By Jim Henderson
Special to the Turnagain Times
The McKenna Brothers Paving Co. was awarded the Girdwood Road Service Area road maintenance contract by the Anchorage Assembly on March 25.
Under the new contract and contractor, the 2008 road care will cost our community $258,315 less than we had to collect from the Girdwood taxpayers for 2007 for our Maintenance and Operations. In addition to the savings, we got additional road improvements.
The 2008 road budget for maintenance is $170,000 less than the amount budgeted for 2007 road maintenance. This is due to last years contractor’s demanded rates and cost for the same work being 51 percent higher than our new contractor’s hourly costs. The 08’ actual estimated costs is about $249,760. Jerry Pineau, Municipal Service Area Coordination, recommended rounding this amount off to $280,000 for any unplanned issues. The budgeted amount for last year’s contractor to do the same work was $449,000.
There is $135,000 allocated in this years budget for road infrastructure improvements. The improvements include pulling the ditches, contouring, putting asphalt emulsion on 2.5 miles of roads and paving three intersections. McKenna Bros. estimated the cost to do this work at $127,320. That amount was rounded up to $135,000 to cover unforeseen issues.
The rest of the costs of the Girdwood Maintenance & Operations budget are pretty much driven by the city’s past costs for street lights, human resources, phones, etc. The planned hiring of a road manager and associated costs, (salary, phone, gas), clerical staff, and the posting of announcements and GBOS agendas in the local newspaper are included in separate line items. The only line item that will require more work is the intergovernmental charges (IGC’s).
Last year we budgeted $78,829. We had that revised to $49,420. In that we have already paid IGC’s on the $200,000 we are applying as a credit to the total planned 08’ expenditures, it is hoped we could talk the city out of having to pay those IGC’s twice and save some more.
After total credits, the road maintenance budget is $258,315 less than we had to collect in taxes last year for road maintenance and operations.
There should be a reduction in the taxes collected from Girdwood residents for the local portion of your Anchorage property tax bill. Pleasingly, there is $135,000 in road improvements in this lower cost 08’ budget, which, hopefully, we will receive real soon.