BENTONVILLE -- Benton County officials hope a plan to keep a fleet of 20 road graders up to date will work better the second time around.
The Finance Committee has approved buying five new road graders as part of the 2015 budget. Jeff Clark, public services administrator and head of the Road Department, said the plan depends on buying five graders every year for four years. The county will then be in a guaranteed buyback plan with the dealer, and the net cost of the graders will be greatly reduced, Clark said.
Five new road graders will have a price tag of about $1.5 million on the front end of the plan, Clark said. The county has looked at the market for used graders and expects to recoup about $600,000 of that by selling five older graders at auction, Clark said. Auction sales will continue for the first few years of the plan until the county gets into the guaranteed buyback plan, Clark said.
The life span of a road grader is measured in hours of operation, Clark said. In the county's fleet of 20 about half have about 6,000 hours on them. The rest are between 8,500 and 10,000 hours, he said.
"Usually around 10,000 hours -- that's the industry standard -- is when you start seeing problems," Clark said.
The county typically puts from 1,250 to 1,500 hours on a road grader in a year, Clark said. With a four-year rotation, the county will dispose of the graders when they've reached about 6,000 hours of service, Clark said. Many businesses will jump at the chance to get a grader with that much useful life, he said.
"They've still got about 4,000 hours on them," he said.
The net cost on the $299,000 graders will be cut to about $64,000 each under the buy back plan. The county expects to get about $120,000 for the used graders it will auction in the first few years, Clark said. The net cost should remain low once the buy back plan is in effect, Clark said.
"If we follow the guidelines of the plan, they give us a specific buy back," he said.
The county tried to get into a similar arrangement before, but failed to stick with the plan. County Judge Bob Clinard said the county began a similar plan his first year in office, but budget cuts and spending priorities halted the program. According to Terry Lewis, properties manager, the county bought nine road graders in 2011. Five of the graders were bought at a cost of $218,730 each, while three graders cost $243,751 each. Another was bought for $212,803.
"We bought all those graders one year and they came back the next and said, 'We don't have the money this year,"' Clinard said of the Quorum Court. "Then we had a lot of turnover in the Road Department and it's taken us a while to get back to it."
Kurt Moore of District 13 said his recollection of the decision making that ended the earlier plan is department officials made the choice.
"We had to come up with budget cuts and the Road Department said if we're going to have only some of what we've asked for, we'd rather have some dump trucks and other pieces of equipment" Moore said.
Moore said he agreed the county can and should work toward the goal of replenishing the road grader fleet while lowering the cost. County administrators have to make it a priority, he said.
The county's budget in recent years has seen revenue fluctuate, and the county has been searching for a funding source for rural ambulance service, both of which made any long-term plan difficult to carry out, Moore said.
"It's fairly easy this year because we seem to have more money than usual and we've got funding for the ambulance service" he said. "In coming years there are gong to be good money years and there are going to be bad money years. I'm afraid of us not sticking to it in the bad years."
Barry Moehring of District 15 came onto the Quorum Court after the 2011 attempt to set a plan for buying road graders. Continuity on the court is important if the plan is to succeed, Moehring said. The 2012 approval of a state sales tax for transportation that will provide about $1.2 million a year for transportation needs over the 10-year life of the tax should also be a factor, Moehring said. The justices of the peace, as well as the county judge and Road Department, have to be mindful of the best use of that tax money, he said.
General News on 12/03/2014