AUBURN — The city’s Public Works staff is learning cost accounting methods and narrowing its focus to make its work more efficient and save the city money.

Crews will concentrate on maintenance issues for city properties,
but construction projects will go to private contractors, City Manager
Glenn Aho said.

“When you have a service-based department, like Public Works, you tend to expand your scope of work every year,” Aho said. The more demands are made — to fix roads or sidewalks, repair pipes or install new utilities — the more the department expands to meet those demands.

“The traditional solution is to solve all those problems with more manpower or money,” Aho said. “But we just can’t afford to do that anymore.”

Replacing a culvert at Penley Corner last spring is one example, Aho said. City crews were working on that project but were pulled off to deal with an emergency maintenance issue.

Aho said a private crew should have been working on the culvert, leaving city crews available to handle the maintenance.

“We get so intent, as a staff, trying to meet everyone’s needs,” Aho said. “We run from citizen request to request with the best of intentions, but we don’t end up meeting anyone’s needs.”

As a first step, Aho said the department will begin farming construction projects to private contractors. They’ll also begin tracking the individual costs of the other jobs they perform, and that includes creating a fleet management system. Public Works staff will visit a Ryder Truck rental operation to see how that company keeps track of costs, Aho said.

He expects to be able to sell off some of the larger, more rarely used pieces of equipment once the department has a better understanding of the actual costs.

“There is nothing new in what we’re doing,” Aho said. “It’s not some fad management style. We’re just getting back to business basics, because that’s what we are — a $4.6 million business, Auburn Public Works Inc.”

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