Recently in Public Works Category

Source: KPMG, Feb. 2, 2010

 

.... The survey strongly supports the increased involvement of the private sector, which is likely to help in delivering additional infrastructure more effectively. Increased private sector involvement is not a total solution and the public sector should also bear responsibility for how it leverages the private sector to best add value.

Source: By FRANK ABDERHOLDEN, Sun Times (IL), August 22, 2009

 

A debate is brewing over whether or not the village should be outsourcing more work, specifically in the public works department.  The public works employees are members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 31 and they recently passed out a flier questioning the financial sense of privatizing some of their work, saying it jeopardizes high-quality services, offers an opportunity for corruption and leads to a loss of accountability.

Source: BY CÉCILE LEPAGE, San Francisco Bay Guardian (CA), Wednesday July 8, 2009


City officials are considering shutting down the municipal asphalt plant -- the source of material for repaving roads and fixing potholes -- in order to facilitate construction of a private plant on the waterfront that the city would agree to help finance and support over the long term.

While the privatization plan is being billed by project proponents as a way to save money during tough financial times, it raises questions about whether relying on the private sector for this essential material could hurt the city's ability to make emergency repairs and ultimately end up costing taxpayers even more.

Source: BY ZACHARY GORCHOW, FREE PRESS (MI), June 10, 2009

 

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing wants to privatize services provided by the much-maligned Public Lighting Department.

...... John Riehl, president of AFSCME Local 207, which represents about 20 of the 200 lighting employees, said his union would fight an attempt to privatize. He said the city charter requires a 60% majority of voters to support such a move.

Source: By Karen Pierog, Reuters, Thu Apr 23, 2009 4:50pm EDT

The demise of a deal to lease Chicago's Midway Airport to private operators may put the brakes on the privatization of bigger and high-profile government assets as the global recession eats into the availability of financing.

Financing for future deals may become more selective even as increasing numbers of state and local governments turn to leasing their assets to bolster coffers diminished by the sagging economy.

Source: By Lisa Allmendinger, Milan News (MI), October 9, 2008

The possible privatization of the city's Department of Public Works was the focus of the Milan City Council's preliminary budget discussions Monday night.

..... Angela Tabor, a union representative from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 25, urged the council to look at the relationships it has with its employees, and requested that the city sit down with union representatives to talk before making a final decision.

Source: By Michael Fielding, PUBLIC WORKS MAGAZINE, September 1, 2008

Kevin Beachy has been overseeing the bridge replacement program for Alleghany County, Md., since 1985, when the county--located in Maryland's panhandle three hours west of Baltimore--adopted a different approach to rehabilitation and replacement. .........

..........In just two decades, however, the county has cut in half the number of bridges posted at load restrictions (it is at 28%, down from 60%) by contracting out large projects and keeping the smaller, more manageable projects in-house--all without a dedicated bridge crew. Considering that both light and heavy manufacturing equipment as well as coal mining trucks travel the county's 550 miles of roads, that's quite a feat.

Source: By JENNY ANDERSON, New York Times, August 27, 2008

Cleaning up road kill and maintaining runways may not sound like cutting-edge investments. But banks and funds with big money seem to think so. Reeling from more exotic investments that imploded during the credit crisis, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the Carlyle Group, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse are among the investors who have amassed an estimated $250 billion war chest -- much of it raised in the last two years -- to finance a tidal wave of infrastructure projects in the United States and overseas.

Their strategy is gaining steam in the United States as federal, state and local governments previously wary of private funds struggle under mounting deficits that have curbed their ability to improve crumbling roads, bridges and even airports with taxpayer money.

Source: By Robert Barkin, American City & County, Aug 1, 2008 12:00 PM

With the clock ticking last fall, Centennial, Colo., officials had a tough decision to make. For the first time since it incorporated in 2001, the Denver-area city soon would be responsible for its own public works services, which previously were provided by Arapahoe County. City leaders had to make a choice: go it alone or hire out the operation to a contractor.

So, Public Works Director Dave Zelenok opened his spreadsheet and calculated the options. He could either build his department from scratch, buy all the equipment and hire a staff, or he could outsource the whole operation to a third-party provider. After running the numbers, he and other city leaders decided to outsource. "I was pleasantly surprised," he says. "The outsource option was competitive against the public sector model in a large city."

On July 1, 2008, Englewood, Colo.-based CH2M HILL OMI began conducting all public works functions for the city of 110,000 residents, from water and wastewater system optimization and operation to community development and public works administration.

Source: by Nooshin Mahalia, July 8, 2008 | EPI Briefing Paper #215

Executive summary

For over a hundred years, many state and local governments have required that companies that want to contract for public works must pay their workers a wage that reflects wages commonly received in the area. The federal government adopted its own prevailing wage requirement with the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931. At the heart of these laws is the conviction that government, as a major buyer in the construction sector, should not act to drive down wages. Indeed, the civic-minded reformers who initially pushed for prevailing wage laws believed that the government ought to use its buying power to enhance the welfare of workers and their families.