For months, the City Council has casually discussed terminating the existing street sweeping contract and purchasing the equipment to do it in-house due to the poor performance of the contracted company over the last few months.
City Manager Jim Wieprecht explained, "For many years, we’ve opted to outsource and let someone else deal with the maintenance concerns, but recently, we’ve had performance issues," he said.
The Council noticed the deterioration in the quality of street sweeping with explanations such as cars parked in the way of the sweeper and winter weather. However, more than once the company didn’t show up at all and other times with a broken machine. "I don’t think the quality issues are because of parked cars in the way of the sweeper, but because the actual machine was broken, and they used it anyway," said Mayor Christopher Miller. He described situations where the sweeper spread mud all over the City instead of cleaning it up. "It’s a reliability and quality issue," he said.
Councilman Chris Tillman agreed, noting that cars being parked in the way wouldn’t be as much of an issue if the City did the work in-house, because the City would be able to do the sweeping at their own pace and could schedule times to catch the missed areas.
Currently the City has budgeted $30,000 for FY-25 for the street sweeping contract, which expires in 2025. According to Wieprecht, the City’s Department of Public Works (DPW) believes they have the manpower to do the sweeping in-house and has been working with the City Attorney to see if the contract can be terminated early.
The Council will also need to decide if they want to purchase new equipment or investigate purchasing used. "We’ve had good luck with the used bucket truck we purchased a few years ago," said McCarron. Although used machinery may be cost-effective at the onset, it can be problematic because it rarely comes with a warranty and, since a street sweeper is a complex vehicle, that could be an issue for the City in the future, according to Wieprecht.
Currently, the City roads are done once a year and the State roads once a month. If the City were to do the street sweeping completely in-house, they would have the freedom to sweep whenever and essentially wherever they wished. "We would be able to sweep our streets before special events," said Tillman. He pointed out that with an in-house sweeper they could do parking lots as well. Councilwoman Judith Fuller added that attachments could be purchased at a later date to aid with other jobs like leaf removal from clogged storm drains. This would be a beneficial perk in the City’s parks.
Mayor Pro Tem James McCarron has been an avid supporter of in-house street sweeping for years. "The advantages of having in-house equipment would outweigh any disadvantages," he said. He asked whether the current issues with the contractor could be solved by adjusting the hours that they sweep as a temporary fix.
Currently, the sweeper is scheduled to work in the early morning from 5 a.m. to 6 a.m. McCarron asked if delaying the work to a later time, such as 9 a.m., would improve the quality of the sweeping. According to Fuller, DPW did a trial run of a sweeper recently and it caused traffic to back up, creating a bigger issue for the City than was desirable.
The Council will be looking into the costs of operating their own street sweeper before making a final decision at a future meeting.
