Editorial: ADA Push in Newberg – Consider Joining the Concrete Crew

Written by: Newberg City Manager Will Worthey. Any opinions expressed here are his own.

Want a hands-on job where you can help residents in your city get around?

The city needs people skilled in concrete work, and here’s why:

Since 2021, the City of Newberg has focused on its Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) plan to make the city’s facilities and streets accessible to all. Newberg has been developing an ADA Self-Evaluation and Transition Plan.

The Newberg ADA plan demonstrates the city’s commitment to providing equal access to its public programs, services, facilities, and activities for residents with disabilities. This plan targets specific city facilities, including buildings and pedestrian access routes within the right-of-way, such as sidewalks, curb ramps, street crossings, and on-street parking.

This next step is critical for our focus on sidewalks, curbs, and ramps. As a part of this effort, the city has developed a list of primary pedestrian routes in the last few years that we want to see enhanced, to allow more mobility for all our residents.

Click HERE to see an interactive map of these primary routes.

One of the biggest problems we have seen with fixing the relevant sidewalk sections is that many have small breaks in just a few sidewalk panels that effectively limit the value of an entire route! These small sections are often so minor that contractors the city usually employs do not want to bid on work that’s only a yard wide. This is a significant problem caused by small damaged sections of our sidewalk.

This issue was brought to my attention when I was new on the job in 2022. I asked our staff what we could do to solve this problem. After exploring other solutions, the idea emerged to hire our own three-person sidewalk crew in public works to fix the damaged or missing sections.

The fiscal pressures of finishing a few very major roads projects have delayed this project, but we are now ready to hire this crew and target them at our worst or missing sidewalk sections along primary routes. This will also enable us to make our road repair dollars go further, by fixing the ramp and sidewalk sections ahead of re-paving efforts. This saves money for the city in comparison to sub-contracting everything. 

If you are skilled with your hands, especially in the world of concrete, or know someone who is, please lean in and apply (or let them know). This is a noble cause, and we are a great place to work with second to none benefits! See the job listings from Concrete Finisher I, to Concrete Crew Chief.

Apply Here

Will Worthey is the City of Newberg’s City Manager. To reach him directly, email will.worthey@newbergoregon.gov.