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THURSDAY MAY 26 2016 O'FALLON PROGRESS 3ANewsOFPROGRESS.COM
Out with the old, and inwith the new, is the mes-sage Village EngineerNorm Etling touted atMonday’s Committee atLarge meeting in Shilohconcerning the importanceof integrating a geograph-ical information system(GIS) with village depart-ment data.
“It’s just a more sophis-ticated than an old man,”Etling said..
Village AdministratorJohn Marquart made therecommendation for May-or Jim Vernier and theboard to the village toenter into a “great rela-tionship of innovativetechnolgy,” with Thouve-not, Wade & MoerchenInc. engineering group.
“We have the money inthe budget to cover thefirst year cost, and this willbe a five-year contract thatwill give us a better idea ofwhen and how we paveour streets, and what I like
about it is being able tosay we want to allocate$300,000 a year or what-ever amount it may hap-pen to be, and we canapply it more efficientlytowards the end goal,which will also take thesubjectivity of village staff(members) out of it,” Mar-quart said.
Trustee Colleen Powersrhetorically asked Mar-quart, “so it takes theguessing out of it?”
“Yes, this will put theprocess of evaluation in amore objective platform,”Marquart replied. “Fromour standpoint, it’s a goodway to analyze our pave-ment, plan for the future,be consistent in what it isthat we budget for andthat we will know everyyear what we need doneand when it’s going to becompleted.”
She then said, “I thinkthis is good.”
After the old project thatwas put on the back bur-ner, the village decided torevisit the project endeav-or, and voted unanimously
to invest $187 K for GISdatabase creation andhosting over the couse of afive year contract. Theamount paid annually is inthe ballpark of $37,000.
After spending morethan 18 months in 2007through 2010, and$17,500 paid to Mascou-tah based SouthwesternIllinois Resource Conser-vation and Development,the village discontinuedefforts — until now.
TWM project engineerKarzan Bahaaldin present-ed his pavement manage-ment and GIS databaseplans to the board Mondaynight, along with MarshaStrom who has worked ona number of projects withthe village.
“An element in thefiscal year 2016-2017budget, is the effort tofinally consolidate andcomplete the village’s GISdata. (Previously) the datahas been hosted in severaldifferent locations and indifferent data forms,”Marquart said. “The ob-jective is to bring it alltogether, finish the projectand give the village a GISdata base that can actuallybe used by staff (now andin the future).”
Village Director of Pub-lic Works Megan Fuhler,who was a recent additionto the village staff thisyear, has been working onthis matter and has signif-
icant experience in thisarea, Marquart said.
“This system will notonly help the departmentstaff to keep track ofwhere things are, but alsowill allow us to longtermplan in terms of pavementmanagement. But also wecan not only figure outwhich streets need resur-facing based on severalfactors the program con-siders like weather, ageand subgrade material, butalso will encourage us tobe more proactive in add-ing extra life to pavementin the village,” Fuhlersaid.
“It allows you to getmore bang for your buckessentially,” Fuhler added.
Bahaaldin said duringhis presentation that thevillage has about 90 to100 miles of paved road-ways.
“Quite frankly, with theway we do things now,you’re always behind theball on repairs and mainte-nance, and are alwaysspending more moneythan necessary because weshouldn’t wait until theroad needs repairs, weshould be more proactive,and in the long term it willbe better for the roads andthe residents,” Marquartsaid.
Treasurer Bill Bokerreitterated the point thatthis system is a more rea-sonable approach because
it’s not just one personpicking which streets wework on — residents mayappreciate the scientificand objective evaluativeprocess.
“Since I’ve been here(2013) we’ve spent at least$300,000 on a combina-tion of asphalt and con-crete work,” Marquartsaid.
Vernier said the workdone at Hunter’s Crossingsubdivision and CountryRoad amounts to about $1million spent in the last sixyears.
“Hunter’s Crossingsubdivision is one that wasannexed into the village,and is an example or poorsubgrade materials andwasn’t done by villagestaff,” Vernier said.
Another benefit to thiscontract to create a GISsystem, Fuhler explainedto the board is villagestaff, like inspectors, pub-lic works staff, engineersand even police and emer-gency medical service(EMS) members can allinterface with GIS with theuse of Apple iPad tabletsthat will be purchasedeither by TWM for $1,100per device, or at a cheaperrate in bulk by the village.
Another annual cost of$7,500 the village willincur for TWM to set upand host the cloud basedGIS implementation, andstore everything in the
internet cloud so the vil-lage doesn’t have to pur-chase more computers,servers or software.
Strom said the cloudbased storage is fairly newto TWM, as they onlybegan utilizing and of-fering it to clients two orthree years ago.
“This will all play a hugerole for the village to keepour focus on budgeting,capital improvements andfuture goals,” Fuhler said.
Fuhler gave a hypotheti-cal scenario to the board,“Say in five years time were-do a subdivisionsstreets, I could then gointo it and add values tothe database, and all thedata for that project willbe in one spot instead of inmaps, file cabinets or onmy desk on a piece ofpaper. And the softwarecan be changed to whatev-er expectations you have,in other words the pro-gram will change the pa-rameters everytime toupdate what haschanged.”
In the first year is whenall of the extensive map-ping latitudes and longi-tudes, and data points likewhere properties, lift sta-tions, hydrants, under-ground piping, inlets,outfalls, junction boxes,paved swales, force mains,air release valves andmanholes are locatedspecifically, which Fuhlersaid will be instumental inproject, emergency oranalysis situations. Pointsare GIS maps have layersupon layers of data allow-ing a person to choose thelayers of information to beanalyzed for future main-tenance or where build-ings are relative to inlets.
Shiloh board recommendshigh tech GIS database. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
GIS is not new technology to village, 2007-2010 effortsto add it stopped. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Contract of $187K will go to Thouvenot, Wade &Moerchen Inc. to build and host database by 2021. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Five-year Pavement Management plan provided byTWM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
BY ROBYN L. KIRSCH
The cities of Belleville,Edwardsville and O’Fallonpaid $2.7 million in over-time in the 2014-15 fiscalyear, according to theBellevilleNews-Democrat’s PublicPay Database.
Belleville paid the mostovertime at $1.4 million,followed by O’Fallon with$780,000, and Edwards-ville at $520,000.
Across Belleville, Ed-wardsville and O’Fallon,
police or public safetydepartments, as well asfire departments, earnedthe most overtime pay, at$2 million out of $2.7 mil-lion total.
O’Fallon’s fire depart-ment, however, only con-tributed $1,200 to that
figure.O’Fallon’s department
is all-volunteer, whichhelps keep costs down,Fire Chief Brent Saunderssaid.
O’Fallon’s Public Worksdepartment was the fourthmost expensive depart-ment across the threetowns in terms of over-time, with $204,000 in2015.
In seventh place wasBelleville’s Streets Depart-ment, at just over$100,000.
In Edwardsville, thelargest amount of over-time was paid to one fire-fighter who earned anextra $20,000.
And in O’Fallon, 10 ofthe top 15 overtime ear-ners were paramedics,who earned almost$265,000 total in over-time.
However, overtime is a
much trickier subject thanmeets the eye, BellevillePolice Chief William Claysaid.
“Overtime will never beeliminated,” he said.That’s because officers arealready scheduled to workfull time, and the onlypeople available to workovertime are off-dutyofficers, he explained.
The typical shift has 12police officers, but, Claysaid, even if there were 18per shift, there will alwaysbe extra work and, there-fore, “OT.”
So far, fiscal year 2015-16 has seen almost 9,000hours of overtime, but thatdoesn’t mean officers areworking all of those hours.Sometimes, officers getout of events early, andsometimes they are paidminimums depending onhow long something lasts.
With so much overtime,
it brings up the question ofwhen the police depart-ment should hire morefull-time workers. Claysaid he keeps track of howmany and what type ofhours police officers work,but hiring is a tough callthat depends partly onwhether the departmentcan use an officer fulltime.
For example, Clay ex-plained, there is usually abump in crime during thewinter months, when peo-ple buy gifts that end upgetting snatched aroundthe winter holidays. Itwould be useful to haveanother full-time officerthen, of course, Clay said,but it would be difficult tojustify firing the personwhen crime decreases,and when the departmentthinks about all of thebenefits and other coststhat go into hiring some-
one new, he said it makesmore sense to rely onovertime to handle spikesin work.
Clay said that 44 per-cent of overtime is fromcourt calls, crime unitsand emergencies.
In addition to seasonalfluctuations, events alsomean more overtime forpolice officers.
In the 2015-16 fiscalyear so far, $170,000, orabout 42 percent, wasbilled to events, like highschools who need officersduring important games,or a busy 5K race. Therest, about $231,000, waspicked up by the City ofBelleville.
Casey Bischel:618-239-2655,@CaseyBischel
Belleville, Edwardsville, O’Fallon spend$2.7 million in overtime. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Belleville paid $1.5 million in overtime in 2015 fiscal year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
In O’Fallon, 10 of the top 15 overtime earners wereparamedics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Overtime governed in part by pool of available workers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
BY CASEY BISCHEL
Brent Saunders
always try to be more of afriend to people.”
Bundy said he neverrealized the depth of theR.O.T.C. program.
“You get to make friendsand join teams,” he said.
Bundy, however, feelssad that he is leaving nowas he's about to start hisjunior year.
“But I had no choice,” hesaid.
Bundy said he plans tocontinue with his R.O.T.C.career while he lives inGermany.
He says he hopes tobecome a leader like Hart-ing, who he described asbeing “a phenominal lead-er.”
“In drill team, he is sogood," Bundy said. “Hemakes sure that everyonebelow has all of the thingsthey need in order to gettheir task completed.”
Bundy and Harting saidthey are drawn to the mil-itary because of its brother-hood. “Everybody is unitedunder one thing: to protectand serve our country,”
Harting said. They also take pride
seeing the American flag flytoday.
“The military is history,”Harting added. “Nothingagainst the other profes-sions out there like police,teacher, firefighter, I alwayshave seen myself as being amember of the military andsomething I always wantedto do.”
Bundy said he looksforward to help protectingthe rights and freedoms,which many people take forgranted living here .
“That motivates me,” hesaid.
Bundy and Harting are“humbled” everytime theysee the American flag.
“The flag symbolizes allof the sacrafices that servi-cemen have given theirlives for throughout thehistory of America,” hesaid.
“Throughout the ages,we have had men andwomen who are alwayswilling to step up and dosomething our country.”
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R.O.T.C.
