Frankfort Street Superintendent Brian Kilman and Park Superintendent Ryan Edgar joined WILO and Boone 102.7 FM’s Party Line program this week to discuss how the city weathered a historic wave of flooding across Indiana, along with storm cleanup, staffing changes and a slate of fall projects for both departments.
The conversation opened with talk of a potential $300,000 investment the city could use to combat drainage problems that have worsened during this year’s exceptionally wet season. The proposed investment is a ‘Vac Sweeper’ that would be able to not only clean Frankfort’s streets, but clean out drains as well. This is beyond the capability of equipment currently used by the Street Department. The Vac Sweeper is “never gonna prevent full flooding, but to help like what we’ve been going through this season — yeah, it would be huge to have in our arsenal,” Kilman said. He pointed to clogged storm drains as a persistent culprit. “The debris and stuff, because I mean sticks and cans. Sticks when people blow their grass out on the roads, all that stuff… it just gets in there and it just continues to clog it up,” Kilman said.
Both officials credited a long-running east side drainage project — the product of years of city-county collaboration and private-sector support, including from Rusty Schultz — with sparing Frankfort from the kind of flooding that once put water in Case Arena and near the Burger King, problems local radio personality Vern Kaspar complained about for decades. “Finally, you know, the county and city came together, and it took collaboration and cooperation to be able to do that,” Kilman said. Even so, water pooled on 28 West during recent storms, a state road where the city’s role is limited to warning drivers. “The main thing we do is we just put signage up to alert people of where the high water is,” Kilman said.
The pair put the flooding in a broader context, noting that 53 Indiana counties have been under a state of emergency amid what officials have called a 500-year flood event exceeding levels seen since 1913. Sheridan drew on his own history responding to major floods, recalling volunteer work during the 1993 Mississippi River flood. “We moved 26,000 sandbags in ’93, and we were going into homes with scoop shovels and scooping the mud out of the kitchen floors,” he said, adding that Frankfort has largely been “blessed” compared to hard-hit communities and urged residents to support the Red Cross, Salvation Army and local churches assisting flood victims elsewhere.
On the parks side, Edgar described a season of catch-up mowing and repeated storm cleanup. “This week’s the first week we’ve had a full week of mowing,” Edgar said, noting TPA Park has flooded repeatedly and crews have cleared downed limbs “at least once a week, sometimes twice a week, depending on when the storm come through.”
A tree fell on a park tool shed during a recent storm, and Edgar said the department is still working through an insurance claim. “It should be here next month, I’d say. Hopefully,” he said.
Looking ahead, Edgar outlined his top priorities for the rest of the year: finishing new basketball goals and court resurfacing at TPA Park, Circle Park and Green Street, completing renovation of the park’s caboose, and finishing playground work on Third Street. He also addressed earlier vandalism concerns, saying a staffing change — with an employee now working a night shift through early Sunday mornings — has curbed incidents. “We’ve seen a lot of that stuff cut back,” Edgar said. “It’s actually turned out pretty good.”
Kilman said his own priorities include finishing alley work in the southeast part of town and starting street paving once utility work clears the way, likely by mid-September or early October. He also flagged an increased salt budget heading into winter due to newly annexed areas near Frendo and the Jefferson factories, and said the department plans to begin using treated salt, which performs in colder temperatures than the untreated salt currently used. “The treated salt can go down towards negative temperatures. The non-treated stops around ten, fifteen degrees,” Kilman explained.
Both officials also confirmed normal trash collection will continue on Labor Day, since the city works every holiday except Thanksgiving and Christmas. “We just bring a skeleton crew in, they just run trash and then we go home,” Kilman said.
The conversation touched on longer-term community goals as well, including expanding walking trails, cleanup of the roundhouse property under a recent grant, and continued investment in west-side neighborhoods — themes the officials said will factor into the city’s ongoing comprehensive planning process.
