In this episode, Olivia from our team chats with Eden Prairie’s City Manager, Rick Getschow, to discuss an important area of local government operations: Public works, and how this municipality has made waves with its award-winning development of an in-house system that efficiently removes sediment and other materials carried by the storm sewer system from streams, lakes, ponds, and wetlands.
Eden Prairie has created an environment where frontline staff is empowered to experiment and innovate. From allocating time specifically to developing these bespoke innovations to ensuring innovation is embedded in the city's overall objectives, Eden Prairie has been recognized for its innovative spirit, most notably in the realm of public works. By taking a comprehensive approach to fostering innovation, this US city is ensuring the best delivery of services to its residents.
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Featured government: Eden Prairie, MN
Episode guests: Rick Getschow, City Manager
Visit govlaunch.com for more stories and examples of local government innovation.
Lindsay: (00:05)
Welcome to the Govaunch podcast. Govlaunch is the Wiki for local government innovation. And on this podcast, we're sharing the stories of local government innovators and their efforts to build smarter governments. I'm Lindsay Pica-Alfano, co-founder of Govlaunch and your host. Today, Olivia from our team chats with Eden Prairie’s city manager, to discuss an important area of local government operations: Public works. This municipality has made waves with its many groundbreaking innovations. One of which includes the award-winning development of an in-house system that efficiently removes sediment and other materials carried by the storm sewer system from streams, lakes, ponds, and wetlands. I'll turn now to Olivia to dive into this work and learn more about their approach to public works innovation.
Olivia: (00:56)
Hi, I'm Olivia from Govlaunch and I'm here with Rick Getschow from the city of Eden Prairie, Minnesota in the US. Rick, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Rick: (01:06)
Yeah. Hi Olivia. Thank you. So I am the city manager of the city of Eden Prairie. So city manager would be akin to the chief executive officer of the city. We have a council manager form of government. So we have a mayor and five council members who serve the community at large. And I'm the one employee that they hire to be the chief executive of the community. And Eden Prairie is a suburb of a Western suburb of Minneapolis, a population of about 65,000 heading toward maybe 80,000 in the next 10 or 15 years. So we're close to fully developed, but we have quite a bit of redevelopment that's occurring in our community and a little bit more room for new development. As I said, we're just a few miles west of Minneapolis, St. Paul. And I would say that our community is one in which we have almost as many people living here as do work here as well. So we have a very robust business community and we consider ourselves a full service suburb. A suburb that has many jobs, a lot of commercial industrial and all types of residential property. So we're really close to the twin cities and, and the airport here in Minneapolis, but yet we're a pretty full service suburb.
Olivia: (02:27)
Excellent. So how are things going in the realm of innovation in Eden Prairie would you say?
Rick: (02:33)
Yeah, I think they're going really well. So our city council reaffirmed the community values and goals about two or three years ago. And one goal that they had that they put in there in the top five, uh, city wide strategic goals was to be innovative and to have sustainability and innovation, probably the two new major strategic goals of the city and that resonated with the staff as well. So I think we've been a city that has always strived for innovation, and we have a leadership from our elected officials all the way down that have supported our city as a ooperation, just trying a lot of new and different things and trying to be innovative. And as I said, uh, sustainable as well. And, and I'm going to share, you know, a few of those examples in the public works realm as well, but I think it's something that cascades throughout the entire city government operation.
Olivia: (03:39)
Great to hear that innovation is not just a concept, but actually embedded in your strategic goals as an organization and that that's coming through all elements of leadership in Eden Prairie. And you mentioned public works. And I know that you've been getting a lot of attention because of your epic public works innovations. And I feel like public works is, of course, what many local governments consider to be the backbone of its service delivery. It's such an important part of what we do as local governments. Before we delve into the specifics, can you walk us through your public works culture just generally and how it manages to effectively innovate so well?
Rick: (04:16)
Yeah, Olivia our, you know, our city is 36 square miles and we've got many roads and trails and lakes and streams and a lot of water and sewer infrastructure. So we were pretty robust in terms of public works and it's and our department is laid out in, in four main divisions of streets, our fleets, our utilities and our engineering and all of those areas of those divisions of the public works department, you know, really strives to be innovative. And, and I won't be able to go in depth into all of the examples, but are our streets. And I'm going to share this later has won some state awards in terms of just our snowplowing operation, which is obviously the, the meat and potatoes of, of what a street department does, but also for a lot of their street maintenance practices as well. And our fleet division is really moving toward full electrification and our utilities division I'll talk about has, um, you know, you think a lot of times it's just keeping the water running in the city and treating the wastewater and the stormwater, but I've got a couple of really good examples of our utilities division actually, uh, from the ground up inventing products that actually improve services to our residents actually creating new inventions.
Olivia: (05:49)
As a Canadian, I can emphasize how important snowplowing is to a community and the need to get that right. (Rick: Yeah, Absolutely). So now that we've set the stage, I'd love to chat more about one of your public works, notable innovations in particular, the vacuum dredge box. What is it exactly and how did it come to life?
Rick: (06:09)
Yeah, great question. And, you know, I'm going to go a little bit into detail because it's not as straightforward, maybe as some other public works operations, but our, you know, we have a lot of lakes and ponds, streams, and a lot of them are in, you know, as people may know, there are a lot of national standards in how you have to treat stormwater. So many, many ponds have arisen in residential neighborhoods that need to be managed and maintained. So we have to go out quite a bit and remove sediment and other materials from a lot of those wetlands and water bodies. And so our, um, division actually created an invention that allows our department to go into people's backyards and through their property with actually a smaller piece of equipment, um, than you would normally have that you would take through private property or through easements to actually remove the sediment.
Speaker 3: (07:12)
So what happened was they invented a vacuum dredge box that allows sediment to flow, to have a gravity flow all the way through the property, to a box that is not located necessarily, um, takes up a lot of space in the, in the backyard. So there's couplings that actually attach to a vacuum system on a Vactor truck that sucks the sediment out of the box, up to the street, and then it can actually be hauled to a disposal site. So it's just it, and again, this is something that our frontline utility crew actually invented. They created, they, um, they welded all the different parts together and invented the box.
Olivia: (08:01)
That's really powerful. And I love that it came from frontline staff just innovating together and coming up with a bespoke creation. So how did your team go from piloting to actually scaling these vacuum Dredge boxes?
Rick: (08:14)
Yeah. And I would say that, you know, surprise, and there's a, there's a, you talked about when we talked before the podcast about a video that we have that really shows the, how the box works in action. And, and if we could, if you could see the video, it would probably would show very clearly how it can, um, is very easy to replicate. And as I said, it was fabricated in house by welding steel parts together. It doesn't have any special mechanical parts other than leg extensions control the flow to the coupling. So the availability of parts for any that anybody could get is really easy. And again, as I mentioned, fabricating it is simply welding pieces together. And the vacuum suction was provided by a Vactor truck, which, which is a common piece of equipment that, that many people have.
Rick: (09:06)
They use it to clean sewer lines and lift stations and storm pumps. So if you, any community I would argue, you know, throughout the country could, um, you know, get a vactor to rent, but they could also fabricate the equipment on their own. And it really would actually save cities, uh, quite a bit of money in terms of having to rent other equipment or, um, you know, paying to go through private property on a regular basis. And then the other part I'll say too, is, you know, we all have to be responsible for restoring property. So when you, you know, you take large equipment through any, uh, property, that's not public, even if it's public, you have to restore that property. And there's a cost to that as well. So, you know, it's something I think that can be replicated and can be created in, in different communities and can save time and money.
Olivia: (10:02)
And to your point, this innovation not only had impacts on cost savings, which you've walked us through, uh, because of it required less trips out from your crews and also reduced potential for damage on private properties as you've mentioned. But I would assume it also increased residents trust in their local government as well. Can you elaborate on this element of the innovation?
Rick: (10:24)
Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, you, you have, um, you know, people coming through, as I said, their property and you're removing sediment from ponds and water bodies and, and when people, th they invariably come out out of their backyards or the apartment complex or whatever property, and they'll ask, you know, what is that? And when you explain what it is and how it was invented, the reason, well, someone immediately thinks that this is on their behalf. This is to save time and money tax money. And also, um, it shows care for their property. So that alone builds a sense of trust. And I think it's pretty neat to have, you know, that idea that you have people working on the front lines of the city that go out of their way to find new ways to do something people really, that really resonates with people. And they think that that it's not just the same old, same old for the same old cost of money in terms of taxes, people are really finding ways to do more. Sometimes with, with less.
Olivia: (11:29)
I want to take us back to the start for a moment. How did your supervisors create a safe space for experimentation for your frontline staff so that they could really have their ideas come to life?
Rick: (11:41)
Absolutely. So the other one, and again, I think this is from the ground up is snowplowing, and that's very straightforward. Um, snowplowing, as you said, we're in Minnesota and you talked about Canada and snowplowing is, is a big deal. It's a quality of life issue. Um, for Midwestern cities, Western cities. It really is. It's, it's, it's continuity of keeping people moving to work or for businesses. So I've been here almost 10 years or over 10 years. Our public works director has been here about the same amount of time. He was one of the first people that I hired when I came here and we sat down with our crews and asked as new people, part of it was, Hey, we're new? What do you think about the city's plowing operations and through a committee and a task force, again, from the ground up, they had a lot of different ideas about how we could deploy our crews and our operations citywide. So it was just a matter of getting that input from the driver, but also in terms of innovation, technology played a huge role in improving operations, not just how people are deployed. So this was about five or six years ago that the city invested a certain, you know, I would say it was maybe in the 30 to $40,000 range.
Rick: (13:04)
So this is not hundreds of thousands of dollars in fleet vehicle locators in material tracking systems. So again, you can know where every piece of equipment is and the sand and the salt that is on every piece of equipment. And we implemented a software system with real time data to display exactly where everybody is, what material they're using, just think of this, just map of the city that shows kind of trucks moving along on different routes, and someone would be in an incident command room, and they could see exactly where everybody is and what they're doing.
Rick: (13:44)
And it, isn't just a matter of someone on a radio, um, saying I'm coming back to the shop or I'm stopping at another location that gets solved. They could be routed from location to location to help each other out. So the snow could be removed a few hours sooner than normal. And also we installed, um, road and weather information systems again are about 36 square miles in our city so believe it or not the amount of precipitation or ice on the street from one end of the city to the other might be different. So we were getting real-time data on the actual ice on the road, the amount of precipitation that was coming down. So we were able to manage the amount of material we put down. And that goes back to sustainability because having those systems and technology in place, we have saved a lot of money a lot of time.
Rick: (14:41)
And we've saved a little bit of the environment in terms of the amount of sand or salt or product we're putting down. It kind of, it's kind of funny. It goes back to that vacuum dredge box. If we put, um, less sand down that’s less sediment that we have to take out, uh, off our own streets and ponds and roads. But the point is we really got input from our frontline operators. We invested in technology to help them. And then we were able to receive a statewide award from the state of Minnesota for some of our innovation and operations.
Olivia: (15:19)
Love that both frontline staff's input and expertise, as well as leveraging existing technologies and, and data points has enabled you to really become pros snowplowing. So that's really exciting for your residents and for your team too. So you're passionate for innovating your city's operations. It's very evident. What advice would you share to local governments looking to foster an innovative culture within their very own public works divisions perhaps for the first time?
Rick: (15:49)
Yeah. Olivia, I would say there, there's probably three things I think of in terms of advice. One is listening. I mean, it's, it's constantly listening, uh, is huge. Always keep an ear out for what people think at all levels of the organization, even cross-departmentally could help. I have gotten great advice, believe it or not on, um, snow plowing from police officers. And I've gotten great advice about how to do recreation programs in a city from public works employees. So listen. The second thing, and I talked about this a little bit with the vacuum dredge box is it's okay to experiment. It's okay to fail. It's okay to try different things. Local government, whether local government, county government, state, we are not always programmed to be experimental and innovative and allowed to fail. We're a little bit more conservative. We're, we're not necessarily considered entrepreneurs.
Rick: (16:52)
We're not tied necessarily to a bottom line. So you have to sometimes kind of push a little bit in terms of allowing a failure and experimentation that that's probably, you know, a big issue. And the, and the last thing I hear a lot of times too, that some of the best innovations come out of, um, difficult times recessions or, um, times when governments have to cut back. But I think that desperate times, don't always call for desperate measures. Sometimes you should be able to be innovative, uh, not necessarily when you're forced into it. So those are probably three things that, that jump out to me,
Olivia: (17:38)
Shifting gears a bit. Do you know of any other standout innovation in another local authority we should check out?
Rick: (17:46)
You know, I, interestingly enough, one thing I think about Minnesota at the state level, the county level, the city level. One thing that I think is happening that I'm really excited about is what I'm seeing with sustainability and energy savings and how it relates to, uh, fleets. Fleets at all levels. We are trying to be a leader in electrifying our fleet in our city. We're going to be one of the first cities in the country, actually that we're deploying a police fleet of Teslas, electric vehicles. And it's not as easy as you think when you're dealing with a needing a pursuit vehicle or a police vehicle that, needs to do a lot of different things, but we really feel strongly that the future that the biggest bang for your buck in terms of sustainability in climate change is an energy and in transportation with different levels of government. So I'm always keeping my eye out throughout the country at what people are doing in terms of energy sustainability. I think the day may be coming where you're seeing duck trucks and garbage trucks and front end loaders, police cars that hopefully are more, um, you know, sustainable and electric. So I'm really excited about that. I'm keeping my eye out for that. And in a lot of other jurisdictions.
Olivia: (19:12)
Great! We’re always looking for new products in the space or insights into some leading products as well. Can you share with me a gov tech product you use that you'd highly recommend and why?
Rick: (19:24)
I know one one's related to gov tech and one might not be, but I think it's where we're headed. One is our, our POLCO product. The product that we have that allows us to do some polling. That's tied to our residents and voter registration information. So we've had a lot of success with different, um, surveys that we do in our city using POLCO. And it's just, it's a, it's a simple, not expensive product that, that cities can use. Any level of government can use to really ask the residents to get it, to get some, some input on any, any different project that you're doing. So we've had success with that. The other, and it's not a gov tech product, but the other thing I think is interesting.
Rick: (20:09)
I also, myself, as city manager, I host a city podcast at, at the city and it's, we use a lot of the, um, same products that, and anybody else could use for a podcast. But the podcast that I do, it's called real talk with Rick and I simply interview different staff members or residents in the community. And really a lot of what we talked about in terms of public works innovation I've had a few different guests that have been on to talk about this vacuum dredge box or the snowplowing on a podcast. And then we make that available to our residents. It's really hyper-focused on, on the city. But if anyone is interested in local government, you know, having your, your state Senator, your mayor, uh, other city employees on, uh, podcasting at the local government level is something that I, I found interesting as well.
Olivia: (21:06)
I definitely think our listeners will be interested in that considering the topics that you cover. Uh, excellent. Lastly, what's something that excites you about the future of civic innovation and Eden Prairie?
Rick: (21:20)
I, I think the last several years in the examples I gave of, of innovation that we've been set up to be supported to innovate in our city, that I don't see that changing. And I see it continuing. And to be honest, if I had an idea what the future of innovation and our city is, I'm probably already pigeonholing, some, some different ideas. I have to be open to what might be changing in policing in the next 10 or 15 years and how we can be innovative in that. What can be changing with the pandemic that we have we had, or I would say had, because I feel we're coming out of this and what that might mean for how employees engage with each other in the public. So I don't have any one thing in terms of the future that I see. I think you have to be just wide open to possibilities and, and really just have a mindset that anything could come along and you should be able to be adaptable to it and flexible to it.
Olivia: (22:30)
Well, we're looking forward to seeing more cities fostering innovation, as well as a culture of experimentation within their public works and beyond. Thank you so much for joining us today, Rick.
Rick: (22:40)
Well, thank you, Olivia. I really appreciate you having me on thank you.
Lindsay: (22:50)
Eden Prairie has created an environment where frontline staff is empowered to experiment and innovate. From allocating time specifically to developing these bespoke innovations to ensuring innovation is embedded in the city's overall objectives, Eden Prairie has been recognized for its innovative spirit, most notably in the realm of public works. By taking a comprehensive approach to fostering innovation, this US city is ensuring the best delivery of services to its residents. To stay informed on their work and others visit us at Govlaunch. I'm Lindsay Pica-Alfano, and this podcast was produced by Govlaunch the Wiki for local government innovation. You can subscribe to hear more stories like this, wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a local government innovator, we hope you'll help us on our mission to build the largest free resource for local governments globally. You can join to search and contribute to the wiki at govlaunch.com. Thanks for tuning in. We hope to see you next time on the Govlaunch podcast.