Crow Wing County will renew an arrangement with a contractor to complete snowplowing and road maintenance in the unorganized territories.
The county board Tuesday, acting as the township board for the First and Second assessment districts, approved a contract with Holmvig Excavating. The contract extends through 2020 and covers a number of maintenance activities: plowing, sweeping, pothole patching, spot repairs, gravel hauling, grading, tree and brush cutting and roadside mowing. Beaver dam removal and culvert cleaning were added to this contract in comparison to the 2014-17 agreement.
Jory Danielson, assistant county engineer, told the board costs of the maintenance activities in the bid were favorable, but represented a sizable jump overall. An estimate of the increase was about 20 percent over those in the earlier contract.
"We attribute that to upkeep and a higher level of service expectation," Danielson said.
Spreading that across the six-year span the contracts cover, however, means an increase of slightly more than 3 percent each year.
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Chairman Doug Houge asked Danielson if there was a point when increases in the contract meant it was more cost effective for county employees to resume maintenance internally.
"At some point, it would be," Danielson said. "I don't believe we're there yet. There also would be an increase on the county's end, and also at a loss of service that we're providing on our county road system."
When the contract first went into place in 2014, County Engineer Tim Bray hoped it would result in a quicker turnaround time for snowplowing on the nearly 50 miles of township roads within the territories. Bray explained those roads-including dead ends and culs-de-sac-were near the bottom of the county's priority list when it came to plowing, because they are less traveled.
Concerns about plowing performance arose last November, in the wake of a brutal early winter blizzard that dumped about a foot of snow across the Brainerd lakes area. Commissioner Rosemary Franzen said residents of the First Assessment District were worried the contractor was not plowing as much as it should, particularly in the area around McKay Road.
Danielson said a major change to the new contract with Holmvig Excavating increased fines for roads missed by the contractor's snowplows. It was $300 per road per snow event, and is now $500 per road per 24-hour period. Danielson said the county fined the contractor just once, for missing Mitchell Circle North in November. Mitchell Circle North is a short, dead-end street in the McKay Road area, north of Riverside Drive.
Another change to the contract converted costs for mowing and sweeping from lump sums to hourly. Danielson said a rough estimate of this impact was a 20 to 30 percent reduction in costs.
"It depends on the winter," Danielson said. "This year, we've used a lot more sand, because of the rain."
Danielson said the county has the flexibility to control what the contractor does. If it's a particularly tough winter and plowing results in high costs, he said they could scale back other activities to compensate.
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"We're at the mercy, with the county system and First Assessment (District), of what Mother Nature throws at us," Danielson said.
Danielson said the county was "extremely happy" with how the contract is working for Unorganized Territory residents and for the county as a whole.
"We have increased the level of service," Danielson said.
