Cass, St. Joe take more steps toward joint council

Published 8:18 pm Monday, January 10, 2011

A joint purchasing council — another step toward a formal joint operation — will be proposed to the Cass and St. Joseph County road commission boards at their respective meetings in January, Louis Csokasy, manager of the joint operations has announced.

Details of the proposed council will be shared with the Cass County Road Commission on Jan. 6 and with the St. Joseph County Road Commission on Jan. 14. Csokasy said the purchasing document that he is proposing will set up the framework for the two commissions to jointly purchase all strategic items that are used for both agencies general operations. These include such items as asphalt, emulsions, rocks, culverts, gravel, snow blades, chemicals for dust control on gravel roads and fuel oil.

The initial agreement that has allowed Csokasy to serve as the manager of both the St. Joseph and Cass County road commissions was signed by the St. Joseph County Road Commission Dec. 8, and by the Cass County Board Dec. 10. That agreement provides for the two agencies to share Csokasy’s time with his salary and benefits split evenly between the two. The second major agreement, a much broader joint operations agreement, is expected to be developed over the next several months.

Csokasy noted that the broader document will be a joint operations agreement only, and will not in any way represent a merger of the two road commissions. The boards of both road commissions will have input into the document which will define the proposed extent of the joint operation, he said.

“I see significant savings in the area of shared equipment and shared services. We already have shared a bulldozer, side shoulder machine, compactor and a sprayer,” he said.

He noted that St. Joseph County Road Commission, for example, will provide quotes for Cass County’s chip and seal applications, and Cass County’s agency will provide quotes for paving St. Joseph County’s roads. The two commissions already are exchanging engineering information on bridges, he said.

The purchasing council document that Csokasy will propose next, however, will allow for the establishment of a purchasing council that will include at least one representative from each agency. The purchasing process would include a bidding procedure that would increase the volumes of high dollar amounts for road materials used by both road commissions. While the council would set up the bid specifications and make final recommendations based on a detailed set of procedures, each road commission would be responsible for the awarding of separate contracts.

Both the management services agreement as well as the larger joint operations agreement under development have been prompted by reduced funding that road agencies receive from the Michigan Department of Transportation, in tandem with continued increased operational costs.

The Cass and St. Joseph county road commissions are the first in Michigan to undertake such an arrangement.

The idea for a joint operating agreement between the two counties first was proposed in a meeting of the Frugal Five, an informal organization of the road commissions representing the five border counties of Cass, St. Joseph, Hillsdale, Branch and Barry. Road commission representatives from those counties, which are similar in size, in population, operations and miles of roads, meet quarterly to share information.