State and county governments may have at least one thing to be thankful for in the struggling economy.
The number of project bids for many public construction contracts is rising, resulting in more competitive rates for state-funded agencies.
Ohio University is one public organization that has seen an increase in construction contract bids.
Ralph Six, director of the Purchasing and Contracting Office, said he has seen as many as two or three new companies bid for many of OU's smaller projects.
Complete General Construction, a construction firm based in Columbus that focuses on public projects, has also seen the increased competition for government agency contracts.
A lot of the people who were doing things in the private market were forced to try to get some public work
said Mike Lynch, a vice president of operations for the firm. He attributes this increased interest to economic woes, particularly the housing crisis.
This means lower rates for local governments such as Athens, Lynch added.
However, any benefits Athens County might gain from increased bidding could still mean little to no financial gain.
Mike Canterbury, the county deputy engineer for operations, said the cost of transporting outside materials for construction projects would outweigh any financial gain from more bids.
We live in an area where it's hard to get stuff in and hard to get stuff out. Everything we do here has to be shipped in ... that increases the prices he said.
The higher cost of salt this past winter is one example of increased transportation expenses, Canterbury said, adding that the price almost doubled from $56 to $106 per ton.
While a supply shortage might have partly caused the increase, Canterbury said that it was affected by shipping costs. The county now gets salt from Portsmouth, Ohio, instead of Marietta, Ohio.
Canterbury said he would like to lessen these costs by looking into new ways to transport construction materials in and out of the county, particularly rail transport. He also accused the county commissioners of doing little to reduce these costs.
These are thoughts these current commissioners should have had and conversations they should have had and they really haven't he said.
County Commissioner Lenny Eliason responded to this accusation, saying, That's the engineer's job. If they want to have it delivered that way then they need to bring it up. We will review what they recommend.
Canterbury said the engineer's office has yet to submit a recommendation to the commissioners.
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Dan Quarfoot
