Tax dollars private VS State municipal work

Glad this some what came up. In my area there is a big debate on it. The ideas are to put out for private work stuff like road and municipal work. Examples are paving use a paving company instead of the state highway dept. 2. Snow plow and road mowing use private instead of county. The for crowed sees more money in private sector and less municipal crews and equipment. The against seems to say can't get the work done. Lack of quality control, supervision nightmare. Due to insurance, OSHA etc. you will only get big outfits and thus the "mob" etc. will thrive. So what is your opinion? I lean toward it with state, county being the supervisor but with a small force to fill any gap or deal with emergency.

in Omaha, we have some private mowing contractors in medians and such-I think the city still does the parks? Also, private snow plows in residential areas, while the city does the main roads. They tell us they are delaying residential plowing until the mains are passable!

State hires private contractors for snow removable in my area and the private guys keep the roads a whole lot better than the state ever did.

(quoted from post at 12:41:48 10/17/16) in Omaha, we have some private mowing contractors in medians and such-I think the city still does the parks? Also, private snow plows in residential areas, while the city does the main roads. They tell us they are delaying residential plowing until the mains are passable!

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The last engineering firm I worked for in Omaha had a contract with the city to be inspectors of the private snow removal. Their job was to go out and inspect that every road has been cleared to their satisfaction. They begin their shift when the contractor begins his.

I always liked the idea some western states have with people making hay along the interstate highway, so mowing was not needed

I see both sides of the argument, but in my area (county at least) not much gets done, be it county or contractor (State does quite a bit better, but still political). There is a county bridge being replaced just down the road from me, crossing my property. Keep in mind this is being funded from several sources, including fish and wildlife, conservation, county, etc. It was put out for bid, but only one bidder, so it appears he named his price. I went to the bid opening, and it was almost unbelievable. The sole bid was hand carried in a few minutes before opening by the contractors girl friend, and everyone was on a first name basis. This is a small elevated/low water crossing across a county road, approx. 21 feet wide, and approx. 100 feet wide. Bid (not including removal of old slab) was $229,000 and change with completion to be done in 60 days. Construction began in July, and it is now October, and the only thing finished is the support piers. Typical good ol boy job, and no one is holding anyone's feet to the fire to get this done (call and you get a run around and no call back), and meanwhile I detour approx 5 miles one way to commute to work every day.

It varies widely with the job and the interest of the contractors. Contractors generally want more steady work instead of intermittent work, plus they don't want to invest big dollars for specialized equipment. I think a lot of places would like to hire rather than own their own equipment, but doesn't work out too well in many cases. For example, I know of one state that doesn't get much snow, hired contractors with graders to clean the highways. Unfortunately one contractor forgot to take off the steel cutting edge on the grader and replace it with a rubber cutting edge because of all the lane markers epoxied to the road surface. The operator shaved off 5 miles of lane marker bumpers before they got him stopped. Contractor tried to get by without paying to replace the lane markers, even though it was plainly covered in the contract; he lost the battle but the contractors wouldn't bid on any state snow removal work after that, so the state had to buy their own equipment.

In my part of Ohio most road work, except small maintenance work is done by contractors. Have never seen the state/county/city do anything approaching major work.

County does all the work mowing snow clearing except the townships do their own mowing and snow plowing, builds 99% of bridges in county. They do contract out the paving instead of owning the equipment, very good paving company and they do the state highways as well. State plows and mows their own. The state has to contract out by bid all road building. If we get a very big blizzard then if they need help will hire outside help to compensate for needing more pay loaders than they own. It is the goverments job to take care of that type of stuff not to contract it out. Even the private prizons are illeagal.

I'm a township supervisor- our township is a large one- 8600 people. We have a 4 man highway crew- they do snow plowing, road shouldering, mowing, etc. Another local township of similar size abolished their highway dept and hired private contractors. In the case of snow removal and salt, they spend 2-3x what we do... even when we consider all costs like capital expense for the trucks, crew member time plowing, etc.

We do not do our own paving, but we do keep a man on the paving contractor crew to supervise so we do not have to pay someone else. We also shoulder after they are done.

Thanks for the input, explaining both sides of the argument, and thanks for taking the thankless job.

Find out if your state requires prevailing wages, heavy construction rates, with extra on the end for holiday pay, overtime pay, health and retirement pay, etc. pay. Find out about liability insurance, workman's comp. Find out about performance bonding. And I mean find out actual information, from competent attorneys or local civil engineers, not just down at the Table of Wisdom at the coffee shop.

For equality for all concerned, also find out about writing good specifications, advertising, competitive bidding, taking bids, and opening bids.

Your welcome. I have one of those D@#$$% meetings tonight.

By the way, want to see where most of youre tax dollars go? Almost 3/4 of it. Makes me want 5o barf sometimes.

Now you are making it too complicated. You are messing up the "Magic solution".

Here in Indiana the townships do nothing. The county is responsible for rural
road maintenance. Our county usually hires out paving work tho they do some themselves. And you can sure tell the difference. The county work is usually crap.
So what's wrong with paying a decent wage and having insurance, workers comp, etc? Sounds like you re jealous.

It all depends on the area. At the county I work for, we don't do any paving, even though 4 of my coworkers used to work for paving contractors. We don't have the money for the equipment, or enough townships that have enough money to pay for the paving. The townships are financially responsible for the class "B", or local roads, and the Road Commission is financially responsible for the class "A", or primary roads. But, the Road Commission is the one that does the maintenance to the primary and local roads. We are also contracted with the state of MI to maintain the state trunk lines through our county, M57,M46, and US127. We don't do bridges either, we don't have cranes or the manpower to do them. We only do culverts under 48" as well. It used to be one driver per township, but to save money, we all take care of a township and a quarter now. For instance, in my territory, I have a total of 79 miles of roads to maintain, which actually means 158 miles when you figure both lanes for plowing, scraping, etc. Mine is about half pavement, and half gravel roads. So along with the territory is scraping roads, mowing (twice on blacktop,once on gravel per year), crack sealing, patching potholes, shoulder gravel on blacktop, hauling and patching gravel spots, cutting trees and trimming limbs, scraping for chloride, plowing snow (must be completely done in one work day). I also run the tack truck for chip seal, and the chloride tanker every other summer. We do have a backhoe operator, loader operator, and a sign guy that is used as a fill in when there isn't any sign work. It's amazing how many people have no idea what we are doing though. When crack sealing last week, a lady came out and asked why we were vacuuming the road. Then you have people that don't understand why you scrape the road so it is all dusty right before you spray it with chloride. 1) to fill in the potholes 2) you have to take the road "out" to get all the stones off the surface so you are spraying basically just the base material. Loose stones roll, tear up the chloride layer, shortening its life substantially. You will never make everybody happy, best you can do is just try to do a good job. People will tell you all sorts of stuff. The road is too bumpy, when there's only a couple potholes. The road is too smooth, people drive to fast. I don't want chloride on my road. I don't want a dusty road, put chloride on it. The townships all pay us as the contractor. We are exempt from hour limits unlike most CDL drivers. We are shorthanded so if we get a bad storm in winter, most of us will work in our territory all day, then come in and switch out our trucks for the state trucks and run on the state all night while the state guys get some rest. We are contracted by the state, so it MUST be done. We try to keep it under 16-18 hours, but sometimes we just sleep in our trucks in the barn to get the extra 45 minutes we would spend driving home and back. During a bad winter, we get many days of only 3-4 hours of sleep, but we are always told that if we need to get off the road, then just do it, don't be dangerous. Many people don't like to get called at anytime of the night and then drive for 45 minutes to go cut a tree off the road. The last one I did was at 2:30 in the morning, and I spent 3 hours cutting and dragging it out of the road. It was 2 36" maple trees that were tangled together and one was hanging about 25 ft up where it broke off the stump. Then other days you get called for several trees after a storm, work all night Friday night in the rain, then work half the day Saturday smelling like a wet dog. During winter, if we get called on a weekend, almost everyone comes in every time, unless someone is on vacation away from home. That way, everyone gets done at about the same time. If one person doesn't come in, it really screws up the rest of us because we have to do our work, and their work, but either way we work as a team to get things done as efficiently as we can. Today I started on my gravel roads "bringing them in" for winter. I'll probably scrape all of my gravel roads 3 times before it freezes. We bring in all the loose stone scraped off for chloride so it will pack back in and not get bladed off when plowing snow. We basically will just continue scraping our roads until they are all shaped up when it freezes so we don't have to plow pothole filled roads. I know my territory from memory, I know how to get it done in my 8 hour day. It MUST be done in a certain way at a certain speed, 40 mph when I can, or you'll never get it done in 8 hours. Every township is different, it all takes experience. We are on call 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.