Public works director tells study commission county maintains infrastructure for 90,000 with funding for 35,000

Public Works Director Mark Neary told the Butte-Silver Bow Study Commission that the county’s infrastructure was built for a far larger population than it currently budgets for, and described several operational and regulatory challenges his department is addressing.

"We have an infrastructure for about 90,000 people, but we're maintaining it with the funds from 35,000," Mark Neary, Public Works Director, said during the commission's meeting. He said the department oversees water, sewer, roads, landfill, transit, parks and other services and that most of the work is maintenance of existing systems rather than new construction.

The discrepancy matters because it affects how the county prioritizes repairs and capital projects, and because the commission is considering charter and structural options that could change how departments are organized.

Neary gave a detailed rundown of his staffing and operations: he said his office includes roughly 15 nonunion staff (project manager, compliance inspector, pretreatment coordinator, transit manager, civil engineering tech and interns) and numerous union positions spread across multiple crews and sections. He described ongoing programs for road overlays and mill-and-fill projects, and said the department contracts out 10,000–15,000 tons of paving material annually while also completing multimillion-dollar reconstruction projects when funds are available.

On procurement, Neary said…