Posted on December 22, 2020
The Barnstable County Dredge Program’s director Ken Cirillo proposed a new rate cost for dredging at the Assembly of Delegates meeting on Wednesday, December 17.
The assembly was scheduled to vote on the new rate proposal after a discussion and presentation by Mr. Cirillo, but instead the assembly voted to postpone the dredge rate fee increase indefinitely.
Assembly speaker and delegate Suzanne McAuliffe of Yarmouth said a vote on the proposed ordinance will hopefully be rescheduled for the next assembly meeting on January 6.
The current rates per cubic yard is $9 without a booster and $13 with a booster.
The new proposed rates are $11 without a booster and $15 with a booster, and all projects will have a minimum fee of $20,000.
“We have a commitment to provide reliable service to the towns, and it does require continued investment,” Mr. Cirillo said. “That is key here. We can’t just keep on patching equipment up. We need to invest in it, and we need to make sure we’re managing everything properly.”
The proposed rates are still much lower than the private-sector costs. Mr. Cirillo estimated the new rates are 60 percent to 70 percent below the private sector.
“The bottom line is the current revenue that we have is not enough to properly maintain a balanced budget without having to continually dip into our reserve account,” he said.
Mr. Cirillo said this increase will help make the dredge program sustainable for years to come.
The current rate structure has been in place since 2005 and has not changed since the purchase of the county’s two new dredges.
“We have had on staff as a consultant Foth Infrastructure and Environment,” he said.
The company was hired to help the county understand what needed to be done. Their biggest takeaway was that the rates really needed to change, Mr. Cirillo said.
The current rates are not sustainable for the budget and to run the program properly and safely.
All towns on Cape Cod take advantage of the county dredge program, except for Brewster.
“The program has not been doing a lot in terms of updating, upgrading and expanding its equipment,” Mr. Cirillo said.
Some of the five-year capital purchases the program is aiming for include two additional pickup trucks to replace older trucks; skid steer with tracks and trailer for moving pipe onshore; a fuel and transport barge; a fusion machine for routine maintenance of pipes; a permanent steel building for storage and maintenance; a push boat to replace the current one from 1996; and impellers, trailers and modifications and maintenance needs to occur on the barge.
“You know our barge is old,” Mr. Cirillo said. “We are going to have some work done on it and have it inspected.”
He hopes those repairs happen in the off-season.
“The demand is ongoing for the program; it’s increasing,” he said. “The state MassWorks project is still funding these projects at 50 percent.”
On the program’s five-year look ahead, Mr. Cirillo said they anticipate a lot more demand.
The program is working on projects a Dead Neck in Barnstable, which is the county’s largest project of its type.
They are also working in Falmouth and Yarmouth, with a staging a project in Provincetown.
“We are now starting on Monday in Bourne, a reasonably sized project as well,” Mr. Cirillo said. “After that, we’ll be circling back to do a portion of Bass River, then down to Chatham. So we’ve got a lot of work that we’ve done, and we’re kind of frantically running around back and forth.”
Mr. Cirillo mentioned Orleans is asking for help with the Nauset estuary project and Falmouth is asking for help with Mill Pond.
“And there is obviously more opportunity in ponds throughout the Cape, so we’re starting to look at opportunities there,” Mr. Cirillo said.
There is no shortage of opportunities for dredge-related projects, but the seasonal weather does affect the work.
The delegates were concerned with the cost increase and considered delaying the increase of the rates until the Fiscal Year 2022 budget, as opposed to the FY21 budget.
Sandwich delegate James Killion said his concern was with the current efficiency of the dredge program.
Mr. Cirillo said new hires, including a maintenance engineer and a foreman, have been extremely valuable in addressing any efficiency issue with the program.
In an additional effort, Mr. Cirillo said they are also working to reestablish the Barnstable County Dredge Committee, which is a subcommittee of the Barnstable County Coastal Management Committee.
Once the towns on the Cape approve this, Mr. Cirillo can take it to the Barnstable County Board of Regional Commissioners for approval. However, he said he does not expect any meetings to be held until February.
Source: capenews
