It’s a little unsettling that the city of Mankato has decided to contract out its engineering department, something apparently not done in any other city its size.
City Manager Susan Arntz recently eliminated the 10-person engineering department, cutting two graduate engineers and five engineering staff. The city hadn’t been able to fill two other supervisor jobs. One job will transfer to another department.
City leaders say it’s been difficult to replace engineering managers who have left in the last year. That left the department somewhat rudderless. That has led to a number of miscues including ordering the wrong streetlights for the Riverfront Drive project and missing $1 million in expenses. In a case last year, engineering staff (it’s unclear who), were quietly giving developers six-figure breaks on sidewalk and street-blocking fees.
Arntz said outsourcing engineering had nothing to do with the mistakes, arguing the city just can’t compete with the private sector for engineer pay. If it did, it would have to raise pay of others across the management chain due to state laws. Eliminating the department will save the city about $800,000 while hiring contract engineers is expected to cost about $700,000 with possible extra expenses and to save a small amount of money.
Mankato has long worked with local engineering firms that have again and again proven their competency and efficiency. And it’s likely one or several of them will secure city contracts. But switching a public department to the private sector creates all kinds of thorny issues from conflicts of interest to public transparency.
Private entities do not face the same public record disclosures and open meeting requirements that public governments do. And transparency should be paramount. Private companies are often not comfortable exposing their business to the sometimes messy process that can be public discussion.
So, the city should take all measures to ensure a privately contracted engineering department is subject to all the disclosures that would be required for public employees and a public organization.
Arntz said she believes that contracting engineering could save money. The city can point to contracting out its civil and criminal legal work to a private law firm as a cost-saving measure. But engineering departments are very different than legal work.
At any one time, there are likely dozens of construction projects city engineers must oversee and manage. Many of these projects are complicated and have cost overruns for one reason or another. It’s not as cut and dried as legal work.
The city should consider contract language that also addresses conflicts of interest. Large engineering firms have many projects big and small, public and private. At any given time there may be competing interests faced by private firms that face competing goals of private gain and public good.
That no other city Mankato’s size has contracted engineering should also be a taxpayer concern. That means there’s no real model how this works or any boilerplate agreements that city leaders can study. Starting from scratch will likely be a path rife with pitfalls.
Certainly, taxpayers want the best bang for their bucks and the city engineering department performance needs improvement, but private contracts can go astray if there is no public accountability.