Quoted from mikechristine1

Tough issue.  It is, I believe, by law that it goes to the lowest bidder.  The idea was to prevent political patronage.  If it's not the lowest bidder then who get's the bid, who decides?  Would each and every little project go before the voters?  How much would that cost to have polls open every time another project is done.  I don't know exactly how, I )

Granted I'm not in the business...

But you'd think we could get some legal warranties in the contract - with performance penalties...

Quoted from JackBauer

Granted I'm not in the business...

But you'd think we could get some legal warranties in the contract - with performance penalties...

I would think so to, many contractors that are hired through the city usually have to warranty their work for a specific time. Although that area can be a little grey since the warranty can be void if the damage is not of their fault, many times they can make the case for that.

Quoted from mikechristine1

Tough issue.  It is, I believe, by law that it goes to the lowest bidder.  The idea was to prevent political patronage.  If it's not the lowest bidder then who get's the bid, who decides?  Would each and every little project go before the voters?  How much would that cost to have polls open every time another project is done.  I don't know exactly how, I mean, let's say 50 streets are going to be done in a given fiscal year.   I don't know whether the city packages that as one job or perhaps five projects of 10 streets each, or is it 50 separate jobs.   Volume generally keeps prices lower, look at Walmart, large volume, low prices.   So I would say that 50 projects done all by one company would cost substantially less tha 50 separate jobs.

I think something along this line was raised at a council meeting sometime during this year.  I think it was an issue of minorities not getting "enough" jobs and it may have had to do with something about plumbing.  I think it was mentioned during POF and a speaker (or several) may have said that if the city split up the jobs--I don't know if that meant bid for each different job, or, in the context of plumbing and jobs for the city would it be split by the task within the whole job (think of installing a new toilet---one person to go down to your basement and shut the water off, another to unscrew the toilet from all it's connections, another company to take it out, a fourth contractor to open the box for your new toilet, a fifth to carry it to your bathroom, etc--get the idea).  

Separating jobs into smaller ones, and getting rid of the lowest bidder, would result in higher cost which in turn results in higher taxes for the people (or cutting someplace else)

You have some valid points but can't the city in the bid requirements include the job to be the foundation too?  Yes, it will cost more now but I hold to the same position that it would save us later.

In regards to taxes going up.  If they would just take care of reducing the frills like cell phones and giving cars out to start with or how about 100K to replace parking meters with hi tech ones when the current ones work just fine or have the Mayor drive a vehicle that is just as functional as the one he has but a lot cheaper to buy or lease and costs less in fuel.  There must be other areas that reductions could be made to without much impact other then opening funds up for the needed things.

In regards to splitting jobs I am not sure what that would mean either.

I called the Schenectady Bureau of Services this week.  Either Mon or Tues. can't remember which.  Boy was Eastern Ave. getting pretty severe with pot holes  Not only were they deep they were long and wide. The whole road seems to be breaking up between DeGraff and Nott Terrace.  I got an answering machine.  I left the message.  A polite one.  I acknowledged understanding how difficult this winter has been. I am sure you have your hands full but we have a situation that need to be looked at.  I acknowledged that they just patched the road a couple weeks ago.  But the entire road is breaking up.

This morning I found all all the potholes patched.  Doesn't mean it won't break up again real soon because no doubt it will.  The problem being such a poor foundation.  Years of just adding a top layer to resurface the street.

Then to top it off this morning the city is cutting back all the snow to the curbs.  Out there with the dump trucks etc.  Oh boy is this old house shaking on it's foundation from the trucks rippin into the snow.

The city put up signs two days in advance, no parking for today.  Anyone still parked I hope they get towed! They deserve it.

So I called BOS again today to said... thank you.  

I know it is their job, their responsibility, they aren't doing anything but what is expected of them with the tax dollars we give them  But my feeling is I am really so glad they did something.  It was dangerous the way it was and purely for selfish reasons...MY CAR can't take much more.

Funny part about all this...Today's call a woman answered.  i was taken back and stuttered how surprised I was to get a real person then did the usual Good Morning stuff.  She was stumbling on her replies. Could just tell this is not the type of calls she is used to.  She said she will let the supervisor know with still coming across I took her back, being surprised on the nature of the call.

I am sure there are many that don't feel they they are getting results on their streets.  Feeling they aren't getting anywhere with the BOS and maybe they aren't. The frustration, and in reality they might not getting the results, the level must be right up there and don't blame them if their calls are a tad more aggressive..  Just thought I would share what happened on Eastern.  I am sure they got many many calls about the situation so maybe all of us made an impact.

That was probably the first thank you they have received in a while. They must have a person on that phone at Bureau of Services. People are calling with water main breaks and leaks. Couple of problems-private contractors for utilities are ripping up streets and not patching correctly. That's what happened on Union St near University Place. Then you have the Mayor who postponed scheduled road resurfacing and refused to ever declare a snow emergency.

     It's patch over patch-the road needs to be stripped and repaved. Brandywine Ave is horrible as is Union Avenue which has totally eroded on the right side going north. One way traffic with the parked cars. Saw no parking signs and cars being towed to cut the monster snow banks. Some Union co-eds were not happy campers. This should have been done a month ago.

You'd think the so called bright Union students could read.  The signs are red placed two days in advance what a bunch of dummies.  They shoud all have the cars towed and charged double.  Then I would like for them to make REAL fools of themselves at a city council meeting crying like little babies  Boo Hoo.

potholes on Rotterdam's side streets are horrible

maybe time to make a change at the highway department ??????????????

Quoted from DemocraticVoiceOfReason

potholes on Rotterdam's side streets are horrible

maybe time to make a change at the highway department ??????????????

DV can't read, this is for OUTSIDE Rotterdam   lol

Quoted from mikechristine1

DV can't read, this is for OUTSIDE Rotterdam   lol

Nobody ever accused Ronny of being the brightest bulb on the Christmas Tree.

Quoted from Cel

You have some valid points but can't the city in the bid requirements include the job to be the foundation too?  Yes, it will cost more now but I hold to the same position that it would save us later.

In regards to taxes going up.  If they would just take care of reducing the frills like cell phones and giving cars out to start with or how about 100K to replace parking meters with hi tech ones when the current ones work just fine or have the Mayor drive a vehicle that is just as functional as the one he has but a lot cheaper to buy or lease and costs less in fuel.  There must be other areas that reductions could be made to without much impact other then opening funds up for the needed things.

In regards to splitting jobs I am not sure what that would mean either.

In terms of the job to include the foundation, that would be a totally different job.  I can't remember the terminology.  I think there is resurfacing (or maybe it's called repaving) and then there is a different term for doing the foundation part along with it.  It's not "rebuilding" but that's kind of what I think you might mean.    But it is way far more expensive.

To make an analogy.  You have your yard.  Every spring you re-seed it (I mean you through some more seed on it) as opposed to totally ripping the whole lawn up and starting from scratch.  Buying a bag of seed every year is less expensive than ripping up the lawn every year as well as a lot less time.  Maybe this is sort of a bad analogy in one way because as long as you properly feed the lawn, do what is necessary to prevent weeds and grubs, you'll should forever have a beautiful lawn.  I mean, a lawn, properly cared for, won't need to be completely re-done from it's foundation.

Perhaps your driveway is a better example.  Brand new house, and brand new driveway.   You regularly do maintenance, i.e., use sealer as recommended.  And you are even fortunate that you don't have to put salt down on it in the winter.  EVen with the best of care, you will, at some point, have to re-do the driveway and that means ripping everything up.  Think of driveway sealer in the same way as street repaving, although repaving is less frequent.  

The city simply cannot rip up a whole street and start from scratch in the intervals that it does the repaving/resurfacing.   I'm not sure what the intervals for repaving is, but maybe every 5 years, the city just can't totally rip up a street from one end to the other every five years.  I think Eastern Ave was totally redone, I want to say in the 1990's, that being ripping all asphalt up.  I believe that it was done write down to the original bricks.   That maybe where a problem could be.  It needed to be done, there is X money available.  To take up the bricks and everything underneath that might have cost 3X.  How do you get 3X money from 1X?   Again, I don't know these intervals, a civil engineer would be able to explain it.  

I would think that somewhere the city has like a schedule of sorts that show re-paving cycles/intervals.  Equal number of lane miles done each year and it all cycles back, let's say the life cycle is 10 years, so you would think there is a list of what streets are in a given cycle.  

Quoted from benny salami

That was probably the first thank you they have received in a while. They must have a person on that phone at Bureau of Services. People are calling with water main breaks and leaks. Couple of problems-private contractors for utilities are ripping up streets and not patching correctly. That's what happened on Union St near University Place. Then you have the Mayor who postponed scheduled road resurfacing and refused to ever declare a snow emergency.

     It's patch over patch-the road needs to be stripped and repaved. Brandywine Ave is horrible as is Union Avenue which has totally eroded on the right side going north. One way traffic with the parked cars. Saw no parking signs and cars being towed to cut the monster snow banks. Some Union co-eds were not happy campers. This should have been done a month ago.

Union College used to be a premier college in civil engineering.  But didn't the wannabee mayor eliminate that field of education?

I wonder if this will actually work.  

http://wnyt.com/article/12228/

Michigan Ave is pathetic.....dont forget to hold onto your fillings....although the government probably wants them too....

The link was from a news channel so someone has to see it.  Light it up like a christmas tree.  

Quoted Text

EDITORIALS
What is Sch’dy going to do about its roads?

    Freeze-thaw, freeze-thaw, freeze-thaw ... that last one was the final straw for Schenectady, whose roads totally fell apart about two weeks ago. Crumbling pavement, washboard sections, fields of big, unavoidable potholes — the city’s got them all. But who’s got the solution at a time when there simply is no money?
    Federal dollars would be nice, and President Obama seemed to offer hope of a lot of them when he told a U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting at the White House in 2009, with Mayor Brian Stratton in attendance, that their fi rst priority should be roads and other infrastructure when he sent stimulus money. Stratton came home and drew up a wish list that included $55 million to repave roads and sidewalks and replace sewer and water pipes.
    The city got $1.2 million, which was enough to repave Van Vranken Avenue but not nearly enough to fix all, or even a substantial part, of the roads that need fixing. Had President Obama taken a route through the city on his visit to the General Electric plant in January, rather than around it, he would have had to navigate the same moguls/slalom course the rest of us do every day.
    It would be nice, and only fair, if the city could get more money from the federal government, whose highway building, interest-rate deductions and other home ownership incentives encouraged the exodus to the suburbs, leaving older cities like Schenectady with fewer, poorer people to maintain the same aging infrastructure. But most of the federal dollars continue to go to building bypasses to relieve traffic in the ’burbs, or to new routes to airports and other major construction projects, rather than repaving miles and miles of existing roads.
    Schenectady has about 180 miles of roads in all, many of them deteriorating fast, making the city a much less pleasant place to live in or even drive through. Despite the precarious fiscal condition of the city, the failing infrastructure must be maintained. City officials have to start addressing this issue, and thinking creatively.
    One possibility is to ask for a trade-in of the nearly $14 million in federal and state money for the Erie Boulevard reconstruction project. This could go a long way toward catching up on the city’s paving program, a cost estimated at $18 million to $20 million in 2005 and probably more now. Trade-in may be a long shot, but the feds allowed it in the mid-1980s when New York City traded in $1.5 billion allocated for the planned Westway, an elaborate, elevated highway/real estate project along the Hudson River, and used the money instead to improve subways and repave roads.
    Another possibility is to seek help from Rep. Tonko and Sens. Schumer and Gillibrand in getting federal money. Earmarks, congressionally approved spending for certain projects in a legislator’s district, are out under the GOP-controlled House. But The New York Times reported this week that some legislators are having success appealing directly to federal agencies for money.
    And if the city fails to get help from the feds and is left to its own devices? One possibility is to ask nonprofits such as Ellis Hospital and Union College, and businesses such as Golub Corp., to pay to fix the roads immediately around them. Seward Place, for instance, is a mess. The city paid for its reconstruction when Union fixed up houses on the west side of campus; maybe it’s Union’s turn now. ................>>>>.......................>>>>..................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00700&AppName=1