rentwood

CITY BRIEFLY OF MCKEESPORT BRENTWOOD NEWS

I believe I came across this quote while enjoying my delicious General Tso’ s chicken from the China Wok or it could have been Wang’ s Kitchen, anyway, I though it was appropriate for this article. Although Confucius died over 2,500 years ago his words still ring true to this day. Planning is the keystone to achieving your goals. Planning is not limited to individuals, in fact planning becomes essential as more and more people are brought together. A community needs strong planning in order to continue its growth. As many of you know the borough has recently completed substantial improvements to its parks system, stadium, sidewalks, and roadways. We hope the citizens of Brentwood utilize these tremendous resources now afforded to them by these renovations. However these enhancements to our existing infrastructure come with costs. It is now more important than ever to continue comprehensive and diligent planning for our community’ s future. With these things in mind the Borough Council has authorized the completion of a strategic plan that will address the development goals of our community for the foreseeable future. Many of you may recall filling out a survey in late 2016 regarding strategic goal setting for the Borough Council. These surveys have been analyzed and included into the forthcoming strategic plan. The Council and Borough administration have been busy meeting with citizens, local businesses, community leaders, and outside investors to formulate this plan. Drafting a plan that benefits all citizens of Brentwood is imperative.

The next step in this process is the creation of a Ten Year Capital Improvement Plan( CIP). This CIP enables the Borough to spread out capital purchases from different departments over ten years. By creating this CIP, the Borough can see

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what costs it will incur in the future and address them accordingly. This enables the Borough to keep the tax burden of the citizens of Brentwood low, and allows the administration to search for alternative sources of revenue for these future projects. If we know a few years in advance that we are going to need, say a new chipper for the Department of Public Works, Borough staff can possibly look for grants that will pay for or help subsidize such expenses. This also eliminates the“ surprise” expenses of items that“ break down all of a sudden” thus giving the Borough little options to shop around for the best prices and savings. The Borough has proven success with a similar CIP when they adopted the 5-Year Street Rehabilitation and Maintenance Plan( Street Map). This outlined the streets and estimated costs for 5-Years. Eliminated was the“ guessing” and“ wondering” when your street was going to be paved. If it is on the 5-year schedule, you would know what year and thus you too could plan accordingly. The Street Map Plan not only realized the Borough a lot of savings, but we found we were also able to add some additional streets each year as in-house engineering saved the Borough enough to add these additional streets. In addition, we are able to send out the 5-year plan of streets to the utilities so they know when the Borough is scheduled to repave a street where one of their older utilities is scheduled to be replaced and thus move up said replacement to coincide with the Borough’ s project therefore eliminating the“ tearing up” of recently paved streets. The 10-Year CIP will be a large undertaking and you may be wondering how will the Borough with its limited resources and overworked employees accomplish this undertaking? The Borough was successful in obtaining a grant given by the Local

Government Academy to hire an intern to complete this crucial step of the process. The Borough has hired Stephen Berry, a senior studying economics and political science at the University of Pittsburgh to work on this project. Mr. Berry is looking forward to devoting his summer to helping our community take a tremendous step towards further growth and success.

In summary the Borough has continued to move in a positive direction with the recent improvements to infrastructure, including the completion of the renovations to the stadium and the parks system, the passing of a 5 year sidewalk restoration plan, and a 5 year street rehabilitation and maintenance plan. The time has now come to the take the next step as a community and create a strategic plan tied to a 10-Year CIP that continues and accelerates this growth and success, while following the desires of its citizenry. The Borough Council and Borough Manager have been busy meeting with local businesses, community leaders, outside investors, and most importantly the citizens of Brentwood to create this plan. As I have said in the past if we do not invest in the future of Brentwood, who will? I believe the creation of this plan will allow Brentwood to exceed all expectations and continue down this pathway of success while maintaining our strong sense of community. Have a great Summer!!!!

George Zboyovsky, PE Borough Manager