Around The Industry By Gary Gleason - Around the Industry: Meeting Challenges with Creativity

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Around The Industry: Meeting Challenges with Creativity
By Gary Gleason

Growth and budget pressures continue to be the watchword for the industry as we enter the second quarter of 2007, and public works agencies are responding with a wide array of creative solutions. In this edition of Around The Industry we report on some of the challenges public works directors are facing and innovative practices that help them cope.

Costs
All across the country public works directors are reprioritizing in response to swings in the price for everything from fuel to fire-retardant.

“What our dollar could buy a few years ago our dollar cannot buy today,” said Dave Babbitt, Public Works Director for Bingham County, Idaho. “We can no longer continue to just do everything. We’ve had to adjust our priorities.”

Changing of priorities has some communities extending their chip-and-seal improvements from seven to 10 years between treatments. Others, such as Madison County Mississippi, are trying alternatives including liquid asphalt mixed with aggregate to create a durable but less-costly road surface.

“We’ve been using that liquid asphalt for three years, and it’s holding up pretty good so far,” said Helen Keller, Office Manager for Madison County. “We’re watching it pretty close.”

While costs go up, revenues are down for many. We have been reporting for several issues now on diminishing Highway User’s Tax Fund (HUTF) revenues. The HUTF is a state tax on motor fuel and vehicle licensing fees, which the state collects and disperses to the cities and counties based on number of paved lane miles. HUTF is charged as a percentage of gallons pumped rather than a percent of sales, so as people drive less and drive more fuel-efficient cars, less money is available. And communities that are not building new roads are losing their share.

“Three quarters of our funding come from HUTF,” explained Babbitt, “and our share of the pie is shrinking as highways are increased around the state. Ada County district used be just over 1600 lane miles, and now has over 2000 miles. In that same time ours has gone from 1212 to 1224 miles. Our portion of the pie keeps getting smaller even though our road miles are not decreasing. The difference is that development (in Bingham County) has been more along existing roads, where Ada County had to build roads to where they wanted to build subdivisions.”

Growth Pains
Of course, adding more lane miles and new subdivisions brings a whole new set of customers for public works agencies to try to please.

“With the growth in the population we see a difference in the types of complaints we get. We have put in more turn lanes, more signals, more multi-lane roads, some brand new connecting roads… With more eyes on the road we just get more calls,” said Scott Bressler, Operations Deputy for Butler County, Ohio.

And, as Pitkin County Public Works Director Brian Pettit of Aspen points out, additional customers mean additional demands for new services.

“There are pressures every year for safety enhancement and surface improvements. Each of those improvements is not a lot of money, but they add up,” Pettit said. “Baby-boomers moving out of metropolitan areas expect metropolitan-level services. That’s the reality of a rural county. For example, depending on where you live snow removal may not happen the day of the storm. It is not just a matter of raising our level of service, but managing consumer expectations on what service level they can expect.”

One of the strategies Pitkin County is using help set those expectations is a transportation and asphalt assessment plan. This plan will forecast the quality of county roadways 20 years in the future given current funding levels and growth predictions. The goal is to help elected officials choose between budget increases or diminishing roadway standards.

The most proactive of public works agencies, however, are focusing less on rising costs and more on capturing alternative funding sources. Butler County, Ohio even has a full time person on staff whose sole job is to find and secure grants for the department. They are apparently doing something right.

“We only put up $6-7 million of our own money for about $36-37 million in work we’re doing now,” Bressler said. “Having someone whose primary job is getting the money has been a huge benefit for us.”

Best Practices
In speaking with our industry peers this quarter we also heard a number of examples of how agencies are coping with growth and cost pressures. Some are simple, others high tech. One of the simplest, of course, is taking good care of the roads in the first place.

“We work hard to protect the road base, because that’s the main cause of road failure. We’re doing a lot more crack sealing and chip sealing to see which preserves our assets the longest,” Babbit said. It’s like shingles on your roof: it is cheaper to replace the shingle than fix the water damage once it gets in.”

One of the new tools to improve and protect dirt road surfaces, according to Greenlee County Engineer Phil Ronnerud, is a new mobile crusher developed by the U.S. Forest Service. His agency leases the machine when it is not otherwise employed by the Forest Service.

“It’s basically an adaptation of a milling machine for dirt roads to smooth down hard, rocky spots. They call it a trimmer,” Ronnerud said.

One of the more technical of the strategies our associates discussed with us this quarter is in Bingham County Idaho, where plans are in the works for fuel generation from municipal solid waste.

“We have agreement in principal with a company building a Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) plant, converting our waste to fuel products such as Methanol, BDE, Ethanol, and Propane,” Babbitt said. Right now we’re paying $39/ton to dispose of our waste, and they’ll take it for $20/ton. I get rid of my garbage and have cheaper fuel prices.”

When the plant opens in 2008 it is expected to produce 32,000 gallons of Methanol per day.

It is inspiring to see such diverse approaches to the challenges of our time and money. That is the backbone of our work here at Tracker Software: helping you keep track of what you are doing and where your money is going. If we can help you in that quest, please let us know.

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At Tracker Software we continue to be impressed by the innovation, ingenuity and resilience of our clients. It is a proud pleasure to provide you with tools that help you succeed.

Table of Contents Volume 3, Edition 2

Costs All across the country public works directors are reprioritizing in response to swings in the price for everything from fuel to fire-retardant.