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Commissioner Jeff Rader
Manuel J. Maloof Center
1300 Commerce Drive
5th Floor
Decatur, GA 30030
(404) 371-2863
jrader@co.dekalb.ga.us
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| Public Works Update |
| Jan 23, 2006 |
Construction Projects:
DeKalb Industrial Way, on the east side, from Lawrenceville Highway to North Decatur Road; is about 75% complete; it should be completed by March 11, 2006.
Other sidewalk projects:
The new sidewalk is about 75% complete on the south side of Dresden Road, from Shallowford Road to Dresdan Way.
Roads & Drainage crews are about 93% complete with a state grant-funded sidewalk they are constructing on LaVista Road from the Fulton County line going east about 3,300 feet.
The County crews are complete with patching on Mabry Road.
They also did roadway patching work in restoration of Water system repairs on Heaton Park Drive, Vickers Drive, Vickers Circle, and Woodview. GDOT is about 5% complete with the patching, and 2% complete with the resurfacing in the 2006 LARP program, a total of 67 roads in DeKalb County.
The Briarwood bridge replacement, at North Fork Peachtree Creek, is also substantially complete, and the road was re-opened to traffic at the end of December 2005.
Buford Highway sidewalks and safety improvements, from Shallowford Terrace in Chamblee to I-285 in Doraville, are underway; the contractor is about three-quarters complete with driveway replacements on the north side of the roadway, and are initially making good progress towards the substantial completion date of July 31, 2006.
The first two projects in the Governor's Fast Forward signal synchronization program for DeKalb County have been awarded by GDOT, to Bass Signal Corporation: one being an $800,000 project to upgrade the signals on Briarcliff Road (S.R. 42); the contract completion date for these projects is April 30, 2006. The County's fiber optics contractor is doing the fiber interconnections required for these two projects.
Other DOT-funded projects on schedule to bid in 2006:
Lawrenceville Highway at I-285 interchange reconstruction has been placed on the May 2006 letting schedule by GDOT; this project is in the right-of-way phase. It will be aggressive if GDOT can complete the difficult amounts of right-of-way needed to bid both of these interchanges by March 2006.
The infrastructure improvements project (storm sewers, sanitary sewers, road improvements) that Reeves Ditching and Contracting is constructing at the Seminole Landfill is about four months behind schedule, due mainly to wet weather delays with drainage pipe installation; they have finished the 96" and 84" storm pipe installation. They are excavating and constructing Pond 9 for site drainage. They have substantially completed the new access road, including a concrete side ditch, and they have completed upgrades to the landfill entrance way. The project should be completed in mid-February 2006.
The Phase 3, Unit 1 construction at Seminole Landfill is slightly behind schedule so far: earthwork operations are under way in the new cell, and blasting for rock removal has started on the 39-acre site of this project. Several hundred thousand cubic yards of material have been moved so far, as well as some of the Composite Liner materials; and they have started installation of storm drain lines and structural fill for the permanent access road at the site. They will start work next on the geo-grid reinforced slope. This project is scheduled for completion in early 2007.
The preliminary engineering is starting for replacement of the Central Waste Transfer Station at the central Sanitation Division facility on Camp Road. This facility has reached the end of its useful life, and needs to be replaced with a more modern facility, that is both more efficient and in compliance with current waste transfer regulations. The project has been budgeted in the Sanitation CIP for 2006 and 2007; there will be a presentation at the Board of Commissioners Work Session on this project on Tuesday, February 7, 2006; design is expected to be completed in 2006, with bidding of the demolition of the old facility and construction of the new facility to be ready by end of 2006, for construction over a two-year period from 2007 through 2008, at an estimated cost of over $20 million.
Architectural and engineering work for the renovations to the Fleet Maintenance garage on Memorial Drive, near Rays Road, are about completed, and this project should be bid by Facilities Management this Spring; construction will take about five or six months, and is expected to be completed by late Fall 2006, at which point the Fire shop will re-locate from Camp Road complex out to Memorial Drive.
Customer Service and Community Outreach:
The pilot process for the new 311 call center is moving along quickly; Sanitation, Roads & Drainage and Transportation Divisions have all been involved in the "conference room" pilot tests for work flows and process mapping, and seem ready to go with the estimated May 2006 trial run for routing customer calls to the call center staff for processing. This new centralized customer number will make it much easier to ensure that customer requests get to the right person, and that timely response is logged and communicated back.
The Communications Team is planning an event on Saturday, February 18, from 9 am to 12:30 for National Engineers' Week, to encourage local students to consider a career in engineering. Nationally, fewer students are pursuing this important career, and our professional engineers in the transportation, traffic, storm water management and related civil engineering fields need relief one of these days!
Efficiency:
The GDOT State Aid office informed Roads & Drainage that DeKalb County will have 23 miles of resurfacing funded by LARP in the FY 2007 program; in the FY 2006 program, we had about 25 miles funded. Although the Governor is proposing to double the amount of state funding available for LARP, GDOT is projecting that the bid prices will be nearly double previous years' bids, eating up the additional funding just to maintain similar levels of resurfacing! Since we currently have a backlog of more than 300 miles of the 2,000 miles of County roads which warrant resurfacing soon, this is a discouraging trend.
Fleet Maintenance is continuing to hold the percentage of vehicles and equipment that are out of service at less than 5% of the County's fleet of more than 3,000 units, enabling each department to maintain productivity at planned levels.
Environmental Quality:
The new subscription curbside recycling program now has over 2,500 households signed up. For 2006, the Board of Commissioners voted to waive the annual $25 subscription fee for new subscribers, so that only the $15 one-time fee for a blue bin, and the $15 charge for blue bags as needed, are required for those who subscribe to this new program, in order to incentivize additional recycling.
On October 15, 2005, the County held an electronics drop off recycling event at two locations: the Memorial Drive county government complex, and at Brook Run park. Over 58,000 pounds of electronics were collected for recycling, and about 60 schools participated in the event, which was led by the Keep DeKalb Beautiful organization. |
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