A couple of months ago, a miracle happened. One bright morning, a crew of men and equipment appeared on Briarwood Drive and began to work rapidly. Within a few days, almost half of Briarwood was repaved. I was full of joy.
Then just as soon as they appeared, they disappeared with the road half finished. Each week, I waited for the crew to come back, but they never did. Haven’t yet. Briarwood Road is half-done.
Half-done is way better than where we were. Prior to the work, Briarwood was barely navigable. For several stretches, you had to slow down to about 10 miles an hour to prevent car damage. No lie. The potholes just ran together in long irreparable stretches of rubble.
Ironically, the unfinished milled sections of pavement are five times better than the rubble. Just stripping the top several inches of rubble away was a huge improvement and actually made the road ugly, but passable. Perhaps this is a plan for the future. If we can’t afford to repave the rubble, then let’s at least strip it away and mill down to something firm.
This sort of thing is typical. The city of Jackson road department is in a state of disfunctionality.
Nowadays, almost all the city road work is contracted out. That begs the question: Why does the city even maintain a road department? Just shut it down, lay off the full-time employees and contract the whole thing out. The city does that with garbage collection and it works just fine.
Right now we have the worst of all worlds. The public works department has dozens of full-time employees, yet outside contractors do the actual work. This is enormously wasteful.
There are machines and software to measure the quality of roads based on uniform standards that are objectively verifiable.
The city could seek proposals for an outside contractor to bring 75 percent of the roads to adequate quality within five years. If the contract was bid out properly, then the city could get out of the road business and let a professional firm handle it.
The other option would be to stop contracting the work out, vastly expand the road department and hire quality professionals as city employees.
Roads are so important. It is the most fundamental connection between the city and its citizens. You ride the roads every single day. You know their quality. You can see the quality (or lack thereof). For Jackson to turn around and grow, it must have decent roads.
Road landscaping is also important. Nobody is edging or trimming Jackson curbs anymore. The weeds are overgrown. It is an endless eyesore. Cross over into Ridgeland and a driver immediately sees a change – neatly edged grass and clean curbs.
The Sun received an anonymous memo from someone inside the city roads department. It provides insight into the many challenges the department faces. Here are some excerpts:
Lack of elected leadership with the management skills necessary to create an environment that fosters solving infrastructure problems in an affordable and efficient manner.
Obsession with demanding the methods undertaken to address infrastructure needs must first address social ills of the last 350 years. Fixing the problem has become secondary. Wealth transference is center stage.
Lack of sufficient and qualified personnel top to bottom. I am sure there are a few bright spots but overall the PWD is understaffed and under-trained or not trained.
Lack of consequences if the work is not done in a timely way or if at all.
Lack of funding because successive administrations have alienated folks to the point they moved out of Jackson with their wealth and will.
Squandering what funds the city has had over the years by paying employees in general government to do work a smaller work force could accomplish if a system of accountability existed that fostered a positive, can-do attitude among the work force. I would hate to know I had to excite the workers to increase productivity given the victim mindset of Jackson's leadership.
The more insidious minority participation program was the minority consulting set-aside program. The minority firm did a small amount of the work and got paid handsomely. The majority firm simply augmented the minority's assigned scope with their own forces when the product failed to be developed in a timely way.
To fast forward to today, the minority consulting firm ascendance as the dominant method of managing infrastructure work is a bad way to do business for the following reasons:
Higher costs. More overheads mean more mark-ups.
Loss of control of the work by the city.
Creates no "institutional memory" within the PWD.
Eliminates personnel development in terms of experience and job training within the public sector.
Over time, places city in total dependence on the program management firms who become the de facto managers of the city.
A "chosen few" become the power brokers with the political contacts, influence and money to overly influence who is elected to city office, which does work for the city and how much the taxpayer and ratepayer pay for services.
Opens the door for corruption and law breaking.
In short, the program management method of executing infrastructure improvements creates a system to control what goes out the front door by controlling who enters the back door.
No institutional memory within the department if management was outsourced. If no one in-house knew the details of a particular project, how could they possibly address correcting issues at some future point in time? The only solution would be to continue to utilize those who possessed the knowledge needed to solve the issue - the programmer manager.
No real reason to work for the city and build a career within the public sector if private firms were doing all the work.
The city council has not demanded a Street resurfacing program be presented to them for a vote before approving the yearly budget in the fall. This should be done prior to budget development season to ensure funding is earmarked so the PWD has time to plan and bid resurfacing work in the winter months so work can begin in the spring and continue for the balance of the year. Anyone who knows anything about construction knows you do your planning when you can't work so you can work when you can work. Don't wait until May to say you are going to pave streets because you will not pave very many if you wait until then to act. Street work cannot be a priority unless a priority is placed on funding the work.
The mayor and his folks cannot and do not hire people unless:
a) They live in Hinds County
b) They are a minority
These two conditions of employment:
a) Lessen the selection pool
b) Lessen competition for the jobs
c) Creates a provincial frame of mind and reinforces a sullen work ethic.
This memo appears to be more an indictment of the previous administration. There is no indication Mayor Lumumba will follow the same path.
Briarwood Drive is half finished. The road crew has disappeared for two months.
