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An avenue for collaboration
YOUNGSTOWN
As local governments look to share services and cut costs, some officials see road paving as an avenue for collaboration.
In Boardman, less than three of the township’s 146 miles of road are being paved, said Road Superintendent Larry Wilson.
“If we take the bid together, one or two of the bigger companies ... that have the equipment and ability to do could quote us one price. Maybe we could do 10 miles a year at a lower price” per mile, Wilson said.
That type of collaboration has been done before in Mahoning County on a smaller scale, said Marilyn Kenner, chief deputy Mahoning County engineer.
“We have had other townships bid with us several times over the years,” she said.
This year, Poland village and Canfield city joined with the county on paving projects on North Lima Road and Fairgrounds Boulevard, respectively, Kenner said. In total, this year the county repaved 11.9 miles of the roughly 480 miles of road it maintains at a cost of $1.2 million.
But Wilson set his sights larger: on a county-wide paving program. He pointed out that Summit County successfully completed such a feat this year.
Kenner said she has spoken to local road officials, including Wilson, about the possibility and said she “is open to it,” but has some concerns.
The first is coordinating payments.
“We would have to have language in the contract, and work it out with the prosecutor, so the townships pay [contractors] direct,” Kenner said.
If all 14 townships in the county wanted to participate, those contracts and other administrative work would likely fall to the county, as is the case now for smaller projects, Kenner said.
She said it would be helpful to have a council of governments or similar entity to represent participants and “to look at the big picture.”
The Summit County Engineer’s Office coordinated its 2011 countywide paving program, said Heidi Swindell, government affairs liaison for Summit County Engineer Alan Brubaker.
“We administered the bids and got the specs together and each individual political subdivision’s information ... We got it all in one place and organized it and went out to bid and county council awarded the bids,” Swindell said.
She said the county had a memorandum of understanding between the county and each of the political units involved that explained the programs and stipulated that there would be direct pay from the township, village or city to the contractor.
That was also explained in the bid books, she added.
Swindell said the bids were divided by the kind of work — resurfacing, crack sealing, chip-and-seal, pavement marking and asphalt rejuvenation — and into north and south geographic regions. The cost of all the contracts totaled $2,911,182.80.
Twelve local governments joined with the county in the project and not all had road needs that fell into each category, Swindell said.
But did the county and those local governments save money?
“We’re hoping we can assign a number that we saved this much, but it’s hard to get a specific number. At least each city, township and village doesn’t have to administer their own projects,” Swindell said, noting that alone should save money.
Kenner is cautious about possible savings through a county-wide program.
When the county has collaborated with individual townships, villages or cities, the bids “were not necessarily cheaper than usual,” she said.
When Austintown collaborated with Mahoning County on its resurfacing program in the early 2000s, the contractors “bid the county’s at one rate and ours at a higher rate,” said township Administrator and interim Road Superintendent Michael Dockry.
The difference was that while the total miles of road were high, the contractors would need to move equipment more in Austintown, which typically paves 100 to 1,000 feet of road consecutively, compared to the county, which paves a mile or more consecutively, Dockry said.
“It all depends on how many places you’re sending them and how far,” he said. “...One thing that everybody has to realize with collaboration in anything is if you’re all equal and come together you’ll get benefits.”
If entities are unequal, then collaboration might not be equally beneficial, Dockry concluded.
Swindell said Summit County’s project manager did not notice a large difference between the cost quoted to county based on what entity owned the roads.
“It does take and money to move around. I can see why [contractors] can make the claim that they need more money to move the equipment,” she said.
Swindell said the Summit County Engineer’s Office considers the 2011 program a success and is already sending out introductory letters to local governments about program’s second year.
“We got more participation than we expected and we were happy about that. ... We’re really proud of the program,” she said.