Mark & Juanita wrote: ...
So you're suggesting they simply isolate the broken water main or clogged sewer or don't support a new building w/ power instead????
As somebody else once wrote, 'stuff happens....'
--
I believe that emergency conditions are exempted and I certainly understand that. New building stuff though would require that more expensive tunneling under the new blacktop be done rather than allowing a cut across brand new asphalt.
and as others have said -- prior planning prevents pi$$ poor performance. New building activities seem to be the worst offenders and that is something that could easily be foreseen prior to new paving for at least a year. It wouldn't be so bad if they did a halfway decent job covering their divots, but they don't. Most contractors who do that kind of thing slap on a little road patch, drive a compactor over it and call it good. A couple weeks later and there's a 2 inch ditch perpendicular to road travel that just gets exacerbated as water gets absorbed into the patch and mud thrown during the rainy season.
Mark & Juanita wrote: ...
Again, that's a lot easier to say than to accomplish (having sat on planning commissions and county supervisors and the ilk)...
Quite often there are events which are going on that
a) planners in roads don't have access to inside knowledge of intents of developers who may be holding such information in close confidence for various reasons; land acquisition and competitive position being simply two of the most obvious, and
b) scheduling and budgeting for the maintenance projects may have lifetimes of 5 and even 10 years prior to the actual observable work and there may be (and often are) immutable funding issues involved such as bond revenues or State or Federal cost-shares that have constraints on them.
Again, it's easy to say "shudda'" from the sidelines and in some few cases can be justified even. All in all, there's much in reality that tempers that that the folks are doing the best they can w/ what they have in resources and information available at the time.
Like the closure of a particular armory that started the thread -- there was no intention at the time the work was done to close it and it was not predicted the State budgetary crunch would come to pass that such extremities would be required. Monday morning q-b'ing is much simpler once events have transpired.
--
Tough. This stuff is decided at public meetings with legal notifications in the appropriate places. If a developer doesn't keep track of important measures affecting his decisions, tough.
How does that affect the planning? First step first. The road should surfacing should be last.
I'm sure there are justifications. Poor planning is not one of them.
Sure. Shit happens. When roads are planned it should be known that sewers (whatever) also need work. I've seen new roads torn up six months after being completely resurfaced, to put new storm sewers in. That's *dumb*.
Say road was already there and needed maintenance and had been scheduled /budgeted in the long-range plan. Then the development comes. You suggesting turn down a sizable improvement and jobs, etc., that comes from that? Sure....do that a few times and see what it does for future development in the community....
No, but there are some areas over which one may not have complete control.
Again, perhaps. Then again, perhaps the funding for the two projects is from two totally separate sources that have conflicting budgetary cycles and other constraints. You would suggest giving up both to avoid the conflict?
Trust me, it's much easier to say "shudda" than it is to always avoid what appears to be silly...and g(o)a(head)a(nd)amhikt :)
--
Unless the developer is going to pay for rebuilding the roads as they were, certainly.
Ok, floods, broken mains, earthquakes, sure.
I would suggest that these two entities get together and PLAN. This stuff shouldn't be done in a vacuum!
Of course it's easier to MMQ, but there is a reason they're called "PLANNING Comissions".
Either (1) put the resurfacing off for a year or (2) don't bother with it at all since the sewer repalcement is going to negate the benefits of the resurfacing.
krw wrote: ...
Again, that demonstrates the difference between government entities and business and the fallacy that one can truly operate a government as a business. It makes a good ideal and one tries to be as frugal as possible, but in the end the purpose of the government is to serve its constituency and business is a major constituency.
Throw such roadblocks in the path of development and industry and see how long it takes to ride _that_ rail out of town... :) (One end, of course, being carried by the same fella' as is also on the rail for the "inexcusable" waste of resources).
No, I'm talking of other budgetary and legislative organizations and mandates and on and on and on all of which are players and many of which are out of the control of local legislative bodies--at that level they are little more than peons trying to keep up w/ EPA/DOT/rest_of_alphabet_soup in DC as well as the same counterparts in their own state capitol all the while trying to advance whichever project it is over the other casts of thousands seeking to do the same for _their_ communities...
...
Well, that's the problem--the two entities themselves are likely reporting to separate bosses and simply fulfilling _their_ mandates. And, if it were only two that would be a reduction of a sizable number in all likelihood... :)
If it all were being done at a city or county (or often even at the State) level, this coordination could be feasible to some degree. The problem is that even such local items as a street repair is tied into the funding cycles and planning for everything else in the entire jurisdiction and monies virtually always have strings. Much of the time the web to get even a small task funded is impacted by the big budget projects because it takes getting them in place to make the dispensable local budgets available. Then, of course, one throws in the vagaries of bond issues and other voter initiatives that can cause changes in course in midstream...
No idea what "mmq" is but the planning commissions in general set policy and goals, not specific projects. It's finding the funding for those projects that generally creates the issues because, as noted, DOT (say) funds the surface road but it'll take a grant from somewhere else to do the sanitary system. Those two aren't in synch and likely never will be and there's precious little local governments can do to make it so.
Sad, perhaps, but true...
Again, not that it wouldn't be great in the ideal world that all carts follow their own horses; simply pointing out that often what appears screwed-up locally isn't necessarily that the locals didn't know what they were doing only that they didn't have the resources in hand to get the ideal solution. So, given that, the choice often comes down to go ahead as you can knowing there's a fixup having to come later or blow it all off in hope of the ingredients all coming together again later. In reality, the chances of the latter if have gotten a part already taken care of are vanishingly small and the choice is generally between going ahead and scrapping the whole project for the foreseeable future. The latter generally also doesn't set well w/ constituents.
--
J. Clarke wrote: ...
...
Again, would be ideal but...it's not at all unlikely that the funding for the resurfacing will disappear not to be seen again the following year(s). So, the choice may come down to not repairing a very bad surface at all or having a surface that is far better than the previous even if it does have a repair.
Particularly since most large $$ projects of that type have matching funds, if those funds are not used when/where allocated the local authority generally is not there to use them somewhere else and they will disappear. Once that project has been through the competitive cycle and won but isn't completed, its chances of a returning win in any near term future are, as mentioned above, virtually nonexistent.
It's not nearly as trivial a task as it seems, even for relatively small jurisdictions to avoid all the seemingly obvious to the outside observer...
It's only a fallacy because governments refuse to operate like businesses. They certainly can, though it's not likely because they make the rules for businesses and are under no obligation to follow the same rules.
Crap. The roadblocks in front of business are far more stringent. If businesses do what governments do regularly, they owners would be thrown in jail.
That attitude among politicians is exactly why everything costs double, and more. Government loves graft.
Perhaps they are doing exactly what their boss wants. The "boss" is incompetent, lazy, a crook, or all of the above. ...likely the latter.
Come on! COordination is possible even with a business thrown in the middle of all three. There is no incentive for government(s) *or* their employees to be efficient.
Monday Morning Quarterback
They can wait or not do. In any case they *aren't* required to waste money.
We all know it's true. What sad is anyone defending the practice.
The "ideal" solution certainly isn't to rebuild a road then do the sewers under it. That's simply a waste of taxpayer money and there is
*no* justification for it.
SO you're *required* to *WASTE* money? What nonsense!
So you choose to waste million$ on nothing.
"Use it or lose it." What a waste of resources, all around.
No one said it was trivial. If you're not up to it, let someone else do the job.
And this is a problem because?
Uh, you've never seen them put sewers in, have you. Very little of the new surface will be left after the sewers are in. The expenditure is basically wasted.
In other words our government as a whole is run by bumbling incompetents.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.