San Juan Bautista’s public works has gone private.
San Juan Bautista’s public works has gone private.
San Juan has contracted with Dublin-based MCE Corp. to provide the services. City Manager Jan McClintock said the public works operation will improve at about the same cost – about $190,000 annually – as San Juan had paid before.
The city also paid the firm a one-time fee of about $20,000 for setup costs, McClintock said.
The city’s contract with MCE Corp. started Saturday. Aside from higher efficiency, McClintock said the “big thing” for officials is the company’s participation in a national emergency response group. If the case of an emergency, such as a flood or earthquake, MCE could bring in special equipment to which the city otherwise has no access.
She also noted how the firm likely will obtain subcontracted work for professional landscaping.
“We’re really pretty excited about it,” McClintock said. “It just gives us so much more than we had before, and I don’t mean anything against the guys (handling public works duties previously).”
San Juan’s public works joins other services the city already contracts out such as planning, building and code enforcement, and wastewater management, McClintock said.
The conversion to privatization has taken about a year, the city manager said. But she hopes citizens start noticing improvements in the next couple of months – such as seeing workers out measuring streets, checking road conditions and cleaning parks.
San Juan City Councilman Robert Paradice referred to the prior public works response as a “seat-of-the-pants operation.”
“Whoever was standing around got stuck with it,” he said.
