Podcasts about public works department

Public Works Director Scott Sturtz and Streets Program Manager Joseph Hill join us this month to talk about the latest happenings in the Public Works Department and what citizens can expect for the future. For more information about the City of Norman, visit www.NormanOK.gov Questions or comments about the podcast can be emailed to PublicAffairs@NormanOK.gov Twitter - @cityofnormanok Instagram - @thecityofnorman Facebook YouTube

Discussion on the Monmouth Police Department and Fire Department monthly reports, the sale of vacant properties in the City of Monmouth, the Public Works Department, including an engineering agreement for preliminary investigation of a combined sewer overflow plan, replacement of dead water meters, and the lead service line replacement project, the replacement of the HVAC system at City Hall, plus an engineering agreement for rehabilitation of the runway at the Monmouth Municipal Airport, joining the Prairie Hills Land Bank Authority, and surplus property with the Monmouth Fire Department and City Hall, plus the approval of a three-year employment contract extension for Fire Chief Casey Rexroat.

In the 1960s, a deep anxiety set in as one thing became seemingly clear: We were headed toward population catastrophe. Paul Ehrlich's “The Population Bomb” and “The Limits to Growth,” written by the Club of Rome, were just two publications warning of impending starvation due to simply too many humans on the earth.As the population ballooned year by year, it would simply be impossible to feed everyone. Demographers and environmentalists alike held their breath and braced for impact.Except that we didn't starve. On the contrary, we were better fed than ever.In his article in The New Atlantis, Charles C. Mann explains that agricultural innovation — from improved fertilization and irrigation to genetic modification — has brought global hunger to a record low.Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I chat with Mann about the agricultural history they didn't teach you in school.Mann is a science journalist who has worked as a correspondent for The Atlantic, Science, and Wired magazines, and whose work has been featured in many other major publications. He is also the author of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, as well as The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World.In This Episode* Intro to the Agricultural Revolution (2:04)* Water infrastructure (13:11)* Feeding the masses (18:20)* Indigenous America (25:20)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. Intro to the Agricultural Revolution (2:04)I don't think that people realize that the fact that most people on earth, almost the average person on earth, can feed themselves is a novel phenomenon. It's something that basically wasn't true since as far back as we know.Pethokoukis: What got my attention was a couple of pieces that you've worked on for The New Atlantis magazine looking at the issue of how modern Americans take for granted the remarkable systems and infrastructure that provide us comfort, safety, and a sense of luxury that would've been utterly unimaginable even to the wealthiest people of a hundred years ago or 200 years ago.Let me start off by asking you: Does it matter that we do take that for granted and that we also kind of don't understand how our world works?Mann: I would say yes, very much. It matters because these systems undergird the prosperity that we have, the good fortune that we have to be alive now, but they're always one generation away from collapse. If they aren't maintained, upgraded and modernized, they'll fall apart. They just won't stand there. So we have to be aware of this. We have to keep our eye on the ball, otherwise we won't have these things.The second thing is that, if we don't know how our society works, as citizens, we're simply not going to make very good choices about what to do with that society. I feel like both sides in our current political divide are kind of taking their eye off the ball. It's important to have good roads, it's important to have clean water, it's important to have a functioning public health system, it's important to have an agricultural system that works. It doesn't really matter who you are. And if we don't keep these things going, life will be unnecessarily bad for a lot of people, and that's just crazy to do.Is this a more recent phenomenon? If I would've asked people 50 years ago, “Explain to me how our infrastructure functions, how we get water, how we get electricity,” would they have a better idea? Is it just because things are more complicated today that we have no idea how our food gets here or why when we turn the faucet, clean water comes out?The answer is “yes” in a sort of trivial sense, in that many more people were involved in producing food, a much greater percentage of the population was involved in producing food 50 years ago. The same thing was true for the people who were building infrastructure 50 years ago.But I also think it's generally true that people's parents saw the change and knew it. So that is very much the case and, in a sense, I think we're victims of our own success. These kinds of things have brought us so much prosperity that we can afford to do crazy things like become YouTube influencers, or podcasters, or freelance writers. You don't really have any connection with how the society goes because we're sort of surfing on this wave of luxury that our ancestors bequeathed to us.I don't know how much time you spend on social media, Charles — I'm sure I spend too much — but I certainly sense that many people today, younger people especially, don't have a sense of how someone lived 50 years ago, 100 years ago, and there was just a lot more physical suffering. And certainly, if you go back far enough, you could not take for granted that you would have tomatoes in your supermarket year round, that you would have water in the house and that water would be clean. What I found really interesting — you did a piece on food and a piece on water — in the food piece you note that, in the 1980s, that was a real turning point that the average person on earth had enough to eat all the time, and rather than becoming an issue of food production, it became an issue of distribution, of governance. I think most people would be surprised of that statistic even though it's 40 years old.I don't think that people realize that the fact that most people on earth, almost the average person on earth, can feed themselves is a novel phenomenon. It's something that basically wasn't true since as far back as we know. That's this enormous turning point, and there are many of these turning points. Obviously, the introduction of antibiotics for . . . public health, which is another one of these articles they're going to be working on . . .Just about 100 years ago today, when President Coolidge was [president], his son went to play tennis at the White House tennis courts, and because he was lazy, or it was fashionable, or something, he didn't put on socks. He got a blister on his toe, the toe got infected, and he died. 100 years ago, the president of the United States, who presumably had the best healthcare available to anybody in the world, was unable to save his beloved son when the son got a trivial blister that got infected. The change from that to now is mind boggling.You've written about the Agricultural Revolution and why the great fears 40 or 50 years ago of mass starvation didn't happen. I find that an endlessly interesting topic, both for its importance and for the fact it just seems to be so underappreciated to this day, even when it was sort of obvious to people who pay attention that something was happening, it still seemed not to penetrate the public consciousness. I wonder if you could just briefly talk to me about that revolution and how it happened.The question is, how did it go from “The Population Bomb” written in 1968, a huge bestseller, hugely influential, predicting that there is going to be hundreds of millions of people dying of mass starvation, followed by other equally impassioned, equally important warnings. There's one called “Famine, 1975!,” written a few years before, that predicted mass famines in 1975. There's “The Limits to Growth.” I went to college in the '70s and these were books that were on the curriculum, and they were regarded as contemporary classics, and they all proved to be wrong.The reason is that, although they were quite correct about the fact that the human race was reproducing at that time faster than ever before, they didn't realize two things: The first is that as societies get more affluent, and particularly as societies get more affluent and give women more opportunities, birth rates decline. So that this was obviously, if you looked at history, going to be a temporary phenomenon of whatever length it was be, but it was not going to be infinite.The second was there was this enormous effort spurred by this guy named Norman Borlaug, but with tons of other people involved, to take modern science and apply it to agriculture, and that included these sort of three waves of innovation. Now, most innovation is actually just doing older technologies better, which is a huge source of progress, and the first one was irrigation. Irrigation has been around since forever. It's almost always been done badly. It's almost always not been done systematically. People started doing it better. They still have a lot of problems with it, but it's way better, and now 40 percent, roughly, of the crops in the world that are produced are produced by irrigation.The second is the introduction of fertilizer. There's two German scientists, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, who essentially developed the ways of taking fertilizer and making lots and lots of it in factories. I could go into more detail if you want, but that's the essential thing. This had never been done before, and suddenly cheap industrial fertilizer became available all over the world, and Vaclav Smil . . . he's sort of an environmental scientist of every sort, in Manitoba has calculated that roughly 40 percent of the people on earth today would not be alive if it wasn't for that.And then the third was the development of much better, much higher-yielding seeds, and that was the part that Norman Borlaug had done. These packaged together of irrigation fertilizer and seeds yielded what's been called the Green Revolution, doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled grain yields across the world, particularly with wheat and rice. The result is the world we live in today. When I was growing up, when you were growing up, your parents may have said to you, as they did me, Oh, eat your vegetables, there are kids that are starving in Asia.” Right? That was what was told and that was the story that was told in books like “The Population Bomb,” and now Asia's our commercial rival. When you go to Bangkok, that was a place that was hungry and now it's gleaming skyscrapers and so forth. It's all based on this fact that people are able to feed themselves through the combination of these three factors,That story, the story of mass-starvation that the Green Revolution irrigation prevented from coming true. I think a surprising number of people still think that story is relevant today, just as some people still think the population will be exploding when it seems clear it probably will not be exploding. It will rise, but then it's going to start coming down at some point this century. I think those messages just don't get through. Just like most people don't know Norm Borlaug, the Haber-Bosch process, which school kids should know. They don't know any of this. . . Borlaug won the Nobel Prize, right?Right. He won the Nobel Peace Prize. I'll tell you a funny story —I think he won it in the same year that “The Population Bomb” came out.It was just a couple years off. But you're right, the central point is right, and the funny thing is . . . I wrote another book a while back that talked about this and about the way environmentalists think about the world, and it's called the “Wizard and the Prophet” and Borlaug was the wizard of it. I thought, when I proposed it, that it would be easy. He was such an important guy, there'd be tons of biographies about him. And to this day, there isn't a real serious scholarly biography of the guy. This is a person who has done arguably more to change human life than any other person in the 20th century, certainly up in the top dozen or so. There's not a single serious biography of him.How can that be?It's because we're tremendously disconnected. It's a symptom of what I'm talking about. We're tremendously disconnected from these systems, and it's too bad because they're interesting! They're actually quite interesting to figure out: How do you get water to eight billion people? How do you get . . . It is a huge challenge, and some of the smartest people you've ever met are working on it every day, but they're working on it over here, and the public attention is over here.Water infrastructure (13:11). . . the lack of decent, clean, fresh water is the world's worst immediate environmental problem. I think people probably have some vague idea about agriculture, the Agricultural Revolution, how farming has changed, but I think, as you just referred to, the second half, water — utter mystery to people. Comes out of a pipe. The challenges of doing that in a rich country are hard. The challenges doing a country not so rich, also hard. Tell me what you find interesting about that topic.Well, whereas the story about agriculture is basically a good story: We've gotten better at it. We have a whole bunch of technical innovations that came in the 20th century and humankind is better off than ever before. With water, too, we are better off than ever before, but the maddening thing is we could be really well off because the technology is basically extremely old.There's a city, a very ancient city called Mohenjo-daro that I write about a bit in this article that was in essentially on the Pakistan-India border, 2600 BC. And they had a fully functioning water system that, in its basics, was no different than the water system that we have, or that London has, or that Paris has. So this is an ancient, ancient technology, yet we still have two billion people on the planet that don't have access to adequate water. In fact, even though we know how to do it, the lack of decent, clean, fresh water is the world's worst immediate environmental problem. And a small thing that makes me nuts is that climate change — which is real and important — gets a lot of attention, but there are people dying of not getting good water now.On top of it, even in rich countries like us, our water system is antiquated. The great bulk of it was built in the '40s, '50s, and '60s, and, like any kind of physical system, it ages, and every couple years, various engineering bodies, water bodies, the EPA, and so forth puts out a report saying, “Hey, we really have to fix the US water system and the numbers keep mounting up.” And Democrats, Republicans, they all ignore this.Who is working on the water issue in poorer countries?There you have a very ad hoc group of people. The answer is part of it's the Food and Agricultural Organization because most water in most countries is used for irrigation to grow food. You also have the World Health Organization, these kinds of bodies. You have NGOs working on it. What you don't have in those countries like our country is the government taking responsibility for coordinating something that's obviously in the national interest.So you have these things where, very periodically — a government like China has done this, Jordan has done this, Bolivia has done this, countries all over the world have done this — and they say, “Okay, we haven't been able to provide freshwater. Let's bring in a private company.” And the private company then invests all this money in infrastructure, which is expensive. Then, because it's a private company, it has to make that money back, and so it charges people for a lot of money for this, and the people are very unhappy because suddenly they're paying a quarter of their income for water, which is what I saw in Southwest China: water riots because people are paying so much for water.In other words, one of the things that government can do is sort of spread these costs over everybody, but instead they concentrate it on the users, Almost universally, these privatization efforts have led to tremendous political unhappiness because the government has essentially shifted responsibility for coordinating and doing these things and imposed a cost on a narrow minority of the users.Are we finally getting on top of the old water infrastructure in this country? It seems like during the Biden administration they had a big infrastructure bill. Do you happen to know if we are finally getting that system upgraded?Listen, I will be the only person who probably ever interviews you who's actually had to fix a water main as a summer job. I spent [it at] my local Public Works Department where we'd have to fix water mains, and this was a number of years ago, and even a number of years ago, those pipes were really, really old. It didn't take much for them to get a main break.I'm one of those weird people who is bothered by this. All I can tell you is we have a lot of aging infrastructure. The last estimate that I've seen came before this sort of sudden jerky rise of construction costs, which, if you're at all involved in building, is basically all the people in the construction industry talk about. At that point, the estimate was that it was $1.2 trillion to fix the infrastructure that we have in the United States. I am sure it is higher now. I am delighted that the Biden people passed this infrastructure — would've been great if they passed permitting reform and a couple of other things to make it easier to spend the money, but okay. I would like to believe that the Trump people would take up the baton and go on this.Feeding the masses (18:20)I do worry that the kind of regulations, and rules, and ideas that we put into place to try and make agriculture more like this picture that we have in our head will end up inadvertently causing suffering for the people who are struggling.We're still going to have another two billion people, maybe, on this earth. Are we going to be able to feed them all?Yeah, I think that there's no question. The question is what we're going to be able to feed them? Are we going to be able to feed them all, filet mignon and truffled . . . whatever they put truffle oil on, and all that? Not so sure about that.All organic vegetables.At the moment, that seems really implausible, and there's a sort of fundamental argument going on here. There's a lot of people, again, both right and left, who are sort of freaked out by the scale that modern agriculture operates on. You fly over the middle-west and you see all those circles of center-pivot irrigation, they plowed under, in the beginning of the 20th century, 100 million acres of prairie to produce all that. And it's done with enormous amounts of capital, and it was done also partly by moving people out so that you could have this enormous stuff. The result is it creates a system that . . . doesn't match many people's vision of the friendly family farmer that they grew up with. It's a giant industrial process and people are freaked out by the scale. They don't trust these entities, the Cargills and the ADMs, and all these huge companies that they see as not having their interests at heart.It's very understandable. I live in a small town, we have a farm down there, and Jeremy runs it, and I'm very happy to see Jeremy. There's no Jeremy at Archer Daniels Midland. So the result is that there's a big revulsion against that, and people want to downsize the scale, and they point to very real environmental problems that big agriculture has, and they say that that is reason for this. The great problem is that in every single study that I am aware of, the sort of small, local farms don't produce as much food per acre or per hectare as the big, soulless industrial processes. So if you're concerned about feeding everybody, that's something you have to really weigh in your head, or heavy in your heart.That sort of notion of what a farm should look like and what good food is, that kind of almost romantic notion really, to me, plays into the sort of anti-growth or the degrowth people who seemed to be saying that farms could only be this one thing — probably they don't even remember those farms anymore — that I saw in a storybook. It's like a family farm, everything's grown local, not a very industrial process, but you're talking about a very different world. Maybe that's a world they want, but I don't know if that's a world you want if you're a poor person in this world.No, and like I said, I love going to the small farm next to us and talking to Jeremy and he says, “Oh look, we've just got these tomatoes,” it's great, but I have to pay for that privilege. And it is a privilege because Jeremy is barely making it and charging twice as much as the supermarket. There's no economies of scale for him. He still has to buy all the equipment, but he's putting it over 20 acres instead of 2000 acres. In addition, it's because it's this hyper-diverse farm — which is wonderful; they get to see the strawberries, and the tomatoes, and all the different things — it means he has to hire much more labor than it would be if he was just specializing in one thing. So his costs are inevitably much, much higher, and, therefore, I have to pay a lot more to keep him going. That's fine for me; I'm a middle-class person, I like food, this can be my hobby going there.I'd hate to have somebody tell me it's bad, but it's not a system that is geared for people who are struggling. There are just a ton of people all over the world who are struggling. They're better off than they were 100 years ago, but they're still struggling. I do worry that the kind of regulations, and rules, and ideas that we put into place to try and make agriculture more like this picture that we have in our head will end up inadvertently causing suffering for the people who are struggling.To make sure everybody can get fed in the future, do we need a lot more innovation?Innovation is always good. I would say that we do, and the kinds of innovation we need are not often what people imagine. For example, it's pretty clear that parts of the world are getting drier, and therefore irrigation is getting more difficult. The American Southwest is a primary candidate, and you go to the Safford Valley, which I did a few years ago — the Safford Valley is in southeast Arizona and it's hotter than hell there. I went there and it's 106 degrees and there's water from the Colorado River, 800 miles away, being channeled there, and they're growing Pima cotton. Pima cotton is this very good fine cotton that they use to make fancy clothes, and it's a great cash crop for farmers, but growing it involves channeling water from the Colorado 800 miles, and then they grow it by what's called flood irrigation, which is where you just fill the field with an inch of water. I was there actually to see an archeologist who's a water engineer, and I said to him, “Gee, it's hot! How much that water is evaporated?” And he said, “Oh, all of it.”So we need to think about that kind of thing if the Colorado is going to run out of water, which it is now. There's ways you can do it, you can possibly genetically modify cotton to use less water. You could drip irrigation, which is a much more efficient form of irrigation, it's readily available, but it's expensive. So you could try to help farmers do that. I think if you cut the soft costs, which is called the regulatory costs of farming, you might be able to pay for it in that way. That would be one type of innovation. Another type of thing you could do is to do a different kind of farming which is called civil pastoral systems, where you grow tree crops and then you grow cattle underneath, and that uses dramatically less water. It's being done in Sonora, just across the border and the tree crops — trees are basically wild. People don't breed them because it takes so long, but we now have the tools to breed them, and so you could make highly productive trees with cattle underneath and have a system that produces a lot of calories or a lot of good stuff. That's all the different kinds of innovation that we could do. Just some of the different kinds of innovation we could do and all would help.Indigenous America (25:20)Part of the reason I wrote these things is that I realized it's really interesting and I didn't learn anything about it in school.Great articles in The New Atlantis, big fan of “Wizard and the Prophet,” but I'm going to take one minute and ask you about your great books talking about the story of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. If I just want to travel in the United States and I'm interested in finding out more about Native Americans in the United States, where would you tell me to go?One of my favorite places just it's so amazing, is Chaco Canyon, and that's in the Four Corners area — that whole Four Corners area is quite incredible — and Chaco Canyon is a sign that native people could build amazing stuff, and native people could be crazy, in my opinion. It's in the middle of nowhere, it has no water, and for reasons that are probably spiritual and religious, they built an enormous number of essentially castles in this canyon, and they're incredible.The biggest one, Pueblo Bonito as it's called now, it's like 800 rooms. They're just enormous. And you can go there, and you can see these places, and you can just walk around, and it is incredible. You drive up a little bit to Mesa Verde and there's hundreds of these incredible cliff dwellings. What seems to have happened — I'm going to put this really informally and kind of jokingly to you, not the way that an archeologist would talk about it or I would write about it, but what looks like it happened is that the Chaco Canyon is this big canyon, and on the good side that gets the southern exposure is all these big houses. And then the minions and the hoi polloi lived on the other side, and it looks like, around 800, 900, they just got really tired of serving the kings and they had something like a democratic revolution, and they just left, most of them, and founded the Pueblos, which is these intensely democratic self-governing bodies that are kind of like what Thomas Jefferson thought the United States should be.Then it's like all the doctors, and the lawyers, and the MBAs, and the rich guys went up to Mesa Verde and they started off their own little kingdoms and they all fought with each other. So you have these crazy cliff dwellings where it's impossible to get in and there's hundreds of people living in these niches in these cliffs, and then that blew up too. So you could see history, democracy, and really great architecture all in one place.If someone asked me for my advice about changing the curriculum in school, one, people would leave school knowing who the heroes of progress and heroes of the Agricultural Revolution were. And I think they'd also know a lot more about pre-Columbian history of the Americas. I think they should know about it but I also think it's just super interesting, though of course you've brought it to life in a beautiful way.Thank you very much, and I couldn't agree with you more. Part of the reason I wrote these things is that I realized it's really interesting and I didn't learn anything about it in school.On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were PromisedFaster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe

President Ramaphosa sticks to his guns in lotteries corruption probe; Public Works Department asks State Attorney for assistance in evicting former MPs from Parliamentary Village. Lester Kiewit speaks to Barbara October of GroundUp News.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chris Baker is the Senior Active Transportation Planner in the Public Works Department. From the first bylaws establishing bike paths in 1898 to the micro-mobility of today, we cover a lot of ground in this episode. It's important for the City of Winnipeg to evolve and provide transportation choices for people of all ages and abilities. People, bikes, and vehicles can co-exist and Chris highlights the river trail as a great example of a multi-use path. And as a winter city, Winnipeg continues to expand its network of bike lanes to keep winter cyclists in their lane. He also speaks about the neighbourhood greenways. These are streets with low traffic speeds and volumes where vehicles and bikes share the road equally. If you haven't been biking for a while, these are great spaces to get you back in the saddle. This podcast is recorded in Treaty One Territory, the home and traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Ininew, and Dakota peoples, and in the National Homeland of the Red River Métis. We acknowledge that our drinking water comes from Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, in Treaty Three Territory.  What programs and services impact you the most? Email us at city-podcast@winnipeg.ca with suggestions for future episodes. ------------------------------Chris, du Transport actifChris Baker est le planificateur principal du transport actif au Service des travaux publics. Des premiers règlements municipaux ayant établi des pistes cyclables en 1898 à la micromobilité d'aujourd'hui, les sujets abordés lors de cet épisode sont vastes. Il est important que la Ville de Winnipeg évolue et qu'elle offre des possibilités de transport pour les personnes de tous les âges et de toutes les capacités. Les gens, les vélos et les véhicules peuvent coexister; comme le fait remarquer Chris, le sentier fluvial est un excellent exemple de piste polyvalente. En tant que ville hivernale, Winnipeg continue de développer son réseau de pistes cyclables pour favoriser les déplacements des cyclistes pendant l'hiver. Il parle aussi des couloirs verts de quartier. Il s'agit de rues où la circulation est faible et la vitesse de conduite est basse, ce qui permet aux véhicules et aux vélos de se partager la route de façon équitable. Si ça fait longtemps que vous n'avez pas fait de vélo, ces rues sont l'endroit idéal où se remettre en selle.Ce balado est enregistré sur le territoire visé par le Traité no 1, le berceau et territoire traditionnel des peuples anishinaabe, ininew et dakota, et les terres ancestrales nationales des Métis de la Rivière-Rouge. Nous reconnaissons que notre eau potable provient de la Première Nation Shoal Lake, no 40, qui est située sur le territoire visé par le Traité no 3. Quels programmes et services vous touchent le plus? Envoyez-nous un courriel à city-podcast@winnipeg.ca pour nous donner des suggestions pour les épisodes à venir.

This week, the City Manager talks about the snow removal efforts of the Public Works Department, upcoming events and explains what you see on your tax bill.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Wichita Public Works Director Gary Janzen joins us with a look at what has been a very business weekend for the Public Works Department.

Monique Bruns is a stellar representative of the Public Works Department on Day 8 of the 12 Days of Shreveport. Her passion for service and appreciation for the community are a shining example of the department's values in action.SN: There will Be NO CHANGE in the Garbage Collection Schedule December 23-27.

Phillip Lilley, Clinton's Public Works Director, has intentionally worked to influence the culture within the City of Clinton's Public Works Department. He talks on how building leaders internally have had a direct impact on the efficiency of the department. He shows that it's more than fixing pipes or laying asphalt. It works around trust and taking pride in your work. As always, thanks to Ty Garvey, Drew Mellon and the rest of Don Quixote's Horse for allowing their music to set the local tone for these podcasts.

Discussion on the progress at the Beck Oil Convenience Store and the Public Works Department, including West Harlem Avenue and replacement of lead service lines throughout Monmouth, Discussion on the resolution of an amended liquor license, Discussion on the adoption of the 2024 Tax Levy, and Discussion on the Annual Christmas on the Square event and an update on the Downtown Beautification project.

Mike Chmielewski talks with Tracey Maes of the Public Works Department about her 7th season of holiday lighting and decorations.

1. Henry (US) – The Ghost of a Friend 2. Dan (Bothel, Washington) - Continuation 3. Victoria (Atlanta, Georgia) – Visit from Panchi 4. Timothy (Jacksonville, Florida) - Dinner Bell Time Warp 5. The Mist at the Tower Green - Lex Wahl 6.  Ghosts Haunt Drifts in California Mine (1920) 7. Franklin B (US) - More Stories from Public Works Department 8. Bill (Ontario, Canada) – Picture in Salem 9. Bob (US) – The Tapping Ghost and a Ghost in the Dark 10. Ghost Averse to Modern Houses (Greensburg, Pennsylvania) - 1920 11. Tyler (Durham, North Carolina) - The Haunted Governor's Mansion 12.  Laura (San Francisco, California) - The Haunted Apartment

This is the Catchup on 3 Things by The Indian Express and I'm Flora Swain.Today is the 24th of September and here are the headlines.Shortly after the High Court dismissed his plea, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today called the alleged Mysore Urban Development Authority (MUDA) scam case a “sham”, and “revenge politics of the BJP and JDS”. This comes after the high court dismissed a petition filed by Siddaramaiah against an approval granted by Governor Thawarchand Gehlot to three private individuals to file cases of corruption against him over a MUDA land grant to his wife. Siddaramaiah asserted and I quote, “This is a fight against the revenge politics of Narendra Modi-led BJP government. Our judicial struggle against this revenge politics of BJP and JDS will continue. I have faith in the court."The Supreme Court today dismissed the Punjab government's appeal challenging a Punjab and Haryana High Court order quashing its decision to expand the definition of ‘NRI quota' for undergraduate medical admissions to include relatives of non-resident Indians. The apex court was hearing appeals challenging the high court's September 10 order quashing the notification issued by the Punjab government on August 20. The notification expanded the NRI quota to include even distant relatives “such as uncles, aunts, grandparents, and cousins” of NRIs for admissions under the 15 per cent quota for this group in admissions in medical colleges.Actor-legislator M Mukesh was formally arrested today on rape charges but released on bail later on the back of an anticipatory bail he secured from an Ernakulam court earlier this month. The development came hours after the Kerala High Court denied anticipatory bail to fellow actor and former Association of Malayalam Movie Artistes (AMMA) general secretary Siddique on similar allegations. In her complaint, a former woman actor in the Malayalam film industry had alleged that Mukesh, a two-time Communist Party of India (Marxist) MLA from Kollam Assembly constituency, had raped her in 2010 at his flat in Kochi promising a membership in the actors' association AMMA.Delhi Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena has instructed authorities to initiate a ‘Dust-free Delhi' drive within 7-10 days to combat air pollution ahead of the winter season. Key agencies, including the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, the Public Works Department, and the Delhi Jal Board, have been tasked with addressing road dust, a major contributor to air pollution, particularly due to dried-up mud and silt following a lack of rainfall. MCD, IFCD and DJB are required to coordinate and move out the silt or mud for disposal.Harini Amarasuriya was officially sworn in as Sri Lanka's new Prime Minister today, marking a historic moment as she became the first woman to hold the office since Sirimavo Bandaranaike in 2000. The ceremony took place in the capital, Colombo, where the 54-year-old leader of the National People's Power (NPP) took her oath of office administered by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake. Dissanayake also appointed a new cabinet of four members, including himself. In her new role, Amarasuriya has been assigned several crucial portfolios that include Justice, Education, Labour, Industries, Science and Technology, Health, and Investment.This was the Catch Up on 3 Things by The Indian Express.

Welcome back to KentNow! This week we are welcoming Kent kids back to school!  Josh and Tracy talk to Erik Preston and Derek Hawkes from our Public Works Department to get the latest update on the Reith Road roundabout project. If you want to learn more about our public works projects, click here!  The team has some fun facts about school lunches, crayons and pencils.  Are you team Pumpkin Spice? Share your thoughts at Communications@kentwa.gov   

It's been almost four months since City Fire Chief Pierre Brewton returned home to Spartanburg to lead the department where he first honed his skills as a firefighter. Returning after serving for four years as Fire Chief for the City of Albemarle, NC, Chief Brewton began his career with the City of Spartanburg in 1988, assigned to garbage collection in the Public Works Department. In 1994, he successfully transitioned to the Spartanburg Fire Department, rising through the ranks to eventually serve as Assistant Fire Chief, the highest-ranking minority member in Spartanburg Fire Department history.  Chief Brewton was born and raised in the Highland community in Spartanburg and is a proud graduate of Spartanburg High School, Limestone University, and Spartanburg Community College. He is credentialed through the Center for Public Safety Excellence as a Chief Fire Officer and Chief Training Officer and is a graduate of Texas A&M's Fire Service Chief Executive Fire Officer Program and the International Association of Fire Chiefs Fire Service Executive Development Institute. Today on the podcast, we're talking with Chief Brewton about his experiences growing up and living in Spartanburg, his plans for the fire department he leads, and his reflections on the future of community he is dedicated to serving.

More than thirty laptops were seized for additional investigation, and four senior DPWI managers were placed on precautionary suspension. MyBroadband Editor Jan Vermeulen discusses this tale with host Ray White.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

elitefts Limited Edition Apparel: https://www.elitefts.com/shop/apparel/limited-edition.html               Support and help the Podcast grow by Joining The Crew:  https://www.elitefts.com/join-the-crew           Note: The best all-around training bands ever: https://www.elitefts.com/shop/bands.html        On today's 291st episode of Dave Tate's Table Talk podcast, David Ricks joins us!   Mr. David Ricks is the Director of the Engineering and Public Works Department for Palm Beach County, Florida, providing services to a population of nearly 1.5 million. He oversees a transportation system with over 1,300 intersections, 3,600 thoroughfare lane miles, and 314 bridges. Leading a team of over 450 personnel, he manages an operating budget of over $60 million and a five-year capital program of almost $700 million. Recently, he updated a Strategic Plan for the department.   With over 30 years of experience in organizational management, construction management, and infrastructure, Mr. Ricks has held various prestigious positions. He has served as the Public Works Director for the City of Norfolk, Virginia, the Director of Facilities and Transportation Services for Fulton County, Georgia, and the Director of the Public Works Department for Montgomery County, Ohio. He is licensed as a professional engineer in Florida, Minnesota, and Ohio.   David Ricks was also a United States Naval Officer for 22 years as a Civil Engineering Corps Officer and graduated from the United States Naval Academy. He has been competing in powerlifting since 1980, starting as a senior at the Naval Academy. Mr. Ricks is a 32-time National Powerlifting Champion and an 11-time I.P.F. World Powerlifting Champion. He has competed in eight I.P.F. Equipped World Championships and seven I.P.F. Classic World Championships, holding 71 I.P.F. records. Notably, he broke the Open Classic Squat record three times as a Master.   Awards: 1993 Navy Male Athlete of the Year Summit County Ohio Sports Hall of Fame Barberton Ohio Sports Hall of Fame 2011 co-winner of the Brother Bennett Award from USAPL 2012 inductee into the International Powerlifting Federation (IPF) Hall of Fame 2021 inductee into the USAPL Men's Hall of Fame    David's IG: https://www.instagram.com/dricks205/     ABOUT THE HOST   Dave Tate is the founder and co-owner of elitefts.com. He is the author of twenty books and has logged more than 40,000 hours of training and consulting. Dave is married to elitefts co-owner Traci Arnold-Tate, and they reside in London, Ohio, with their two sons. Personal Credo: Live, Learn, Pass on™.   Dave's IG: https://www.instagram.com/underthebar/?hl=en                SPONSORS   Marek Health       A telehealth platform specializing in hormone optimization and preventative medicine. Offers self-service labs and guided optimization with competitive pricing.   Save 10% on your first order with code TABLETALK.   Visit Marek Health today: https://marekhealth.com/tabletalk       LMNT       A zero-sugar, naturally-formulated electrolyte drink mix suited for athletes and those on hydration-focused diets.   Receive a free 8-flavor sample pack with any purchase. https://partners.drinklmnt.com/free-gift-with-purchase?utm_campaign=agwp&rfsn=6760586.28b9b1e&utm_medium=sponsor&utm_source=tabletalk&utm_content=&utm_term=       RP Hypertrophy App     An advanced training app designed for maximum muscle growth. Early access pricing starts at $24.99.   Visit the provided link for more details and discounts. https://go.rpstrength.com/hypertrophy-app/   CODE: TABLE TALK       sleepme       Invest in better sleep and improved life quality with Chilipad's bed cooling systems and mattress toppers.   Save up to $315 plus free shipping with code TABLETALK.   Visit sleepme: https://sleep.me/TABLETALK        1st Detachment       1st Detachment     Field Rations is a workout supplement designed to enhance performance and recovery.   Use code TABLETALK for a 10% discount on your first purchase at 1stDetachment.com.   Vist 1D: https://1stdetachment.com/?sca_ref=3163134.5GUtwKKhG9       elitefts       Offers a wide range of gym equipment and apparel.   Support the show: https://www.elitefts.com/content/table-talk/   Save 10% with code TABLETALK.   CODE: TABLETALK     All profits support Dave Tate's Table Talk Podcast.   SUPPORT THE SHOW   Support and help the Podcast grow by Joining The Crew:  https://www.elitefts.com/join-the-crew   All profits from elitefts Limited Edition Apparel, Table Talk Coffee, and Team elitefts Workouts, Programs, and Training eBooks support Dave Tate's Table Talk Podcast. Shop these elitefts items: https://www.elitefts.com/content/table-talk/          elitefts Shop: https://www.elitefts.com/         elitefts IG: https://www.instagram.com/elitefts/ elitefts Limited Edition Apparel: https://www.elitefts.com/shop/apparel/limited-edition.html

How is June almost over? Welcome back to Episode 13 of KentNow!  This week, the KentNow team talks to Lucie Wu, Transportation Planning Technician in our Public Works Department. Lucie breaks down some of the transportation services available to residents in Kent.  It's budget season, so we talk to Finance Director Paula Painter and Budget Manager Michelle Ferguson about the City of Kent budget and how the process works. As always, we break down other things happening with the Kent City Council with the council recap.  So many wonderful things to do in Kent this Summer, we go thru all the events for the next 2 weeks, and wrap things up with Maas's "Did you know?" Have a happy and safe 4th of July! 

Welcome back to Episode 12!  This week Josh, Kyle and Tracy bring back Tony Donati from the city's Public Works Department! He's bringing water conservation knowledge to the garden and drops some helpful hints on how you can cash in on some rebates!  The team talks about our Kent Parks 4th of July Splash event at Lake Meridian, another Green Kent event coming up and rounding 3rd base with Kent Cornucopia Days in July!  We would love your feedback, so drop us a line at Communications@kentwa.gov  

Recent University of Missouri Master of Music in Percussion Performance graduate Miles Bohlman stops by to talk about his various grad program recitals (04:45), his Graduate Assistantship with the Mizzou New Music Ensemble and finishing the degree (21:15), growing up in the Chicago (IL) suburbs, his musical family, playing soccer goalie growing up, and his marching band activities (39:30), going to Illinois State for his undergrad (58:15), his high school band and percussion job out of undergrad, teaching during COVID restrictions, and keeping up his percussion chops through playing with British-style Brass Bands (01:10:10), and settles in for the Random Ass Questions, including segments on making curry, when he worked for his city's Public Works Department, Nicholas Cage movies, Barbara Kingsolver, and his Chicago Sports Team Fandom (01:23:40).Finishing with a Rave on Kelefa Sanneh's 2021 book Major Labels (01:50:10).Miles Bohlman links:Miles Bohlman's TCP pageMizzou New Music EnsemblePrevious Podcast Guests Mentioned:Megan Arns in 2017Julia Gaines in 2016Nathan Daughtrey in 2021Other Links:David CollierBenjamin Stiers“Velocities” - Joseph Schwantner“Asventuras” - Alexej Gerassimez“Spider Walk” - Marta Ptaszynska“Azul” - Nathan Daughtrey“Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra” - Alvin LucierNine French-American Rudimental Solos - Joseph TompkinsTwelve Studies for Snare Drum - Jacques Delecluse“Rebonds B” - Iannis XenakisThe Golden Ratio“Valseana” - Sergio Assad“Jobiniana No. 1” - Sergio Assad“Marking Time” - Chris P. ThompsonAlarm Will Sound“Insomnia” - Cody Holmes33 “God” - Bon Iver“Sculpture in Wood” - Rudiger PawassarEric HollenbeckJosé G. Martinez“Ionisation” - Edgard VareseJake HarpsterPhantom RegimentSarah WhitlockCavaliers DCIDan MooreSymphony No. 3 - Thomas TrachselIn C - Terry Riley"“Crown of Thorns” - David Maslanka“Consider the Birds” - Ryan GeorgeFountain City Brass BandNorth American Brass Band Association“Shofukan” - Snarky PuppyThe Princess Bride trailerThe Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent trailerMandy trailerPaddington trailerPaddington 2 trailerPursuit of Happyness trailerBarbara Kingsolver“hemenway” - Tiny HabitsCaleb WilliamsDerrick Rose“meditation for water, wind & metal” - Elizabeth A. BakerAbout Time trailerRaves:Major Labels - Kelefa Sanneh

Jacqueline Rhoades joins Inside Arvada to talk about all things transportation in Arvada!Jacqueline is the Public Works Director who oversees an expansive department that includes engineering, inspections, streets and traffic operations, mobility planning, facilities and much more. In this episode, we dive into a variety of topics related to the City's transportation including:Updates on the Ralston Road and W 72nd Avenue widening projects, including the pause in construction coming on W 72nd Watch the 4/12/24 W 72nd community meeting recordingThe annual Pavement Program and some of the challenges the program faces in maintaining our roadsConnecting Arvada, the City's first comprehensive transportation system planPlus, Jacqueline helps explain some of the complexities related to construction that often lead to construction fatigue, funding and managing projects, and how we work with other organizations who provide services in Arvada. Other news and events:Upcoming City Council workshops:May 6: Updates on parks maintenance practices and naming a new parkMay 13: Waste hauling rates and fees adjustment recommendationsOlde Town Transit Hub top level closed until end of JuneTake the sustainability surveyFollow us on Facebook, Instagram, and X and learn about upcoming celebrations:Drinking Water Week (May 5 - 11)National Public Works Week (May 19 - 25)Visit us at ArvadaCO.gov/Podcast or email us at podcast@arvada.org.

A woman named Melanie who loses her wedding ring at the North Greenville Recycling Center gets it back with the help of the Public Works Department.Secondly, a photography company called A Gold Photo increases adoptions and fundraising for over 50 shelters through a project called Second Shot, aiming to connect pets and people.The third story is about seven California condors, a critically endangered species, released into the wild after being hatched and raised at the Oregon Zoo.Moving on, the Kahakura Red Admiral Butterfly wins New Zealand's Bug of the Year title, based on a public vote involving 17,000 bug lovers.The final story involves a dad mistakenly buying a 6-meter long dinosaur for his son which had to be delivered by crane, creating an unexpected giant surprise.

The big topic coming out of Monday's Kewanee City Council Meeting was the decision to table a vote over whether or not to outsource trash collection in the City of Kewanee to a private company. The company was not present at the meeting to answer questions regarding a potential contract. This led to the proposal being tabled until representatives appeared at the meeting. Mayor Gary Moore joined Wake Up Tri-Counties to discuss why the City of Kewanee is considering contracting for trash collection service to a private company. The Mayor also addressed concerns regarding current sanitation department employees. According to the Mayor, any deal that would contract out the trash collection service would also guarantee that current sanitation workers would be transferred to new jobs within the Public Works Department. The Mayor also addressed concerns about the Transfer Station and stated that the Transfer Station would remain open and operational.

Greg Garrett, Key Budge, and Mya Acosta discuss the lastest developments from the February 5, 2024 Tehachapi City Council Meeting. From the approval of new pickleball courts to recognizing the Public Works Department for 1,000 days of no lost time incidents, there was plenty of interesting topics from the meeting. To learn more and to find council agendas, visit our website: www.liveuptehachapi.com  

Outlaw Johnny Finger, better known as The Rumpo Kid (Sid James), rides into the frontier town of Stodge City, and immediately guns down three complete strangers, orders alcohol at the saloon—horrifying Judge Burke (Kenneth Williams), the teetotal Mayor of Stodge City—and kills the town's sheriff, Albert Earp (Jon Pertwee). Rumpo then takes over the saloon, courting its former owner, the sharp-shooting Belle (Joan Sims), and turns the town into a base for thieves and cattle-rustlers. In Washington DC, English "sanitation engineer first class" Marshal P. Knutt (Jim Dale) arrives in America in the hope of revolutionizing the American sewerage system. He accidentally walks into the office of the Commissioner, thinking it to be the Public Works Department, and is mistaken for a US Peace Marshal, and is promptly sent out to Stodge City. The Rumpo Kid hears of the new Marshal, and tries all he can to kill the him without being caught, including sending out a pack of Indians, led by their Chief Big Heap (Charles Hawtrey), and attempting to hang the Marshal after framing him for cattle rustling. Knutt is saved by the prowess of Annie Oakley (Angela Douglas), who has arrived in Stodge to avenge Earp's death and has taken a liking to Knutt. Eventually, Knutt runs Rumpo out of town, but once Rumpo discovers that Knutt is really a sanitary engineer and not the Peace Marshal he believed, he swears revenge, returning to Stodge City for a showdown at high noon. Knutt conceals himself from Rumpo's gang in drainage tunnels beneath the main street, emerging momentarily from manholes to pick them off one by one. He does not kill or capture Rumpo, who escapes town with the aid of Belle.

The Public Works Department in Haverhill, Mass. spoke about their flood preparations for the upcoming storm, WBZ NewsRadio's Shari Small reports.

The next CDL information session is on December 19th from 5 to 7 pm. We willbe at UROC (University of Minnesota Urban Research and Outreach-engagementCenter) located at 2001 Plymouth Avenue North in Minneapolis.

A look inside our Public Works Department's preparation for winter weather, food distribution for the Rotary Club's Twelve Days of Christmas program, and the Letters to Santa program.

Dustin is the City Administrator for the City of Ellsworth in Kansas. Dustin is in the process of rejuvenating a Public Works Department within Ellsworth and he is the right person for the job. We chat about all things Workforce Development and culture. We also cover "Ctitizenship Academy" a concept that is new to me and how it can help bridge the knowledge gap with the City and its constituents. Give the show a listen and remember to thank your local Public Works professionals.

Rounding out the year with jingle bells and tinsel! Happy Holidays everyone! In this episode: You'll hear about Josh's love for tinsel and flocking. Shepard Pie and why everyone loves it.  Heather Martin from our Public Works Department talks about Fats, Oils and Grease and why they could cause thousands in damage! Chef and cookbook author Christina Arokiasamy and her Taste of Kent series coming up in 2024 Food Blogger Erika Diama and her latest visit to Kent  How you can get more involved with the city by applying for our Boards and Commissions. Kent City Council voted unanimously to adopt Mayor Ralph's 2024 Mid-Biennium Budget Adjustment proposal. Carpinito Bros have a long history here in Kent with the last "Did you know" of 2023 We would love your suggestions on topics or what you want in this pod! Please email us at Communications@kentwa.gov   THANK YOU!

Police made a major bust of a fencing operation that sold items stolen from Victoria's Secret and other major retailers - which still had their price tags - on a San Francisco street corner.On October 7, 2023, the San Francisco Police Department, in collaboration with retail loss prevention partners, cracked down on a suspected stolen merchandise operation, resulting in the recovery of approximately $17,880 worth of stolen goods and the arrest of three individuals.Police said the vendors had a permit issued by the city Public Works Department allowing them to set up shop.The operation took place in the 1800 block of Mission Street at an open-air market where street vendors have taken to selling merchandise that is oftentimes stolen in retail thefts.Support the show

Mayor Inman returns to the studio to talk about City of Macomb business including the Community Development Block Grant;  updates on the renovations and upgrades occurring in the Public Works Department, namely the Wastewater Treatment Plant and the Water Treatment Plant, as well updates on the road resurfacing projects.  Mayor Inman also discusses the success of the Downtown Block Party that took place on August 25th, and looks forward to the upcoming Community Walkthrough with the WIU students. To stay up to date on events happening in Macomb, visit the City of Macomb and Downtown Macomb Facebook pages.

By Karl Stephens, CMCA, AMS, PCAM General Manager/COO Work is nearing completion on the repair and replacement of the Landings Harbor Pier deck and railings. The work strategy used the combined forces of in-house staff and subcontractors, keeping costs low, while centering on the Public Works Department's mantra of “let's touch it once and do such a great job, we don't have to touch it again for a long, long time!” This much-loved amenity is used by residents and their guests for walking, fishing, watching sunrises and sunsets, and accessing their vessels. Over time, the condition of the deck boards and railings had fallen below acceptable Landings Association standards. Additionally, the gaps in the deck boards created a safety hazard for users. However, you wouldn't be able to guess these conditions ever existed by the new look of the Pier. Join Construction Manager Bill Campbell and me as we discuss how the repairs are going and when we can expect the project to be completed. Click here to watch the video.

Host Jen Miller speaks with Avon Lake High School Band Director Joshua Brunger. Upcoming events happening in Avon Lake: August 4, 4:30 PM: ApplicationDeadline for the Public Works Department's Full-Time Laborer Position August 4, 7:30 PM: Friday Flicks at Weiss Field - The Muppets August 4 & 5, 5:00 PM: St. Joseph Parish's "Lake Breeze Festival" August 5, 7:00 PM: Shoremen Brass Classic at Avon Lake Memorial Stadium August 8, 6:30 AM:-7:30 PM: 2023 Special Election August 8, 6:00 PM: Civil Service Examination for the Public Works Department's Full-Time Laborer Position at The Old Firehouse Community Center August 8, 7:00 PM: Environmentally Speaking: Coexisting with Nature at the Avon Lake Public Library August 9, 6:30 PM: Meet & Greet with Superintendent Joelle Magyar at Avon Lake High School August 10, 4:00 PM: CLE MARKET & Avon Lake Summer Concert Series - The Bridge Live at Veterans' Memorial Park August 12, 9:30 PM: Perseid Metior Shower Star Party at Walker Road Park August 13, 6:00 PM: Avon Lake Summer Concert Series - Nomad Soul at Miller Road Park For information about these and future events/meetings in Avon Lake, please visit www.AvonLake.org/Events.

We get a chance to talk to Don Marsh and Tyler Napier from our Public Works Department and talk to them about the day to day operations that keep Tehachapi running. They share insight into how much work they oversee and how it is managed. We talk about planning, maintenance and executing that plan. The goal is to give you better insight on how our city is taken care of, including the things you see and don't see. Send your thoughts, questions and suggestions to Media@TehachapiCityHall.com. 

Michael Thompson, PE has been on quite a journey at Plymouth, MN, since taking over as the public works director in 2017.  Listen to learn how he has reshaped the department and the lessons he has learned.  Further Resources: Plymouth Public Works Weekly Update Newsletter April 26, 2023            https://drive.google.com/file/d/10zwSatA9IQ1kZDpcXVmcpKMWkaqOz9kQ/view?usp=drive_link  Plymouth Public Works Department Organizational Chart (As of December 2022)            https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tYhVwBxH_O6YgMEzOoe7qcYqqsQ9QFzG/view?usp=drive_link APWA Minnesota Chapter Leadership Academy            https://www.apwa-mn.org/events-education/education-training/leadership-academy City of Plymouth, MN            https://www.plymouthmn.gov/departments/public-works City Engineers Association of Minnesota (CEAM)https://www.ceam.org/ 

DOE officers investigate a report of a sinking boat. Cayman is set to host the Caribbean Customs Law Enforcement Council's 45th conference this June A team from the Ministry of Financial Services and Commerce and the New Cayman Islands Government representative to Asia wrap up an engagement trip to Hong Kong and Singapore. Skilled apprentices will be showing off their skills next week at the 2nd Annual Construction Skills Competition hosted by the Public Works Department. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rcnews/message

In this episode of the Infrastructure Hot Seat podcast, host Chad Smelter sits down with Jonathan Gano, the Public Works Director for the City of Des Moines, Iowa. Gano shares his journey from serving in the United States Army to working his way up the ranks in the Public Works Department of the City of Springfield, Missouri, and eventually landing his current position in Des Moines. He discusses the challenges he faced along the way, the importance of mentorship and leadership development, and how he is addressing labor shortages and climate change in his current role. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-infrastructure/message

For many of us, winter snow is an occasional inconvenience. For those living in the Sierra Nevada region of California though, it's a way of life. Placer County stretches roughly 65 miles from the suburbs of Sacramento all the way to the border of Nevada and the shore of Lake Tahoe. Dealing with massive amounts of snow, with few places to move it, is a regular problem here. But this winter was truly exceptional. More than 700 inches of snow fell, making it their second snowiest on record. On this week's episode, Donny Francis, Placer County's Road District Superintendent, talks about what this winter was like and the huge effort that was needed to try and keep the county's roads clear. About the Across the Sky podcast The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team: Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises' Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia. Episode transcript Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically: Hello, everybody. Meteorologist Joe Martucci here with the Across the Sky podcast, Lee Enterprise's national weather podcast. I am joined this week with Sean Sublette from the Richmond Times Dispatch. Matt Holiner in the Midwest. Kirsten Lang is on maternity leave. We wish her the best. She delivered a healthy baby boy not too long ago, so congratulations to her. We miss her. We will see her in a couple of months. We'll be back here on the podcast sometime later in June or July. Guys, this week we're talking about snow. And I know for many of you listening, you're like, Hey, snow season ended a month ago or three months ago. Or if you're like Sean and I, we didn't even have a snow season. But that is a much different story out west. We'll take you to Lake Tahoe, where one town, two homes got 435.4 inches of snow. Another place got over 700 inches of snow, and that is with Donny Francis. He is the road district superintendent for Placer County in California. Was talking to us all about. You may not know Placer County, but you do. Now, one of the towns there that is Tahoe Cities is right at Lake Tahoe. They actually have an interesting mix of the valley areas, the foothills and then these mountains here. We had the pleasure of chatting with him. We'll go over to Shawn. This was quite the episode, especially for us. Shawn, where I think we saw maybe combined like White Point eight inches of snow between Richmond and South Jersey. I mean, yeah, we're our big snow seasons here are 20 or 30 inches you know and they would get that in a day, you know, several hundred inches of snow this year in Tahoe. And, you know, his county there goes from from the Central Valley all the way up toward Lake Tahoe. So have a huge range in elevation there. And they have to serve areas around ski resorts, too. So they have a wide variety of terrain. They've got to handle narrow roads with these population, you know, these small population centers that are densely populated right around the ski areas. And just some of the things that they have to do to get this job done are phenomenal. Well, after this winter and all the snow pictures we were seeing on social media and all the news stories about just round after round, we knew we had to get somebody on the podcast to talk about that, who is out there in the trenches dealing with injury, like somebody from like the Department of Transportation or somebody who's clearing the roads because what does it take to clear hundreds of inches of snow? I mean, where it is just dumping and dumping. So I am so glad that we are on the show because it is truly a unique experience, you know, and this hasn't happened in a long time. So some good stories to share. Yeah. Especially when he talks about the number of hours that that they've worked over the years and taking care to ski resorts. And when he was talking about the ski resorts, I was like, I wonder why they would take care of those, you know, roads right around there. But it's such a huge tourist attraction, obviously, for everybody who's coming. If you can't get to the ski resort, the county is losing out on money from the businesses. And I think I know I have I don't know if you guys saw there is a one photo of the snow actually up to the ski lift, the chairs there on the chairlift where they could even move an chairlift. The snow is so high. So it was it was pretty incredible. So without further ado, we're going to turn it over to Donny Francis. And we're all about this season's snow near Lake Tahoe. So we are here with Donny Francis from Placer County in California. Here he is with the the Public Works Department. He is a road district superintendent. And he has seen a lot a lot of snow all winter and spring long, too. Donny, good to be here with you today. How's it going? It's going good. How are you? Good, Good. We're doing good. You were saying, when we were recording this on April 20th, that it's a nice sunny day in some 80 degree weather. So that'll take out, you know, maybe one or 2% of the hundreds of inches of snow this winter. It's certainly been near record breaking to record breaking across the area. Let me ask you this. And I kind of do I do a couple of road department stories a year, you know, mostly in New Jersey or I should say, all in New Jersey, of course. What's the mindset of your road crews going into the winter and let's just say going into this winter? And what's the morale like after such a tremendous snow season? I know it's still going to be going in parts, but what's the feeling like before and after? I think after, you know, a long summer, it gets pretty hot here, too. A lot of people look forward to winter. And, you know, we got a lot of people in the valley down here that volunteer to plow snow in the snow districts. So we got three snow districts. There's about nine, ten guys per district. So I think a lot of them look forward to it getting up there because they know they're going to make a lot of extra money, get to play in the snow, run heavy equipment. So that's always a morale booster until you get these record breaking storms where guys are stuck up there. You know, we have to put them in a condo or hotel for I think the last stretch was 31 days straight away from their family. So I think some people really dig it. You know, they love it. And some people kind of just, you know, taper off and get tired and you're working 12 to 16 hours a day, maybe noon to midnight or midnight to noon. So it gets tiring. So then, you know, a lot of people look forward to spring and summer after the door. And from from what I see here and this is a total from a cooperative observer program stations associate with the National Weather Service 316 inches of snow in Tahoe City. Donna, I want to be honest with you. I don't know if I've even seen 316 inches of snow in my life in New Jersey, let alone in one winter. I believe Colfax saw 62 inches of snow. Can you give us a lay of the land? What does a county look like geographically and on a climate basis as well, in terms of what you're seeing during the winter months within the county? So we see everything from flooding to, you know, rockslides, mudslides, significant amounts of snow. We go from a valley level, you know, a couple hundred feet elevation where it's flat farmlands, rice growers, and you get a lot of flooding down there. Appear to the foothills. You'll see some snow and then up to 7000 feet on Donner Summit where we got actually this year, record is 730 inches of snow. And we we plow roads at 7000 foot elevation. So to spring serene lakes, we see the most snow there. You know, I think we're we're usually right top most snow in the United States for you know and expenditures and then up to 5 million, you know, a year in snow removal. So we go from valley to mountain, you know, I-80 corridor. You know, Caltrans takes care of 80, but we take care of all the subdivision side roads and everything in Placer County. It's a pretty big area, 1100 miles of roads we take care of. And depending on elevation, you'll get, you know, those 1100, 3 to 500 miles of snow covered roads that we have to plow. Big area. Absolutely. I'm trying to wrap my mind, too, around 730 inches of snow. Now. I'm trying to get an idea of what your workflow is like. Like how often are those plows having to go like, what was the the worst period of it for you? I mean, I'm sure you you've been busy all winter long and into the spring, but what was the busiest stretch for you and how many drivers did you have out and how frequently were they having to clear the roads late February onto, say, the 27th and 28, we got 52 inches of snow in a 48 hour period. We had bad storms in December, late February, just in Tahoe, we have 12 graders with push plows, eight blowers or push plow trucks. It takes just in Tahoe when we go to 24 hour shifts. We did a stretch of 31 days straight where we worked and that takes up to 28 guys to run that equipment around the clock. And then you come downhill this way a little bit, actually higher elevation. When I say down the hill, our farthest north is Tahoe City, but before that's Donner Summit. And there we have four more graders, five Rotary snowball loaders, multiple push plows, because when the snow level drops, it come all the way down here to Auburn. Then we got to get our valley guys with two wheel drive plow trucks down here with chains. And it's just it's go, go, go. 24 seven. Yeah. So Shawn, here in Virginia, again, just for some kind of additional perspective, we know it has not been as busy. The last few few seasons have not been as busy as this year, obviously. But can you speak to how much how much more busy you are regarding time commitments and manpower in terms of getting these things done? I mean, is it is it six or seven times the workflow? Is it one or two times the workflow? Did you have to was there a big hiring to get people? Were you running out of resources in terms of what we've seen in years before this this snow year? How how, how is this tax to resources? I've been here 22 years and it's the worst I've ever seen. We we've had the contract out both for contractors to help us remove snow and plow extra snow. We have school roads we can't get to. You know, some days they don't want to close the school. So we have contractors we've rented, we've rented extra graders and push plows. We don't really hire extra help other than contractors, but we have 80, 80, not 80 men in our road department. And we ask for volunteers every year to go up to sort of the to go volunteer to pull snow. So, I mean, it takes at one at one time there's probably 40, 50 guys working at once just to plow snow. So in terms of the weather part of this, the weather forecast, who are you working with? Who are your weather partners or partner that you're working with throughout the winter? Mostly? Noah Got it. So the National Weather Service. And are you are you actually speaking with them or like are you speaking with them over the phone or is it something where you're just you're you're reading their forecasts on their website? How does that work? And, you know, before this big, you know, let's say your bigger events, how far out are you planning with their forecast? Well, we have meetings with Noah once, twice a year. And when we have these big events coming in, we will team up with the Office of Emergency Services, which they work with the weather, you know, more than we do. So we'll go have meetings with them and just kind of get a game plan together of what we're going to do and even after and how are we going to recover from it. We have people get trapped in their homes. Oh, yes. Sheriff's search and rescue. Everybody's on board to chip in and, you know, help get through the on average, an average year for us is about 215 inches of snow. And this year, you know, significantly more 730. So and I should ask, too, where do you live? Are you living in the mountains or are you down in the valley? I'm in the foothills, actually, so I'm right in the middle of it all. But I've worked in every district we have in my 22 years here. So I've seen the flooding, the snow that we had early winter. We had trees, low snow, which brought down tons of trees. So then we go into tree clearing mode and then we had to hire contractors for that. I think we put out 500,000 for five contractors to help clear roads and and just open it up for emergency services and so we can get thousands there to open the roads. Okay. So here's kind of a another daunting question I have with my little Eastern bias here. So I apologize. But once you remove this snow, where do you put it? I think Midwest. And that's why our way, when you're driving up our roads up there, the walls of snow are like 20 foot high. So it's just a the process, the repeated process constantly work when it's snowing. Plows are on the ground, pushing it to the side. You know, you can ramp it off in certain places, but we don't have right away. We just have road edge. So we plow. We plow. We plow. When you get a break in the storm, then we send all of our rotary snow blowers out, which cut the snow back. We blow it as far back as we can. Sometimes there's some open area. We can blow it. I mean, we have to stick it between houses. For instance, in serene lakes, the walls are 20 feet high and sometimes you don't know where you're blowing it. You have to experience burying in propane tanks, putting it on people's roofs. We blow it windows quite often because you just can't see where it's going. So, yeah, it's a a process of pushing it off the road and then your roads get so narrow, you're down to one lane or you close them. Then you just blow the snow paths back as possible some place. Some places like in Tahoe City, Caltrans has to blow it in the back of dump trucks and hold out because there's just no place to put it. And we almost ran into that this year. We say don't explain that to us one more time because I might have missed. Are you saying you're putting plow and other dump trucks to hold the snow? Is that what you're saying? Yes. So there's some tight little neighborhoods and in cities up there, Tahoe City, Kings Beach, for one, where there's businesses and sidewalks, you get so much snow, you can only plow it so far. Then you have to blow it with a rotary snow blower and blow it in the back of a dump truck and hauling out to a storing staging area. But what guys, basically, they do that every year in Kings Beach in Tahoe City. Wow. It's less than if you're listening to this podcast and you live out in the Mountain West and I'm sure you get it. I think for the three of us here who, you know, we've seen snow, but not snow like that, that that's just a wild experience. We're here with Donny Francis from the Plaza County partment of Public Works. We're talking all about their crazy snow they had this past week. They're on the Across the Sky podcast. Back with you after the break. And welcome back, everybody, to the Across the Sky podcast, Lee Enterprises National Weather Podcast. You can catch new episodes every Monday, wherever you get podcasts or on your favorite Lee Enterprises news website. Here we are with Donny Francis. He takes care of the county roads that surround Lake Tahoe, the same county that Tahoe City is in. That is the one that he is with in the state of California. He is a road district superintendent. He was just telling us in the break here that 4700 hours work between the crews this winter. Can you tell us when your first day of plowing was this winter? And we're recording this on April 20th. So what was the last day that you guys have plowed so far? Well, you can stop me on that one. Oh. Oh, man. On the first day about maybe that would be October, October, November. And then, you know, the storms come and go, or the worst part of the winter was beginning of December and end of February. Last time we plowed snow was actually last Monday. We got a couple inches up on the summit. Right. Okay. And that's April 17th, is what you're saying, that a couple days ago. Roger. Okay. And you were saying you actually plow some of the ski resorts as well. Tell us about that. Well, we have to we have three actually. Tahoma has one to our main ski resorts or Palisades Olympic Valley, which used to be Squaw Valley. They held the Olympics there in the sixties. The Winter Olympics. And then we have Alpine Meadows. So these are ski resorts in Placer County subdivisions. So there's houses, lots of houses, lots of streets. So we plow all the all the roads in and out and the subdivisions, the ski resorts plow their own parking lots, you know, groom their own runs and stuff. But yeah, those are elevations at around like six, 7000 feet in a lot of snow. And Danny, I'm curious when you're in the worst of it, like that period you mentioned at the end of February, how do you prioritize, I mean, when the snow is just dumping and you're trying to get as many people out there as possible? I mean, you're basically I mean, it's just a continuous process going 24 seven. How do you prioritize which areas are getting the most coverage and which areas are you going to most really? Is it by popular action? Is it by how big the road is? How significant is it by how much you just go to the snowiest area and focus on that? I mean, especially being such a large county and when it's snowing everywhere, how do you prioritize which areas to really focus on? Tahoe City. So we have ten zones that we have our own road district department there, and then Colfax has their own and they plow Donner Summit and Scherger. So two Springs area. So they have a few different areas, zones we call them. And then Tahoe City, we have ten zones. So normally you start your zone at point A and B, right? So but on these heavy storms, you just by the time you get halfway through zone, you can't even tell you plowed. So prioritizing by main roads and main accesses. So we'll just go hit school routes main roads, main roads I mean way like Alpine Meadows Road that goes into that huge subdivision, Olympic Valley. So you start out with your main arteries when you get these heavy snowstorms, start out with your main arteries to keep them open for emergencies and stuff like that. And then when you get those open, you branch off into your side streets and stuff and that's all the heavy store. Normally you plow a zone from beginning to end and then you start it all over. And it's just a process because the snow doesn't start sometimes. So you might start your zone by the time you get back there, there's another 12 inches. That's just it. And it's tough for for me to fathom. So let me ask you this. Are there even in a normal year, are there roads that you that are very high elevation that you was like, well, we're just not going to touch these this year. They're not easy to access in the first place. So we just let them go. And if so, are there additional ones in the year like you just had where you're we are like, we just can't keep up with everything. So we're going to make these other ones exceedingly low priority and just let the snow pile up. Is there anything like that going on at all? Rarely, because we have residents that need, you know, access in and out. So we rarely let anything go. But we did this year have to leave some while we concentrated on the main arteries. So yeah, there was roads that were inaccessible for a short amount of time. And you know, they get so much snow where you can't push the snow. So you take a blower out there and you just open it up with the blower and then you got to clean up behind that. So it's just a long process. We're supposed to plow every road once one pass every 12 hours, two passes every 24 hours, and that's just kind of our motto, just to keep everybody safe and have access. You know, you said that you were that you're born and raised in the area you were and Sacramento and then moved to the foothills here. Most of the crews that you work with, the people who you know, are they from the area, do they understand what it is in such a, you know, snow heavy region like Tahoe? Is most of your crews local or do you have people who are coming from around the country or do you and I don't even know, do you have people say, hey, I want to come here because I love plowing snow so much, This is where I want to be. Is this a haven for people who are who love snow plow? We have we have a guy from Maine, actually, he just retired. He splits his time from there. And here now, because he loves the snow so much. You work for us for years and he was the foreman in total. But normally it's just local people from around I'd say around California. I don't think anybody flocks here to work, but it's mostly local people, a lot of people that have grown up here and, you know, they know they know what's happened and where we get snow and where we don't. Do you run up against people who have relocated there recently and really have had to learn what this is all about or most of the people that that are in your service area have been there a long time and they kind of get it. Or do you still run into these people who are relatively new and they're surprised? Yes, that's one of our the biggest problems we have for complaints is people that moved to Tahoe from maybe the Bay Area. And and if it was this year, then they're always calling and when's the plow come? And I haven't seen a plow. You haven't plowed in days. Well, we have a zone or system or plows that we can go to the GP's and we can track and look and see where the plows been so we can say no, it's been plowed, just not another foot since you looked. So yeah, that's a huge hurdle for us is to just to curb the complaints because we've got a young people, young money that moves up there and you know, they want stuff done Now in the winter like this. It's hard to keep up with just a normal winter. It's hard to keep up with. But yeah, we got a lot of new people in the area and they've never experienced snow like this before. So lots of complaints this year. And I'm sure after a winter like this, you know, with so many crews out there plowing for so many hours, I'm sure you've heard a few good stories this season. Is there one in particular, though, from just chit chatting with the guys as they're coming back and forth, coming in for a quick break and going back out? Is there one story in particular from from this season that stands out to you? Not really. I mean, you get a lot of there's a lot of good in that. You get more complaints than you do, you know, pats on the back. But, you know, probably the the best one was when we had the avalanche in the Olympic Valley, a huge avalanche came down and hit some condos. So, you know, of course, they call us to the rescue. We have to get in there and open it up for emergency search and rescue and that. So we had we sent graders out there and blowers, and that was probably the best story of the year, you know, just to help out, you know, save some people and get them out to safety. Comparing this to the record setting storms since they've been recorded, we're number two right now. Behind 1982, they got over 800 inches. There's a story. It's called the 1982 Avalanche Alpine Letters. And that one actually killed some people. That was that was the biggest record setting snowfall ever recorded here. So this was kind of a flashback because I just watched the documentary. And then here we get hit with another avalanche. What I'm coordinating snow removal. So that was a good story. Just to help out, can you give people a scale of about how much terrain an avalanche is, is covering? You know, there's there's been an avalanche. How how big of like a square mile area do you have to go, you know, effectively excavate after an event like this just to a ballpark? I haven't seen anything bigger than probably a square mile. Okay. So usually there is multiple avalanches in years like this. They may come down on the highway. There is a self triggered avalanche control. The Alpine meadows does they set off, you know, compression bombs and cause them themselves. And sometimes it covers our road. We have to clean them up, but don't usually see a lot of avalanches that consume buildings or people, you know. So this was a first for me. Those compression bombs sound similar to prescribed burning for wildfires. They're intentionally set off to to limit something that's unintentional and bigger. And I know that you said that was good. You said that you also brought up the, you know, the record snowfall mount. I believe you said just those in the 1980s. What I'm curious about is could you tell us how technology has changed with plowing snow over the decades, you know, in terms of either equipment or salting or brining even how much weather, as you know, weather forecasting and improvements there has impacted your job? It's changed a lot. Like, for instance, in 82, you know, watching the documentary, you see these old trucks with push plows on it and stuff like how do you even I think that's back when they lost roads or there wasn't enough population up there, they didn't have to plow as much. So it's been getting a lot better. When I started in 2000, I was running a 1959 international snowblower. That's so that was all back then too. Yeah. So, yeah, we've got a lot of new equipment, but yeah, it's changed a lot. We have a lot more equipment. It's too still though. It's not enough to keep up with the population and the houses they're building and, you know, roads and we're getting new equipment constantly. We got new graders this year, we got new blowers, so we're getting up to date with equipment. Finally, I think our oldest piece of equipment is like a 95 blower, which is about done. Yeah, I bet, especially after this winter. And you know, my final question for you, Donnie, is, you know, now that we're getting these warmer temperatures and finally less snow, are there any concerns, though, about all the snow that is still piled up in these massive piles, this huge amount of snow? Are there any concerns now that we're getting these warm temperatures with the melting? What are your thoughts about that? What are your crews doing to prepare for all of this melting snow now, there's already been warnings for flooding like on the Walker River, but that goes off in towards Nevada. If we get the heat, there's no in-between anymore. It seems like with these winters, the summers, it's goes from cold as heck to 100 degrees. And with this much snow up there, all of our reservoirs are finally full or close to. So they're letting water out. Rivers are at capacity, so they're predicting some more flooding from all the snowmelt that's coming because it's already warming up quick. It's like I said, it's going to be 80 this week, so that'll turn to 100 within probably a month. So for us that all we can do is close roads. You know, we don't have the power to to build levees or stuff, but, you know, our state does and they do without some breaches in levees this year because some a lot of flooding and loss of houses and stuff. But yeah, there's already some warnings for the well, this was very eye opening, especially if you live in a place that doesn't get snow. But even for the three of us or who are low on the snow totem pole, Midwesterners and mid-Atlantic people here, it was really interesting to hear your insight. Dani, anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up with the podcast or I just wish I had some pictures to show you and we'll do the video series next time. If you do some photos though, in the next couple of days, shoot us an email. We can we can get some out as we talk about this episode before we release it here, which I'm sure everyone's listening to now, either on April 24th or sometime thereafter. But otherwise we really appreciate the time and hope you guys have a nice long summer break here. And you know, hopefully next winter will be a fun challenge, but hopefully not record setting like this past winter. So thank you again for your time. We really appreciate it. Thank you. And I'll definitely send you some pictures. Awesome. Sounds good. We are going to take one more break then three of us. We're going to wrap it all up here on the Across the Sky podcast. Thanks again to Donnie for the time here. We know things have been slowing down for him, at least on the snow aspect. But like he said, they're now moving into flooding season with all of that melted snow that has to come. But we do hope he does enjoy a nice long summer here. As you look this up, the most snow that I've experienced in a winter season is 68.2 inches. That was in 2010, 2011. And some places didn't even see 10% of that or excuse me, that was only not even 10% of what some places up by him saw for the winter. Still chilly, incomprehensible amount of snow. Now, what what did you think of the interview? Well, you know, the mountains are just a whole nother a whole nother animal of your if you're a plains person like me, you know, in much of the Midwest where it is, it's pretty flat. You get some hills. But, boy, I mean, so when we get a big snow here, you know, you're talking six, eight, and then, of course, you know, noteworthy. So you're talking about a foot 14 inches. But to be talking about, you know, just getting 12 inches in a matter of hours. A matter of hours, and then, you know, another another 12 inches like that's just an everyday thing up in the mountains when you get up into elevation, it is truly incredible how much it snows. You get up into the Rockies or Sierra Nevada and boy, it it it's remarkable because you could see how much snow in just a short distance, how different it can be. When you go from low elevation to high elevation, you get into those colder temperatures and the snow just just piles up. It is, you know, some really challenging weather forecasts out there, some really, really tight gradients on the snowfall forecasts. Now, forecasting snow is always a challenge, but when you're forecasting the mountains and trying to predict and wrap your mind about forecasting, you know, five feet of snow making a forecast for that and then another system coming in right behind it. And so, you know, to Donnie and those crews, I cannot believe how busy they were this winter. But it's important work, too. I mean, gosh, you know, all the people that are being impacted and, you know, people need to get on with their lives, need to get to school, get to work, but they need help to get to work and get to school. And folks like Bonnie and his crews make it happen. So shout out to them for dealing with one heck of a winter again. And there's still so much snow sitting on the ground there. I mean, I just pulled up visible satellite images and I'm just looking at at the Sierra right now, just packed with snow, deep white, bright whites on the satellite imagery, all this snow that's just sitting there in the Sierra. And as you mentioned, that's it's melting and the water is high. So, you know, they have to manage all of that with rising water from the the snow melt. I mean, you were going to talking earlier on, Joe, about how much snow have you seen in the season? The most I've seen is about 100 inches, 110 inches. And that's when I was up at Penn State in the in the early nineties. And it just a brutal, brutal winter in 93, 94. But that was the last time I'd been through something that one white might call a truly bad winter that was brutally cold, brutally snowy. It wasn't here in Virginia, it was the central mountains of Pennsylvania, although you could get you can you get over 100 inches of snow in Virginia and some of the mountains. And, you know, I think you might be able to pull it off in far northwestern Virginia in the higher elevations in Frederick County or maybe in the in the very high elevations of deeper southwestern Virginia, our paths, I-77, But even that that's a tough that's a tough nut to crack, as we used to say. Got it. And we certainly hope that they catch a little bit of a break here, hopefully as all this snow melts, you know, they're not going be just as busy closing down roads. And I know because I mean, I'm sure that, you know, inevitably there's going to be some road closures due to flooding, but we certainly hope it's not going to be a widespread issue and they can relax a little bit. Boy, they they need it after after this winter. Absolutely. All right. Well, I think we're going to wrap it up for this week's episode of the Across the Sky podcast. We'll be back with you next week. And gosh, it's going to actually be May next week, which sounds kind of crazy. This year is flying by last year. I did not think it flew by this year, but we're going to have a whole bunch of guests for you lined up as we go into May. Of course, we have severe weather season getting into hurricane season two. That officially begins June 1st in the Atlantic Hurricane Basin. Three of us, we'll keep you updated as we go on over the next couple of weeks. So thanks again for listening to the Across the Sky podcast.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

First Aired April 15, 2023Earth Day is April 22, 2023, but Battle Creek has declared the entire week of April 17 Earth Week. Residents are able to volunteer to help clean up city parks and the Battle Creek Linear Park Trail.Bessie Stears, environmental program coordinator with the city's Public Works Department, shares some details in this episode of Community Matters.Episode ResourcesBattle Creek's Earth Week Cleanup Registration and WaiverBattle Creek's Earth Week Cleanup MapABOUT COMMUNITY MATTERSFormer WBCK Morning Show host Richard Piet (2014-2017) returns to host Community Matters, an interview program focused on community leaders and newsmakers in and around Battle Creek. Community Matters is heard Saturdays, 8-8:30 AM Eastern on WBCK-FM (95.3) and anytime at battlecreekpodcast.com.Community Matters is sponsored by Lakeview Ford Lincoln.Battlecreekpodcast.com and The Richard Piet Show are Livemic Communications podcasts. Livemic Communications helps businesses, organizations and entrepreneurs create customized, purposeful podcast content.

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A former Customs and Border Control Officer pleads guilty to firearms charges in Grand Court Today. Twenty illegal migrants are repatriated back to Cuba this week Tourism Minister says 2023 will be a momentous year for tourism.... this after seeing the country surpassing its projections for 2022 visitation A new community park and a potential Cargo Port Development Project are just of few of the things Cayman's leaders tackled at their January 25th meeting. A familiar face will stay at the helm of the Public Works Department. Cayman sees the launch of a new custom-fitted sound and recording facility --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rcnews/message

Set in 1950s London, LIVING is a drama starring Bill Nighy as a stoic civil servant in the Public Works Department named Williams. Williams discovers he has a fatal illness and decides to take some time off from work for the first time in his life. Williams starts spending time with a former colleague named Margaret. Margaret is the exact opposite of Williams. She's passionate about living her life with vigor and joy. Margaret inspires Williams to live life to the fullest and do something more meaningful with his life.

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Audit ATX interviews Investigator Mike Yamma about a recent investigation on a misuse of City resources at the Public Works Department. 

The temporary Open SLO program that brought parklets to downtown San Luis Obispo is set to expire this month. On July 5 and 19, City Council will consider a plan to make those parklets permanent. I spoke with Adam Fukushima and Luke Schwartz from SLO's Public Works Department to find out what the city is proposing. Action item: Take a look at the new Outdoor Dining Guide draft at openslo.org. When that draft comes to the city council next week, you can share your thoughts by emailing, calling or showing up in person to give public comment. The July 5 meeting agenda has all you need to know. Technical note: We had some audio issues that made our sound quality less than ideal. Apologies for the glitch. This episode was produced by Samantha Riordan, with music by Wes Bisheff. If you liked the show, you can go to agendabreakdown.com to listen to past episodes and follow us on social media. You can also find us and subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Want to support Agenda Breakdown by becoming a subscriber? Details at agendabreakdown.com. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/agendabreakdown/support

It's May the oneth ... a brand new month (notice the rhyme?).  On this episode Barry observes May Day, Lemonade Day and salutes the Public Works Department of Winchester for the quick clean-up following the fireworks and parades.