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STEUBENVILLE -- Some Jefferson County communities and agencies were able to secure their supply of road salt for the coming winter at a cheaper price than they would have had to pay if they'd stuck with the state's purchasing program.
County Engineer Eric Hilty said Hoops Edwards Capital LLC agreed to charge participating communities $123 per ton for 10,000 tons of road salt, significantly less than the price they'd been quoted by the only company that showed any interest in working with them through the state's purchasing program. Hoops Edwards is getting the salt from Kansas.
While the $123 per ton is still pricey, he said the county alone will save more than $150,000.
"I think the city of Steubenville is close to that amount," he added. "The other entities will also be saving money. It's still a major price increase from what we paid last year, but it is substantially cheaper than what we had in ODOT contract."
"(Bidding it out ourselves) was a success," Hilty said. "Our alternative was $155 per ton through the ODOT contract, so we saved a couple hundred thousand dollars across multiple entities in the county."
If they'd stayed in the ODOT contract, the county would have had to commit to purchasing substantially more than the 10,000 tons they're getting from Hoops Edwards.
"We were on the hook for $852,000 at minimum (through the state contract)," he said. "Now we'll be paying $565,000 and we can order a little less."
Hilty said he's excited about being able to find a workaround for this year and said going forward, they'll continue to look at all their options.
"Moving forward, we're going to look at any and all options to make sure we can secure salt and secure it at an affordable price," he said. "I'm not sure what the future will bring as far as buying and storing salt ... in the past we've always utilized the state contract through ODOT, this year was the first we did it on our own."
In the meantime, he said he's "still pursuing answers" as to why some Ohio counties were quoted prices significantly lower than what neighboring counties were quoted, if they even were quoted a price.
"We need to know what happened so we can make good decisions moving forward," he said.