Based on the transcript provided, the speaker identifies himself in the opening sentence as the Public Works Manager. While not on your provided list of senior directors, the Public Works Manager for the City of Oakdale is **Brian Romanek**. He remains the sole speaker throughout the duration of the tour and the explanation of the ballot questions. [0:00] Brian Romanek: [Music] [Intro] Brian Romanek, Public Works manager for the city of Oakdale: Since Oakdale has become a city our population is nearly tripled since this facility was built in 1985 Staffing levels have increased by 65 percent to handle the growth this facility is surrounded by a wetland on three sides so we lack the ability to expand space constraints present challenges to operating efficiently in November Oakdale residents will vote on a local option sales tax which would be used to help finance a new Public Works facility I'd like to take you on a tour to highlight some of the challenges of our [0:46] Brian Romanek: current Public Works facility now we're in our parks department storage area we have several limitations in this area based on storage right now we're set up for summer operations so our lawn mowers ball field grooming equipment is inside we have to leave our trucks parked outside overnight it just adds to the inefficient season or operations that we have by loading and unloading our equipment every day okay now we're in our mechanic shop what we always say is we tend to work on anything from a weed whip up to a ladder truck for the fire department this platform lift that we have here it's a good lift for us for our Public Works equipment which is smaller shorter but when we get into the [1:33] Brian Romanek: larger ladder trucks and engines on the fire department it's not long enough and it doesn't have the capacity to lift those trucks another issue we have is our roof several leaks on the roof in this area as we continue to grow as a city and we develop a acquire more equipment and we may end up adding more staff here where I think the space needs are going to become more more obvious up here we have a good overview of our truck parking area a lot of the trucks are out for the day right now doing work but kind of gives you an idea of the the issues we have with space and how tightly um parked our trucks are well the way that they're parked especially the bigger [2:20] Brian Romanek: trucks the plow trucks we have to have them leave in in a certain order and come back in a certain order so it really adds to our inefficiencies on how our crew leaves and how they return from their jobs for the day the drawback to our locker room upstairs is that we have to go upstairs and we do not have an elevator so it's not accessible for an employee if we hired an employee that couldn't walk up steps or became injured and couldn't walk upstairs the locker room is is full um so if we had additional staff we're not going to have a locker for them to come into the issues with the furnace room being where it is it's upstairs it's in the main shop saw the air that it pulls in [3:06] Brian Romanek: that runs through the furnaces and pump the heat down heat and air condition air into our shop it all runs right through here so it has all the diesel exhaust from the trucks this one here is pretty clean so I think it was just probably pretty recently changed maybe in the last week or two but we tend to tend to change these every couple weeks or three weeks in the uh in the season when we're in our Peak Heating and Cooling season this training room doubles as our break room eight or nine months out of the Year we're we're right up to our capacity but in the summer when our summer staff comes in we don't have enough space for everybody to eat lunch or to have meetings you can see it in this cabinet here I'll block the the cabinets are on the inside again [3:52] Brian Romanek: that's diesel exhaust that's coming in from the the ventilation system currently we're in the men's restroom facility here at our Public Works building um we have two stalls and one urinal for our staff to use here of again it's typically about 25 people during the summer we'll go up to about 30 35 people are using this facility so it's really tight it's limited only two sinks for staff to wash their hands now we'll take a look at the vents that are in the restroom you can see all the build up that's on here from the diesel exhaust these again should be white but they're they're black most of this equipment that's stored on these racks is for uh Bobcat type equipment skid loaders [4:39] Brian Romanek: so a lot of it is hydraulic equipment very hard on the equipment to be outside in the weather difficult then in the summer in the Heat and the Sun very difficult and in the winter also in the snow cold so this stuff would be nice to have inside it would make for a much longer life expectancy on the equipment that we have thank you for taking the time to better understand the challenges of our current Public Works facility the ballot for the November 8th general election includes two questions about the local option sales tax the first ask voters to approve a half percent sales tax for 22 million dollars for the construction of a new Public Works facility the second question seeks [5:24] Brian Romanek: to use a half percent sales tax to provide 15 million dollars for the expansion and remodel of the current police facility if one or both questions are approved the half percent sales tax would add five cents on a ten dollar purchase and would be paid by both residents and non-residents you can learn more about the local options sales tax and the public works and police facility projects by visiting our City website at [Music] www.ci.oakdale.mn.us thank you