To this day, before I conduct interviews for rocoinhoco.com, I get nervous. And so it was last Monday an hour before I was set to meet Krishnakanth Jagarapu, or Kris J as he is known for short, the Chief of Howard County’s Bureau of Highways. Colleen experiences no such nervousness, probably because she spends an hour before each of her interviews praying, divining, and generally banishing all negativity from her aura (her words!). Alas, I’m no such amateur guru, so I have to rely on more…terrestrial, shall we way, methods of calming myself down–such as the Chocolate Cocoa Waffle at Eggspectation! So I trotted down from our room at the Sheraton in downtown Columbia to the parking garage and hopped into the Kia Soul Colleen and I just bought to make my way there. Halfway through my journey, I thought it might be nice to have some company. So in the parking lot of the restaurant, I texted Jen Terrasa (D-13) and asked her to meet meet me. She agreed.
More Cheesy Foods, Fewer Cheesy Words
As walked into Eggspectation, I thought how I would never have been able to rendez-vous with Sherrie–the daughter of our good friends Margy and Allan Feigelson–at the Eggspectation in Owings Mills a few weeks ago were it not for the web of highways, byways, and everything in between that snake around and out of HoCo. And then I would never have had my first taste of waffle and chocolate doused in mascarpone cheese that is the Chocolate Cocoa Waffle. That would be my angle for this article, I thought. Then again, that may have been too cutesy even for RoCo. But the kernel of that thought, that Kris J and his team of 140 employees connect the far-flung corners of the 253 square miles that is Howard County with each other and beyond, was still true.
And then I heard Kenneth Greif’s voice in my head. Kenny taught English at the Park School of Baltimore and was another good friend of mine and Colleen’s. We’d often get into long conversations about literature, and one time he spent next to an hour talking about a phrase from E.M. Forester’s Howard’s End. It was riveting.
I could hear him say: “Only connect,” that haunting line from Forester’s classic.
“Only connect! Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height,” Forester wrote. And then it hit me. Kris and his crew see to it not only that people in HoCo are connected to places or even that places are connected to places. They see to it that people are connected to people. In this time of fractured Trumpian politics, the breakdown of Martin Luther King’s dream that we could all live together in peace, and climate change induced-disasters that threaten to take more and more lives as weather gets more unpredictable, that’s no small feat.
The Road More Traveled
Jen and I said our goodbyes in the parking lot of Eggspectation. She stopped to look back at me as she got in her burgundy minivan.
“Who are you interviewing again?”
“Kris J from the Bureau of…”
“Oh my god, he’s the best. When I was on the council and we wanted something done, we went to Kris J,” she said. She climbed into the driver’s seat, then smiled and waved as she drove off.
Over at the Bureau of Highways offices on Riverwood Drive, I sat across from Kris in a conference room that had been recently renovated and had that sparkly feel that brand new interiors do.
“When county residents are using the roadways, they start from some place and they’re trying to get to some place. My role is to see they get there without too many issues,” Kris told me as I took a sip from a bottle of water his Administrative Assistant Amy Rill had brought me a few minutes ago. He said the primary challenge he faces in his work is responding to weather events and making sure that when they happen, the county’s roadways are still safe and passable.
This work of maintaining the county’s roadways differs from the work of other departments in the Department of Public Works, of which the Bureau is a part, in one important way. Highways doesn’t do its work on a project-to-project basis.
“We have to maintain things in perpetuity,” Kris said. “I have a wonderful staff, and we have to maintain things, essentially forever.” In this work, they rely on the public and interaction with it. If there’s a problem on one of the county’s 3,600 roadways, Kris and his staff may not know about it.
“That’s why any time I attend a public meeting I tell people, ‘Please call us. Please let us know,'” Kris said, smiling. He told me of two apps, SeeClickFix and TellHoCo, essentially the same app, that make it easy for residents to report any concerns they have about the network of arteries that allow us to get from A to B and beyond.
Another point Kris made that I’d never thought about despite being a fan of Columbia history is that much of the city was built at the same time. There was a boom in development about 50 years ago when this little oasis sprouted up in HoCo. Hence, it’s aging at the same time.
“The aging infrastructure is one of the main challenges we face,” Kris said.
Getting the Show on the Road
Kris was born in the state of Andrha Pradesh in India. He completed his Master’s in Civil Engineering in and got certified as a Professional Engineer. Then he went to work in the private sector. In 2009 he came to the Bureau of Highways.
He chuckled when I asked him what a typical day is like for him and his staff.
“It’s a busy day. I try to pull myself out of the daily routine and do more proactive stuff,” he said. He and his staff, whom he said are indespensable to him, try to reduce the amount of reactive work and increase the amount of planning they do.
He said that there’s a risk in his work of getting stuck just fixing what problems arise every day and not approaching the maintenance of the county’s roadways with forethought.
“My goal is for us to be prepared, so we can react to the things we don’t control and are able to provide the service the citizens expect from us,” he said.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Roadways But Were Afraid to Ask
“Pretty much anything that you see along a roadway we have to maintain,” Kris told me.
In the course of that maintenance, Kris and his staff work with nearly every other department in the county. And the eternal turn of the seasonal tides is a big part of their work. In the winter, they’re clearing the roads after snow events, in the spring they begin mowing along the streets and sidewalks, in summer they’re fixing potholes, and in the fall they’re making sure the sudden deluge of leaves isn’t interfering with the lives of HoCo-ans. Again, talk turned to the weather.
“Uncertainty with the weather plays a big role in this,” Kris said.
That uncertainty has increased a lot in Kris’ 10 years with the county, with the effects of climate change becoming more frequent and more dire.
“When we’re planning to do things a certain way, throw in a weather event–whether it’s a flood, a tornado or a snow event or anything else–you drop what you’re doing and react to that,” he said. Then, the gang at the Bureau has to go back and pick up whatever they were working on prior to the weather event they dropped things to react to.
“A lof of times we have drainage-type concerns with the recent floods that we haven’t seen in years past,” Kris added.
The former director of the Patapsco Heritage Greenway, Mary Catherine Cochran, lauded the Bureau for how “responsive and dependable” they were when her organization’s did trash clean-ups.
“After a big clean up, we’d sort the trash from the metal and recycling and let them know and they’d come and scoop it up,” she told me in a Facebook Direct Message exchange a few days after I met with Kris.
Still Waters Run Deep
Kris is tall and broad-shouldered, but he has a placid presence. I assumed this outer calm bespoke an inner Zen that likely served him well in a job that I gathered could be stressful at times.
“When things come up, I have to respond to it whatever time of day it is,” he said. And a lot of things come up, I can say with confidence, based on something else Kris said. I asked him what he would do as Chief of the Bureau if money were not an object.
He’d make sure that he and his team weren’t in a constant head-to-head with that cruel mistress who taunts us all–time!
“I would make sure all of our roadways are paved on time. I would make sure all of the signals we have to upgrade would be upgraded on time. I would make sure all the signs we need to upgrade would be upgraded on time. I would make sure all the trees we need to prune were pruned on time,” he said. Kris and his team don’t just have a hand in the maintenance of the 3,600 roadways in the county. They have to keep up HoCo’s 1,200 stormwater management ponds and 30,000 signs. In addition, they are solely responsible for the servicing of 100 traffic signals in the county, and they often pitch in with the oversight of the 7,900 street lights to provide light along the county’s roadways.
Street Smart
Before Kris and I parted ways, I simply had to know more about how the roads in Columbia are named. As a fan of all things words-and-language-related, I’m fascinated by the city’s whimsical street names–Open Window, Red Bandana, Rippling Tides…the list goes on and on! In fact, during my date with Jen earlier, I’d mentioned I’d be asking Kris about this.
Jen told me I had to get a book called, Oh, You Must Live In Columbia: The Origin of Place Names In Columbia. It catalogs all the streets in the area and their literary, poetic, or other basis. I immediately ordered it online, and it arrived at my doorstep the next day.
“All the roadways are typically built by a developer,” Kris added as I rested my chin in my hand and leaned in as if I were listening to a spooky story over a campfire. He said that with every development comes requirements to build roadways.
“When they build the roadways, they have to come up with the names,” he said.
When Columbia was founded in the 1960s, someone was tasked with coming up with its original street names.
“Oh, to be that person!” I thought and smiled to myself.
Missy Burke, Robin Emrich, and Barbara Kellner, authors of the book I mentioned above, list all of Columbia’s fanciful street names–emblazoned on those iconic blue street signs–and cross-reference the snippet of literature or poetry they find their origin in. They write: “The names are full of possibilities. After you have read and re-read the poem or gazed for hours at the art of your namesake street, why not find a way to show off your new-found knowledge?”
The authors list dozens of ways you can have craft-y fun with the street’s monikers. They even tell of Columbia natives who’ve had fun with the town’s distinctive road names, penning poems based on them. This includes a long-form poem by Columbia resident and former writer for the Columbia Flier, Phyllis Kepner, in which she writes a Christmas poem that mimics the form of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.
On the Road Again
Knowing that we HoCo-ans rely on the constant passabilty and availability of our roadways, Kris takes both pride and pleasure in the work he and his team does.
“It’s rewarding to serve the public,” he said, “And it’s an important job that we do.”
Amy Rill is Kris’ Administrative Assistant. She apoke too of the team effort that’s a crucial part of her job.
“I feel that the most valuable part of my job is customer service. I am the first person that the resident speaks to so it is important to know what key questions to ask so we can help resolve the issue.”
Rill says after speaking with HoCo-ans about concerns they have abour county roadways, she takes it to to the approriate Bureau staff.
“relay the information to the supervisors to include the type of problem, location, and severity of the issue,” she told me in an email exchange. Also she noted that her strong relationships with Bureau supervisors and those out in the field are vital to addressing resident’s input.
“Knowing how they operate turns a tornado event into just another busy day at the Bureau of Highways. Teamwork is essential in our department and without my team I would be lost!” she said.
As I drove out of the parking lot of the Bureau’s offices and embarked on my way back to the Sheraton, I took with me a new admiration for how each road I took was clean to look at, comfortable to drive on, and easy to navigate–and how much work it takes to make this all possible.
Also: Regina Clay dished with us on HoCo’s spiritual life.
Thanks for reading! Check back with us here at rocoinhoco.comevery week as Robert, Colleen (and pup, Moses) get to know the many facets—one each week–of this prismatic place called Howard County. We want to take you along with us, so follow us on Twitter at @rocoinhoco, join our Facebook group, and follow us on Instagram at @rocoinhoco.