Repairing Ailing Infrastructure

Most of the elected people that I know, and I do know a few, have no idea of how to incorporate an upgrade of their utility infrastructure by using a street repair program. Street repair is normally just the street, as opposed to street, curb, gutter, sidewalk, water main, sewer main, telecommunications and the electrical hardware

The most common complaint by people about roads is, why do they fix the road only to knife it open two to six weeks later?  The answer is, the elected officials do not have a clue as to how to make it all work together.  With most towns and citys having infrastructure that is older than fifty years, some locations are still using cast iron sewer pipe, the cost can be exorbitantly expensive to upgrade everything all at once.

There is a method, and the proper way, to get the thing done is to have a law.  This ordnance would apply equally to all city run utilities as well to all other utilities. Simply speaking the ordnance would tie infrastructure up grades to tie road repair program.  County, state and federal roads would be exempt, because they are our of your local jurisdictions.  

The road ordnance would be lined to a road repair master plan.  This plan would identify, classify, and have a date cretin when the road is to be repaired.  All utilities, every service private or public, would be notified a year in advance of the next road repair date.

In the ordnance if any utility, private or public, opens the road within fifty years of the finish of paying they get a fine. This fine would be ten thousand dollars a month, in addition to paying for the complete repaving of the entire ,just completed, road repair project. You could require all telecommunications to be placed in conduit, underground, for further expansion.

The beauty of this is that all of the aging pipes, and wires could be replaced at once.  If you your road project is a block long, then all of the utility stuff gets replaced for that block.  If it is a mine long, then a mile of new sewer and water pipe get upgraded. 
And if the utility opens the street, instead of willingly participating in the upgrading program, then they pay for the repair of the road.

This is a good deal for everyone, and real nifty method of putting fiber optics every place in your town.

Sherman

Contracts, Avoiding Being Taken To The Cleaners

After you have been in office for a few months, make some inquiries about contracts are handled by the entity that you serve.  Contracts are all about doing the best with as little cash as possible, without the public’s money being squandered.

The city of Portland Oregon is a good example of how not to write contracts.  The latest example is just another case of remarkably dumb decision, being made by less than smart people.  Portland Oregon negotiated a contract with the only bio-diesel manufacture in the state, and some farmers in eastern Oregon.

Anyone with half a brain knows that the price of seed, beans, name a commodity, fluctuates all the time. What the city did was, by contract; tie the price that they pay for bio-diesel to the price of Canola seed, as sold on the futures market.  They failed to place a clause in the contract, which would allow for the city to seek lower priced bio-diesel from out of state.

The result is predictable; the city pays more for bio-diesel from the manufacture than the public pays at the pump.  Private enterprise buys its bio-diesel, for resale, from the cheapest source possible.  When the futures for Canola oil rose, so did the price that the city of Portland Oregon pays for the finished product.

In my view the city of Portland Oregon should have had two things in the contract.  A firm commitment for the price of bio-diesel for a twelve-month period, and a “get out of jail” clause, this would have locked in the price of the bio-diesel for twelve months. And it would have allowed the city to find cheaper fuel elsewhere, if the price of bio-diesel fell.

Don’t make the same mistake that they did by being locked into an unintelligent mindset

Sherman