Briefs

Plugged in

Stark County, Ohio, has contracted with Santa Clara, Calif.-based Thales Navigation to provide six GPS receivers to aid several surveying and mapping projects within the county.

Charlotte, N.C., and Mecklenburg County, N.C., have contracted with Dayton, Ohio-based Woolpert to merge the street centerline databases of several departments into one geodatabase.

Kendall County, Ill., has contracted with St. Charles, Ill.-based Sidwell to provide photogrammetric services.

Greene County, Ohio, has contracted with Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Sanborn to enhance the county’s GIS database. Completion is slated for March 2004.

Cook County, Ill., has contracted with Denver-based Merrick to provide digital orthophotography and LIDAR technology. The firm will provide 4,489 digital orthophotography tiles on DVDs this summer and is currently collecting LIDAR data that will be used to generate a new digital terrain model of the entire county.

Huntsville, Texas, has contracted with Walnut Creek, Calif.-based Synergen to provide asset-management software.

Detroit has contracted with West Friendship, Md.-based OmniLearn to provide a learning support system for its employees. Initially, the firm will develop training programs for the city’s general ledger, purchasing, accounts receivable and accounts payable computer applications.

Benton County, Ark., has contracted with St. Louis-based Government e-Management Solutions to provide 15 financial and human-resource software applications. The firm also will install the software and provide data conversion and training services.

Oklahoma City has contracted with Pleasanton, Calif.-based People-Soft to provide a software suite that will allow the city to electronically manage several financial and administrative functions, such as processing vendor purchase orders.

Water, water everywhere

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has contracted with Oakland, Calif.-based V&A Consulting Engineers to provide corrosion protection services for the city’s water supply system from 2003 to 2006.

The Lambertville (N.J.) Sewage Authority has contracted with Manalapan, N.J.-based Schoor DePalma to design and manage construction of upgrades to the authority’s 1.5 mgd plant.

West Palm Beach, Fla., has contracted with Morristown, N.J.-based SPL WorldGroup to provide billing and customer-service software for its water, sewer, sanitation and related accounts.

Refugio, Texas, has contracted with Chesterfield, Mo.-based Insituform Technologies to repair or replace more than six miles of sewer mains.

Park Forest, Ill., has contracted with Crystal Lake, Ill.-based Baxter & Woodman to provide design and construction engineering services for a $15.9 million water treatment plant. Construction of the facility is slated to begin in spring 2004. The 2-mgd capacity facility, which will replace an existing plant, will use a lime-soda ash softening treatment process.

Upper Dublin Township, Pa., has sold its sanitary sewer system to the Bucks County (Pa.) Water & Sewer Authority for $20 million. The authority agreed to hold rates for at least one year. After that, rates will increase over a 10-year period to the rates charged to the authority’s other customers.

If you build it…

Lumpkin County, Ga., has contracted with Atlanta-based Rosser International to design park and recreation areas funded by a special purpose local option sales tax.

The Abbeville County (S.C.) Development Board has contracted with Columbia, S.C.-based Wilbur Smith Associates to develop a master plan for a 95-acre business park.

Poway, Calif., has contracted with San Diego-based Ninyo & Moore to conduct material testing and provide inspection services during the construction of a 25,000-square-foot City Hall.

Getting there

The San Bernardino (Calif.) Associated Governments has contracted with New York-based Parsons Brinckerhoff to design improvements to Route I-10 in Redlands. The project will include adding additional lanes, closing the median gap on 11 bridges and installing 2.5 miles of sound wall noise barriers. Construction is slated to begin in summer 2004 and end in winter 2005.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, Texas, has contracted with Chesapeake, Va.-based INIT to provide an integrated vehicle operations management system.

San Diego County has contracted with San Diego-based Berryman & Henigar to provide engineering design services for the Valley Center Road East project. The project includes improvements for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Miami-Dade County, Fla., has contracted with Alpharetta, Ga.-based Mactec Engineering & Consulting to provide quality-control testing and inspection services for the $687 million expansion of the South Terminal at Miami International Airport. The expansion includes the construction of an extension to the South Terminal Building and aircraft parking areas.

And the winner is…

Four cities have received first-place City Cultural Diversity Awards from the Washington, D.C.-based National League of Cities. Phoenix won the category for cities with more than 400,000 residents for its City of Phoenix Diversity Task Force. Stockton, Calif., won the category for cities with 100,001 to 400,000 residents for its Mayor’s Campaign for Racial Harmony and Fairness Task Force. Lynwood, Calif., won the category for cities with 25,000 to 100,000 residents for its “We are One” policy-making philosophy. Enterprise, Ala., won the category for cities with less than 25,000 residents for its Multi-Cultural Club.

The Fairfax County (Va.) Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court has received an Act of Caring Award from the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Counties. The award is for the court’s Volunteer Interpreter Program, which provides interpretive services in several foreign languages for the court’s prorgrams and services.