Inside Arvada

Inside Arvada's Public Works Department: Transportation with Jacqueline Rhoades

• City of Arvada • Season 1 • Episode 3

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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:

Plus, 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:

Visit us at ArvadaCO.gov/Podcast or email us at podcast@arvada.org.

Katie Patterson:

Welcome to Inside Arvada, the City of Arvada's podcast, where we bring you conversations with the people who make Arvada a thriving community. Hear stories about the past, present and future of Arvada through the lens of the city team members who help make it all happen. Explore the complex topics impacting our community, from the roads you drive to the water you drink, the parks where you play to what your neighbors think. Join us as we take you Inside Arvada. Welcome everyone. Thanks for being here and listening today. We are excited to have our guest, Jacqueline Rhoades, Public Works Director, on today. A little background about Jacqueline she started with the city in 2020 as an engineer working on utilities projects in our Public Works Department. She transitioned to the city engineering role, overseeing all of our engineering teams and then, in 2022, became the Public Works Director. Her background is in engineering. She got her bachelor's in chemical engineering and master's in environmental engineering and, after several different jobs in the private side, she moved to a job with the city of Arvada. And I'm here today with my co-host, Sean Star. Hey, Sean.

Sean Star:

Hi Katie, a really informative interview today with Jacqueline. As someone who mainly works in the parks side of things, it was very interesting to me to learn about all the things that go into maintaining and building our roads and keeping them safe, and I really enjoyed learning about the two bond projects going on in the city Ralston Road and West 72nd. So great interview with Jacqueline. So with that we will kick it over to the interview right now.

Katie Patterson:

Hi, Jacqueline, great to have you on today. Hey, katie, it's great to be here. So normally we start with asking you to tell us a little bit about yourself and your work here at the city, but before we do that, I would be remiss not to point out for our listeners that your last name is Rhoades, and today we're going to be talking all about roads and transportation. It's a big part of your role, and so tell us a little bit about yourself and your role.

Jacqueline Rhoades:

Oh man, I never knew growing up that I would end up doing so much work in the transportation space. It's really ironic because my background was in water and here I am with my married name, Rhoades, doing so much work related to transportation. It's pretty ironic. So, as public works director, I feel proud to lead a dedicated, hardworking team that really is responsible for designing, building, maintaining, operating the city's infrastructure and, as part of our infrastructure work system, public Works and our utilities department do a lot of this work. We really believe that resilient infrastructure actually creates the foundation for Arvada's vibrant community. So, really passionate about infrastructure. And a little bit of personal note, I'm just a working mom and engineer who's really passionate about both water and sustainable infrastructure.

Katie Patterson:

Yeah, and you've worked your way up through the city a little bit. You were city engineer prior to becoming public works director, so that's kind of the engineer at the city that oversees all of the different engineering departments that we have. You mentioned a couple of them, like utilities and roadway engineers and all the different types of civil engineers that we have. So that's a great kickoff to our next question Can you give us a little bit of overview of all of the different functions of our public Works Department?

Jacqueline Rhoades:

Public Works is a large department. We have 135 team members that work across our divisions. We mentioned streets we're talking about roads today, so streets everything from snow removal, filling potholes, sweeping, all of our streets maintenance, all the city facilities as well. So our facilities division lives in Public Works. We have our ADA coordinator, so we do a lot of implementing our ADA transition plan within Public Works, even though that affects citywide operations. We have traffic engineering operations and maintenance. We also have our engineering division, as you mentioned. So not just project managers and engineers, but you know, really this includes all of our municipal inspections, our survey team, our CAD team, our permitting teams, just to ensure that any work happening in the right-of-way is done safely and to our standards. We also liaise or our staff help support our citizen transportation advisory committee. So that's a big part of the work we do.

Katie Patterson:

Great Thanks. That's a good overview. There's a lot in there and what we do, and we won't dig into all of those areas today. We could probably spend a lot of time on what each of them do, and we hope to come back in future episodes and do some of that digging in more, and we'd love to hear from our listeners about all those things she just mentioned. Is there anything that you all are particularly interested in hearing more about?

Katie Patterson:

So a little plug for future episodes, but today we're really going to focus on transportation, because we all travel somewhere every day. It's a huge part of our lives. Whether you're walking, biking, scootering, e-biking, driving, taking public transit, we all go somewhere, and we have lots of projects and programs that are related to transportation in the city, and one that I think most, if not all, of our community members are aware of are the two bond-funded projects that were passed in 2018, west 72nd Avenue and Ralston Road widening projects. So can you help us understand those two projects a little bit more and what's going on where we're at with those?

Jacqueline Rhoades:

Absolutely. One of the things I love about our transportation work is, obviously, we are paying close attention to making sure everybody every member of the traveling public can get to where they need to go safely and comfortably, and these two roadway projects that you just mentioned are some of the largest historical investments in this type of infrastructure. Aside from our Arvada Aquatic Center project we have going on right now, these are some of the largest capital improvement projects we have in the entire CIP. So, you already mentioned, nearly $80 million was approved in 2018 to fund this work and we are well underway.

Jacqueline Rhoades:

So, ralston Road, we're nearly 90% spent and while the project was originally supposed to be completed in May of last year of 2023, everyone knows that some of that work was delayed and we didn't get pavement down towards till towards the end of the year, in December. There's still work happening on the corridor. So, while it's comfortable to ride along and you can see a lot of the progress, there's still landscaping work underway and we want to make sure that the contractor completes everything to our standards. So some final improvement work that's happening before we can actually put the project into warranty.

Katie Patterson:

Yeah, thanks. It's good to see that really open up and I think generally the public feels you know, we can travel through the area without disruptions. Open lanes, open sidewalks it's exciting. What about West 72nd?

Jacqueline Rhoades:

So West 72nd. We have also made a lot of progress on that project. Overall we're about 60% spent on the original funding. But, as everyone knows, we're coming into what we're calling a pause on the project. We've completed the first two construction packages primarily all of the utilities, relocations and a lot of the roadway improvements and the final construction package is building the underpass. So we just got through our open house community meeting last week and have been talking a lot with the public about what this is going to look like, essentially for the next year.

Jacqueline Rhoades:

We're going to see activities slow down on the corridor, meaning construction will pause. We are still trying to achieve all the approvals we need to get from the Union Pacific Railroad to approve elimination of the crossing and building the underpass. That is a challenge that we've been working really hard at. Our teams are pushing to get through the approvals process and it has delayed our project significantly, also resulted in rising costs. So we've identified the funding needed for what we're estimating the rest of the project is going to cost to complete the work. But there's still a lot of significant work ahead as we move into construction of this underpass.

Katie Patterson:

Yeah, and I think just for folks to know once that next phase of construction starts well, first there'll be a nice little reprieve for folks, for the traveling public, for a little while for, likely about the next year, and then, when construction does start again, there will likely be some full closures needed short term to get the what they call a shoo fly route for to detour traffic while they build that bridge. And an interesting fact I learned recently was that we were told this is the most complex bridge construction project happening in Colorado right now. Not of all time or anything like that, but that just kind of helped us explain some of the delays that we're seeing and challenges being faced. So that was an interesting tidbit I heard, anecdotally at least.

Jacqueline Rhoades:

Thank you. This is big work, it's expensive work and oftentimes we can't see what's happening underground in terms of the utilities conflicts, and so all of that is important to keep our infrastructure safe and functioning, and so you may not even see all the work that's happening underground, although you're certainly impacted by it in terms of the overall completion of the project.

Katie Patterson:

Yeah, and you mentioned the meeting that we had in April, the community meeting. We did a recording of the information that was shared at that meeting, so that has some good info for folks that we can put in the show notes as well. So I'm going to move us on to our annual pavement program. What does our paving management program do?

Jacqueline Rhoades:

Well, thank you for wanting to talk about it. We see our streets maintenance as a core service that we deliver as a city, and so it's very important work to us. In addition to having clean water and beautiful parks and all of the other quality of life elements, we want to have safe and comfortable streets, and so what is our pavement program? Well, that is the work that we contract out, and we do citywide pavement treatments, rehabilitation, and we do concrete work as part of that program as well. Ultimately, we try and measure our level of success by using an industry standard metric called the Pavement Quality Index, and our team goes out and collects data every year to understand how we're doing.

Jacqueline Rhoades:

We've been falling behind for many years. It's a known fact that we have some funding requirements to keep this program moving and to help maintain our streets. Our teams are working hard to put those dollars to good use and stretch every dollar, and so we help keep good roads good first. It's always easier to maintain something that's already in good condition to be able to extend its life. By the time it falls into complete disrepair, just like anything in your household that you might maintain, it's more expensive to fix. So we stretch our dollars as far as we can go. We have a goal of keeping our pavement quality index or improving that over time and overall trying to reduce the percent of our overall street network that is deficient. It's a big program, though. In 2023, we spent over $12 million and that's the budget we're targeting for this year. I know we're looking at ways to come up with some other dedicated funding sources to help support our work in this area.

Katie Patterson:

Yeah, thanks.

Katie Patterson:

I think you touched on one of the questions we get a lot around this program and around roads in general.

Katie Patterson:

Is the road right outside someone's house, their local road, as we call it, and those tend to be the ones that are traveled the least and particularly in the older parts of the city have fallen into that kind of tier of disrepair, as you were saying, and so recognizing it takes a lot more time, funding and resources to repair those roads. At that point a band-aid like crack seal, which is kind of where you see that kind of tar-looking material that just fills a crack, isn't really going to benefit that road anymore. It really does need more mill and overlay, which is where you grind down the actual top of the roadway and then repave it right, just the top layer, not full reconstruction, which is what we're doing on Ralston Road and West 72nd. But anyways, I think that's just a good example. And then you talked a little bit about the concrete side, the ADA improvements. Could you speak a little bit more to how that program addresses those?

Jacqueline Rhoades:

Yeah, absolutely, and so while we talk a lot about how we maintain our asphalt, we recognize that our customers use every aspect of this roadway, and you may view your street as wanting comfortable sidewalks, and we want to be in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act requirements. So a lot of what the program also looks at is replacing curb ramps on corners, making sure we have safe crossings, making sure we have adequate drainage. We don't want to have issues with icing or any barriers present, and so, while our streets maintenance team also can go out and help address spot issues as they arise, the pavement program tries to look ahead as what asphalt treatments we're going to be applying and go in and do some concrete work. This is expensive, it's challenging. Sometimes we don't have the right-of-way needed to correct issues or there might be other obstacles in place that prevent us from fully coming into compliance. But it's something important that our teams are looking at Our pavement management program and you know, overall streets maintenance is not our sole program, though at how we deliver our ADA transition plan.

Jacqueline Rhoades:

Barriers exist in other areas and we try and use our capital improvement dollars stretch those the most as well. So we try and address adjacencies through other capital projects that we're dealing with and we try and dedicate as much funding as we can to address our highest priority needs related to ADA. So that's another big work that you can tell we're passionate about here in Public Works just making sure that we're advancing our city's network with this regard.

Katie Patterson:

Yeah, and I think, just to put a couple numbers to it, I'm not sure overall how many curb ramps we have in the city, but I know each year. A couple of years ago they did, I think, nearly a thousand curb ramps in one year and in the last year last year at least it was over 300 as well, and so a lot of work goes into that and, like you mentioned, it takes a lot of additional resources to make those changes, but they're super important for making our community inclusive and accessible for everyone. Okay, anything else on pavement program that I missed?

Katie Patterson:

Oh, I could talk about it all day, but I know we're trying to cover a number of topics today. Okay well I'm going to move some of the work that our traffic maintenance and operations team does because this is another area that we get a lot questions and concerns around congestion and speeding and all different variety of topics. And right, now, one of the most exciting pieces of their work that I've been involved with is the city's first comprehensive transportation system plan, which we're calling Connecting Arvada. So can you tell us a little bit more about the goals of that project?

Jacqueline Rhoades:

Absolutely. This work is so exciting. It's foundational in terms of system planning, so it looks at both capacity needs across the system and just other known gaps in our infrastructure. So I mean not only are we looking at roadways and signals, but we're looking at connecting bike routes, missing sidewalks, bridges, transit. It's really all-encompassing when it's related to our transportation system and I see this as forming kind of a foundational element to the next few decades of capital planning of what we need to implement on our transportation systems, not dissimilar to what we've done recently when Council directed us to do utilities system master plans and we're not here to talk about utilities today.

Jacqueline Rhoades:

But our team is hard at work implementing the projects that were prioritized through those efforts and we're doing a similar thing here. I would be remiss if I didn't talk a little bit about some of our maintenance plans too. So, in addition to this really comprehensive Connecting Arvada plan, our teams are hard at work every day, whether it be implementing our fiber system and building out our fiber network to connect all of our signals and to connect city facilities and infrastructure or our signal maintenance plans, making sure that we can improve those assets to better connect and inform timing and allow smart, intelligent transportation technology to be applied in our traffic systems. So those are just a couple of examples of supporting maintenance plans that are underway right now. That will also help improve the experience of the traveling public.

Katie Patterson:

Yeah, that's great. I think what you're alluding to here too is some of these plans are really to help bring us forward, as we both see growth in Arvada and aging out infrastructure, and so these types of plans are taking kind of a fresh look at and redeveloping how we approach comprehensively traffic signal timing, roadway connectivity, all of these different things that in some areas are aging. We have older traffic signals, things like that, older roads as well as how does that kind of maybe older part of the city connect with the growth that we've seen in some of the western side of the city and how do we bring all of that into one plan, one connected city more comprehensively. So super important work that that team is doing and I'd be remiss not to point out I don't think you mentioned it our operations team that is out.

Katie Patterson:

Often when a sign goes down or when a crosswalk is faded, they go out and they're repainting those crosswalks and replacing signage, that sort of thing, and they do a lot of hard work every day. When we get giant wind storms, like we just saw, and a sign blows down, they're the ones out there replacing them. So, speaking of both an aging and a growing city, we often hear about all of the construction happening around town and that sentiment of construction fatigue and so construction disruptions are kind of unavoidable. But can you help us understand a little bit about some of the complexities, when it comes to our work in public spaces that lend themselves to this sentiment of fatigue?

Jacqueline Rhoades:

Yeah, Well, first I just want to acknowledge it. We've heard it through our customer engagement, we experience it every day there is no shortage of active construction happening in our public spaces and I think one of the biggest challenges is not all of this work is city-led public projects, although a lot of it is in terms of rehabilitating our infrastructure, improving our, you know, implementing these capital plans. But there's a number of private entities, so private development, you know, to members of the traveling public, and that safety practices are followed and that our standards are being met, because ultimately, these public assets need to be protected and we want that business-friendly experience. And so, while I acknowledge and I feel it every day, the amount of construction happening across the city, you can know our teams are hard at work to at least make sure it's coordinated, it's happening safely and that it meets our standards.

Katie Patterson:

Yeah, and I think one thing related to that you mentioned warranty earlier, and one thing that our inspectors help with, along with our engineers and project managers, is accepting work that's in our right-of-way. So could you explain a little bit about the warranty process and how our inspectors help to ensure that what we're accepting is quality, the quality we expect?

Jacqueline Rhoades:

Yeah well, something we're passionate about is leaving things better than how we found them and making them lasting investments for the generations to come. So we have engineering standards that we follow to make sure all the infrastructure is built to last and our inspectors go out and along with all of our other operations teams and they will go out and inspect it, whether it be putting cameras into our storm sewers to ensure that things are constructed correctly underground, doing pressure testing of our pipes, obviously, materials testing to make sure everything was installed correctly. And we will then hold those contractors accountable to repeating the work if required to make sure it meets our standards. So what that looks like is we do at least for publicly funded work we hold retainage to make sure that that work ends up being completed. Or, on the private side, we conduct those inspections and before we accept them and issue completion, we provide what we call punch lists and we make sure that everything is completed before kind of putting that into warranty.

Katie Patterson:

Yeah, and I think that's some of what we've heard people ask questions about along Ralston Road in particular. I'm thinking of just because it's such a large project and highly visible one is some of the concrete getting like ripped out and replaced and all of that is done because it's not meeting our standards and important note it's also done as a part of the contract agreement and that cost is taken on by the contractor so we're not paying more for that work to be redone if it's needed. And those are typically really small spots where something maybe gets hit during a late phase of construction or there's all kinds of complexities to why that might happen but generally I think it's important to know that's not an additional cost

Jacqueline Rhoades:

Absolutely. I mean, just like you wouldn't accept something substandard in your own home, we're not going to do that in a public space. So that's really important to us to make sure it's a quality product that's going to last.

Katie Patterson:

And the other thing we kind of touched on and then I'll move us on to our next question, was about the complexities of kind of underground utilities, and I think that's another piece of what can cause a project to take maybe even longer than expected. And we saw a lot of that on Ralston Road about. It's an older part of the city and so a lot of that underground utility was maybe less well known. And can you talk a little bit about the Ralston Road maybe as the example but how that can delay a project or cause complexities?

Jacqueline Rhoades:

Absolutely. There are some things that are known and unknown or suspected, but once you get into construction and you see the actual condition of things underground, we want to make sure that whatever we build on top of it's going to last and so in terms of the Ralston Road work it's that there was more extensive aging and needing full replacement storm sewer than we had originally scoped and designed in the project, and that did contribute to some of the increased costs and delays as having to go in and redesign and replace more extensively than we had originally intended the storm sewer network. But again, that's important to make sure that this is something that's going to last we're not going to have to get back in there later and so that's a great example of aging infrastructure that ultimately will need to be replaced at the end of its life.

Katie Patterson:

Yeah, thanks. Well, we've talked a little bit about capital improvement projects, and so I want to talk a little bit about different funding routes that the Public Works Department takes for these types of projects. So first, what is a capital improvement project, and then we can talk a little bit about bond funding, grant funding and different funding sources.

Jacqueline Rhoades:

Yeah, absolutely.

Jacqueline Rhoades:

These are our major infrastructure work and major capital maintenance work that happens on our facilities or infrastructure, and so we develop a capital improvement plan from all the experts across our team and, in fact, periodically there's a citizen committee that can come in and also help advise.

Jacqueline Rhoades:

So a lot of the work that we're completing today was actually done by the 2013 Capital Improvement Plan Citizens Advisory Group and then through our other active citizen committees, like our Transportation Committee, will also make recommendations or inform some of our planning.

Jacqueline Rhoades:

But a lot of our capital funding comes out of what we call our 98-101 money, and that is actually referring to the portion of code that directs us to apply 60% of the first cent of sales tax towards this important infrastructure work. But as those dollars are allocated, we also I just wanted to emphasize that we look for a lot of grants. So our team has over $7 million worth of active grant projects that we're delivering right now, of active grant projects that we're delivering right now and you know, overall big CIP just with active projects, over probably $360 million that public works project managers are actively responsible for delivering right now. So a lot of big work. In addition to the bond funded. I just wanted to emphasize our teams are investing a lot of time also into pursuing all the infrastructure money that's out there and applying grants as well.

Katie Patterson:

Thanks, yeah, I think that's helpful context for understanding how all this millions of dollars and pretty intensive work gets funded. So, before we wrap up, one of the maybe more kind of misconceptions folks have about the city is the things that we are responsible for and not responsible for within the city, and so we've mentioned a lot about private development and how we have inspections and how we accept into our right of way the quality of work and things like that. But there are a variety of entities that work in the city, and so can you share a little bit more about some of those often partners or private developers and how that relationship works?

Jacqueline Rhoades:

Yeah Well, first of all, the goal is that, as a customer or user operating within our system, hopefully you don't have to experience the differences in quality as you travel across our network.

Jacqueline Rhoades:

But it is important to know that a lot of our major infrastructure is adjacent to city work, like CDOT, and so, whether it be Sheridan Wadsworth, indiana State Highway 72, we work really closely with our partners at the state to make sure that our customers understand and we can help provide that same level of service.

Jacqueline Rhoades:

But I also want to acknowledge that sometimes the work that's underway may be private utility companies, and so all of that's happening in the public right away, whether it be replacing aging gas lines, undergrounding electric, installing fiber conduit communications. So you may get questions, or we may sometimes get questions at the city regarding cell service providers. These are all private companies or other agencies that the city does not. The city partners with but does not control the planning of their projects. So, gosh, we talked a lot about the railroad earlier too similar to how we partner on some of our work. So those are just some examples of areas that can definitely impact our city work but that customers as you're, you know, hopefully traveling through the city may not realize, whether it be a county, a state highway or some private utility work, that it's actually not the city's projects happening.

Katie Patterson:

Yeah, thanks, I think that's helpful. I think that's you know, the Xcels, the Comcasts, the Verizons, you know all of those folks that support our community members in tons of critical ways, but where we provide water service, we don't provide your gas service. So just a little nuance in how that all works and definitely an important partnership that we maintain with all of those and those relationships with those partner agencies are super important. Okay, well, with that, I'm going to pass it to Sean for our lightning round.

Sean Star:

All right. So yeah, our lightning round is every episode we asked every guest that comes on Inside Arvada the same five questions, just to get to know them a little bit better. So, jacqueline, are you ready for the lightning round?

Jacqueline Rhoades:

I'm ready.

Sean Star:

Ready as you can be. Okay, what is your favorite thing about Arvada?

Jacqueline Rhoades:

Our water. I've been listening to the prior episodes, though, and others have already said this, so I'd also be remiss if I didn't talk about just having access to open space. I love riding along Ralston Creek with my kids riding their bikes. It's just such a special place to be in Arvada and have access to the mountains.

Sean Star:

Yeah, we are blessed with just so many awesome trails and parks in the city, and everyone's one of their favorite parts. What was the first, last or best concert you've been to?

Jacqueline Rhoades:

Stapleton. That was the last concert I went to. It's always fun to see Chris Stapleton. That was the last concert I went to. It's always fun to see Chris Stapleton live.

Sean Star:

Red Rocks?

Jacqueline Rhoades:

No, this one happened to be in Arizona. I've seen Stapleton in California and Arizona and not yet in Colorado.

Sean Star:

Heard great things about him. I've never seen him. What brought you to Arvada?

Jacqueline Rhoades:

Well, I like to talk about mountain sunshine and just an excellent place to raise my family. I have some history and roots in Arizona and I just knew that those elements were important to me. But overall, great job opportunity, good job market and just a great place to raise a family.

Sean Star:

Absolutely Speaking of your roots. What was your first job?

Jacqueline Rhoades:

Ooh, I was a pool attendant at a health resort. It was very fancy, and I would often fold towels and refill sunscreens and make sure everyone had a happy experience as they were enjoying the pool.

Sean Star:

All right. And finally, what was like your favorite project you've done with the city.

Jacqueline Rhoades:

This one's hard because we have so many projects that we've been working hard on, but what I thought to share is actually a project that's currently underway we're rewriting a citywide snow operations plan. And why I think this is really cool is I'm proud to work with our team members that support our snow and ice control operations and these hardworking members from across the city. So this is interdepartmental. This touches everyone in the city when it comes to how we manage snow, and I'm really excited to say that we're just updating some of our operations manual and kind of acknowledging that level of service that's provided from our parks teams, our streets teams, our utilities teams, our facilities teams. It really takes a citywide operation to make sure that the public has a good experience when it comes to managing these storm events.

Sean Star:

Yeah, they do a great job. It's, you know, got to keep an eye on the forecast and you know, when they're called upon it's all hands on deck. And you know, with these big storms we had in the spring, they did a terrific job in keeping our, our roads safe. So shout out to our snow and ice control team. All right, well, thank you so much, jacqueline, for coming on inside arvada. We had um great interview and I learned a lot.

Jacqueline Rhoades:

Appreciate it thank you, sean and katie and I am so passionate to talk about anything infrastructure related, so please let me know if there's more you want to hear about. I would love to come back and talk some more.

Katie Patterson:

Thanks.

Sean Star:

Absolutely All right. Before we let you go, we're going to wrap up with our news and update segment. Just wanted to remind everyone that you can submit feedback and listener questions by emailing us at podcast@ arvada. org, or you can visit our website at arvadaco. gov/ podcast. We also wanted to mention a couple of topics that are coming up for city council meetings here in May. So on May 6th, the Arvada Parks team will be presenting to city council an overview of our park maintenance standards. That workshop will highlight some community survey data that we have, as well as key methodologies and some innovative practices that we have going on that same night, our Parks and Urban Design team will be proposing a name for the new Holistic Health and Fitness Park. And then, I know, katie on May 13th the following week the Utilities Department will be presenting yeah, so they're going to have a workshop about waste hauling rates and fees.

Katie Patterson:

So that's the services that we contract with Republic Services and the team will be presenting on the recommended updates to those rates and fees and that's a part of the contract with Republic. They have an annual increase that they're allotted with a cap at 3.5% annually really an inflationary type increase and so there will be some more information at that workshop about what's going on there and then folks can expect to see those increases approved by city council in June and then applied to their bills starting in July. And then, additionally, the Old Town Hub parking garage has the top level of that parking garage is closed until approximately the end of June, and so just want to let folks know about that. Since you can't park on that top level, they'll try and keep the pedestrian access open on that west side, but it may be closed where you'll have to exit on the east side of the parking garage for some of this work. So just keep an eye on that.

Katie Patterson:

If you're going to Old Town, we're also encouraging folks to take the G-Line into Old Town if there's a major event going on throughout this time and then some exciting upcoming kind of fun weeks. We have Drinking Water Week coming up, may 5th through 11th, and then National Public Works Week is just after that, may 19th through 25th. So if you don't already follow us on our social media, check those out. We'll have some interesting facts and information about our public works teams and our water systems, as well as some highlights of those team members, and you can follow us on Facebook, X formerly Twitter and Instagram to get that information. And then, sean, I know there's a survey up on Speak Up. Tell us a little about that.

Sean Star:

Yeah, and so our sustainability team is in the process right now of creating the city's first climate action and sustainability plan, and so to learn more about that plan and how you can engage in that process, you can visit the webpage at arvadaco. gov/ climate action and we are asking the community, as part of that planning process, one simple question what does a sustainable Arvada look like to you? So you can visit Speak Up Arvada or that Climate Action webpage that I mentioned to learn more, and you can check the show notes for website links to any of those dates and information and websites that we mentioned during this news and updates segment. Once again, thank you to today's guest, public Works Director, jacqueline Rhodes. Be sure to catch our next episode in a couple weeks, where we will be featuring the guest Ian MacDonald, our city forester, who will be on to talk all things urban forestry and trees. And, as a reminder, you can stay in touch with the podcast by visiting our website at arvadaco. gov/ podcast, and you can always send us feedback or questions to our email address.

Sean Star:

Podcast@ arvada. org. Please help us spread the word about the podcast, sharing it with friends or co-workers or neighbors, and subscribe, rate and review. Today's podcast was recorded and edited by Arvada Media Services producer James Long. Hosts were Katie Patterson and Sean Starr, and I'll leave you with this fun fact for today, according to the US Department of Transportation. This fun fact for today According to the US Department of Transportation, as of 2020, there were over 4.1 million miles of public roadway in the US, and nearly 1,500 of those miles are in Arvada.

Katie Patterson:

Whoa.