New Center Street Bridge

Our Salem Mayor has recently announced that the bridge on 1400 block of Center Street is going to be replaced during the summer of 2006.

The things that qualify this for space on of Pete's Rants, are  the following.

Number 1: The cost of this replacing this sixty foot bridge is quoted as $1,500,000, or $25,000 per foot.

What materials are being used for this project. Is the gravel in the concrete being replaced with various precious gems? Are the reinforcing rods going to be made out of platinum? Will the surface of the bridge be gold plated?

The individuals receiving and accepting bids need to be replaced with someone that can sit down and research the actual cost of materials, the properties of the materials and how much actual labor is involved in a project. If the received bids are not in line with these costs, all bids should be rejected and opened for new bids.

The alternative would be for the city street department to build the bridge and for our greedy contractors to "go whistle".

Number 2: You cannot build a bridge in a timely manner if you only have two or three workers on the project.

Contractors on government road and bridge jobs rarely have enough workers to do the job in a timely manner. This leads to  lengthening the project and somehow the increases the overall cost of the project.

Example: If the highway from Anchorage, Alaska to Seward, Alaska was built using the same per mile number of workers and pieces of equipment as was used on the widening of the freeway through Salem, instead of being completed in one summer and paved the next, the road would still be under construction and would not be finished until at least the year 2100.

Our duly elected officials need to pull their heads out of the sand and start looking after our money instead of worrying about  the next election.