Fargo Public Works Road Graders
FARGO (KFGO) – With winter right around the corner, Fargo Public Works is getting creative to take on whatever challenges the weather brings.
According to Director Ben Dow, one of the biggest challenges for the department is the same one that is affecting nearly every industry – staffing. As of mid-October, the street crew was down 10 percent for equipment operators.
They were down as many as eight people on their 50-person street crew over the summer, and competition from the private sector – including the diversion project – is making filling those spots difficult.
“There are some people leaving the City that are equipment operators or truck drivers that are going to that field and taking advantage of the pay structure that they’re offering,” Dow said.
Dow said Public Works is getting creative to make sure the work will get done this winter.
One area they have been forced to get creative in is hiring, including offering full-time positions to individuals who don’t have a commercial driver’s license (CDL), something they hadn’t done in the past.
The intent is to get operators hired, and then train and help them to get their CDL, which Dow said can take a month’s time.
First, though, they need to get applicants, which is easier said than done. The City of Fargo has had a continuous listing for equipment operators for nearly a year. Those positions start at $23.66 per hour.
“Positions that used to get 25 applicants, we go months without applicants,” Dow said.
Dow said, unfortunately, services have suffered a bit due to the staffing shortage and he wants to correct that as quickly as possible.
“We tried to pick and select what we did and not make too many people angry,” Dow said. “I could definitely see it throughout the city and I do not want to have to do this anymore.”
The City is also looking at contracting out snow removal but, again, even that is tough since contractors and other businesses in the industry are also short-staffed.
After staffing shortages, training is the biggest challenge for Public Works. Dow said because they are hiring operators without CDLs, and they are so busy in the summer, they have a short window between new operators getting their license and training them to operate a snow plow.
“That is another challenge,” Dow said. “Even though we filled some of the slots, the people in those slots aren’t ready to go yet.”
Dow said the Public Works crew began to implement changes nearly a decade ago to be more efficient as they are clearing the streets during and after a snow event.
Buying equipment that would allow more work to be done by less operators was one of those changes. Eight years ago, the City had four road graders, or ‘maintainers.’ Today, by exchanging truck plows out of their fleet, they have 14 maintainers.
That strategy has paid off, especially now when the street crew is running lean.
“A maintainer can operate by itself,” Dow said. “So, rather than taking two trucks and two operators, we can take one maintainer.”
The City has also started subletting some of the work in the industrial park to contractors. Dow said his crew decided to have contractors plow snow in the industrial park because they want City employees in neighborhoods to keep that direct contact with homeowners.
Dow said Public Works has been facing the same challenge as other industries – increasing prices. The City creates a budget in June for the following year and when prices fluctuate as they have recently, Dow said it is tough to react to that.
Rising fuel and chemical costs, in particular, have been tough budgeting items to get a handle on. The City pre-buys fuel on bid contracts, which Dow said helped save Fargo from seeing some of the increases a lot of other cities have seen.
The City only bids about 85 percent of their fuel because they have to pay for what they bid, regardless of whether they use it or not. So, they bid low in case they have a light year because they don’t want to pay for fuel they don’t use. This year, though, a snow-heavy beginning to the year and various other projects have used up fuel.
“Because we used a lot of fuel this year with paving or snow plowing from January through March, we did have to buy off-contract because we used our fuel quantities up,” Dow said.
The City already has fuel prices locked in for the first half of 2023.
“The good thing is, January 1 is a new budget year,” Dow said. “We were able to build some of those increases into our budget because we were aware of them this June when we submitted our budget. So, we’re optimistic as far as contracting some stuff out. That was one of the things we were planning ahead for.”
Dow said Public Works does their best to work with the finance department to make sure they are good stewards of taxpayers’ money. He said if a winter is ‘kind,’ the unused budgeted dollars “go back into the coffers.”
“We don’t spend when we don’t have to,” Dow said. “We only spend what we need.”
Dow said the entire Public Works crew pitches in to get the streets cleared. If a major storm comes through, the Forestry personnel will run sanders, Mains & Hydrants personnel will plow alleys, and Central Garage will all be called on.
“It’s one of those things that we divide and conquer and make it happen,” Dow said. “We’re always looking for new ideas and changing the way we do things. That’s what we do here.”
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