Grand Rapids — For all they do, people know surprisingly little about Public Works.
“I don’t even know what they do, and I’ve been here a long time,” Kim Gibeau said during her introduction for the Public Works presentation at Week Three of Grand Rapids’ City Government Academy.
Public Works Director and City Engineer Matt Wegwerth’s slideshow was 34 slides, which may seem like a lot but was necessary to cover the scope of the two departments.
He started by defining Public Works and Engineering as, “Management of all things within the right-of-way and on City property.” Not a broad definition at all. The department has 14 full-time staff and 15-20 part time, depending on the season.
Public Works is divided into six smaller departments: streets, fleet, parks and trails, engineering, airport and cemetery.
Care for the commute
Streets work falls roughly into three categories itself: roadway, right-of-way and snow and ice control.
Roadway maintenance includes the obvious pothole patches, street sweeping and pavement markings.
While it’s easy to complain about unfilled potholes and bumpy roads, I have a bit more respect and understanding after learning about just how much the city is responsible for. Public Works maintains 93.1 centerline miles of local streets, 12.8 miles of alleys, 31.5 miles of sidewalks and three roundabouts.
Additionally, streets maintains storm sewers, signs (1,645 in Grand Rapids) and street lights (1,910 of them). Plus, they play a large role in the beautification of the city. The streets team is responsible for the flowers and landscaping downtown, and last year, the city cared for over 4,000 boulevard trees and planted 100 more. Grand Rapids isn’t immune to emerald ash borer or Dutch elm disease and is working with the Department of Natural Resources to help diversify from the once-popular species.
Snow and ice control had six presentation slides all to itself. Not only is it a huge undertaking, but it plays a significant role in how people perceive Public Works.
“That’s what they’re [the public] usually impacted the most with — good or bad,” Wegwerth said.
The city applies 400 to 600 tons of salt each year. Plowing is done by six dump trucks, three front-end loaders, 23 pick-up trucks and two motor graders. With all that at their disposal, the city can completely plow the city in eight hours for up to six inches of snow.
The city’s snow plows are relatively new and come with swappable beds, so the same truck can salt and haul away snow with just 10-15 minutes required to change the truck bed. The swapping of beds isn’t a new concept, but the speed is — Itasca County has older trucks and requires a two-day notice for bed swapping.
The city is divided between 10 plow routes, each with an assigned truck/driver. For sidewalks and trails, there are four quadrants, though not all sidewalks are cleared and city ordinance requires property owners to clear their own walks.
The most interesting part of snow and ice control — perhaps except for getting to climb in the plow truck — was the salt.
Most people have heard of the dangers of over-salting, especially in water-abundant Northern Minnesota. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency says chloride pollution, caused primarily by de-icing salt, makes freshwater saltier and thus toxic for fish, bugs and amphibians. But all the efforts to prevent over-icing get less attention.
Grand Rapids takes part in smart salting programs from the state. They also utilize electronic controls to automatically apply specific amounts of salt to prevent human error over-salting. The controls limit the amount of salt that can be applied. They also allow for very slow distribution, as little as a household-sized bag of sidewalk salt spread over a mile.
“The electronic controls have made a big difference applying salt and when and how and where,” Wegwerth said.
The city also makes its own liquid salt brine using an Accubatch. Making it saves the city a good chunk of change; city-made brine costs about 17 cents per gallon, whereas the magnesium chloride they used to purchase was $2.80 a gallon.
Salt and salt brine work effectively down to around 15 degrees. But the city has one more trick up their sleeve to help lower the melting point: a massive drum of beet juice.
Well, not exactly beet juice, but essentially beet juice with some chlorides mixed in. The beet heat additive costs about $2 a gallon and — when mixed into the brine at a 30% ratio — makes the brine effective down to 5 degrees. But any colder than that, the city’s kind of limited by the laws of the universe.
“When the roads get icy, we’re kind of stuck with it until it warms up,” Wegwerth said.
I was also amazed by just how expensive snow and ice control is. While this year was a lighter plow year with only around 23 inches of snow, last winter’s 88.7 inches was just an inch and a half shy of the all-time record in the winter of 1996-97.
Snow removal cost the city $488,040 in 2023-24, quite a bit more than usual. The 5-year average is just over $282,000 a year, with each inch of snow costing around $4,000 to remove.
Maintaining the fleet
The second department within Public Works is the fleet. The city has about 91 pieces of mobile equipment, including six large-surface mowers, 23 pickups, 2 ballfield groomers, six fire trucks, 20 police squads and three Zambonis.
Whenever possible, the city buys equipment from Grand Rapids-based ASV, rather than larger brands like Bobcat or Caterpillar.
The city leases vehicles through Enterprise’s Fleet Management program — yes, the same Enterprise you rent cars from. Through the program, the city is able to turn vehicles about every five years, which helps keep maintenance costs low.
City Administrator Tom Pagel said that through a state bid program, the city gets about a $10,000 discount on vehicles they purchase. Then, they are able to sell them back in the private sector a few years later, usually around the price they originally paid for them. That resale element is largely why city trucks are now white instead of yellow; there’s a much larger resale market for white pickups.
Parks and trails
While Grand Rapids has a Parks and Recreation department, Public Works handles park maintenance, which includes 566 acres across 27 parks, 38 miles of trails, five ballfields and three soccer fields.
There are also some special projects that fall to Public Works’ parks and trails team, such as the outdoor skating rink behind Robert J. Elkington Middle School and the Crystal Lake Fishing Pier. The pier was repaired this winter, with the DNR providing funding and materials and the city providing the labor.
Engineering galore
Another large, diverse department is engineering. They’re responsible for the construction and reconstruction of roads, capital projects and right-of-way and stormwater permitting and regulations.
The department maintains a running list of capital improvement projects, ranked by priority, and works closely with GRPU to overlap projects with their sewer and water projects. That way, an old road isn’t redone and then torn up again in a few years because GRPU needs to replace pipes.
The Municipal State Aid System also falls within engineering. The Legislature provides funding for city-designated state-aid roads for municipalities with over 5,000 residents. Funding comes from the gas tax and is split into two categories: construction ($738,959 for Grand Rapids in 2024) and maintenance ($280,729).
Grand Rapids has 26.44 miles of state aid routes.
Wegwerth said the city is currently paying off a state aid bond, so the actual aid they receive is about $300,000 less than the allotted amount. The state holds the funds for the city until enough is accrued to pay for a full project.
The storm system is engineering’s other major responsibility. The Grand Rapids storm system consists of:
- 48.8 miles of pipe,
- 1,581 catch basins,
- 31 outfalls into the Mississippi River,
- 54 rain gardens and
- 36 stormwater treatment ponds.
Because of its population and nearness to the Mississippi, the PCA considers Grand Rapids an MS4 community meaning the storm system must follow state guidelines. This includes six minimum control measures, one of which is public education and outreach.
Grand Rapids helps fulfill this requirement by stenciling near storm drains to catch people’s attention and alert them that whatever enters the drain ends up in the Mississippi. Even seemingly harmless things like grass clippings should be kept out of storm drains. Clippings become phosphorus when they enter the drain, which can cause algae blooms.
Last year, engineering approved 116 right-of-way permits and 38 stormwater permits. Right-of-way permits cover everything from a new driveway with a larger curb to tearing it up for a sewer connection.
“Anything that disturbs a right of way requires a permit,” Wegwerth said.
From the air
I was surprised by the amount of traffic the Grand Rapids Airport sees, despite commercial air ending around 2004.
There are 74 aircraft based at the airport, including one jet. UPS flies in at least once a day, and there are approximately 21,000 operations a year, with takeoffs and landings each considered a separate operation.
Airways Aviation is the airport’s Fixed Base Operator, meaning the city allows them to offer services like fueling, storage and maintenance.
The airport generates $18,000 in property taxes each year and costs the city and county, which shares ownership of the airport, $20,000 each annually. When it comes to project costs, the city and county are responsible for 5% (split evenly between them), the state covers 5% and the Federal Aviation Administration covers the rest.
The city hopes to expand the airport, as the waiting list for smaller hangars is always five to 10 people long, and there’s not much turnover.
Honoring the dead
Last but not least, the city maintains the Itasca Calvary Cemetery. The Itasca Cemetery Association was formed in 1896, and the city took over the cemetery after the annexation of Grand Rapids Township in 2010.
Pagel said there are three Super Bowls for cemetery workers each year: Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day.
“They are passionate about that cemetery,” he said.
Workers perform burials, set headstones and generally maintain the cemetery. There is also a scatter garden available.
Behind the scenes
I hate to end on morbid note, so here’s my takeaway from this academy session:
Wow.
With such a wide range of responsibilities, I’m amazed Public Works and Engineering keep the city running as smoothly as they do. Wegwerth and others who helped guide the tour of the Public Works facility clearly had pride in the work they did and cared about the maintenance and reputation of Grand Rapids.
And they do much of that work behind the scenes with little recognition. It’s often hard manual labor, with many frustrations and headaches along the way. And I’m sure a lot of the times when they interact with the public, people are complaining about being inconvenienced by a project.
Public Works employees do a lot to keep Grand Rapids running smoothly and a home to be proud of. Keep that in mind next time you see them filling potholes, cleaning up trees after a storm or watering the flowers downtown.
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