Public Services Update at HSV 2024 Board Retreat

Director of Public Services Ken Unger and Associate Director of Public Services Matt Broom updated the HSVPOA Board of Directors at the Board Retreat on April 23, 2024. The two presented in-depth presentations on the Public Services departments.

Unger said he and Broom would tag-team the presentation and had much to cover.

Ken Unger’s Presentation at the 2024 Board Meeting

Unger said, “Besides salary, what is important is the environment. We are talking about creating an environment where people want to work here. One evidence that we are on the right track is that we lost several people last year. We lost them for about two weeks. That word gets out in the community when people leave here for an extra dollar an hour, but they realize that they don’t have the environment they had here. That is an important part of what we are trying to do here.”

“I come up with a word every year. My word this year is ‘metamorphosis.’ We are trying to unleash the potential of our employees. We don’t just have workers. We have very talented people in this organization. With challenges that we face, we can save a lot of money [doing tasks in-house] and help them produce what they can produce. That is one of the things we are targeting as well. The word I am focusing on this year is going from an organization that is whack-a-mole* to an organization that is building things. That is changing our community for the good.”

“We brought on Matt [Broom] as Associate Public Services Director. Part of that involved the absorption of the Permitting and Inspections organization last year, with Charlie Brown leaving the POA. Community Support went over to the Police Department.”

“We recently took on Contracts with Ginger George, [Hot Springs Village POA Contracts and Development Supervisor]. We are actually blending her back into Permitting and Inspections, where she will be Staff Liaison to the Architectural Control Committee.”

“There are a lot of synergies there. I don’t have a lot of time to go into them, but if you can imagine, construction in our Village is tied to the things that Public Services are responsible for, like roads, sewer, and water. That combination in the organization made a lot of sense.”

“Right now, we have 101 [positions]. We converted some of those positions to part-time. We’re trying to maintain our headcount to get everything done.

Credo (Unger)

“One important thing when discussing the environment is the Public Services Credo. I rolled this out when I first came into this position.” Click here to read an article about the Public Services Credo. Unger asks everyone to read the P.S. Credo. (See below.)

“These areas [in the credo] are critical to a successful organization. They evolve around people. People and customers are the big focus of our organization. Hopefully, you will hear from the community how we focus on residents as customers, on each other as customers, and on people and their ideas.”

Hot Springs Village Public Services Department Credo

Financials (Unger)

“We continue to track [financials].”

“My goal here is to always, always do more with less. My goal is to drive our expense budget down to where we absolutely need to be to operate the organization. That has been a work in progress. I feel pretty good that by the end of this year, we will know what we need to run this organization. Obviously, any time we invest capital, the idea there is to reduce expense. We should be fixing things that are impacting our expense line and that is what we’ve been targeting.”

Ken Unger, HSVPOA Public Services Director

“The other side of that coin is revenue. We introduced various services. I won’t say they are dramatic revenue generators, but every little bit helps. The goal is to maximize revenue opportunities while doing things for the community, like ‘Free Dirt Fridays,’ where we pull material out of lakes. We want to give back to the community as part of that effort.”

“On the capital side, we have a large capital budget this year. We hope to execute that and come under budget, which is always my goal – to do things for less. Hopefully, you will see some projects focusing on that moving forward.”

7-Year OMT – Operations and Maintenance Table (Unger)

“My goal has been attacking water/sewer. Probably by mid-year this year, I will have a pretty good handle on what we are going to need to invest to bring our infrastructure up to par.”

“We have delved into sewer first. We are focused heavily on water right now. We should have answers back by mid-year, locked down on what we need to do. That will chart our course moving forward.”

Water and Sewer System (Unger)

“On the water/sewer side, the primary focus is the most important thing in the community: the water main. We’ve invested heavily in that, but not so many large projects.” Unger said they are converting the water plant from chlorine gas to hypochlorite. Click here to read about some of the water system projects.

Unger said they have been doing other upgrades, like replacing a 24″ broken valve outside the water plant and a Venturi meter. The broken valve was necessary to shut off the flow from the water plant if repairs were needed, and the Venturi meter was needed to determine how much water the plant produces and the water loss in the system.

Turbidity meters were also replaced, piping was replaced, and water tanks were repaired.

Unger has also been working on the Mill Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant bypass and consolidation into one plant (Cedar Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant), which Crist Engineering and GarNat Engineers are designing. Click here to read about the design contracts.

Unger said we would modernize Cedar Creek, stay current with all the regulations, and “put ourselves in the position to address future restrictions coming down the road.”

“On the lift station side, we’ve had multiple issues with lift stations. We have one left that we are working on now to replace. We are working on a project at the GG lift station to increase capacity. Hopefully, this will be done for about half of what we had budgeted. and hundreds of thousands less than what the ultimate solution would have been had we pursued that [solution].

Water / Sewer System

Line Maintenance (Unger)

Unger said he has very talented people in line maintenance. “This is one of the organizations where we are trying to transform them from a whack-a-mole organization to one that is proactive.”

“Last year was the year of operations. One of the things we did last year that helped the organization was to change how we operated the water plant. Rather than turning pumps on and off constantly, we run the plants at a constant rate for the most part, except for summer. What that did was it impacted the water system and reduced water hammer.

“We have a lot of main breaks that occur in the early mornings.” There is a phenomenon called water hammer. Water hammer can occur in any piping system where valves control the water flow. It results from an abrupt pressure surge through the piping system.” Click here to read more about water hammer in an article titled “Reality of Hot Springs Village Water Mains.”

Unger said because of the change in pump operation at the water plant, there has been a dramatic reduction in main breaks, which has allowed them to concentrate on replacing the more problematic water mains.

Unger said they continue to find storm damage to the water system. “Despite all the issues we have had with Mother Nature in the last four months, the team continues to produce, fix, and repair things within the systems.

Line Maintenance

Building/Fleet (Unger)

Unger said the methodology in Building is to ‘Paint, Polish, and Preserve.’ “Mike [Sykora] doesn’t advertise much about what his team is doing, but they are constantly out there. This includes furniture and bathrooms at Ponce. He is working on halfway houses. Mike and his team are a very talented organization. His team can self-perform just about every project that he does. This is fantastic for us.

“On the fleet side, we continue to pursue the ‘used’ approach. Just about everything that we bought, except for a trailer, is a used piece of equipment or vehicle, which we have gotten for half the price of what we would have paid if we had gone new. It serves our needs. It helps to fill our holes at a lot less cost.

Unger talked about a recent purchase of a 2018 316F 10T Caterpillar Excavator from Riggs Caterpillar for $144,500, tax included. Click here to read about this purchase. This is one of several pieces of equipment that will be used for project self-execution, which will save us millions of dollars. The Caterpillar excavator has already paid for itself. “This is the kind of strategy we are trying to employ across the organization,” said Ken.

Building Fleet

Matt Broom’s Presentation at the 2024 Board Retreat

Streets (Broom)

“We’ve had a challenging year with the Street Department,” said Broom. He said a winter storm started the year, and then the tornado occurred. Broom said we are returning to normal activities, such as culvert replacements and golf pond dredging.

Broom said we have a phenomenal staff member who can operate the recently purchased Caterpillar Excavator. Along with Unger, Broom anticipates this piece of equipment would be a big money saver.

We use millings from road projects at various parking lots to form a more stable surface than gravel alone.

The Streets Department seals and restripes parking lots when golf courses are closed.

Broom said they also continue fog sealing.

Streets

Sanitation (Broom)

Property Owner trash is picked up Monday through Friday. “When we are not picking up your trash, we rehabilitate dumpsters, take care of our equipment, and wash and take care of our trucks. Saline County inspects the trucks annually and is impressed by their cleanliness.

The Sanitation Department rebuilt cylinders on an older commercial garbage truck, which provides the department with a backup in case one of the newer commercial garbage trucks goes down.

Unger said, “We are currently finding buyers for cardboard and potentially for plastics and glass. While this won’t generate much revenue, it will reduce costs.”

Broom said, “We want to expand the recycling program. There used to be a big recycling operation. It wasn’t managed properly, so they did away with it. We do have a cardboard baler. We are going to get some plans in motion to recycle cardboard… More to come on recycling.”

Sanitation

Common Property/Forestry/Wildlife/Lakes (Broom)

We have acquired new attachments for the tractors: one is a street sweeper, and the second is a limbinator. In the past, we rented a street sweeper. The street sweeper attachment was purchased for a very low cost. The limbinator cuts overhanging limbs on roadsides.

Lakes Maria and Sophia were dredged this past year. Lake Coronado is scheduled to be dredged later in the year.

Currently, electrofishing is occurring.*

The Lakes Department creates fish habitats and cleans boat launches and parking areas.

The Lakes Department also gives presentations at area schools.

Common Property / Forestry/ Wildlife/ Lakes

Permitting and Inspections (Broom)

“Permitting and Inspections is one of the newly acquired departments. One of the things we want to push is construction site inspection.” Broom said they want to keep the roads clean, safety measures followed, and work sites neat. The Permitting Department will hold on-site pre-construction meetings before issuing a new permit.

A mandatory meeting was held for new builders earlier this year. Click here to read about this.

Broom said they will have at least one new builders meeting every year.

Permitting and Inspections

Engineering (Broom)

“Engineering is a very important department.” The Engineering Department employees do a lot across the organization. They work with public utilities to define high-water pressure areas. Additionally, they correct our GIS to show served and underserved lots accurately.

Engineering also does culvert analysis to determine areas of concern and if culverts are adequately sized. The POA owns well over 3,500 culverts. Broom said when he “started in 2022, most of the green dots in the bottom/left image were red. Red is condition one. It is the worst condition culvert. As you can see through our progressive culvert rehabilitation program, we have converted many of those to green, category five, or the best condition culverts.”

Engineering

Contracts (Broom)

The newest department under Public Services is Contracts, managed by Ginger George, who handles the Rental Registration Program. Broom stated, “We currently have 15 POA-managed contracts – nine food and beverage facilities, one POA rental home, three cell phone towers, janitorial services, and Ferrellgas.”

The POA has substantially lowered subsidies to food and beverage since 2020. In 2020, the subsidy was $784,000. In 2021, it was over $441,000. In 2022, it was $188,000. In 2023, it was $64,704. “The food and beverage subsidy is constantly declining,” said Broom.

Contracts

* Whack-a-mole refers to spending so much time on small things that you cannot tackle big ones. It is akin to the expression “putting out fires.”

*Electrofishing is a technique scientists use to capture fish for study without causing permanent harm. It is a valuable method for monitoring fish populations, assessing the health of aquatic ecosystems, and supporting conservation efforts. Electrical currents are sent into the water, momentarily stunning the fish and making them easy to collect. This method allows researchers to examine the fish for counting, measuring, or tagging before safely releasing them into their environment.

Transcribed, written, and assembled by Cheryl Dowden