Alternate services?

[cowman]

In the last county paper there was an article about how well "alternate services" have worked in Red Deer County. Alternate services means you privatize the service and a contractor supplys the service...sort of like what the province has done with a good portion of its road maitenance?
Anyway the article claims the county saves $1.5 million per year...on a contract of $2.1 million a year, so I assume that means if it was being done the same way as most counties that would amount to $3.6 million in the traditional way?
Now I believe there are about 18,000 residents in the county and if you figure 4 people per household the we have about 4500 taxpayers? That works out to a saving of $333 per taxpayer?
Now when they first brought out this plan of alternate services there was four phases. The first phase was to get rid of the public works/field services...the plow trucks, mowers, backhoes, signs etc. I believe the second phase was agriculture and assessment. Third phase was accounting and planning. Fourth phase was enforcement and fire fighting. The report stated all could be privatized and I believe they had estimates of the savings available? I believe the privatization of the public works/field services exceded the expected savings!
However a strange thing happened...after phase one everything ground to a halt! In fact it went the other way! So today the county has a much higher number of employees than before! Thirty three people went down the road but they have been replaced with over 40 paper pushers(and very well paid paper pushers!).
Now personally I think this privatization was the way to go if the $1.5 million is a true figure and not just the councillors cooking the books to look good? But I truly wonder why they don't continue with phase II, III, and IV?
Some people claim the privatized service isn't as good but I don't see it? The roads aren't in any worse shape considering the added traffic of an oil and gas boom like you wouldn't believe! In fact I do believe there is a lot more gravel being put on than ever before!
The article also states that no other county in Alberta has gone as far with privatization as RD County? Now why is that? Do they enjoy paying extra taxes?

[cakadu]

I think there are a couple of things to ponder before one gives this the old "two thumbs up" cowman. How exactly are they defining maintained?

Just exactly where are the savings - are they in areas where we need to save? Without seeing the exact figures, it's hard to determine if this is a good thing or not.

I also think that if you happen to live in or near the highway #2 corridor, then your roads are a little better maintained than those located out in the nether regions of the county.

There might be more gravel being put out, but have you seen how much is in the ditch? I would also say that the bonds for some of the roads are being used elsewhere because out in my region there are some roads that are in less than okay condition and they are likely only going to get worse.

There needs to be more answers before one can say that this is actually a good thing or not. Our taxes went up this year and if the county is saving so much, getting so much in oil money etc., then what was the reasoning for putting them up?

[cakadu]

Our county contracted out one grader beat as a pilot project. It cost more, and the county still bought the grader blades or else the contractor barely scratched the road. In 1997 the contract grader was costing approximately $30.00 more per mile than the county equipment complete with the operators cost and the replacement cost of the grader. By that I mean that the county had an equipment pool reserve where each hour the equipment worked ( this included pickups, graders and all county equipment ) that hourly rate was put in reserve to replace the equipment once it had a certain number of hours or kms on it.
In our area it is impossible to get contract cats to do minor construction jobs if the oil patch is busy. The county builds some of their own local roads as time and budget permit with county owned equipment and in the winter if there is no snow to plow the grader operators are kept busy doing brushing etc.
Based on my experience with municipal budgetting etc., it would take a lot to convince me that contracting equipment actually will save money in the long run.

You will find that RD County is likely only one of a handful that has gotten rid of their equipment, and it would seem to me that each municipality has done the math and found that for the most part having their own equipment is the best way to go.

[cowman]

Well the $1.5 million saving is a direct quote from the Reeve. He doesn't go into any detail!
Linda: I know what you mean by the gravel being in the ditch...I think that had more to do with the practice of "winter gravelling" which the county finally realized didn't work...well hopefully...they intend to do some this winter, but on a very small scale! They seem to have a problem with learning from their past mistakes!
Now that the county has embraced contracting out for the roads, it isn't going to change? No way will they ever admit they might have screwed up? But the important thing here is: If privatization was such a boon why haven't they continued with the plan and implemented phase II, III and IV? I would suggest that our taxes went up despite the oil money rolling in because the beuracracy is completely out of control? No one is minding the store?
I know a contractor who built a road for the county. He got an hourly contract on a D7...it never got out of low gear! That sort of stuff goes on all the time.
However, according to the Reeve and council the savings are there, so if that is true why haven't they privatized the beuracracy? Personally I have come to the conclusion the $1.5 million is a lie to protect a stupid decision that wasn't thought out very well, but what do I know? If the $1.5 number is true then lets get on with privatizing the rest of the operation?

[cowman]

Oh, and by the way, I have occasionally contracted a few small jobs with the county. Seeding and small contract spraying jobs. They never question hours or materials used! They never inspect the job site!
The temptation is there to pad the bill and with some justification? They dither and want changes and can't seem to make a decision on what they want? They are actually kind of a pain to do any work for.

[cowman]

exactly the point I am making, contractors are not going to take on a job if there isn't money to be made vs running county equipment at cost !!!

Counties usually contract the jobs to the lowest bidder and sometimes the results are a disaster.
As far as gravel in the ditch is concerned, stones are round and of course they will roll of the road, the gravel will be returned to the road when shoulder pulling takes place.

[cakadu]

The lowest bidder isn't necessarily the best as we all know -- you get what you pay for. Putting the gravel back on the road is one option, if the county chooses to take it, which, if memory serves me correctly, they didn't want that being done anymore.

There is a way to proceed, even if they did make a mistake to contract it out and I'm not saying that they did. They could take the stance that... based on this "pilot" we learned x,y,z and now we can move forward incorporating the learnings. Simple enough and shows that they were willing to learn. Nothing is ever perfect and one can't know all of the consequences when making a decision.

Out of curiosity, how can the county not want to take into consideration costs, inputs etc. when they have GPS on all the equipment and can tell where they are and how long it is taking?

[cakadu]

I think that the growth facing RD County has made them decide to be rid of one major component which is machinery and a large public works staff, vs having more planners and development people to handle the vast number of applications that come. If as cowman says, the number of employees is growing, then obviously it is in the planning end of things, support staff etc. I wonder if the county has their own engineering department as well to deal with wastewater issues.

[cowman]

Linda: They have GPS on the plow trucks and the graders, not on road building equipment from independent contractors. Unfortunately they don't know whether that grader is going down the road with the blade up or down! The county doesn't buy the blades and won't take the rise in costs into consideration...therefore the blades aren't pushed very hard!
They do pull the ditches but this gravel is so far off the road no grader is going to pull it! In some places there is up to a foot of gravel at the bottom of the ditch!
The county does have an engineering staff that seems uncapable of building a road the first time? Usually takes three or four tries! I believe they deal with some drainage issues but most waste water type things are contracted out to EPCOR? Things like sewage lagoons etc.

[cowman]

Linda:For an example of the county engineering staffs ability to build a road check out the road built two years ago west of the Medicine river on #592(west of Penhold)? Notice how the idiots didn't put in wide enough culverts so the road has washed away around them and the road is almost down to one lane traffic? Notice how they didn't get the drainage right and the runoff floods out the farmers fields? I was working on a lease near there and got a full run down from a local farmer!
This is a very high end road designated for paving in the near future...well after they rebuild it...hopefully only once!
I suspect any competent road builder should know how to build a road?
I do know of two other roads where the contractor told the engineering staff the fill they were using was not going to work, but the engineering staff refused to listen. Consequently they went ahead and paved one of these roads and it is an obvious disaster with the patch crew out every week and the pavement all ridged because the base keeps shifting! On the other road the sides keep sloughing off depositing some farmer hauling grain in the ditch!
They hauled river silt over thirty miles because they got a "deal" on it! Some deal?
The paved road is a disaster. Eight miles of high grade road paved and it will eventually need to be tore up, the silt hauled away and a new clay base hauled in. This is the third attempt at building this road and I guess we will have one more go at it! The cost must be out of this world!
Now if there was a screwup like this in the real world, someone would be going down the road? But apparently not when it is the county engineering staff?