The Board of Road Commissioners has initiated a series of
Working Sessions scheduled this spring to review our
“Core Services”. The intent of this exercise is to evaluate all of the
primary services and functions our agency performs to determine if
we are consistently performing the essential tasks that support
our statutory charge and agency mission. This review will entail an in-depth analysis of our various
routine and capital investments to determine if we are on a
financially sustainable path. The schedule for these
Working
Sessions is as follows:
March 17th.........Financial Overview
April 23rd...........Asset Management
May 20th...........Equipment & Facilities
June 23rd...........Employee / Contracted Services
July 20th............Proposed Sustainable Strategies
Sept. 22nd.........Core Services Adjustments
The timing of the
Core Services review has been driven by the
steadily decreasing amount of Michigan Transportation Funds we are
receiving. In fact, we are anticipating the same amount of
revenue in 2009 as we received in 2000. Meanwhile, we have seen a
53% increase in our routine maintenance costs over this same period
of time. It is not surprising that we have had to limit
expenditures where possible to balance our budget. The real
question is: Are we meeting our statutory obligations and spending our precious resources in such a way that preserves the
overall road system to the best of our ability, or should we
eliminate certain services in order to focus our remaining
resources on essential services?
These are not easy questions for our Board to answer, so we have embarked on a series of Working Sessions over the next couple of months to determine the best path for our agency. This process will challenge our agency to balance primary roads versus local roads; roads versus bridges; paved roads versus gravel roads; bare roads versus snow covered roads; equipment replacements versus road investments; facility improvements versus road investments, and employee costs versus contracted services.
The Road Commission recognizes that the public has entrusted our
agency to be good stewards of the public resources; we are
committed to providing the public with the most cost effective method
to “maintain a reasonably safe and convenient road system”.
See published Working Sessions: