Valley to care for own streets

Spokane Valley took a step toward taking care of its own streets Tuesday as the City Council approved measures to begin transferring parts of its street maintenance contract from Spokane County to private contractors.

“At the end of year three, about half of the contract would be transitioned, potentially, away from the county,” Public Works Director Neil Kersten told the council regarding the new plan for road work.

“Previously, the county kind of managed their own work,” Kersten said. “We will be out going down the streets doing work plans,” under the new agreement, he said.

When Spokane Valley incorporated, the county continued to take care of the roads and provide many of the public services on a contract basis that an established city would cover with its own departments.

Recognizing that the city eventually would take over much or all of the work inside its boundaries, the county did not retain full-time employees to cover the contract work.

“We would hire temporary or seasonal people to fill in,” said County Engineer Ross Kelly.

The city budgeted $3.1 million for street maintenance in 2004, but only $2.3 million in road work was billed to the city. In 2005, almost $3.2 million was budgeted, and about $2.5 million was spent.

The gap is due in part because the last two winters were light, and plowing costs weren’t very high. Some of it, though, was because of road work the county did not get to, according to a city report presented to the council.

“It’s a scheduling thing,” Kelly said.

Crews maintain streets all over the county, and some work in Spokane Valley wasn’t done as quickly as city leaders would have liked.

The county and the city agreed some of the tasks would be done more efficiently if Spokane Valley bid them out to private contractors and oversaw the work itself.

This summer, residents may see landscaping, care for the storm water system and street sweeping conducted by private companies if they can do the work for less than the county. Other types of road work are scheduled to go out for bid over the next several years.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the council also approved two new positions to manage the new contracts and inspect the work.

Private contracts could save the city money, and Kersten said the cost of the two new positions in Spokane Valley would be covered by avoiding the 24 percent management and overhead charge the county adds to the actual cost of the work when billing the city.

“It just seems to me that it’s an excellent effort,” said Councilman Bill Gothmann.

The contract change and the two new positions were approved unanimously.

Changes to the street maintenance contract are the latest in city efforts to reflect the council’s philosophy of using outside contractors to conduct city work whenever it is less expensive.

City officials point with pride to the work Senske Lawn and Tree Service completed last summer when it took over Spokane Valley parks maintenance from the county.

Last year the council also floated the possibility of moving its library contract to a private company but abandoned the idea after a public outcry led to the city’s library annexing to the Spokane County Library District.