A new report from the World Bank’s Urban Development department estimates the amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) will rise from the current 1.3 billion tonnes per year to 2.2 billion tonnes per year by 2025. Much of the increase will come in rapidly growing cities in developing countries.
— from the World Bank website, 2012: Report Shows Alarming Rise in Amount, Costs of Garbage
Please understand, I’m not trying to paint Archuleta County as one of the “rapidly growing cities in developing countries…” although certain similarities do exist. Like, for example, a growing divide between rich and poor. Troubled infrastructure. Substandard housing.
And the problem of government waste. I don’t just mean “wasted money.” I actually mean, government trash, sent to our local landfill.
But the story is complicated, and it also involves road maintenance.
Immediately following the special meeting on the morning of November 8 — where the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners voted not to pursue a ‘declaratory judgment’ concerning the election of Kristy Archuleta to the office of County Clerk & Recorder — the County staff rearranged the meeting room for a discussion about the 2019 budget.
The discussion was slated to focus, that morning, on the Public Works Department — a department near and dear to the hearts of many county residents, considering that it includes the Road & Bridge Department, and the Solid Waste Department.
We need well-kept roads, of course, so our garbage haulers can carry our trash to the landfill. And for other reasons as well.
As the meeting was about to start, Commissioner Michael Whiting walked over to the couple of people in the audience, to thank them for showing up and listening to the pending budget conversation.
“Before we get started, I want to thank you guys for being here during our budget hearings. Because, normally, nobody comes to these hearings, and it’s $34 million that we’re spending, of your money.”
Audience member Mark Weiler responded.
“The question I have is, will you allow the public to help you?”
Commissioner Whiting: “Well, you can observe. This is the most important thing we do.”
Mr. Weiler: “There’s a difference between public comment and ‘help.’ If the intention is to simply patronize the public by allowing them to speak — but you won’t take their suggestions into account… I’ll go do something else.”
BOCC Chair Steve Wadley, seated at the work session table, overheard the conversation, and assured Mr. Weiler that he has an open mind, and welcomes ideas from the public.
And then, we were off and running, listening to a presentation about the Public Works Department’s budget proposals for 2019 — which includes the Road & Bridge Department, and the Solid Waste Department. As far as I could tell, the conversation seemed to be frank, and honest. The commissioners had before them a fat binder with summaries of the proposed department budgets for 2019.
How the commissioners adjusted those budgets would, to some degree, determine road conditions for the next couple of years, in our various rural neighborhoods — although several subdivisions maintain their own roads through metro district mill levies.
The main presenters were County Finance Director Larry Walton and Public Works Director Bob Perry.
About halfway through the discussion, however, the conversation took a serious detour into a futuristic realm, where the BOCC theoretically figures out what to do about their failed 1A sales tax increase, and builds a new jail. Not really a Road & Bridge conversation? Or maybe it is?
A few points from Bob Perry’s presentation, that seemed important.
The application of mag chloride would keep the same schedule as 2018. Mr. Perry expected a possible increase in the number of neighborhoods willing to fork out additional money for ‘privately funded’ mag chloride applications. Maybe a better job of crack sealing the paved roads — at least, the ones that haven’t completely fallen apart.
Mr. Perry:
“We try to hire some part-time help in the summer [to help with crack sealing.] And we just had no success in hiring part-time help to do that this past summer. Just zero. We didn’t have anybody apply.
“This summer we were running four employee short. We have four vacancies. So we offered the opportunity to train people. But there’s a cost to training. It takes at least a year to train somebody with minimal experience, to be a good operator. And to become an Operator II, it takes about four years.”
“Right now, half of our operator staff are [Operator I] because of the new hires we’ve made. And because we didn’t have any snow last year, we weren’t able to train the new people. So about half of our operators have never plowed snow. So that’s a little bit scary.
“The other thing is, we made an agreement with Lindner Ranch, to haul off 50,000 yards of their gravel every year, so we could have that gravel to use.”
That would be uncrushed gravel… needing to be crushed.
“We were fortunate, in some ways — because we were so short of staff — that we didn’t have a lot of gravel to haul last year… We calculated that it will take one man, working full-time, about seven months to haul the [Lindner Ranch] gravel. And of course we can only haul in the summertime.
“And again, that’s another drain on our manpower. And then, sending out two people to do crack sealing… well, that’s another pull on our resources.”
Finance Director Larry Walton noted that the BOCC had adjusted the property tax mill levy, a few years back, to direct additional money into Road & Bridge. That additional money is, however, not going as far as it once did.
Mr. Walton:
“We didn’t mention it earlier, but the cost of mag chloride, for instance, went from $310,000 in 2016 — and in 2019, we’re looking at $500,000. Even though between 2018 and 2019, there’s not really an increase in the mileage — but there was a pretty big bump up [in 2018, in the number of road miles treated.]”
Based on the above conversation, we will pose a question to our readers.
Would you want your County Commissioners to redirect money, in the future, out of the Road Capital Improvement Fund… and into a nice new jail?