Asphalt Ordinance

An email I received that helps shed more light on possible effects of this ordinance on some local pavers. Refer also to my archives to find my blog of 2/9/10 titled " Laborers Union Letter to County Board Members Regarding the asphalt material paving ordinance.

To date, I have received a copy of one lawsuit opposing this new County Asphalt Ordinance.

Sent: Friday, February 26, 2010 7:39 PM
Subject: FW: Asphalt plant and Peoria County Board


Ladies and Gentleman;

I am forwarding this email to you as suggested and as a courtesy if you will.
As a Project Manager and Superintendent, doing Multi-family and Commercial Developments, with my experience in dealing with costs and surcharges. All of them always in the end are within the final billing to the customer. All costs of doing business is one or another passed onto the customer with add ons for mark-up an overhead...

So for example... If each load as explained by IDOT has to be inspected at the project, generally speaking from my own experience, the avg for sampling and testing cores can run as high as $1000.00 per... so if the avg project takes 2 loads, that would be a direct cost to the County or Contractor. If it is the County doing the testing that would mean the permits for doing a driveway or parking lot would be no less than $2000.00 plus whatever amount the county adds for administration.
If the Contractor is required to do so, the same numbers applied, take the $2000.00 and one can expect at least 15% markup, which is a reasonable and standard mark-up.. Either way these costs are applied directly to the project, so I ask, who is going to pay these additional costs, The Homeowner/Property Owner.

It is common knowledge who is backing this measure ( Local Unions ) Okay, lets look at their history, for a minute...
Can any of them really convince any of us that it would be competitive for them cost wise to load their equipment, call the Union Halls, have 2 Operators, 2 Laborers, 2 Teamsters, keeping in mind, one from each of those would have to be considered a foreman, per Union guidelines. If that wouldn't drive the costs up to a level that the avg homeowner would not be willing pay, for one to believe otherwise is not thinking fairly or realistically. If you were to look at a neighbor city and county, Bloomington for example. Asphalt is Union controled, non-union contractors can not even purchase materials there, to truck them there from Peoria is not an option, material would cool to much in the travel distance and time. So in the end, Asphalt Driveways are an option for citizens. No one is able to justify the cost to install such a driveway. So a choice is therefor removed from the public.

As a voter myself, If the one whom represents me is backing and pushing such a measure, I would really call them and ask them to reconsider, for it would lead me and most educated people and voters to rethink who it is speaking on their behalf's, Political Career suicide I would suspect.

Thanks in Advance for your time reading and looking into all of this.

Regards.

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Subject: RE: Asphalt plant and Peoria Co