on, Moore Street, of course, which flows all the sewage from City Of Onalaska and the industrial park, includes Quick Trip Great Lakes Cheese.

So we started lining sewers, down Logan Street and then eventually from Clinton Street. I was newer in my position as a superintendent, and one of the goals is to line from Clinton Street to the wastewater plant. We have line from Clinton Street to Hager Street, which is our Hager Sanitary Lift Station, our largest station where we're doing a rehab this year because we're gonna update the controls and pumps at our second station there, which conveys all the flow from the North Side, the industrial park, on Alaska, Campbell. So it's a big station. We wanna make sure that's in good condition.

That forest main then pumps from Hager Street to Riverside Park right by the International Gardens. Those two very big main interceptors then run from there to the wastewater plant right alongside the river through Riverside Park. We've lined through the Riverside Park now to Division Street. We wanted to make it to the plant. We're nearly there, so we're planning another project from Division Street to the island.

But these are not popular projects that was we laid pipe through the Riverside Park and events are planned, and we try to bypass pump, and yet we have pumps that make noise that are right by local hotels, which aren't necessarily accommodating for the customers. But how else do you pull off the projects? You have noise with pumps running, have pipes or bypass pumping, but this is the only way to open up these pipes, rehabilitate them. We've gotten to Division Street. We're making our way there.

We have other things that happen like two and a half mile long force main from 33rd Street, Pammel Creek area across from Super Walmart, two and a half miles long. It pumps from there to Green Island Ice Arena on 7th Street. This stuff happens behind the scenes. Nobody talks about it, but it's conveying sewage to provide that service for the ratepayers in the area. When these fail, it's not pleasant.

I have folders and files where we work through these situations, but we proactively line 2,000 more feet of that pipe where the soil was corroding, the outside of the pipe from outside in. Right? So you can't televise it because everything looks fine inside, but we use a company out of Canada using an eddy current to inspect the pipe from the inside out, find where there's degradation, and then install a liner to convey sewage. We, we budget so many, dollars worth of lining money biannually to pull off more lining projects. Not that lining is always the answer, but it's a good alternative where you have busy traffic, groundwater problems or issues where we have to dewater.

But sometimes it makes sense to line, and then it's a fiberglass liner inside a pipe, which works fine structurally for good for many years. Sometimes it makes sense to replace the pipe. So we have televising records here. So 16 and a half miles in 2025, 12 and a half miles, 2024, and then so on and so forth. In our CEMAR, when we bring that back to the Board of Public Works for approval and then ultimately resolution for approval to submit to DNR, it has in their expectations kind of miles televised, root sawed, cleaned, assessed, that sort of thing.

One third of the system, 66 miles a year is cleaned annually using a jetter equipment. 500 to 4,000 manholes are inspected annually, so we're out there checking those manhole structures as we're doing checks or cleaning. Future projects, major major interceptors on Mississippi, Cast, Maine, tenth, eleventh, sixteenth. The focus will be to, you know, radiate out from the treatment plant to rehabilitation, the highlights, cost, consequences, failures. What's it mean to operate 27 sanitary lift stations?

Well, we have a a staff that maintains those pumping stations. Last week, they were lucky enough twice a year to clean the wet wells to make sure we don't have plug pumps, backups, that sort of thing. One to two times per week with major stations being checked daily, we have a route, a routine where we check the bigger stations. New anchor station will see two pumps like I talked about. Panel Creek will rehabilitated this year.

Pumps are okay, but it's controls that are shot, generators shot where we need to replace those just to make sure that when the power goes out, we can still pump sewage. Lift stations. What a good project that we finally pulled off was radio communication with every pump station. That includes storm. And we have the ability to run the collection system from the wastewater plant.

If we have a cyber attack, we can run the wastewater plant. We can unplug from the outside world the Internet and run the entire plant, 27 sanitary lift stations and six storm stations. But with licensed radio, have the ability to communicate and control a large portion of these lift stations. The other one has the telemetry where it automatically alarms us if something's going wrong. In summary, the plans we have in place and proactive approach help minimize emergencies even though not popular times, normal traffic flow patterns, bypass pumping noises or big bypass pumps along sidewalks and through popular city parks.

The activities named in this presentation are to help ensure sewage can be received at the wastewater treatment plant for treatment. The named infrastructure service large industries and surrounding communities that make up the regional wastewater treatment plant here for the city of Crosse. So that's kind of a quick summary of sanitary sewer collections. You know, we talk about the wastewater plant and what's going on there, but this is a big part of what we do also at the wastewater plant. So at that point, I open it up to any questions.

Thank you very much, Jerry. Any board of public board members have questions? Well, I have a couple. Okay. And I pretty much talk to you all's department about this constantly, but just for public record sake, what would it take to essentially update all of our underground infrastructure, specifically when you talk about the pipes that might need to be replaced and things like that?

Well, that's a tough question. I know. We went from combination storm sanitary 1936. So some of those oversized sanitary pipes, you know, you rehabilitate them to come, flow sewage. You know, you separated out storm we have from sanitary and separate any clear water from sanitary. You can see some of the dollar numbers attached to just what I call small projects. For example, lining the sewer from Cass Street to Division, we were hoping to get the Market Street, and we run out of funding for that. I think that was a 2 to $3,000,000 project. And now we'll probably have to plan another million dollar project. And there you're talking, you know, a thousand feet, 2,000 feet, you know, at the most.

So to put a number on replacing just the pipes in the ground, it would be a tremendous amount of money. You know, just we're doing lift station upgrades of Hager and Pamel this year and that ends up being in that $3,000,000 range and that's two pump stations. And then you multiply it by 27 sites, it's a it's a big dollar of infrastructure to convey sewage to the wastewater plant.

Thank you. You know, I I appreciate this and you being able to take us underground and kinda behind the scenes because I think people need to know that. Right? Sometimes people look at, like, well, we got potholes and we need those fixed. Well, there's potholes. There's work underground that has to happen between sanitary and all the other utilities and, forestry, etcetera, right? And so I think that that's just important for the public to fully understand that, there's a lot going into the maintenance of infrastructure that we have here in the city.

Yep, absolutely.

Council member Goggin.

This sort of just occurred to me, so forgive me. But, like, if there is a fail of some of this pipe, then do you look north, south, east, west to the pipes to try to do more work, like, to to maximize whatever we're doing? Like, if do do you know what I'm saying? If are we trying to maximize your time, the city's money to do whatever we can? Or and do would you ever entertain coming back to a body for emergency funding to get something done?

Absolutely. We always wanna avoid the emergencies. We don't want the sinkhole. We don't want that surprise. You know, my assistant, Luke Shipper, spends hours every week, every day as condition assessment. You know, why did the collapse happen? So right now, we have a storm collapse on East Avenue, a sinkhole. Not a collapse, a sinkhole. The frustrating part is we can't find anything wrong with the pipe. I think some of the joints maybe lacked a seal when it was first installed.

We have had some issues out in the East Avenue, Bluffside area and just can't find the problem. But when we do find a problem, what's the true fix? What's the long term fix instead of a Band Aid? The truth be told, when there's a sanitary sewer overflow, the sewage hits the top of the the surface, right, or there's a leak or there's a leak in a force main. One of my favorite projects is a leak underneath the La Crosse River on a force main. That was a great project. 01/02/2019. I don't know why I remember the date so well. We end up dewatering the La Crosse River in order to pull the project off. You don't want those failures to happen.

But as soon as that happens, the the DNR response that we need to do is call DNR spill hotline immediately, call the DNR basin engineer that's responsible for the City Of La Crosse wastewater plant, and then media notice. We have to notify the media right away. That's part of that SSO process. Then you have to report back on what the fix is and what the future fix is and why this won't happen again. Lately, DNR has put an emphasis on force mains and siphons because it's out of sight, out of mind where you don't do typical televising cleaning of those.

You do some cleaning of siphons, but there was a failure in Eau Claire where it was under the Chippewa flowage, and they couldn't figure out why their flow for years was dropping at the wastewater plant. And then all of a sudden, they're taking on the Chippewa River at the wastewater plant. It was a siphon fail underneath the Chippewa River. So, anyway, there's more emphasis put on that and more pressure for us to do a better job to help mitigate the area or where the failure is and why the failure is.

I think it's clear, probably when we've been in these meetings together, that I'm always wondering why we're spending what we're spending. But I want to be clear that I feel that I don't want to put a Band Aid on something that will cost us double so that I want you to feel encouraged to come back and find out what you need and let us know what you need.

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate that.

Thank you.

All right. Any other questions? Seeing none. Thank you very much, Jerry.

You're welcome.

Moving to our next agenda item, 251456, street department updates. Oh oh, my bad. I'm sorry, Claire. Forgive me, Claire. Can you hit the microphone just to

Oh, there we go. Yep.

That's better. Thanks. Okay. So here's our spring stormwater utility update. So I know on the agenda last week was our m s four report. So, hopefully, if you were interested in taking a look at that, you got a chance to do that. But I'll be going over some of the major highlights of that report today. So that was submitted the March to the DNR, and that just basically summarizes everything that we're doing to meet those permit requirements to the DNR to prove that we're doing what we're supposed to be doing. So this year, we had some follow-up from our 2024 December 2024 audit, some things they requested from us. So updates to our full storm water management plan.

We had, like, a bunch of separate documents for each topic instead of having them all in one master document. There was, like, a few things missing from that they wanted us to add. Some updates to our storm water utility map, including some new outfalls in that, marking our satellite leaf collection sites, which are a pollutant source potentially, and then marking some of our industries that are permitted as potential stormwater risky spill sites. So marking those on the map so they're really easy for us to see right away. And then updates to our stormwater pollution prevention plans.

We have four city facilities that require those. That would be the wastewater treatment plant, MSC down on Isle La Plume as well, the airport, and then the Myrick water utility garage. So those are the updates from the audit, and then the rest of it is just kind of a annual summary every year that we we do. So this year, we had 458 catch basins cleaned by our sewer crew. We had 5,382 tons of material collected and disposed of through street sweeping, which is handled by the sweep street department.

391 of our BMPs, which stands for best management practices, those are green infrastructure, things like rain gardens, swales, ponds. So 03/1991 of those inspected, and then maintenance was needed and completed on 39 of those. We had eight illicit discharges reported and followed up on, so that is just anytime anyone is dumping anything other than storm water into a storm drain. And then we had eight construction projects completed and 30 new green infrastructure BMPs approved last year. I'm gonna go over some of our pollution prevention.

This is just one of the permit topics on our MS four report. So these are things that we're doing as a city as part of that permit all the time. So including our green infrastructure and BMPs, having inspecting them, maintaining them, looking for ways to implement new ones during construction projects when we're updating things. We have our stormwater pollution prevention plans for those four sites that I mentioned, And then spill prevention and cleanup specifically at those sites are kind of the high risk sites. That's why they require the SWIP, but also just anywhere that we're working.

And then we've got our our street sweeping, leaf collection, catch basin cleaning, road salt, and nutrient reduction. Those are big pollutant sources. So nutrients would mostly be like fertilizers and chemical applications on lawns and gardens. And then our vehicle equipment and maintenance all go into all source sources of pollution that we can kind of keep an eye on and be monitoring. So these are all things we do as a city, as a government, but they're also things that you can kinda think about, anyone can think about in their day to day life when they're doing lawn maintenance, yard work, you know, taking care of their vehicles and equipment so we're not having oil dripping or leaking into the streets and getting washed into the storm drains, all that sort of thing that we do as a city that anyone can kind of implement in their day to day life as well.

So this soak it up award is something that we do with La Crosse Area Waters. They had this event last week with the media to highlight their twenty twenty five award winner, which was a residential property in La Crosse this year. So they have this lovely rain garden that you can see in the photo. There's also quite a few more photos of this property if you follow the link here on the website. It's really quite an impressive property.

But, yes, includes lots of native plants, some edible landscaping, and drainage swales that direct the water to the edible garden and everything. So, again, really lovely property, and they had a media event last week organized by La Crosse Area Waters to highlight this. Great time of year when people are thinking about starting their gardens for the spring, getting some inspiration for some green infrastructure. So these are just kind of some of our upcoming projects. Well, basically, everything I covered with the MS four report last year, kinda ramping up to do that all again for this year.

So our inspections and maintenance of green infrastructure, as soon as the growing season really gets into full swing, we can inspect all the vegetation, make sure that's healthy. We're having a new contract coming up for approval that'll probably be in front of you guys soon, for our twenty twenty seven to 2030, contract with LaCrosse Area Water. So they cover a lot of our education and outreach permit requirements, and they do an excellent job. Then with the com the completion of our wastewater treatment plant upgrade, we have two big dry detention basins that were part of that upgrade. So as soon as we get that project finalized, we can start getting credit for those large BMPs.

That'll be wonderful towards our TSS total suspended solids reduction, which we are trying to meet our requirement of 20%. We're at about 17.3 right now. So that's one of the things we're focused on, trying to get more credits there. And then just with the spring summer, just our seasonal sustainability initiatives and educational events, a lot of those, again, through the cross area waters. All the parks department participates in a lot of those as well. I think that is most of what I have. Yep. Here's my contact information, then happy to answer any questions you might have.

Awesome. Thank you. Any questions from Board of Public's Director Terre. Thank you, Claire. In what ways do you collaborate with other departments such as planning with the climate action plan or parks department or any other departments to achieve some of these goals?

Yeah. So there's quite a few ways, quite a few departments involved directly and indirectly in stormwater management. I would say our our sewer utility is a really obvious one. They maintain all the storm sewer. So we have our green infrastructure, our rain gardens. That's kind of my purview there. And then the gray infrastructure is what we call the just the pipes. The sewer utility is maintaining those, inspecting those. And then, you know, if there's issues with one, sometimes there's issues with another or flooding or overflow, that kind of thing. They they are connected.

There's overflows from all the green infrastructure to the gray infrastructure. But so we work together to make sure that is all functioning well. Parks department, as I mentioned, does a lot of the education and outreach, hosting events at the parks. I know last year, was, like, a rain garden rain barrel sorry, rain barrel, like, create your own rain barrel workshop that was really great. And La Crosse Area Waters and Parks work together on that.

We've got our street department that handles leaf collection and street sweeping, which is really important for those pollution prevention credits that we get. And then the I know the climate action plan has a section on stormwater. I I don't know that we have worked directly on that to collaborate. It's just kind of part of their plan there, but it it goes over a lot of, like, all of these topics that are covered on the MS four report.

Thank you. Any other questions? Council President Dickinson.

Claire, I'm wondering if you could give some examples of some illicit discharges that are more in the residential category just for public information? Essentially. Yeah. Last year, we had

one where a property owner was draining their in ground swimming pool into the storm drain that we had to save. Not allowed to do that. Chlorine is a a pollutant that we don't want getting into the storm system, so that needs to go to sanitary or, like, a you can just charge it to, like, a grassy lawn area and just let it infiltrate if you have a big enough yard for that as well.

Didn't someone come here one time and say they use bleach and clean a sidewalk and push them?

Yeah. Things you don't necessarily think about until you're in this industry for sure.

Fair. Well, thank you so much. I definitely appreciate

it. And

as we get ready for the street department and agenda twenty five one four five six, I just wanna say, director Gallagher and deputy director Stephanie, thank you all for having these updates come to the Board of Public Works. I think it's very informative to, you know, learn more about, what's happening behind the scenes. All right, Ryan.

Of course, I can't get to it now.

I

was gonna say you helped Jared out now.

No. The ribbon on the top was covering all my stuff, so I had to make it smaller. Yeah. I'm here to go through street department, kind of phrase this more for current operations and what we're doing and what's coming up for us. Of course, it's that time of year, so we've already started our first CIP roadwork.

First job was Liberty Street, Saint Cloud to Saint James. And currently, we are on King Street. We are doing the section between 2nd and 3rd where we're removing all the or the asphalt and all the concrete. So we had taken all the curb lines and the approaches for that project. So we'll continue as the road projects come up.

We'll start doing those. We'll come back and we'll do the second block at King Street when the water and sewer utility guys are ready for us to have another block open. Winter repairs, we've had crews out repairing sod, mailboxes, anything that any plows hit throughout the city. I think we actually completed almost the whole list of sod already. And I know we got all the mailboxes put together already.

So we should be ahead on that one. We've had to do some cleanups. This one was underneath the Copeland Bridge. We have one more coming up. There's some material under the George Street overpass on the south side that we will be getting to next.

The reason I wasn't here last week was George Street. The overlay over the weekend decided not to be attached to the concrete any longer. So we had to go out there with grader and scrape it up, we could get that would actually come up, pile it up, and load it out. We've done this on Rose and Copeland already, but George was a little with it being two lanes of traffic each way, it's not a one way. It was a little more work to get it done, but we got that completed on last Monday.

As you know, Yard Way site opened up. So that opened up March 30 and closes at the November. That's open every Saturday through Tuesday. And today, we started LEAP pickup. So we started up we're in the North Side. We have six crews on the North Side, and wastewater has donated a crew. They are East of Losey starting on the North heading south. So our hope, depending on how the weather goes, is to complete it in a week. Probably not gonna I mean, there's a lot out there. So but we're gonna try to get through as fast as we can.

So that's our big push. Pretty much most of our guys are on this right now. Unless there's an emergency outside of this that we need to go to, we'll keep our personnel on this because we wanna get this completed as soon as we can. And, of course, that brings us into next week is brush week. So that kind of is gonna correspond.

Usually, that only takes a couple people anyways, so we'll go around and start picking up everybody's brush starting next week. Kind of informative. I know we started doing this. We're on a break right now because of brush, but I did kinda wanna just if you see us out on Lozy over the past couple weeks, we have done it down on Mormon Cooley, and I know we did some on Copeland too. Primarily, this is a new product to us called Mastic.

So if you look at the one picture on the side, you see how we've kind of patched everything up as good as you can. But the problem with that is, of course, that creates potholes during the winter because water gets in there, it freezes, and as it freezes, it pops up everything that we've put in those holes. So what we're putting down now is mastic. It's like a crack seal but a little different. It it actually is meant for sealing wide cracks.

It has aggregate in it in oil, so it actually can take we can put it pretty deep and it actually has stability. It's waterproof, so primarily it will actually adhere to the concrete, to the asphalt, and then it doesn't allow water to get down in it. It bridges and strengthens the crack, and we can reapply. So if we go through and apply it and some areas settle, we can come and it can build up on itself. It it makes for a lot better ride on some of these roads, especially I know once we plow, we kinda end up taking off that top layer because it will skim, and it'll actually make a very, very nice road.

So we've done this on Lozy. We will finish once we get time again. We've done some on Mormon Coulee, pretty much from Birch down to QuickTrip. We did some on Copeland, and we will be hopefully, if we can get there in time while the road is closed, we will do some of River Valley because we will be going out to River Valley. I know I don't have this in here.

Because of the closures, there's probably seven, eight panels of concrete we're gonna take out, ones that are really tipped and repair those too while we have the opportunity. Of course, potholes, that's coming out of the winter. This is the worst time for it. We're going around trying to clean up as much as we can. Just kinda giving you, we did receive our truck, and it will be going out for the first time probably next week.

As you can see, they've had the trailer on the left. Now we have a truck. The truck is five ton, so we can actually go to the plant and actually get enough material for the whole day. The other thing is is it's got a conveyor system, so no hand shoveling because that's probably one of the biggest workman's comp areas for us. I mean, if you have four guys shovel five ton of asphalt in one day by hand, that gets hard on the guy's body.

So this will actually place it in a hole, so now it's raking. And like I said, they won't have to make multiple trips. So some pictures, I know that you guys seen this last time, but that's a new product we use in the fall, spring and winter when Mathi is not available. If Mathi is open and we can do it, if it's a road that we're gonna end up masticing, we'll use use asphalt in there. We will be getting ready to do some zipping and milling repair.

Kinda wanted to show a couple roads. So the one on the left, of course, is 2nd Street, right at 2nd And La Crosse. When we get to that point where do you patch? This is a good place for us to come in. So we'll bring our zipping machine, grind down the road, and then put a new layer of asphalt on it.

The one on the right too, that's kind of another example of a road that might need some zipping on it. One of the layers is just peeled right off. We'll be out. I know we started some, but we'll get back out. Brushing and mowing.

So some of the areas that need to be pushed back or get some of the high weeds out, we'll send our boom mower out and kind of prep so that the areas are ready for mowing for the spring. We are also for the refuse and recycling right now. The pickup for garbage and recycling expires at the 2027. Harders has that contract right now. They've had it since 2014.

So they had initial seven years and a seven year extension. We are going through the contracts right now and getting everything set so that it can be rebid for the 2028 year. The the reason why it's so ahead, anybody who needs to bid on something like this, there is a lot to it. There's trucks. There's infrastructure.

You know? So if anybody outside of Hardist were to get this contract, they need time because they're gonna have to up you know, make sure that they have the fleet, they have the the buildings to process the materials. So we should what we're hoping is to get it out within the next month or so and let everybody actually have a couple months to look at the bid and have time to actually create a bid. Equipment. So as I said, we got our new asphalt, pothole truck, that'll be used for potholes, utility openings.

I don't know why I have paving in there because we wouldn't pave with it. We did get our first, hook lift plow, and I did put a picture of what it in May, it'll go down and get its leaf back. That is a picture of how it will take that leaf back on and off. So currently, the other picture has a salter on it. So this is where I'm saying, like, if we were out doing leaves and we had a snowstorm, you could pretty much drop your leaf vac, put on your salter, put the front on within a half hour, and this trucking can be converted from one to the other.

The other nice thing is this is all hydraulic. So the guys out on leaf vacs right now have to move around that big hose all by hand. Now they'll have a remote control. They'll be able to move it all by remote control, which again is another one of those things just easier on all the guys to use. The other nice thing about the hook trucks, their, collection point can actually come all the way to the corner of the vehicle, and we can run curb lines picking up leaves with them too.

So, this will be the first one. Like I said, I'm hoping by June, it'll be back and it'll have the lead back and everything. So it'll be set for next year's. 2026 work, we're looking at about 12 to 14 CIP projects. That's tear out, remove curb and concrete and pave. We are doing a couple projects for parks. We're gonna be doing the boat landing portion of it over by Powerhouse Marine, and then we got some stuff at Copeland Park they want us to do too. Yeah. Actually in the park, the Loggers Park. Road maintenance, mastic, like I talked, crack seal.

And this year, we are gonna be doing some slurry seal. We've been doing micro seal, but what we're looking at is some roads that are probably a little farther down the line, but there's nothing gonna happen for them for a while. And what slurry seal does is it's in essence a lot more in-depth chip seal, but they'll actually work all the material into every crack and actually help the roads. Road repair, as I said, concrete, we'll do River Valley, and we got a bunch of other miscellaneous things to do. Zipping, we'll do 2nd Street.

And that's the end of it. Any questions?

Well, thank you. Y'all needed that pothole truck last year when I was doing pothole patrol with the governor. That would have been easy. Can you you talked about cleanups under the bridge. Are those encampment cleanups or is those people just dumping things? Because I know that happens a lot.

These ones are very specifically cleanups from homeless. Yes.

Okay.

Now we have had cleanups where people dump stuff along bridges, but these ones very specifically are those.

Okay. Council President Dickinson.

Sorry. I thought it wasn't on. Is the refuse contract always seven years with a seven year, renewal, or is is that maybe gonna be structured different, or do we know?

I don't know what it was previous to this. I know the contract was pretty inclusive because fourteen years ago is when we moved to carts, not people's you know? So this this contract covered, you know, the distribution of all the new carts, the tagging. There's a lot of things in it that won't be in this one because, of course, now the city owns. Because if yeah.

Because the way the contract reads, at the end of this well, at the end of the initial seven years, all the carts were ours, the city's. So now it's really just one to actually maintain our carts and use them. So it's a little different of contract, not much different. I don't know if anybody knows what you guys did before or how many years it was. I just know the, you know, the initial one, which is the past fourteen years.

Yes. Go ahead.

I think you've spoken before, but I just want you to reiterate. Now that we're upgrading our trucks, the the manual use of the control system inside the cab is gonna be more uniform. Is that correct? Or describe it the way it should be. I'm not doing well.

Our trucks, like the street department? Yeah. Every effort right now is being made that every truck has pretty much the same controls. There will be slight differences, but when you walk in, it'll be the same patrol alarm. You might only have two levers versus three, you know, because if you don't have a wing, you're not gonna have an extra lever.

But for the most part, they're they're all identical. The hydraulic systems, the lights, we are trying to uniform everything so that one, it's less parts we have to carry. But two, once you get trained on one, you know them all because, you know, every light within the configuration is set the same place. It's really just your controls. Are you gonna have two, three, or four depending on how, you know, does it have a hydraulic wing? Does it not have a hydraulic wing? But yes, they're all they're all coming in identical.

Thank you for answering my awkward question. Thanks.

Director Tray. Ryan, I have two questions for you. What's the process for reporting potholes, and then what is the city's responsibility for potholes on state highways?

All the state highways, that's our responsibility if there's a pothole outside of our I'll I'll say that in our jurisdiction, our maintenance jurisdiction. So, you know, anything north of on 16 North Of La Crosse Street, that's not us. Anything from QuikTrip on the South Side down, it wouldn't be us, but everything within the city is us. So primarily, as I said, we run around and look for them. I mean, that it it's a hunt and peck type of situation unless we get calls.

If you get a call that goes to the top of the list. That's the first place they go. So it primarily, if you call our office and leave a message, slight location's always nice to know so that they can find it. But, yeah, those are always the priority list.

Can a resident also put a request in online? Like, is it attached to 311 or anything like that? Yep. Does that also include 3rd And 4th Street?

It includes 3rd And 4th Street. Trust me.

Sorry, Ryan.

I I I would love to do something in the 3rd And 4th Street. It again, it's one of those I mean, zipping be really good, but that's a really I mean, to do stuff like that when it's four or five years away, it's hard. You just fix them as we go. So

I just know that's where all my emails come from. There's more. Yeah.

Honestly, I I would if if I had to say, more I mean, the parts of and and that's where we're going at. Mastic is the ones that we're always being called on. You know? That's why we went after Mormon Cooley. That's why we went after we're doing Lozy. Their state road will be on the list to trying to seal them in because if we can start sealing them in, then we're gonna get less and less calls. I mean, that's really the the the point of it. No. There's always gonna be more. I mean, it's just gonna happen.

Yeah. Council member Goggin.

I have one question and one comment. So first, I'll do the comment. I use that, George Street overpass a lot. And when I was driving here last week, I saw the, you know, the stuff being done. And then when it was done, it was just very nice to be able to drive over that and not have my vehicle all splattered with debris.

So I appreciate what the city did there. My second question or my question is, you've talked a lot about the improvements with the trucks and such. Is there any chance that, like, when you come back next year that you'll be able to quantify the money that we've saved? Like, you know, in 2026, we did this and then, you know, it cost us, you know, this much in 'twenty four and then we've lowered those costs? Is it is there a chance to show the public what we're what we're saving?

I I will be able to do some of that with the brining especially now having five trucks. Well, they're not all here, but by season, we'll have five. That I'll be able to quantify. It'll take a little longer because we need a few more before I start quantifying that it takes less trucks, you know, because we're wider. I mean, we've seen the fruits of that with the two the two routes that the tandems were on.

They can just cover so much ground. I mean, they're just so big. We didn't have to have a fourth truck. Now we took that fourth truck and put it somewhere else for now. We're kinda it it's a hard thing because we're trying to redo the way we do stuff, the old style, so that we're not going over things twice.

And I I think, yeah, within a couple years, we'll be able to start seeing some of the fruits of this coming. But 100% with the with the brine trucks because as I talked about before, a brine event, if we can hold off some of that salt, I mean, we're talking 4,000 versus 16,000, 18000 in an event, that's a lot. Even if we have to brine twice, we're just using so little salt when we start doing stuff like that. That's where the a lot of the savings from them. But it it will start showing some savings too in the leaf collection because these these are bigger trucks.

They can stay out longer. They don't take a half hour to unload because you have to take a trailer off and then unload it and then put a trailer back on. Yeah. There's gonna be some quantifiable net gain for us at some point as we're moving through all this stuff.

I think it'll just be important for us to be more transparent, like, yep, it did cost us this much, but we are it's taking less time. It's saving even the workers' comp that you mentioned. So all of the all of the positives of these these expenses that we're incurring Yep. We need to show the public what the positive sides of these are. So I appreciate all the work you're doing in that realm. Thank you.

Thank you very much. One question, because I get this a lot. So there are some folks who believe, like, in streets, you're supposed to be everywhere all at one time. Right? You gotta be fixing potholes, collecting leaves at the brush site, and also doing construction all at the same time. Can you just shine light on what the street staff as of, like, how many street staff do we have? And when we do major projects like leaf pickup right now, like, how do you direct direct your people?

It's so for the most part, during it's different with Leaf because we are or with the Leaf pickup because we are putting an emphasis on trying to get it done. So we we have most able bodies doing that. You know, the only other group that's really working on doing some stuff is our sign shop because, you know, there were some down poles and stuff. I won't pull the electricians in and them to do leaf season because there's plenty of work on poles and everything else that they have to complete. But generally, there's always a patch crew out.

I'd probably say 80% of the probably 90% of the summer. They're either doing utility openings or potholes. And if there is an urgent pothole, they'll pull off utility openings and go fix it. So there's usually a crew always running around doing that. This like I said, the sign shop. The other, it it's really varying depending on season and everything else because, you know, you look at it Green Bay, when we paved Green Bay. That was another example of all hands on deck. That was a very large paved. We only it was right at the end of the season, so there pretty much was only one or two crews running that time. Everybody was on Green Bay.

Either you were working on the paver, you were grading, or you were pulling in asphalt. So there are times where we have to pull everybody together. But usually, I would say there's three or four different crews doing different tasks, you know, because some of the tasks we do do not require more than one person. You know, the sweepers, you know, we try to keep at least two out, possibly three. If you're out brush mowing or mowing, that's only a one person job, you know.

So really just that kinda depends, But, yeah, trying to be everywhere, everything. There's always something to do. Yeah. There's always another task that needs to get completed. It's just really what's what's the most important tasks that are ahead of us, and we have to do those first and work through. Because something's gotta be completed in a timeline that has to be done now so that later. But that's probably the biggest thing is trying to keep the keep moving the crews around because it it changes from day to day.

Yeah. Well, thank you. I would say, you know, a lot of folks complain about the streets in La Crosse, but I feel like our streets are better than most municipalities in the state of Wisconsin. So thank you for all that you're doing. Alright. That being said, meeting adjourned. Appreciate you all.