Abstract
One of the overarching tenets of Public Works Management & Policy (PWMP) is that academic researchers have an important role to play in helping to improve the delivery of vital public services. This issue of PWMP presents five articles that underscore our continuing commitment to that vision.
The first, “Prioritization of a Bridge Inventory for Historic Preservation: A Case Study for Tarrant County, Texas” by Puls, Hueste, Hurlebaus, and Damnjanovic presents a framework for prioritizing the preservation of historic bridges. Working from both the National Bridge Inventory (NBI) historical significance rating and the sufficiency rating, a quantitative rating system was developed that reflects the characteristics of bridges located in Tarrant County, Texas and the application of the methodology to two notable bridges in Tarrant County are described.
Increased expectations for municipalities to provide services, a push for updating and maintaining the services already provided, and simultaneous dealing with strained budgets and less federal funding opportunities have led some communities to adopt alternative service for delivery of public works systems. In “Perceptions, Realities, and Euphemisms: Community Choices of In-House Service Provision or Alternative Service Delivery,” Hora and Schreiber investigate what characteristics increase the likelihood a political subdivision will choose an alternative service delivery system for what was a traditionally in-house public service.
Every year, billions of dollars are spent to resurface roadways, ostensibly to improve the travel experience. One justification at the local level is that such expenditures could also increase property values. “Pavement Condition and Residential Property Values: A Spatial Hedonic Price Model for Solano County, California” by Seo, Salon, Shilling, and Kuby evaluate this premise using hedonic regression to estimate the relationship between pavement condition and residential property value in Solano County, California. They found that the estimated relationship is small in magnitude and often not statistically significant leading to a conclusion that there are certainly many reasons to improve pavement condition but that increasing property value may not be one of them.
A significant expenditure for many local governments is the automotive fleet. In “County Government Fleet Acquisition Practices: Service Demand or Budget Limitations,” Steve Modlin examines fleet acquisition practices of professionally administered county governments from the standpoint of the role played by the finance officer who must balance the needs of operating agencies with affordability and available resources.
The final article in this issue, “Public–Private Partnerships: Where Do We Go From Here? A Belgian Perspective” by Martijn van den Hurk examines the use of public–private partnerships (PPPs) for infrastructure provision in the Flanders region of Belgium. Despite frequent use of PPPs, a long-term PPP policy strategy, central coordination mechanism, and application of value for money assessment tools are not in place. Such an ad hoc approach has limited opportunities for knowledge sharing regarding best practices. The article concludes that while reform is needed, implementation of improvements will be challenging.