Henderson’s contract with the Department of Transportation for the maintenance of state roads within the city limits, the procedure for the purchase of gas and diesel fuel, and the future of garbage collection came under scrutiny at the meeting of the City Council’s Public Works Committee on Thursday.
The city has a contract with the state Department of Transportation to provide maintenance and upkeep for the state roads in the city. Some of the main state roads are
Oxford Road, Garnett Street, Chestnut Street, Beckford Drive, Graham Avenue, Dabney Drive, Raleigh Road and Andrews Avenue. There are 20.76 miles of state roads in the city.
The contract includes lighting, grass cutting, litter control, patching, changing signal lights when appropriate, and snow and ice removal. The city has a contract to be reimbursed $31,000 annually, or about $7,700 per quarter. The money is supposed to cover the cost of gas, materials, labor and benefits, equipment, depreciation, equipment rental when necessary, and uniforms and supplies.
Here is where the problems lie. If the city only does, say, $4,500 worth of work on the state streets in a quarter, it can bill and be paid only $4,500. If the city has to do $9,000 worth of work the next quarter, it may bill and be paid only $7,700. Last year the city lost $7,975 on the contract, and that was without any snow removal, Public Works Director James Morgan said. “We have lost as much as $25,000 in a year when we had five or six snows.”
There was debate as to when the contract was last negotiated.
“It’s been this way as long as I have been here, and I have tried to change it,” Morgan said.
It is a political decision not to do away with the contract. The city could push the responsibility for the state roads back onto the state, but Henderson then would have to rely on the state to do the work. As Mayor Clem Seifert has said, if a light is burned out on Dabney Drive, the city gets the complaints and the criticism, even if it’s the state’ problem.
Assistant City Manager Mark Warren said the road contract dates to 1971, and the city staff is going to research whether the dollar amount in the contract has changed by more than $1,000 and report back to the committee.
“We are not working with 1971 costs,” City Manger Eric Williams said.
Council member Elissa Yount said she has talked to other cities — Roanoke Rapids, Oxford, Sanford, Garner, Gastonia, Graham, Havelock and Hendersonville — and “none maintained the N.C. state roads through their city.”
She urged the city staff to do its own surveys.
“Most of the folks I talked to were not department heads, but overwhelmingly the contacts said it was not good business for them,” Yount said. Gastonia does have a two-tier system in which that city agrees to do some of the work, but the contract for snow and ice removal was excluded. That contract also was separated into two parts so the city could require reimbursement for actual costs.
Yount said the city should cancel the contract before the snow and ice arrive or renegotiate so the city can recoup all of the actual costs. “The city is getting gypped. It is a lose-lose situation for us.”
Williams brought up the city’s difficulty in budgeting for snow removal. “What’s hard to measure is the implication in the eyes of the public,” he said, if people don’t get their streets cleared quickly. “It’s hard to gauge how they will react if stuck in a neighborhood.”
Yount said the answers no doubt are in the hands of other cities; Henderson just has to ask “It obviously works, and we need to find out how others handle snow removal when state roads and city roads meet.”
She later added: “This will not be a hard-sell for the city residents. They will understand saving money, and we can give them the number of DOT to call if DOT does not do the job as well as the city did.”
Committee Chairman Ranger Wilkerson asked the staff to gather information and set an October 4 meeting date for further discussion.
On the issue of purchasing gas, “we do not have a contact,” Morgan said.
The city has budgeted $1.95 per gallon for gas purchases for the fiscal year. (The city doesn’t have to pay almost 45 cents in taxes per gallon.) Morgan previously reported that if the city had purchased gas under a state contract recently, the savings would have been about $1,100 every two weeks compared with what the city paid Rose Oil.
The possibility of saving that much persuaded the committee to provide new direction in gas purchases. Morgan is to seek three prices and buy the cheapest gas he can find.
“Be sure to keep good records so we can follow the progress,” Wilkerson said.
That led to a discussion of gas conservation methods used by the city departments.
Fire Chief Danny Wilkerson outlined the methods in place for his department, which include having a truck stand by and no idling. “That right there adds up to a lot of fuel,” Ranger Wilkerson said.
The committee asked that a report be given to the council that outlines plans for gas savings for all departments. “We must save at least the percent of difference between budgeted cost for gas and actual costs,” Yount said.
“At this rate if something doesn’t change, I will have spent my gas budget by March,” Morgan said.
Morgan also was reminded that the committee is planning to make a recommendation to the council curbside garbage pickup. Before that presentation, the committee wants to see examples of different containers and the costs associated with each. The target date for a decision is December.