STARKVILLE — Debate over the cost and necessity of outsourcing Starkville’s roadway maintenance planning sparked a divided vote among aldermen during the board’s regular monthly meeting Tuesday evening at City Hall.
The discussion unfolded after Ward 6 Alderman and Vice Mayor Roy A. Perkins asked to pull an item from the consent agenda that would approve a $57,500 payment to Civil-Link, a Southaven-based engineering firm, to update the city’s roadway maintenance improvement plan.
The city began working with Civil-Link in 2023 when the firm developed a 10-year assessment identifying streets across Starkville most in need of repair through a rating system based on the road’s age and condition.
Mayor Lynn Spruill spoke in favor of the continued use of Civil-Link, arguing the data-driven approach has saved the city “millions,” a statement Ward 2 Alderwomen and Budget Chair Sandra Sistrunk echoed.
“In addition to what the mayor has spoken about, I think we can see over the last few years how the changes in the pavement preservation and maintenance that we’ve been doing has allowed us to address far more streets than we typically would have been able to address,” she said. “… This gives us a third-party, arms-length evaluation of the streets and gives us an opportunity to make informed decisions, which I think is what we’re all trying to do with our taxpayer dollars with these street improvements.”
Sistrunk moved to approve the item.
Perkins, over an impassioned seven-minute monologue, spoke against it, calling the cost a “liberal expenditure” and arguing the work should be done in-house.
“We have a ton of engineers … and they’re capable of doing these things,” Perkins said. “They are fully competent, knowledgeable and experienced to identify these streets. We don’t need no outsider to tell us what streets we need to do. … Why they can’t do it? What’s the problem? What’s wrong?
“… When this contract expires, I can’t vote for it again,” he added. “From now on, anything like this, that’s $57,500, I cannot vote it. I’m looking to trim the fat in this city.”
Spruill pushed back, saying the analysis requires specialized equipment the city does not currently own.
“I certainly don’t think it’s a liberal expenditure,” she said, laughing, from the board table. “I think it’s a prudent one based on, again, data. So without the equipment necessary to do that and with the understanding that pavement preservation, I think, is our future, it is important, from my perspective, that we continue to move forward with this with the thought that at some point, in the not too distant future, we will be able to manage it in house, which I think is a perfectly appropriate thing to do.
“… I do not think that city has … fat,” she added. “I think we are very prudent with what we do, and I think we get a lot done with a lot less than most municipalities, so I’m very proud of both our staff and our board for the things they have chosen to do over the years, and the things that they have opted not to do which have been expenditures that go beyond what we can afford to do.”
The motion passed 6-1, with Perkins casting the lone dissenting vote.
Perkins did not respond to calls and messages from The Dispatch on Wednesday.
Bringing it in-house
City Engineer Cody Burnett said to do the surveying in-house now would require his staff to ride all 315 lane miles with a GoPro camera and a notepad to manually rate the condition of each road.
“It takes a lot of time to ride every street, to video every street, to rank every street and Civil-Link can do that in about 10 days,” Burnett told The Dispatch on Wednesday. “So cost-per-time is a factor for us. But as the technology gets better, we’re going to be able to do this with equipment that’s already out driving the streets anyway. … We’re just not quite there yet.”
Burnett said the data from Civil-Link has helped increase the life of roads in the city by 10% to 15%.
“If you look at every street in Starkville (and) take an average condition, that average is going up,” he said. “Previously it was going down. What’s going to happen at the end of this 10-year plan is we will have a much higher roadway condition on average and the cost to keep it there will be substantially less because it’s cheaper to keep a good road good, than to make a bad road good.”
Burnett said he hopes to bring the surveying in-house in the near future, once equipment costs go down.
“I fully expect next time we survey that I will be able to have some type of camera mounted on a garbage truck or a street department truck that is surveying streets every single day as it’s out driving around,” he said. “… I think we need to see Civil-Link through again one more time to make sure the plan we’re on is working … but once we have some of that confidence that this is indeed heading in the direction that we think it is, we’re going to be able to survey those streets ourselves.
“There’s 100 different ways to have detection,” he added, pointing to the various cameras and radar technologies used to monitor road conditions. “We’re trying to let the cream float to the top and see what is the most cost effective and accurate. … It’s really new. Even this program is only two years old for us, so we’re still trying to get our arms around it a little bit, but we certainly want to be able to bring everything in house.”
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