(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "The Journal".

I'm Steve Kendall.

If it involves economic development, transportation, water quality and an array of other things, it's a sure bet the Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments, or TMACOG, is involved.

In this edition of "Journal," we'll be talking with Sandy Spang, the Executive Director Kari Gerwin, for talking about water quality and Marissa Beckstein, who'll be talking about transportation.

Right now we're joining the opening segment by the Executive Director, Sandy Spang.

Sandy, thank you for being here, and we appreciate you coming on "Journal" today.

- Oh, it's a pleasure to join you today, Stephen.

- Now, when we talk about the Metropolitan Area Council of Governments, kind of explain what a regional council of government is, because we hear it used in a lot of different ways, lots of different organizations, but TMACOG is one of those regional councils of government, so talk a little bit about what that means actually.

- Sure, so this is a council.

It's a voluntary membership of governmental entities.

And so we have 84 governmental members.

Our area ranges from the southern most part of southwest Michigan, through a part of Fulton County, Lucas, Wood, Ottawa, Sandusky Counties.

And the members they range from the counties as well as cities, villages, townships, and other special districts such as park districts, port authorities.

And so we join together so that we can work together to take advantage of opportunities that our region has as well as to address challenges.

- And from a regional point of view, that makes a lot of sense because everybody is sort of interconnected, especially when you're looking at northwest Ohio or any particular geographic area.

When you get this group together, there obviously are sub committees and subsets of that group.

So we're obviously going to talk about transportation planning, which of course is a regional issue.

Water, which is more than a regional issue.

When you bring these folks together, how do you manage getting everybody's ideas, opinions, thoughts about what direction things should go?

How do you manage that because obviously anytime you bring that many entities together, there's a wide range of thought on what the direction should be for the region?

- Right, well, one of the things, that you want to think about is that roads and waterways don't end with those political divisions.

And so we all have such an interest in cooperating together to find solutions within our region.

And so we have organized into committees that look at these things together without the politics.

Looking at what's the best solutions for our regions.

So we focus on areas of transportation, and we are also within our boundaries.

We have a metropolitan planning organization, which comprises Lucas and Wood Counties, which is involved in the allocation of federal funds, which go through the Ohio Department of Transportation, and then are allocated within that Metropolitan Planning Organization.

And so that group of governments works together to allocate those funds for projects, and that's really regionalism at its best because they're looking at those projects, determining which ones should go forward first and doing that in a cooperative way.

We bring people together around topics that are emerging, like electric vehicles and bring them together to learn together about what's coming to their municipality.

So we try to offer educational opportunities through things like our Team of (indistinct).

So that is something that we can offer that's of value to all of these governments.

- And all of the entities, I assume that because funding for the organization, you're talking about of course, allocating money that becomes available from state, federal grants, things like that.

But each of the entities pays like dues or a fee to be a part of the organization.

- That's right, that's right.

As I say, they're voluntary members.

And actually the organization is governed by our members.

We elect a chair from one of the elected officials this year, as a matter of fact, Bowling Green Mayor Mike Aspacher, is the Chair of TMACOG.

And our Vice Chair, who will be our chair next year, is the Mayor of Perrysburg, Tom Mackin.

So they preside over the organization.

And so they will provide that governance.

We have a general assembly every January, we bring all the members together And they elect individuals to serve on our board of trustees.

- So it is their organization, it is their council of government.

But we also bring them together to look at funding opportunities that may be available because funding that's available these days.

We see an unprecedented amount of funding coming through the BIL, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Legislation from the federal government.

But a lot of the requirements for that funding, it's looking at opportunities that require cooperation and collaboration, between sometimes multiple jurisdictions.

Or it might be a transportation, for example, Tartar might be working with a city or with a park division.

So you bring in groups together, so that they can put those applications together.

And so they want a more of a regional collaboration.

So we can convene groups together to come forward to put those applications together.

Something that TMACOG did was we worked with the Toledo, or we worked with the metro parks, Lucas County Metro Parks, so that we could do the application for the build grant that really sparked the Toledo River Walk.

And so then we were sort of the pass through for that.

We were helpful with them on that application.

So we're able to help convene people to come together around funding opportunities and that is a really powerful tool that we have.

- Because I know when you look at grants for projects, generally, the more people you can show impact with and the number of jurisdictions, the more return for the investment on whatever the grant happens to be, the more likely you are to get the money, the more likely you are to be able to get more money as things go along to support that project.

And you guys could provide sort of a neutral ground for people to get together, you said, try to take the politics out of it because, obviously there's a lot of infighting, even within jurisdictions, there's political infighting.

This is a way for the region not to have that interrupt and disrupt progress, moving the region forward.

It's a place for that to be set aside and actually then move forward with projects that benefit not just one entity, but more than one.

- And our staff is able to provide transportation planning services.

We have such a skilled staff of transportation planners and water quality planners.

So we're able to help communities when they are applying.

They often need data, they need information that they need for those applications.

So we're able to help them with that as well.

And so that's a, a valuable service we provide.

- Yeah, because not every jurisdiction has the expertise to go out and do a study on a particular project.

(Spang) - Even traffic counts.

- Something as basic as traffic counts.

It's not something everybody is set up to do in that way.

You can standardize that, and basically fit it in with all the organizations.

Nobody has to do that on their own.

When we come back, obviously we're going to talk about transportation, and as we know, if you drive around northwest Ohio, look at the region, there's a lot of transportation work in place.

But that's what's going on now.

And I think people sometimes forget that the things we're doing right now, those are years in the past in terms of planning isn't like, that just popped up last year.

"Oh, let's redo a highway."

So when we talk about transportation planning, probably give people an idea of just how long, what the lead is on some of these things.

And of course that requires a lot of analysis to make sure that when it gets into place, it's actually doing what we thought it would do.

And we talked about designing it, planning it, five or six, seven years ago.

It actually meets the need at the point when it actually goes into operation.

- That's right.

A lot of what we do is looking forward, whether it's water quality, whether it's transportation, we're looking at future needs and you know, we're opening up into a new area of looking at future needs and that's economic development.

And that's in partnership with actually some work that's been done through the Bowling Green State University.

- [Together] Center for Regional Development.

- They have led the Toledo region, Lucas, Wood and Ottawa Counties through a comprehensive economic development strategic planning process, which was approved by the Economic Development Administration.

And that that sort of blueprint for the future, for economic development, the future of the region, can lead us as we go forward long term for economic development.

And the recommendation then came out of that strategic plan that we apply to be an economic development district.

And so TMACOG was approached about becoming designated as that economic development, yes, district.

- As a lead organization.

- And so we are applying to the EDA for that designation and that will allow us to do more of that convening and it will open up opportunities for economic development grants that we are not able to apply for now.

And a recent study showed that these economic development districts represent 52% of the US population, but they receive 77% of EDA funding.

And so we want to be able to bring those resources to our region.

And so we're very excited about taking this next step and expanding our areas of practice from transportation, water quality, and then adding that onto that the economic development piece.

- Yeah, great.

But we can talk a little bit more about that too.

When we come back.

- That sounds great.

- Yep, back in just a moment with representatives from the Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments here on "The Journal".

Back in just a moment.

Thanks for staying with us on "The Journal".

We're talking with representatives from the Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments.

And in this segment we're joined again by Sandy Spang, the Executive Director and also Marissa Beckstein, the Transportation Planner for TMACOG.

And I know Marissa, obviously we see all kinds of projects going on right now, all over northwest Ohio, Southeast Michigan.

But your specialty is really looking, quote unquote down the road, to say, where are we going to be next year, two years from now, five years now, 10 years from now, maybe even 20 years from now?

- [Together] 30 years from now.

- Okay, so talk a little about what that is like, because people see this on the ground work going on, they probably don't realize that maybe some of that was talked about 30 years ago and has been in the planning stages.

And finally it's come to fruition.

Talk about your role as a long range transportation planner.

- Right, yeah.

So we just kicked off our long run transportation plan.

It's a required document that we have to do as part of our Metropolitan Planning Organization.

And we do look 30 years into the future.

So our horizon year is 2055.

- Wow!

- Yeah, it's hard to think about and wrap your mind around.

But we update it every five years, so we don't just make a plan for 30 years and then check it in 30 years.

We check it every five years and make sure it's current and we're kind of grasping those trends and including those in it.

- Now, when you first started, how long have you been doing this for team at TMACOG?

- I've been at TMACOG for just over four years.

- So the things you were talking about then, you're about ready to do a five year revision on, because you're coming up on that.

Have things drastically changed from when you first got and started talking about, "Well, in the year 2025, this is what we're going to be doing."

So how much different is it now as you approach that five year window?

- Yeah, there is quite a few things that are different.

So five years ago, really a big focus was on automation, autonomous vehicles.

And so we kind of we're hitting that a little hard in the plan, now that's kind of still being talked about, but not as much.

And so now electric vehicles are a huge discussion with a lot of the new funding sources out there.

And that's something we didn't really have five years ago, so that's something that we need to include in this plan.

As well as air mobility, which is a drone technology.

That's something else that's being talked about.

Those type of technologies that are coming really quickly and they change quickly.

So looking at it every five years will help us keep on track of those.

- Now, when you talk about air mobility, what types of things are we're talking?

Are we talking drones delivering things?

What's the detail on that?

- Yeah, I think it's going to start with more deliveries.

You know maybe in the future we'll have drones delivering people (chuckles).

- They'll be flying us around and dropping us off.

- But I think it's starting now with just the deliveries and helping get stuff moved around more efficiently and effectively.

- We're currently in a partnership working with the regional growth partnership, which is our regional arm of Jobs Ohio.

And we're doing some research with them and looking at the low weight but high value freight and how we can move that with these larger drones.

And it can be lifesaving medical equipment or I think they were talking about a snake bite where it took hours to get the anti venom, yes.

- [Steve] The anti-venom to them, yes.

- But a drone could have gotten it there quickly.

Potential, maybe an organ transplant and or getting that piece of equipment that is needed to keep a factory running.

So it's very exciting.

- Well, well, it's interesting too because I know when you talked about autonomous vehicles, we were talking about smart roads and the kind of infrastructure that would need to go into the roads.

As you said, now we still talk a little bit now we've got electric vehicles, now we're into air mobility, a whole different approach to some of those things.

When you look at the, the 5, 10, 15, 25, 30 year plan, you talked a little about the evolution from what it was like when you first started doing this.

When you look at something like air mobility, what kind of infrastructure, because not every place is designed to have something land in a particular point, and that requires skill sets for people to be able to deal with that, on both ends and while it's up in the air.

So is that part of the planning process?

Where will these hubs sort of be or how do we deliver things that's all part of this process.

- You have to take a look at kind of where the best locations for some of this to start out is.

And that's the same with electric vehicles.

Where's that charging structure going to be?

So people get over that range anxiety, they can feel comfortable traveling and knowing that there's charging where they're going to be going.

- Sure 'cause I know when you drive an electric vehicle, of course I've driven hybrids mainly never a pure electric vehicle, but you find yourself watching the charging going back and forth sometimes.

And then I know people that drive electric vehicles and if they drive a great distance, like from Chicago to Toledo, Toledo to Chicago, they do have to do a little bit of planning to make sure that they can make the range theoretically, but they're always a little bit concerned about that.

But more and more these charging stations are going in.

When you talk with people, do you consult different jurisdictions on how many they should have, where they should be, that sort of thing?

Is that part of your role too?

- We don't get into super-specific details in the long range plan.

We kind of look more general.

So kind of where, how many we might need in the region.

- In the future.

- Yep, in the future, we'll definitely look at jurisdiction by jurisdiction and kind of figure out where the best places will be.

- And you probably then have to figure volume, how many electric vehicles will be on the road, projecting that, which is a whole nother set of statistics and all of that.

When you move beyond electric vehicles, and air mobility, what are the other kind of things you're looking at, the transportation infrastructure of Northwest?

Because obviously we're seeing huge amounts of work on 475-23.

Just finished a big project, although still pieces going on on I-75 in Toledo.

But what are some of the things that you're looking at now in the year 2030, 2035 on out?

What will it look like around the expressway system in Toledo in those years, if we had to say right now this is our snapshot of it?

- Well that's where the public involvement and our stakeholder involvement come into play.

So we really want to have a very connected system that's the transit connection, passenger rail connections, pedestrian and bikeway connections, all of those.

We need those connections and we need to also make sure our network is safe for our freight network on our expressways and making sure that all works together.

And that's where we really like to hear from the stakeholders, which we do through our task force.

And then also right now we're in the middle of our public involvement.

So we want to know from the people in the region what they would like to see where they want to see the future of transportation going.

So we have different ways of doing that.

We do it through open house events as well as a few table events at local universities and other organizations.

And then we have an online survey that's currently going on and we just want that input from the people.

- Now if they to find all of the information, whether they just go to the TMACOG website and there's links there that will take them to the survey or take them to the event listing on here's where we're going to be discussing that this date, time, et cetera, et cetera.

And real quick, we've just got a moment here.

One of the things that has come up for years, I don't know if this is part of your planning is the discussion about linking Toledo to Columbus, the US-23 or whatever, is that a piece of this a little bit or not?

- That will definitely include it.

That's important really for the economic development, for the freight movement as well as the passenger traffic as well.

But you know, there's lots of passion for the connection through the highway and then also in the future maybe having a passenger rail connection to Columbus and other major metropolitan areas around.

- So that's very much a part of this then.

'Cause that's one of those things been talked about for more than 30 years prior to today.

- I've just been so impressed by Marissa making such a broad outreach to the public by reaching out to so many of our stakeholders to include everything from passenger rail, pedestrian and bike ways, a vision for the future, where people want to see us be able to go and she's bringing in things like housing and issues of equity.

So she's really making this a comprehensive plan and a chance for people to not just think about where things are right now, but where they really want to see our region be in the future.

- That's good because then we can be better than we are right now.

'cause obviously that's what we want to do is be prepared for the future, not have to react to it after we've arrived there.

So Good.

Well thank you so much Marissa.

- Thank you.

- And we'll be back in just a moment.

We'll be talking about water quality in the region in just a moment here on "The Journal".

Representatives of the Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments back in just a moment.

Thank you for staying with "The Journal".

Our guests are from the Toledo Metropolitan Council of Government.

We're joined this segment again by Sandy Spang, Executive Director and in this segment by Kari Gerwin, who is the water Quality Planning Director for TMACOG.

And I know you're working on a big project right now called the Water Force, excuse me, Water Workforce Coalition.

So talk about what that entails 'cause it sounds like it's going to be pretty important to us.

- Sure, so this is a workforce development program for the drinking water and wastewater industry.

As Sandy mentioned earlier in the show, we've worked with local governments from across our four-county region.

And in some of the discussions that we've had with these utilities, both drinking water and wastewater utilities, over the last five years, we've realized that there's an impending.

workforce shortage in this industry.

Ohio EPA actually surveyed the utilities back in 2018 and predicted a 40% retirement by 2028 so now is a great time to start getting into water jobs.

- Yeah, 'cause that's something we don't think about.

Those plants run, they provide that incredibly important service to us both on water quality, fresh water, and also then of course wastewater.

And we sort of take it for granted, there are always going to be people there operating that and doing it in a highly efficient and effective way.

and it's not a job you hear a lot about, - You really don't, - "Like oh, I'm going into waste water treatment."

- But we're trying to change that (chuckles).

I'm going to wastewater be a wastewater treatment operator.

It's not one that you hear people talk about a lot.

So what are some of the things you're trying to do to get people involved in that?

Because it's obviously going to be important to it.

- Sure, so we have developed a 16-week training program.

This has been developed by Owens Community College, also in consultation with the City of Toledo and our water utilities from the region to make sure that anyone coming into this field has all the education and on-the-job training they need to enter into an entry-level position as a water operator or a wastewater operator.

So this is an intensive 16-week program.

Basically full-time students are going to be in a classroom at Owens from nine to four, four days a week.

And then every Friday they'll actually be in the plant.

So if they choose to go the wastewater track, they will be in a wastewater plant.

And the same for the drinking water track.

So this will give them the opportunity to work directly with existing and current operators, learn from them, get some of their hands-on skills that they'll need to enter the field.

- Because these are going to be careers that are going to be long term.

This isn't the type of job that's going to go away in 10 years or five years.

It requires hands-on and expertise at the point of contact with all of this stuff.

Because we all know, when you have water treatment issues, everybody notices that right away.

And I guess this is a situation where I say we've taken for granted that there always are people that are going to take on that responsibility.

And it's a big one because obviously water coming in, water going out is basically the lifeblood of what we do, whether it's industrial, residential, whatever.

We have to have people that manage that and manage it well.

- And these are very secure jobs, as you pointed out.

These are going to be jobs that are here well into the future.

There's a bit of automation that can occur, but you're not going to look at AI taking over your job as a wastewater operator.

- Now you said there's a 16-week class, will that be done multiple times during the year or how does that work?

- Sure, so what I should have mentioned that this is a program that is funded by the US EPA Office of water.

So this is a nearly half a million grant that we've received from US EPA and that will allow us to provide this program for free for at least three, possibly four cohorts.

So the cohort size is 24 and we hope to offer at least three, possibly four with this grant funding.

So the first cohort will begin in January.

So we are actively recruiting.

- Recruiting right - Right now, yes.

We've had a great turnout with an information session that we had last month at Owens Community College.

There'll be another one on November 8th.

So I invite anyone who's interested to stop by and learn all about this program at that event.

And then another thing that we're doing on the 16th of November is offering plant tours.

So we're asking people who are interested to come out, visit a wastewater plant and a drinking water plant, sort of get a feel for what these jobs are.

Sometimes you don't really understand until you're on site and you see what's going on, smell all the smells, all of that.

- And well just see literally the high level of technology we're talking here because it isn't simply valves and whatever and pipe, there's all of the technical parts, all the electrical stuff, all of the monitoring, all of those sensors and things that require that level of expertise.

- These are definite STEM jobs.

So what's really cool about this field is that through this program, you could get some exposure to the STEM component.

But really you're learning a lot of the science, technology, engineering and math on the job.

So especially for folks who aren't necessarily interested in sitting through four years of a college degree, they can get a lot of the science on the job.

- And fill a need that is imminent is like immediate right now.

And they can simply go to your site and find all the information on when those events are and information about the program itself.

- Yes, we launched a new website called waterworksforyou.org.

and you can link to all of our events that we have coming up.

You can also request more information and then we'll connect you with Owens Community College so you can go through the registration process.

- Well great.

Well yeah, thank you Kari so much for that.

Because obviously as we know we deal with that every day.

We see it every day.

But we take that for granted every day.

Like a lot of things that you folks are involved in, we assume it's always going to be there.

Whether it's a road, it's a water situation, it's an economic, we just assume it happens somehow by magic.

But the reality is it's people like you and all the people that you work with and all the agencies, the entities of jurisdictions that make all of that happen.

And we see the end result and it's like there's a lot of work.

Well we talk about the 30 year planning for whatever, the same thing probably happens with water quality stuff.

There's planning long range for that as well.

- And this meets a tremendous need of our members, our municipalities, but it also creates a wonderful opportunity for careers in our region.

And it's an economic development driver because water is one of our greatest economic development tools.

So properly staffing these plants is critically important.

So it really is a big win for our region and a great program.

- Great, well we're going to end it right there.

'cause we got to get going.

But we appreciate it and again, glad to have you guys on any time to talk about things.

'cause obviously regional development, whether it's water, transportation, economic, whatever, even a program like this, people need to know about.

So we can keep moving forward in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan.

So thank you so much for being here.

- Great talking to you.

- Thank for having us.

- You can join us every Thursday night at 8:00 PM You can check us out at wbgu.org.

We will see you again next time on "The Journal".

Goodnight and good luck.

(gentle upbeat music)