By Paige Gurgainers
The Webster Parish Police Jury (WPPJ) will soon be reassessing and prioritizing the Webster Parish Priority Road List. This list is not static and has been updated periodically.
Engineer Brad Graff explained, “It has been our practice with complaints from the jurors to go out and look at particular roads that may have received unusual traffic loads, people logging, construction, well activity, etc. So, we have just been reassessing roads that have been brought to our attention.”
But it has been almost a decade now since there has been a complete reassessment performed on all parish roads.
The parish-wide system includes a list of all the roads in the parish that need repairs or improvements. A third-party company comes in and prioritizes these roads by a certain criterion. They look at the roads that have the highest traffic volume, serve the highest demand for travel, and provide movement to major business districts, hospitals, schools, etc. They take into consideration the number of residents that live on the road and the current condition of the surface of the road.
As the jury has money, they work from the top of the list making repairs.
According to Graff, in the past in order to re-rate every road, he would physically ride them numerous times and make notes on the condition. So, Graff proposed considering new technology that may make this upcoming reassessment less time consuming and leave smaller margin for human error.
The AI technology has proved to be successful in neighboring cities but is costly with Graff estimating approximately $15-25K per year. Cloud storage being the biggest expenditure.
The last time Graff performed the reassessment it cost the jury approximately $20K. “That was 10 years ago though,” said Graff. “There is no way. It will be at least $30K to do it again.”
Juror Steve Lemmons stated he did not see why the jury would agree to pay close to $20K per year for the new technology when Graff could physically re-rate the roads and charge only $30K every 10 years. Graff explained, “Over the years I go out and look at every road that you ask me to look at, I bill the jury for that, too. So, that adds up. I want you all to see a demo to see first-hand what is involved and what all it could do for you.
“You’re basically buying a subscription and with that comes a maximum amount of data and you keep updating your database every year and they run the AI analysis to get it in a presentable form.”
The jury expressed interest in looking at a more detailed cost analysis for Graff continuing to do it the old-fashioned way versus purchasing and utilizing this new technology before making a final decision.