Every day in Marana, a web of visible and invisible systems operates behind the scenes. Officers patrol the streets. Engineers plan out the roads. Accountants balance the budget. You, the taxpayer, trust us to keep this machine running. A few times each year, we’ll be sharing how that happens, profiling each of these departments, pulling back the veil to reveal what makes Marana’s government tick. We hope that by taking you behind the scenes, you’ll not only gain a deeper understanding of how your government functions, but also help us improve by sharing your perspectives on these processes. Thanks for reading, and we hope you enjoy this Marana Newsroom original series, Townies.
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“It was so cool!” Public Works Executive Assistant Loren Churchman remembers. “It was like a little factory. It heats up the material, which is a 30-pound rubber block, then pushes it down a hose and into the crack in the asphalt, which is then washed clean. On the day it arrived, everyone wanted to admire our new toy.”
Few people are as excited about crack sealers as Marana’s public works staff. The thirty nine employees of this department maintain Marana’s 511 lane miles, enforce the Town code, manage a vast fleet of over 200 vehicles, and oversee the operations of 38 buildings. With so much to do, it’s little surprise that a highly efficient tool for improving roads would attract widespread attention.
Recently, we had the chance to spend a few days with some of the Public Works crews. We got to see what they do day in and day out, and more importantly, we got to know them as individuals. They’re heavy machine operators, concrete finishers, landscapers, inmate coordinators, shop foremen, and asphalt spreaders. They’re also pizza lovers, doting fathers, and dollhouse builders. They’re public servants, and it’s fascinating to learn how they serve the public.
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On a cold December morning, Marana’s asphalt team prepared to head out into the field. Donning a fluorescent vest and steel-toed boots, Ruben Cruz climbed into one of the team’s trucks. “My father spent 38 years working on asphalt for the City of Tucson. I’ve been with Marana for 16 years.”
You could say he knows a thing or two about pavement.
Ruben works as part of a quartet of Bunyan-esque laborers who are responsible for maintaining almost every inch of asphalt that’s on Town rights-of-way, including streets, driveways, and parking lots.
Before the day’s work could begin, though, the team needed one crucial ingredient: the asphalt itself. Three tons of it. Keith Francis, the team’s supervisor, drove a lumbering truck to the Orange Grove Asphalt Plant, where the molten material was dropped from a towering mixer into a massive heater on the back of the “patcher,” Keith’s affectionate name for his truck. Orchestrated through an inscrutable series of buzzes, he manages to weigh his empty truck, accept 6000 pounds of hot asphalt, and reweigh his full truck without using a single smart device. The light and horn signals that communicate when to stop, drive forward, and depart were devised decades ago, and appear built to survive any number of apocalyptic horrors. If the end days ever do arrive, Marana’s paved surfaces may fare surprisingly well.
By 8:00 A.M., the team has arrived in Continental Ranch, where they’ll spend the day repairing nine cracks. When the asphalt crew fills in a fissure, it has two options: use the new crack sealer or dig up the entire space around the crack and fill it in with asphalt. For narrow cracks, the sealer is the perfect tool, but today, these cracks all exceed two inches in width, requiring a more extensive repair.
Marana’s Public Works staff love to use jargon. They love it even more if it rhymes. When they tear up a section of pavement so that they can replace it with new material, they call it a “mill and fill,” and that’s what the crew was up to on this wintry morning.
