Cost of fuel takes toll on county vendor

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Cost of fuel takes toll on county vendor

County News

Wednesday, 04 May 2011 14:47

Toho Water Authority to install Harmony fix this week

By Marvin G. Cortner
Editor
The rising cost of fuel is taking its toll on local contractors providing services for Osceola County government, according to information presented at Monday’s County Commission meeting.

Thomas V. Greer, who runs Greer’s Landscape and Lawn Maintenance at 4599 Kissimmee Park Road, St. Cloud, has a contract for right of way mowing, trimming and trash pickup with the county but told commissioners the doubling of fuel costs would force him to abandon that agreement.
Commissioners, however, reached a 3-2 consensus to allow the county manager to look at Greer’s contract and possibly make further cuts in the level of service required in terms of the number of times grass is mowed or additional compensation to offset the rising fuel costs.
“I bid the contract when fuel was lower, now it has gone through the roof. I have no other choice but to let the contract go,” Greer said, adding that he uses about 500 gallons of gasoline a week on county work.
Commissioners supporting some effort to modify the contract were Fred Hawkins Jr., Frank Attkisson and John Quiñones.
“We’ll lose a local company,” Hawkins said, advocating for an adjustment to Greer’s contract. “I can see a trend where people are walking away from contracts.”
Hawkins added that when fuel costs are tallied for the various county operations, such as Road and Bridge and the Sheriff’s Office, budgets would take a big hit as well.
Quiñones said that if the county rebids Greer’s contract to find a new vendor, the higher price of gasoline is going to be reflected in the new bid. He also said he is
worried about opening the door for other mowing vendors to request modified contracts.
“Let’s sit down and see if we can change the level of service required,” he said. “We either do it now, or we do it later.”
Attkisson said possibly modifying Greer’s contract is a “moral obligation.”
Commissioners Michael Harford and Brandon Arrington favored adhering to the contract and not making any modifications for high fuel costs.
“When we do these contracts, we expect bidders to understand the market,” Harford said, adding that modifying Greer’s contract essentially would be helping a business compete at taxpayers’ expense. “I have a real problem with that. Those businesses took the risk and now you want to transfer that risk to the taxpayers.”
Harford also said he would not be opposed to including some kind of language in future contracts to address dramatic cost changes in fuel.
Arrington said opening Greer’s contract would set a precedent for other contracts.
“This is what privatization looks like,” he said. “If the county were doing this in-house, we would have hedged against higher fuel costs. It’s about the tax dollar; we set our budget a long time ago.”
Arrington said the county needs to closely control costs, especially in light of the expectation that property values – and therefore county revenue coming from property taxes – would be 5 percent to 10 percent lower this year.
Toho Water
Authority update
Also at Monday’s meeting, Brian Wheeler, executive director of the Toho Water Authority, reported that the planned fix to the Harmony treatment plant to reduce the amount of carcinogenic byproducts in the water resulting from the treatment process was to be installed this week.
“We have to have the new injection system in by Thursday,” Wheeler said. “We will do extensive sampling over the next few months to see if this modification is successful.”
Harmony’s water for a number of months has not complied with federal and state drinking water standards and the state is requiring the utility to fix the problem. A consultant recently recommended the utility change the location where treatment chemicals are injected as a way to reduce the number of harmful byproducts (trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids).
As a temporary fix, the utility had made carbon faucet filters available to residents at no costs.
Wheeler also spoke about rumors of asbestos leaching into the water from old pipes in Buenaventura Lakes, Poinciana and Kissimmee.
Wheeler said cement-asbestos pipe was used 30 years ago by developers when building local water systems but that the health risk from asbestos fibers is when it is inhaled, not when ingested. He also said about 2 percent of Toho Water Authority’s pipe contain asbestos.
“We’re required to test for asbestos every nine years,” Wheeler said, adding that tests about eight years ago showed asbestos levels in the water all below the legal limit. “We will be doing tests this month because of the concern in the community and then again in the summer for compliance purposes.”
Wheeler said the utility has no regular program to replace this kind of pipe but does so when pipe must be relocated for road projects or when leaks are repaired.
Since it is a public entity, the County Commission has one seat on Toho Water Authority’s six-member board of supervisors.