Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Hoe, Hoe, Hoe this is not a funny story.


For the last five budgets I participated in, Administration, specifically Public Works approached council regarding the purchase of a track hoe.
The argument was made that we needed to have our own, due to us having to dependent on the availability of contractor’s hoes the costs involved etc etc.
Every year I asked the same questions give me specifics of when we ran into a problem getting a hoe, and how much were we spending on renting machines. The answer I always got was no specific dates and $10-15,000 a year.
With that information myself and enough of my fellow members of council had the wisdom to not make that $250,000 purchase. Even at a cost of $15,000 a year it would take 17 years to pay for then you would be left with a machine that was worthless, plus costing the town how many dollars to maintain each year.
So budget 2011 rolls around administration brings forth the request for a track hoe again, surprisingly council not only approves it but decides to put the taxpayers in debt to finance it. (at that point 17 years becomes 18-19)
But the story doesn’t end there just a few short months later administration comes back to council and says we need $25,000 to buy a trailer to move the hoe, well I guess now you have made the first mistake you really can’t go out and not have a trailer to move it around so council approves that.
Lets fast forward a year, the story of the track hoe I felt was behind me and could not get any more ridiculous than it already was. So here I am just a few evenings ago having a chat with a couple of fellows that have lived here all there life and spent most of their working life around heavy equipment, when the topic of the track hoe comes up.
I am told that the Hoe the municipality purchased is an odd ball size, attachments and parts can be difficult to acquire, Wow. Then the icing on the proverbial cake comes along (remember the initial argument about availability of contractors hoes) I am told that the municipality does not have a piece of equipment adequate to move the hoe around, we are dependent on contractors to do that for us.

15 comments:

John Prince said...

Here we go again. The trouble with hiring new people from out of town is they don't know who's who and what's what in the community and therefore make colossal mistakes that land up costing the taxpayer here big time. This is one of them, again.

The one thing this council has to learn is hire local when and if you can. That goes from a fire chief to a plummer... like we did with our CFO.

JP

Anonymous said...

You could hire local and the same thing happen. The "major" is local. Don't think it makes much difference. The good thing about hiring your proverbial outsider is that they have no connections to people and that is good as then people don't expect favors.

John Prince said...

Anon @2:01
True enough. You won't get an argument from me in that regard. But in this case it might have helped to know people and contractors here... and to have done their homework before hand instead of rushing out to spend our money willy-nilly.

In addition, what ever happened to that idea about working with other communities sharing equipment and resources this council was recently talking about in the papers, and in their council minutes?

JP

Anonymous said...

Yes, it is a guessing game. You never know. All you have to do is try to find the most qualified person and hope for the best.
As far as sharing resources with other communities, I am not sure how that would work. Could be a logistical nightmare. It probably is a good idea to have your own equipment and have their own workers run it. I think the contractors around here charge way too much because they think they can get away with it.

Anonymous said...

We were spending $10-15,000 a year then they went out and purchased a hoe for $250,000 and trailer for $25,000.
Are you now suggesting they buy their own truck?

Good government type thinking with taxpayers money lets spend $300,000to save $10,000 ???

Albert

Anonymous said...

Well since we already have the hoe and the trailer, I think we may as well. Then be self-sufficient.

Anonymous said...

7:56

This hoe is being used a maximum of 50-80 hours per year for maybe 10 digs.
Are you now suggesting that we go out and spend $30,000 for a used truck or $120,000 for a new one.
Plus train at least four operators to drive it.
To save $2-3,000 a year on using a contractor to move the hoe?
If you are it's exactly that kind of thinking that got us in to this mess.
These kinds of decisions are exactly why we are in the mess we are today.

M

Anonymous said...

I do not think anybody is suggesting that we buy a truck to pull the hoe.
I think the point of this discussion is to show how incompetant this council was in this decision.They surely did not do any research and I do not think they did the math either.The worst thing about this council is that they are so arrogant that they can not admit their mistakes and make the changes nessasary. An example of this is the franchise fees they are planning on raising 300%. They need money to pay for all of these mistakes that they will not admit to, like this hoe, 4-5 extra employees, lawsuits etc.They have a spending problem, not an income problem.On top of all of this they are trying to be deceitful by telling everybody that your property taxes only went up 2.5%.This is true but our total amount of all taxes and fees is now probably going to be closer to 10%.Also not one thing is better today than it was 2 years ago when these 7 people were elected.

John Prince said...

Anon @7:07
Regional Partnerships is what I was referring to in the sharing of equipment to reduce individual municipal costs.

Also, for some years now the neocons in the states and here in Canada, as well as provinces like Alberta, have been 'hollowing' out government, reducing services and contracting out every which way they can. This is a fact. Why then is our local government going in the opposite direction, whether it is unnecessarily buying more equipment, adding more people to our municipal workforce (adding to the bureaucracy), etc., etc. rather than contracting out to the private sector?

It seems to me that this council has found more ways to tax us to death than any other council in the history of the Crowsnest Pass, and in the shortest time frame too, than I can remember, while spending like drunken sailors.

An expression comes to mind that I think fits these guys to a tee:

"Penny wise, dollar foolish"

JP

Anonymous said...

Well, regarding contracting out services, that really scares me also. As they will go to someone's friend or relative, at inflated rates. I don't think that is a good solution.

Anonymous said...

Core services, such as looking after roads, providing sewer and water, maintaining municipal facilities should never be contracted out.

Jack

Anonymous said...

Why would rational educated people make a decision this foolish?

Anne

Anonymous said...

When the recommendation to purchase the excavator was discussed at Council were they informed of the number of excavations anticipated per year, the amount of excavation would be required and other annual projects such as ditching etc... I would also be curious if Council was informed of the cost of operation and maintenance of the excavator equipment, if there is enough work to purchase the equipment then there must be a qualified operator to work with it. Now let’s look at the “extras”, when you hire a contractor to do a dig does he supply a truck and equipment to close in the excavation, such as packers, rollers etc? Does the Municipality have such equipment in inventory? Does the municipality retire a piece of equipment in exchange for the new purchase?
So now to do a water dig you have – I excavator, 1 operator, 1 truck, 1 operator, 1 compactor (plate or roller) depending on job and material and two or three employees assisting given the size of the excavator you may require permits to move the machinery between towns.
I ask these questions because as a Director of Engineering in a community similar in size to the Crowsnest, it is my responsibility to insure that all the information required to purchase the piece of equipment is provided to council so that they can make an informed decision, It is not council’s responsibility to spend hours and hours researching this responsibility is that of the person making the recommendation to COA and Council. It is how ever the responsibility of Council to be comfortable with the recommendation and ask enough questions to satisfy their quarries before voting on it.
The back ground information for recommendation to council should contain comparative costs to the Municipality to operate the equipment, wages; payroll burden amount of actual time on the site verses the amount of time traveling back and forth to their perspective shops for breaks etc. and the cost to have a contractor come in a do the complete project.
In my experience there are times when it is more advantageous to hire a contractor due to experience, cost and efficiency, yes there are bad contractors in the Crowsnest, (I have worked with some of them) and then there are excellent contractors who does have the interest of the Crowsnest Pass in mind. It’s all about doing your home work before hiring; the Municipality can also set the excavation rates by using the Alberta Road Builders and Heavy Equipment Association Equipment Rental Rates guide.
These are just a few of my thoughts, I feel that in this case maybe your Operations person or Director should have provided Council with more information –on the service it appears that you have another large piece of equipment which is going to be underutilized that was purchased with little though to the whole picture
The comment made by John Prince, Wed Sep 12, 11:18:00 AM 2012, is in some cases true, however from my own experience, when I was first hired by my community I made an effort to meet with all contractors and trades people throughout the community, introduced myself and discussed equipment available, experience, types or expertise, man power etc. I then had staff create a data base of the contractors and trades and I draw from that every day I also rely on my staff to inform me of what was done in the past – for a particular procedure or community expertise, this is called team work, to make an informed decision you need information, who better to provide that information the employees who do the work! I think that some of the staff and council forget on fundamental concept of local government the most important person is the taxpayer, sure you may not agree with everything that they decide on but all the facts should be provided to the public as to why the decision has been made, at the end of the day we are not all perfect but we should be trying to achieve perfection each and every day we do into the local government office.

Anonymous said...

12:59 wrote:

"I think that some of the staff and council forget on fundamental concept of local government the most important person is the taxpayer, sure you may not agree with everything that they decide on but all the facts should be provided to the public as to why the decision has been made"

That is our situation in a nutshell, and not just regarding the hoe. Decisions appear "out of the blue". If they are making decisions based on what little appears on the website they are not doing their jobs. If they have more information that they are keeping from the public, they should not complain about speculation on the blogs.

A Councillor has no more right than any taxpayer to access municipal information (except for personnel matters and a few other subjects narrowly defined by FOIP).

It would take only one Councillor who respected the public's "right to know" to blow away this obsessive secretiveness.

Anonymous said...

I hear now that they are going to replace the single axle truck that has not turned a wheel in two years.
With a Tandem axle truck that will not be able to manouver in half our streets.
So the next question is what will they do with the box and plough they have for the single axle truck?