Rotation #12- Engineering

Keith Brann of the Engineering Department serves as the Town Engineer of Marana. He was originally hired as a subdivision and commercial engineer, and now he helps the CIP department with long-range planning. Within his department, he oversees 4 specific areas and oversees the standards and hazards involved with each:

1. Traffic Division. This department creates impact statements for private developments, and conducts traffic studies. The light on Cortaro and Arizona Pavilion is one such intersection where the traffic signals are constantly getting updated depending on traffic and commercial development.
2. Environmental Division. This department reviews private developments to see if any harm is placed on the environment. It also mitigates any hazards. Federal laws demand certain environmental compliance, so any action that involves specific ordinances concerning federal environmental regulations must follow federal procedure.
3. Development Engineering. This department reviews private developments, particularly in drainage and site construction. It is important for construction to meet building codes. Marana prides itself on having high standards of development, and have won Common Ground Awards for residential design standards.
4. Building Department. Keith resides over the review side of this department. This department reviews models of single family homes.

Developer relationship with Marana

When a developer is interested in building in Marana, they must submit a sketch of the proposed layout, which is distributed through Engineering, Planning, Fire, Marana water, and CIP depending on the condition of the development. These departments review to foresee any issues, and discuss concerns. After this, the developer gives a submittal. If the developer is particularly large (with several thousand homes), then they have a meeting with upper management to discuss any important community impacts that may occur from the development.

Procedural Challenges

In the town engineering line of work, it is common to deal with code infractions by developers or individuals. Flood plaining is another challenge that has recently been resolved. In 2007, FEMA redrew the flood plain maps to include many areas of Marana that are not necessarily in the flood plains. After working to update the maps, Marana is now ready to present the new flood plain maps this summer that show an updated and accurate representation.

Environmental Concerns

In Marana, there are 10 species that are of primary concern, so the environment plays a prevalent role in the town's engineering and development. Marana has adopted a Habitat Conservation Plan, of which determines set guidelines for when rezoning occurs for development. Many of the regulations include insuring a limit of 30% disturbance, maintaining a protective corridor, and overall protecting important environmental features of the area. A large portion of Marana's undeveloped land is zoned for agriculture, so any developer that comes along must abide by these regulations if they want to rezone for housing.

It is very important to maintain a link between the Tortolita Mountains and the Tucson Mountains in order to preserve the wild animal population. When the Twin Peaks Rd was built, a mule deer crossing was placed beneath it to allow for the mule deers to access land on both sides.

Public Interaction

It is very common for Keith to interact with the public, because many times the public wants to hear from the department head why certain projects are happening. Sometimes a neighborhood will not be happy with a new zoning, such as for a landfill. Other times, historical events can have a lasting effect on town-citizen relationships.

San Lucas' Back Door

As part of my future project with Homeland Security, I got to check out the 'back door' of the San Lucas development. Currently, the only established way in and out of the development is over a train crossing. If ever there were a derailment, the community members will need to use an alternative way out. These are the two current alternative ways:

• Owl Head Route

The Owl Head route will take the community members up north into Pinal County before routing back down to the frontage road, where the choice will then have to be made between taking the Marana exit or the Red Rock exit, which is farther north on I10. This route is good because it is wide enough for two-way traffic, but it encounters rough terrain in some parts, loose cows on open range, and confusing routes where neighborhood roads join up to the road. It is a 35 minute drive overall, but this time can change depending on weather conditions, how many cars are being evacuated through, and obstacles in the road.

• Patton Route

 Patton Route is a much shorter route that takes 5 minutes, but it is not large enough to accommodate 2-way traffic, and it is on private land. The biggest obstacle is that once cars get to the frontage road, they cannot go south because it is only one-way traffic.

Reflection

I enjoyed today's rotation and having a chance to see what the relationship is between the town and commercial developers. I'm excited to get started on my homeland security project next week, now that I've had a chance to see the conditions of the alternative routes around San Lucas.