By Rusty Nixon
Correspondent

PLYMOUTH — It’s that time of year when every street and highway department directors’ thoughts turn to salt.

The substance that helps crews keep roadways safe in the ice and snow of winter is purchased right around this time of year for most departments and both the City of Plymouth and Marshall County have made bids for the coming year.

This year, the state of Indiana offered a new wrinkle on salt purchases, allowing government entities from all over the state to jump on board with their bid for the coming winter. While many entities chose to do so, not all saved money. The city of Plymouth was one of those fortunate.

“Last year we did very well on our bid compared to everybody else, but we did even better this year,” said Jim Marquardt, city Street Dept. superintendent

The city will pay $54.67 per ton for its salt in the coming year, after having paid $59.31 a year ago.
Marshall County was not able to hop on board the state bid this year, after confusion over the procedure for doing so. The county must deal with INDPOT channels in most matters and had difficulty getting information on the process of getting in on the bid until it was too late to do so.

Neal Haeck, Marshall County Highway Dept. superintendent, then explored the possibility of getting other departments to bid with Marshall County, and found out from the State Board of Accounts that without interlocal agreements in place with every municipality they could not do so. The county was still able to do well on its salt bid for this year at $66 per ton.

Haeck hopes the county will do even better next year.

“We would have been in on the state bid this year if we could have gotten the information in time,” said Haeck. “We’ll be ready for next year.”

Dozens of places will see their costs drop under the new program — some by more than half. St. Joseph County, for instance, will pay about $55 per ton, down from last winter’s $152.

But Indianapolis is among a few that will see slight increases, as it will pay $70.65 a ton, up from $68.
“The most difficult part of the process for us was that once you hit that button to submit your information you were locked in to it,” said Marquardt. “You have to make sure you have the money and then they gave us no notification of what was going on. I was sitting at home watching television and first heard about it on the news, that people involved were going to see a savings. I thought, ‘I hope that’s us too.’”