A bill for an ordinance approving the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) 2020 annual programs and waiving further City Council approval of specific contracts implementing the annual programs. Approves the annual Public Works infrastructure program by waiving the requirement that contracts above $500,000 be individually approved by City Council. The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 3-23-20. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 2-18-20.
No items have been called out. Did I miss anything? It doesn't look like it. All right, Madam Secretary, if you please put the first item on our screens. And Councilmember Herndon, please put Council Bill 59 on the floor. Yes, Mr. President. Move the council bill 2000 0059 be ordered published. It has been moved and seconded questions by members of Council Council Member State Abarca. Thank you, Mr. President. I called this bill out specifically to go on record as voting no for this and just for the public who are who's viewing this. This is an ordinance that would be a blanket authorization of our annual work program, and that includes street paving, concrete traffic signals, pavement markings all within this work program and totals to probably over 25 million. Last year it was about 12 contracts. And for the same reasons that we are being asked to approve this, I will be a no. I don't believe that with contracts that are an annual expectation that there should be this need to expedite and have this blanket approval. I think that we have checks and balances of separate branches of government in place for a reason. And so to allow these 12 contracts and this $25 million to be spent without coming directly to council for each individual contract, I think is problematic. And just to remind people, this is not a practice that we've always had. It's only been a practice since 2011. And so I will be a no tonight and I hope my colleagues will join me. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Councilmember Sawyer. Thank you, Mr. President. I agree with Councilwoman CdeBaca. I have a lot of concerns about transparency and accountability. And I think that there you know, this is this last year was only regarding 12 contracts. I think that that's not too much to ask, that these 12 contracts come through one at a time to be approved by council . And so I will also be a know tonight. I think that, you know, these can come through just like all the other contracts that come through and are approved by council. So I will also be a no tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Councilmember Hines. But thank you, Mr. President. Is there someone here from Dottie who could answer questions? Oh, there is. Good evening. Council members Jason Gallardo with the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure. Mr. Gallardo, thank you for for coming tonight. We've heard from a few of our constituents that, frankly, that I should vote against this because we shouldn't give daddy a blank check. These are their words. Is this a blank check for Daddy? No. Councilman. Member. It's not. What we do here is this is for maintenance only. So, for example, if we are doing our paving program, our annual paving program, which I sent out to everybody that is a 2020 annual paving program, shows what we're going to be paying for this year, which is an estimated around 570 mile go. What this does is it puts funding towards that early. We're able to get into contract with these contractors early on in order to be able to hold these contractors, to be able to do the work throughout the season. They're capable of doing it. So this money is spent towards maintenance only. It's not going to be new projects. We can't wait in roads with it. We can't. All those type of contracts will have to come through council like normal. This is only for maintenance, for assets we already own. When somebody says they have issues on the roads because it's getting, you know, really beaten up and we go over there and pave it. That's where this fund comes from. And it's there is a reason why we couldn't vote on these. I guess last year there were 12 contracts that came before us. I mean, what's the advantage of this mechanism? Because, I mean, we have what are the what are the contracts called? Where we have you know, I think you we already have on call contracts. So why why couldn't we just approve on call contracts? The reason we did this way in 2011, there was an agreement made that we would bring all these contracts in together as wants to get these contractors under contract early on. What we found is as we're doing work and we're putting contracts out, we end up towards the end of the season losing contractors because they're full with other work. This allows us to keep our program in and actually map out the entire city of projects that we want to get done for the entire season and to move smoothly and keep it going. This is why we were able to hit our goal 500 and I think it was 20 miles of of paved roads last year, which is the most that public works has ever done, is because we were able to get these people under contract early on, these contractors, and make it where we are able to do this work throughout the city without stopping and going through the process, which takes, you know, months at a time. Well, I think I've been on record of not being a super fan of of lane miles of roads, but I don't think that's what's in conversation right tonight. The but we couldn't we approved 12 on or you know however many vendors 12 on call contracts for the total budget amount and then if that comes in under, then we'd be fine. I guess I'm still struggling with why is this? You know what, what do we need to do this now as opposed to approving 12 on call contracts for the full budget amount or whatever, whatever the answer is to make sure I get you the correct answer, I'm actually on call. A colleague of mine up here, Beth Zullo, who knows a little bit more about the process and has done it for this entire time. And maybe she can help answer some more questions to. And also we have a Pat Kennedy here that has designed paving and those type of things, if you have any questions on that. Good evening. So the reason we do this is to, as Jason said, get people under contract earlier. It saves somewhere around 40 or 50 days per contract to take through the budget amounts that were approved for these contracts in mass in this ordinance tonight and then not take them through one at a time through the council process that can add anywhere from 3 to 6 weeks to our process typically. And this allows us to bypass that and go right to the contract. So it would advance in the contracting workflow and go to the city attorney and be fully executed. And will you mention your name for the record and for the William? Thank you. And I guess I'm going to go back to the blank check question that I asked Mr. Gallardo. Really, this this isn't a blank check. This is just the amount budgeted. Right. And it's re approving the amount that was appropriated through the annual budget process. And we attach that to these contracts. So if they if they were to come in above that budget, they would have to come through council. Okay. No exception to that. It's just re approving the appropriated amounts. And I would also say that I'm not a super fan of the budget either, but I was sworn in as it was already most of the way underway. So thank you for your questions. Thank you, Mr. President. Sure. Thank you. Councilmember. Your answers. Council members and all. Thank you. Hey, can I have Jason come back up? I have a quick question. I didn't see. Them. So thank you for your email. I saw that you emailed us the list of from 2019. Yes. What can you do you. When can we expect a list for the 2020 work? So we're approving. I am going over some of the documents. So specifically I see light infrastructure. So likes like traffic lights. Does that include work that would put left turn arrows or right turn arrows on that? Or is that new new infrastructure like completely new replacing them? No, this is to maintain what we already have to make sure that it's operating properly and everything else is not to put in anything new. This is in the any new construction that we do that reaches over the 500,000 mark will come through city council as normal. So adding a left turn arrow, let's say you're going southbound on federal and you want to do turn a left turn arrow so you could head eastbound on 32nd Avenue that would initiate a 500,000. Right. So is some of that money for smaller improvements like that? Because I would think that would be an improvement to our infrastructure. I'd have to know what budget. It comes out. Yeah, it would depend because, you know, unfortunately, we have a lot of money coming from different places, from different budgets. So it depend on where it's at and what what the actual ask is to know exactly where it's coming from. For example, if we were putting a left hand turn next to a school because there is a reason for safety issues, it can come out of this safe for us to school budget or something like that, depending on where it is. I mean, it gets more complicated when we talk about a specific area. So back to my first question for this whole total amount for the annual programs, the improvement programs and the capital maintenance, the facilities waste money. When will we get a line item budget like what you sent us today for 2019? When can we expect that? Quarterly. So we send it out quarterly to everyone and we will be sending it out in three months and give you the entire every quarter letting you know where we're at, who's under contract and what what work has been done so far. So we have. Not always. 2000 yet. Year 2000. Right. Because it's the it's the we're proving it for 2012, 2020. Right. So we haven't gotten the 2021 yet. Right. This is what you're proving. Yes. Yeah. So, so. Sorry. If you're going to if you're going to answer a question, you have to. Have the microphone for everybody who's watching on TV get that report. So it's the in the first quarter. Right, the end of first quarter. It January, February, March. So in March. Into March. We'll get that time. Frame. Yes. We'll get it quarterly. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Councilmember Ortega. Thank you. I'm going to ask Mr. Kennedy, if you wouldn't mind coming up to the podium. Councilman Ted Kennedy with over here, Dottie, Office of Asset Management. Thank you. Can you tell us how the annual work schedule plays into this? I know we got the map showing us where some of those areas are that are outlined for 2020. So our construction season for both in-house and contracted work starts in April and precedes until weather shuts. Us down. In the end of the year. So that part of that's the criticality of the days that Nizzolo talked about for helping us get started helps us get these these programs going. So we have a full construction season order to complete our work. Okay. But the info that was sent over to us is part of what guides the projects that are part of these contracts, correct? That's correct. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I have no further questions. Thank Councilmember Councilmember Torres. Thank you, Mr. President. Pat or Jason and maybe Jason actually for the reporting that we'll see. You know, one of one of the things that I'm interested in is not just efficiencies of this, but how the decisions are being made. If it's just a chronological response to when streets need to be repaved, or if you're referring back to department goals around neighborhood equity, program equity, things like that, and if, if or how, that would be included in your quarterly report. I think that going forward, we definitely like we talked earlier today that the equity part is playing a much bigger role in our decision making going forward. And I and I think, you know, first applaud council for bringing that to the forefront of every conversation we're talking about. And in this aspect, we plan on putting that, implementing it going forward in more equity to be able to show you where we're doing and how we're laying out the process when it comes. To actual paving. They have a great plan. And that is is that goes based off of how old and how long the roads have been there and what was the last thing we laid down. So how long it lasts and we try to try to keep up with that program based off the road's ability just to last. But everything else that you're talking about. Yes. I mean, I think everything needs to be under the equity lens. I think for for me, given this is my first time being involved in approving this process, I'd like to see that play out before seeing if this needs to be refined or done differently. Just being on the city side, I do recognize how long it takes for contracts to be developed and delivered, especially for something that I know my residents rely on, which is the regular paving of their streets. But that piece is going to be a big one for me, so I'm definitely going to. Be looking at where we're happy to work with you on that, and we are going to do individual council member briefings on your paving that's going on in your districts. We're getting those scheduled now. You absolutely. Thank. Councilmember Councilmember Flint. Thank you, Mr. President. Can I ask the city attorney to just shed a little light on this process, Kiersten or Jonathan, I'm sorry you weren't doing a crossword over there or anything. I hope this ability for the department to ask for this waiver was embedded in the charter about 15 or 16 years ago. And could you describe what that did? Because we applied to Cynthia at DIA also. That's right. Here's one covered legislative council. And after I give you the short answer, I'm happy to look up the time period because I can check that in the charter. But 3.2.6 of the charter does give council the option to waive approvals of certain contracts. And we do have a code provision in Chapter 13. I think it's 1311 where we have where council has explicitly waived authority for certain airport contracts. For example, construction contracts that exceed 5 million or under 5 million do not require council approval is not uncommon. Rather than 500,000. 500,000 is the threshold for professional services, but 5 million is the threshold for approval of construction contracts at the airport. Thank you. And Jason or. Well, Jason, the the process, as I recall it, is that within the annual appropriation for this work, we authorize we with this ordinance, we would authorize the department to go out, seek bids. And what you do describe that process. My understanding is that you do a competitive bid for each piece of the work and you go with the lowest responsive bidder, including all of our social ordinances, ah and BWB requirements, etc. and then report to us who those folks who were, what companies were selected on a quarterly basis. That's not how basically it works. That's that's exactly how it works, Councilman. And I really don't even have anything to add to that. That's exactly the process. And the lowest bidder does win. And we will report out who wins and the maybe we be contracts that we add to it and you'll know all the information as we as those contracts are made. And the reason that you ask this is because of the paving season and the asphalt the season and the fact that a lot of these contractors need to develop their summer work plans. And so if we can lock them up now, we can guarantee that this program will be completed this year. That's correct. That's correct, Councilman. And this is how we're able to be efficient and get as much done as possible. We set up goals and timing is everything for the paving season. It's weather. It's it's all these aspects to that. And that's why we try to do it, this process to get it done. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank Councilmember a councilmember say to back you. Back up. Yes, thank you, Mr. President. A couple more questions for you, Jason, and just also a clarification for my colleagues. We approve a budget and then the rest of our entire job every Monday night is approving the transactions that fall within that budget. And so to color this as something that's unique and needs special consideration, I think is problematic. But I do have a question about the contracts that get expedited. So we've had things that the administration needed to see done faster, come through direct file. And so why would this not be a tool that we use for this type of contract, considering there would likely be less cost? Privacy on something that is part of this annual work program. I think because of the transparency in the ability to watch contracts being made, which is a little bit different because we're actually going in contract with a vendor and doing direct file from the mayor's office could make it more political than anything else. To have the transparency to go through is proper process is what makes it this way a little bit better. But we're asking to basically skip over the proper process and instead blanket authorize multiple contracts to be executed outside of the public side. I think that that that our goal here and I and I don't want to talk on behalf of the administration or anybody else why they would do it one way or another. I just think our goal here is to be able to get the money to fund that season, to get as much work done as possible as the paving program is related to this and any kind of maintenance we have outside of that to to get into a different process outside of this would be a conversation that I think that we're more than willing to have about that. It's just this is the process that we're moving forward with is an annual ordinance that we've been doing since 2011. And so can you explain why for an annual program of work like this, we're not a new organization. We're a city that contracts with people all of the time, people who are under the expectation that they'll have to go through these processes annually. Can you tell me why? For our annual work program, we wouldn't have contractors on deck so that by the time we're here in February, instead of approving this blanket authorization, we're actually approving all 12 contracts because. Because the funds don't become available until January. So that's when the work can be left. It's March. Right? So what I'm saying is, why wouldn't we have those 12 contracts on deck right now to be voting on those 12 contracts rather than the blanket authorization? I don't have an answer. So. So just so you can clarify, you're asking us to where we under contract before the money is allocated. So the money was allocated way before. Now it's March. And realistically, I would expect that we would have 12 companies that we're talking to to implement this work. And so and so, yeah. The way it works is we, we get the money that is allocated to us. Then we go through this process and then we put out RFP for them to apply to this process. But without the money actually being through there and actually going through this process, we can't have an RFP. We can't have the companies ready until we have an actual RFP that goes out there and allows people to apply for it. And we get the lowest bid and go through that process. And then got that because we're skipping that. But real quick, can you explain to me the difference between what we've listed as going with the lowest bidder versus best value contracting? Yeah. The lowest bidder versus. These are awarded through hard bid, which is lowest responsive, responsible bidder. So it's just a different method of contracting. And what is the difference? Best value can look at other things like schedule or duration types of work. We don't typically see that in this kind of flat work construction. That would be something like the Convention Center or the Great Hall at DEN are usually done through value. So does best value take into consideration a company's safety and health performance record on past qualification does. And so we're when we go with the lowest bidder, we're not taking any of that into consideration. Yes, anything over $1,000,000 is subject to the city's pre-qualification rule. So how do we know which one of these contracts is being held to that rule if they're not coming before us individually. Pre-Qualification is a condition to be able to bid the projects. So do we have breakdowns for 2020 of how much each contract is going to be? And do we know if they all fit within that million dollar pre-qualification rule? I don't have an answer to that. For the contracts that go up, we have engineers estimates. There's always a couple of the concrete contracts that fall in the 500000 to $750000 range that are designated for small business enterprises. But all of the other bigger contracts are well over a million, and those are all subject to pre-qualification by the contractors. Okay. But we're not using best value contracting with them. No, these are hard bid contracts. Subject that the vendor, the successful contractor meets the prequel requirements and meets any SBC or BMB guidelines that are put in those contracts. Got it. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Councilmember. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Gallardo, if we vote this down tonight, does that significantly improve or impact our paving work? I mean, significant, I guess. Would you have to define what was significant to you and to me? But yes, it does delay our process. Okay. What would if we were to vote this down tonight? Let me try to rephrase the question. We voted down tonight. Then you would have you was in the administration or Dottie would then have to put forward 12. Proposals, 12 different contracts in 12 different RFP, the project contracts, and goes through the process, which could be anywhere between 60 and 90 days. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank Councilmember Councilmember Torres. Thank you. Just clarification, Councilman CdeBaca asked a question about best value that I had asked over email, but I'd gotten a slightly different response. Mine had to do my response that I had had more to do with the language in the charter. Can can you guys clarify if. Go ahead and ask to go with clarify on why I'm sorry, which. Why we base on lowest bid versus best value. Um, do you have a in search of why we're. Based on that. I don't know what is defined as best value. Right. Um, I. I'm sorry. I don't think I have an answer. I guess the best I could say on that one is, is, as Beth had mentioned, best value contracts are generally those large scale contracts like the Convention Center or the Great Hall, where these are limited in scope. They're repairing curbing gutters or performing a specific treatment on pavements. They're installing pedestrian curb ramps at intersections, so they're more of a limited scope. So the best value is obtained by the lowest responsible bid on those unit prices. Mm hmm. Okay. I have to go back to the emails that I got. There was something different around the language that we're required as a city to comply with that was in charter around accepting lowest bids. And that that's that's the clarification that I'm asking someone to make. And I can definitely get you that clarification and make sure that you have the proper answer to that. I'll look. Okay. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember CdeBaca. Thank you, Mr. President. Just a real quick follow up on Councilman Hines question about what happens if we're too delayed tonight. We approve several contracts all of the time for on call services, for street paving, for concrete, for curbs and sidewalks. And so we have multiple people right now on call in the city with encumbered funds for their contracts. I'm wondering why they wouldn't in the interim be deployed to provide some of these resources or accomplish some of these goals in our work program? I think a lot of those are the scale that they're on. On call now is nowhere near the scale that the full paving plan is. We're talking about a more larger citywide paving plan versus taking care of little minor things here and there. This is a much bigger contract in that. Will any of the contracts. Based on your past experience with these work plans? Will any of the upcoming contractors be those that we already have on call? They might be. This is an RFP process that hasn't happened yet, so I can't answer that. Got it. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. I'm going to call up real quick, guys. Stewart it from the mayor's office to get a clarification on the question that was asked by Councilmember Torres about the response that you got. Hi. Skye Stewart Mares Officer, historian, up the stairs to answer things. Councilman Torres, when we had that conversation, we were talking about Section 2.3.3 of the charter, which talks about construction, reconstruction, remodeling of general public improvement projects, and that they need to be awarded to the lowest responsive, qualified bidder through a hard bid. And that applies to this particular body of work. It does. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Hines. Thank you, Mr. President. Sorry that I'm still up here. Just one more question. What did we do before 2011? Because I think this this took effect 2011, correct? That's correct, Councilman. What it does and so, as Beth said, it helps us accelerate the process by, you know, 3 to 6 weeks when you're dealing with a finite construction season, maybe only six months long, you could lose 20% of your construction season. And in the past, yes, we had those issues where we had noticed a proceeds that couldn't be released until May or June, and we were losing a substantial portion of our construction season. And then if you get hit with an early snow like we had last October, it can seriously impact your ability to keep, you know, your annual work programs completed. Okay. Thank you. I'm not excited about the budget. I'm not excited about some of the questions that have asked. But I am concerned that I don't want to mess up our schedule by shooting this down tonight, so I will vote for it. I wanted to I want to revisit this before this time next year so that we can we can get this sorted out and we don't run into this same kind of thing for the for the next year's budget. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilmember. All right, so no other questions or comments, Madam Secretary, roll call. CdeBaca No. Flynn I. Gillmor I. Herndon High. I can eat I. Ortega High level. High. Sawyer No. Torres, I. Council President. I think we're still missing one. There you go. Madam Secretary, please. Because voting announced the results. Two nays nice. Two nays nine. His counterpart, 59, has been ordered published. Madam Secretary, if you please put the next item on our screens and Councilmember Herndon, will you please put Councilman 148 on the floor?