What does the County Engineer do?

Maintenance of roads and bridges is such a large task that the Summit County shares the responsibility with the state of Ohio and local municipalities. The County Engineer works closely with this delegation, in addition to overseeing street pavements, traffic signals, and bridges on all county designated routes.

The County Engineer is responsible for reviewing and approving plans for new developments, including roadways, bikeways, sidewalks, and storm water facilities.

Does the Engineer take care of bridges?

Yes, and this is an important job! The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) requires engineering firms to have three bridge engineers to be qualified for bridge work: One to design the work, one to manage the work, and one to check the work.

The current County Engineer has just one person in the bridge department -- just one! This means there is no one to check the work of the one bridge engineer who inspects Summit County's bridges, a very dangerous practice.

Alan Brubaker will ensure that ODOT standards are being met and will require independent inspection of the County's bridges at least one of every three years to keep Summit County's bridges safe for travel. Periodic inspections by an independent bridge inspection firm will insure that all safety standards are being met.

What will Brubaker do about traffic congestion?

With the soaring cost of fuel, no one wants to be idling needlessly at every intersection.

The current County Engineer has NO Traffic Engineering Department or a Traffic Congestion Management Plan. Brubaker will make sound traffic management decisions to prevent roadway gridlock:

First, intersections need "smart" traffic signals so that cars are able to pass through signaled intersections without having to wait for the signal to turn after a predetermined time period. Also, proper turning lanes will be added so that cars are not backed up waiting for turning traffic. It will cost approximately $600,000 to convert a single intersection into round-about, which is the current County Engineer’s plan; $40,000 signal system improvements will make multiple intersections safer and less congested.

What about bikers and pedestrians?

Most intersections in the county do not even have crosswalks or pedestrian signals and the ones that do are often located on the wrong side of the street! The current Engineer believes that adding a two foot (2’) wide shoulder to a narrow, winding roadway will make the road safe for bicycling, but that is just wrong -- and the area-wide transportation study (AMATS) estimated the cost of completing just the basic parts of a bikeway network to be $135 million!

A new emphasis is needed that will provide LOCAL walkways and bikeways so that we have safe pathway access from our neighborhoods to our schools, shopping areas and park systems. Currently we too often must walk or ride adjacent to fast moving traffic to get from our neighborhoods to anywhere. Brubaker will maintain recreational bikeways, but also help solve our need for alternative local means of access from home to parks and schools.

What about stormwater concerns?

The current County Engineer has proclaimed that a Summit County stormwater basin serving 80 acres is a "regional stormwater improvement".

True regionalism should be much more expansive--most individual allotments are comprised of areas larger than 80 acres! The County Engineer needs to take the lead role in addressing stormwater issues by developing a regional stormwater plan.

Stormwater problems cross all political boundaries thereby limiting the effectiveness any individual community can have at resolving them. It is critical that the county work with local municipalities to place emphasis on improving stormwater issues. This is a top priority for Brubaker when elected.

Why do I see so many workers just standing around leaning on shovels?

The workers are not to blame for this perception. The cause is poor management. It is much easier for maintenance managers to schedule one or two projects with more men and equipment than the projects require than to schedule multiple projects with the proper number of personnel, equipment, and materials.

Managers must be trained to plan the work ahead of time to see that crew size matches the job and to insure that the proper equipment and material is available to perform the task. Private contractors would soon be out of business if their work was not well organized with the proper number of employees, equipment and materials sent to the job.

When elected Brubaker will see that maintenance work is performed as efficiently as possible. Public funds are too valuable to be wasted by inefficient and lazy management practices.

What differences will I see with a new engineer?

Accountability will be improved by using sound business practices and requiring all employee time and all material costs to be assigned to project and task codes; this way we can accurately track the cost of all projects and tasks performed by County forces. This is the only way we will learn if our work is being performed efficiently, plus it will make all employees and their supervisors accountable for their time. Businesses cannot afford to waste employee time and resources unproductively and neither can Summit County.

Fiscal Responsibility is one of Brubaker’s top priorities and costly political promotions using public funds will be stopped. Full scale STOP sign county map distribution stations include specially fabricated signage and map holders that cost in excess of $2,000 in labor, materials, delivery, set-up, and servicing will be eliminated; with a map station in nearly every township, city and village office and in nearly every public library it is anticipated that more than $50,000 in public funds has been wasted on this one item alone. The County maps featuring a full page color glossy photograph of the current Engineer probably cost another $100,000.

Brubaker will also stop the practice of holding parades at taxpayers expense, as was done when County equipment and employees were used to parade around the new roundabout while prominently displaying county tax dollar funded signs promoting the name of our County Engineer. The cost of equipment and labor wasted on this one parade alone probably cost in excess of $5,000 of our highway improvement dollars. Add in the other community parades where County Engineer trucks were used to display campaign style self-promotional signs and the wasted dollars may exceed anyone’s expectations.

Our County engineer should be ashamed of such wasteful practices.

Innovative Maintenance of roads and bridges will be made a priority. The days of allowing our roads and bridges to deteriorate until they reach a poor enough condition to become eligible for replacement funding need to end.

Bridge and road surfaces need to be swept regularly to prevent damaging salt from penetrating the surfaces and to reduce the amount of pollutants that run off into our waterways. Road grit and bird droppings also need to be cleaned from the underside of the bridges each spring to prevent the corrosive effects from moisture trapped there. Just as we need to clean the crevasse under our cars fenders we need to clean the beams and bridge seats under our bridges.

Pavements need to be resurfaced before they become potholed. Pavements that are resurfaced over top of patch materials do not last because the patch materials do not have the proper physical properties to prevent the new surface from flexing and eventually forming a new pothole.

Brubaker will properly maintain the roads and bridges in a timely manner, properly repairing cracks, pavement base and subgrade prior to paving so that new pavements last longer.