Maybe Governor Kristi Noem should put on a flagger’s vest for her next workforce recruitment ad. The lack of road workers is apparently driving up the cost of rebuilding our roads:
“We’re hearing it time and time again, they’re struggling to get help,” Sam Weisgram told the South Dakota Transportation Commission Thursday.
“It’s not easy in today’s environment,” he added. “We’re struggling with it, to be honest.”
The commission accepted low bids on 17 stand-alone and combination projects. Ten exceeded the department’s estimates, including three that were 26.8%, 45.1% and 51% over.
“It’s the market forces piece. That’s the wild card,” commissioner Don Roby of Watertown said [Bob Mercer, “Is Labor Market Affecting State Highway Bids?” KELO-TV, updated 2023.12.22].
Darn—if those road bids keep coming in over the estimates, we may have to start diverting dollars from Noem’s marketing budget to the Transportation Department.
Immigration!!
Noem ought have her trumpian pal Abbott send bus loads of immigrants to South Dakota.
They can work the roads. They can fill the SD school’s shortfall of 600 students. (God forbid that SD actually consolidate school districts, again, to arrive at optimal sizes for effectiveness and efficiency.)
The immigrants can fill the blood banks (sarcasm).
Optimal size for magat governments is filibuster proof majorities.
FYI – Almost all of SD’s major roadwork projects are performed by out-of-state contractors who mostly employ workers from out-of-state. ALL of the employers I have ever worked with on SD projects were from out-of-state, as was my own employer (although they do have a branch office in SD) and to the best of my knowledge there are 4 of us who live in SD, out of the hundreds of employees.
Everyone makes more money being a YouTuber.
We need fewer roads.
Don’t like to argue with Richard Schriever, a man who has acquired much wisdom, but I did a brief turn for Peter Kiewet of Denver Colorado way back in the day on the construction of overpasses on I-90. So did many of my neer do well friends and acquaintances ….driving trucks, working the swamper crew, doing menial and somewhat more important jobs. We learned we were all expendable, but relative to the market in those days we earned pretty good money, worked long hours, and, as long as you showed up on time and didn’t tip over a gravel truck or blow up a piece of equipment, they kept you on. It was a great job for a college kid, or a young farm kid. You walked away with cash in your pocket if you could stay out of the strip clubs in the evening hours. Other than boss men and some cats hanging around with clipboards, we were an all South Dakota crew….as I recall.
Greece shows the way. Greece opened immigration to address its shortage of laborers.
https://apnews.com/article/greece-migrants-residence-work-permits-0851a9592f1811487d1fde49a63be5ae
There’s no workforce shortage in the chemical toilet that better wages won’t fix.
If noem had a brain she’d send the S.D. DOL to the border to find laborers.
And the D of Education to find 600 school children.
Noem needs to realize she’s the governor of an old folks home.
I find this article to be a bit disingenuous and one sided. It should also note that the bids awarded in the December 6 and 12 letting had at least seven bids come in under the engineers estimate. They are from largest to smallest; -53.8%, -32.0%, -26.9%, -19.4%, -19.1%, -9.0%, and -7.5%. It should be noted that the DOT’s estimates can be wildly off, either high or low. If you want to check these numbers follow the link in the op to the kelo story.
It was also stated above in the comments that, “Almost all of SD’s major roadwork projects are performed by out-of-state contractors who mostly employ workers from out-of-state.” This is just not correct. While there are many contractors that are from out of state, primarily adjacent states, SD has a robust supply of contractors. You can review a representative sample of them in the Associated General Contractors of SD at the following link:
https://www.associatedgeneralcontractorsofsouthdakota-digital.com/dakr/2023_membership_directory_and_resource_guide/MobilePagedReplica.action?pm=1&folio=11#pg14