Paving the way

C.F. Public Works director has ambitious program for road work

It's a smoother ride around Columbia Falls these days.

Although not every pothole was filled and every crumbling sidewalk rebuilt, during 2007 Public Works Director Lorin Lowry and his crew of 11 city workers were behind some of the most ambitious project schedules in the city's recent history.

It was Lowry's first full year on the job.

And it was the first time the city of Columbia Falls had had a single person in place to oversee water, sewer, streets, parks and city buildings since Claude Tesmer ended his seven-year run as public works superintendent in 1996.

For the decade following Tesmer's tenure, two department supervisors split duties. Gary Root handled water and sewer departments. Gary Stempin and then Jon Lawler took on streets, parks and facilities. Each reported directly to the city manager.

City Manager Bill Shaw was hired in November 2001, and had been riding herd on the superintendents while administering the rest of the city's official business. Then he took on planning and zoning responsibilities when the Tri-City Planning Office dissolved, just as the town started seeing some real growth.

In early 2006, Shaw conceded he was wearing too many hats and proposed an administrative restructuring.

The council agreed, eventually approving Shaw's choice for the new public works director.

Oversight has only accelerated since then.

"I was always one to run a tight ship," Lowry said. He knows his style can come across as heavy-handed, but said he's out to save everyone time and money with early and frequent inspections so developers build infrastructure to city standards the first time.

"Cities in general are viewed as (costing) them money," he said of developers' perceptions. "But I like to come in front," so developers need not tear out and rebuild their work at the end.

WHEN LOWRY arrived in town in August 2006, his plate already had been filled for him.

He faced a redesign in progress at the wastewater treatment plant, a public water system that had been springing underground leaks across the city, sewer pipes that were being infiltrated by groundwater, and battered and cracked streets scattered across town.

So he tapped his experience administering public utilities in other cities, and his 14 years in oil production.

And he tapped his seemingly endless supply of energy.

Lowry rarely stops for lunch, spending his time instead meeting with engineers to work out the details on subdivision infrastructure, conferring with Root on how to get the most out of the aging wastewater treatment plant, scheduling improvements and maintenance at city parks.

And dealing with repairs, rebuilds, overlays and potholes on the city's 28.6 miles of roads.

IN JUNE 2007, voters narrowly approved a $1.1 million street levy in order to rebuild some of the city's worst thoroughfares and possibly add a stoplight on U.S. 2 at 12th Avenue West.

Now, Lowry is working with engineers as they design the 2008 rebuilds of Talbott Road, Veterans Drive and First Avenue East, roads targeted by the levy because of their dismal condition and heavy traffic loads.

His first fall in town, he discovered the city's pavement management software program, which had been under-utilized and never updated since 2004. So he and his crews undertook a hands-on inventory of road conditions, plugged the data into a formula and scored roads for how long they should last.

He found 55 percent of streets needing repairs in the next decade already have no useful life remaining. More than 18 percent, he reported to the council in August, have six years or less.

"You try to take the personality out of the evaluation," Lowry said. "It wasn't any one or two people deciding this. It was science that decided."

That laid out an ambitious work schedule for Lowry and his crews, including this summer's $53,800 street-overlay program, $46,000 in crack filling and chip sealing, and $10,000 in fog sealing - a process to spray oil over a street surface and cover it with sand. He held back another $30,000 or so to cover road work this winter.

"If you take a preventive maintenance approach … you can extend the life of that asphalt a long time," he said. "If you do nothing … you end up taking more of your maintenance money and have to take a higher level of maintenance. Especially in an older town, you're always catching up to rebuilds."

CATCHING UP was the order of business in the water department, too.

At the end of May Lowry got word that the state intended to resurface Nucleus Avenue, a state highway through the uptown business district. And they intended to do it in late June or early July.

It was a welcome announcement but the suddenness prompted some scrambling to pull workers and resources off other scheduled repairs and redirect them to repairing service connections at a string of buildings along Nucleus.

Miss this opportunity, Lowry knew, and it would mean tearing up the new street later for inevitable work.

In just two weeks, he said, the water department carried out 18 repairs and had everything closed back in before JTL Group's asphalt paving crews rolled along the street.

Water-department workers also are getting "radio reads," electronic gear that allows them to drive along a street and remotely read water meters for monthly billings.

The time savings will be drastic. What had taken two workers five days, working four or five hours a day, now will take less than a day. By the end of that day all billing should be done, too, he said.

He suggested the technology so workers can devote more time on much-needed repairs and upgrades to the city's water system.

HE'S WORKING with the same eye on getting the biggest bang for the buck in the sewer department. A computerized data tracking system, for example, will centralize controls and cut down on false alarms.

"We're trying to get our people freed up" for an increasing work load, he said, "before we have to hire more."

Plans for an upgrade at the wastewater treatment plant already were a couple of years in the making by the time Lowry arrived in Columbia Falls. A facility study was finished and a plan formulated to counteract challenges coming from the city's growth and age of the plant.

What initially was estimated at a $3.5 million project likely will cost $4 million now, Lowry said. The city received a $750,000 Treasure State Endowment Program grant, a $100,000 grant from Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, and is looking into a federal Rural Development grant that may bring $500,000.

Usage rates and plant improvement fees have been increased over the past couple of years so the sewer enterprise fund can cover the remainder.

PARKS HAVE been a big issue for the city, too.

A 28-acre, $945,000 purchase of land along the Flathead River this fall doubled the city's existing park land, Lowry said.

A tennis-court resurfacing at Columbus Park was hammered out in 2007 and is slated to be done in 2008.

Pinewood Park and its swimming pool was a focus of intense work as the city tracked down the source of millions of gallons of water leaking into the ground this summer.

All in all, it's been a good year for Lowry and Columbia Falls' public utilities.

He's retooled the process to "connect labor efficiency back to real-time work," he said, and is impressed with the response to his guidance. "I've never worked with a finer bunch of public-works workers."

The charge to make the most of every public dollar is something Lowry takes very seriously.

"Managers in the private world expected us to be as fiscally responsible as possible," and tax money should be handled the same way, he said. Taxpayers are watching, and have the right to demand efficiency. In fact, "I was probably one of those complaining citizens."

Lowry takes pride in honing cost efficiency and workmanship.

"I would like to think, at the end of my career, that I've gone away leaving the systems I've been involved with a little better."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com