Lodi council honors Public Works
Sunday kicked off National Public Works Awareness week, a time to acknowledge the vital role the Lodi Public Works Department and other public works departments across the county play in maintaining their cities.
“The guys that we’re really celebrating are the crews that go out and actually repair a water leak or repair a broken sewer line and maintain the infrastructure and the services day in and day out and most of the time our residents don’t even know that it happened,” Lodi Public Works Director Charlie Swimley said.
The week is also about recognizing the contributions of the support staff including the secretaries, technicians and engineers, Deputy Public Works Director and Engineer Lyman Chang said.
“This week we get to celebrate our staff and the folks in public works that day in and day out give 100 percent. They really care about the community,” Swimley said. “A lot of them live here and they care about our residents. It’s a great department, a great organization and we don’t always get to celebrate, so this is our opportunity.”
According to Swimley, the department is responsible for collection, distribution and treatment of water and wastewater along with streets, sidewalks, trees, traffic lights and other city infrastructure. The department is also responsible for designing and surveying, reviewing subdivisions and development projects, overseeing the transit and fleet divisions and maintaining storm water drains and city buildings.
Chang is responsible for overseeing the city’s vehicle fleet and facilities, the engineering division and the traffic and transit divisions. Utilities Manager Lance Roberts oversees the water and wastewater distribution, collection and treatment along with street infrastructure, sidewalks, tree landscaping and storm drains.
Both men answer and report back to Swimley, who oversees the entire department.
“Just about everything our citizens do in some form or another rely on the work that’s being done in the public works department,” Swimley said.
In addition to notifying the city council of the department’s plans at council meetings, Roberts said in an effort to create awareness in the community the department gives tours of the water plant to school children and runs the Storm Drain Detectives and watershed programs. They also bring children in every other year to observe a sweep and see how the city uses a dump truck and other equipment.
According to Swimley, millions of dollars go into the city’s public works each year, and in the upcoming year Chang will be responsible for more than $30 million worth of projects including the Harney Lane grade separation.
Roberts will be responsible for $17 million for wastewater, $12 million for water, $6 million for transit, $5 million for streets and $2 million for engineering.
The department consists of more than 100 employees including street workers, engineers, technicians, plant worker, support staff, supervisors and so much more.
“We’re here to improve the quality of life,” Roberts added.
Swimley, Roberts and Chang take pride in knowing that the department is providing quality services for the residents of the city and that they rarely have an outage in services.
“I want the public to know how proud we are of our staff and the dedication that they have towards improving the City of Lodi’s quality of life,” Swimley said. “There is over a hundred people with many different skill sets and our view here is that no one is more important than the next guy, we just all have a different job and we value each and every one of our employees and the work that they do.”