A resolution approving a proposed On-Call Construction Services Contract between the City and County of Denver and ECI Site Construction Management, Inc. for Site Development, Landscape and Irrigation Installation Services. Approves a contract with ECI Site Construction Management, Inc. for $15 million and for three years for on-call site development, landscape and irrigation installation services in City parks and other City property (PARKS-202055325). The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 10-5-20. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 7-28-20.
Thank you. Council member. It has been moved. Can I get a second? Okay. Thank you. Comments by members of Council on these contracts. Council Member Hines. Thank you, Madam President. So these are a is a bunch of stuff all at the same time. And I thank you for being willing to consider them in a blog. The reason I believe that they're in a bloc is that all of these are on call contracts and they total close to half a billion dollars. And so I called out these contracts because of outreach from District ten residents. They I'm concerned, but they're concerned. So I share their concern that that we're earmarking nearly half a billion dollars in contracts less than 24 hours before the executive branch releases the proposed budget for Denver. Council doesn't have any advance notice about the mayor's proposed budget, as we mentioned in the last discussion. But we all know that the 2021 budget will be smaller than the 2020 budget. And considering the smaller budget, this could be seen as a public by the public as guaranteeing this money to to certain vendors. So I wanted to I wanted to bring up. How about the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure? Maybe Mr. Gallardo, if he's available. And one. Yup. There he is. Yes, I'm here. Thank you for having me. So, Mr. Gallardo, can you help explain the connection or lack thereof between these contracts and the budget? And I recognize that some of these I guess some of these are not dodgy contracts. Some of these are parts contract. So feel free to speak specifically to the daddy contracts if you like. Yeah. And I think, you know, on call contracts all together is fine, too. The way they work are very similar. The uncle contract is is putting aside a set of money that we we hold the contractors in this amount, but. We are not obligated to. Spend that amount. So you're not approving $25 million here right now. This is your budget. Conversations will still take place next week. You're still able to if you. God forbid, cut our budget in half. We are not. Obligated to this $25 million per contract. So so it's it's not a scenario where we're coming before your budget talks. Our budget will still be impacted if we only have, you know, if we had $250 million to spend on these contracts and we only have 100 million in the works scope would change to around $100 million among these contracts. So it wouldn't change your conversations on budgets next week, would not and would impact on what work we're allowed to do. But we don't impact your compensation. So the thank you. The all of these contracts are just to make sure that that I understand and people watching understand all of these contracts. They're not guaranteeing the maximum amount for each vendor. So we could theoretically authorize a vendor $25 billion and give them zero. Is that right? That's correct. That's correct. And that's one of the things that Councilman Ortega has done such a great job working with us on is making sure that we're looking at the utilization of contracts and making sure that utilization is spread among them. So we have a report that we've been working on, and I think Councilman Ortega may have a question that's related to that. But we have a report that we're working on that will be an annual report and then also a quarterly report that will show you the utilization of the contracts. And most contracts are on calls. We're not able to match them out anyways just because of the amount of work that comes through during the time of the contract doesn't always meet requirements. So but we. We, we. We do have a reporting mechanism that we plan on putting in place to be able to update council more frequently. And and and thank you. I see that councilmember take his hand is raised so I will skip that part of the maybe we've and certainly I, I have questions but I believe Councilmember Ortega could probably ask them better with quite a bit more wisdom than I do. She's been on council a little bit longer than I have that the next contract or question I have is is allocating on call amounts to certain contracts. Well, I guess this maybe might come out kind of loaded. Does it disenfranchize small businesses? I mean, after all, not many small businesses can support a contract where they might get 20 million, $25 million, some might get $0 million, and yet they must be ready to go to work on Denver's call. Yes. And we recognize that. And again, I give kudos to Councilwoman Ortega for pointing this out, is breaking these contracts up. We hope to have a set of local contracts that are going through at the same time that are SB contract. These are small business enterprise contracts are on calls and they're meant to actually go towards small business enterprises. Maybe we need to be the prime on the contract is just the first time that we advertised that we didn't get much traction on it. We have advertised it now this month and so far we have, I believe it's six or nine that have inquired to it. So hopefully we're able to bring these to council late October, early November, and these are directly towards skis on the same type of contracts as these where they're smaller, so they're able to take up the capacity on their own. So that, I guess, begs one more question. I think some of these contracts and maybe they were the past contracts, but some of them of the $432 million total had been ready to come before us for a month. And and so we're willing to wait for a few weeks for these contracts. Why not wait until we have the small know SB contracts as well and just send in all you know, we already had close to half a billion, you know, why not a little bit more. You may be referring to parts of contracts here. I can't speak to that, but I will say 4 hours when they were ready to go, we moved them forward. Knowing that the SDS will be following. We placed a fact sheet with these contracts when we posted them in the two four weeks ago. That gives that explanation about the contracts coming to follow, and we hope to have those here by November. But again, you may be speaking to Clark, so I can't speak to there. That's totally fair. Okay. That's I guess those are the questions that I have for now. I know Councilmember Ortega is still in the queue and I. So Councilmember, can you just so. Thank you, Madam President. Sure. Thank you. Councilmember Councilmember Ortega. Thank you, Madam President. Jason, thanks for being on to address a couple of things and thanks for the opportunity to chat briefly this afternoon. So I appreciate the commitment and being able to say that here publicly that Daddy is committing to provide these quarterly reports to us on utilization. And for me, utilization isn't just about the firms that are being used. It's about looking at the data on which which contractors have a really cozy relationship with which city agencies, where we tend to utilize the same ones over and over and over. And a lot of people go through this process. You know, they get excited. The council finally approves their contract and some of them never get utilized and we never get to see that data. So we've been asking for the ability to look at that and the fact that you're committing to that. And I see you nodding your head. Yes, I will say it again. We are committed to a quarterly report. We will also do an annual report that is more inclusive with everything. So you have the big picture at the end of the year. And you also asked me earlier today about bond projects and funding and reports on that. We are committed to report on that as well. I don't know if it's going to be quarterly or twice a year, but I have gotten a commitment from the agency executive director saying we will report. It's just we have to figure out how they quantify their information to be able to give it to you. In a way. Well, we need to be able to look at that data so that we know which of these bond projects are actually being kept on budget. And then we're not expecting beyond the amount of money that was earmarked for the projects because we have other projects down the line that are waiting for their share. And if we spend it all on these projects, there's not enough money to do all the other ones. So that's. Exactly. For this body to be able to look at that information and make sure the agencies are staying within the budget of what the taxpayer approved. So I would advocate and hope my colleagues would support that. We want to see that data at a minimum on a quarterly basis. So if you could pass that back onto your. Absolutely, I'm happy to take that. But I think that's critical. That really covers all of it. I just want to thank you, Councilman. Thanks for calling these out and being able to continue to have this conversation. Councilman Flynn and I will be looking at bringing the ordinance before you guys shortly. We've got some draft language that we're just looking back and forth that before we bring it to you on some of the contracts that will come to City Council. So stay tuned and look for that soon. So thank you so much. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilwoman. I wanted to check back in. Councilwoman Canete, we saw your hand raised. Are you okay? Okay. All right. Wonderful. Councilman Hines, your backup. Thank you, Madam President. I just wanted to make a comment. Thank you, Mr. Gallagher, for your for your comments. We have you on the record as as committing to these to these contracts. I, I like the idea of quarterly reports. I, I think that we do these every six months or so when we come and we get all these on call contracts, and they all are thrown at us all at the same time. I hope that six months is plenty of time for you to go back to the people, whoever you know, whoever you need to talk to and get these these reports in place. I know about six months ago we had a similar conversation here about about these uncle contracts. I, I hope that we are in a better place six months from now, and we don't have to talk about these again and agreement. I just want to reiterate that I mean that again, we don't think the executive branch will release the 21 2021 proposed budget in the morning. And we have no idea what will be in that budget, given the budget for the legislative branch of government is in the proposal and we'll learn whether our request was incorporated into the plan at the same time as the general public. So I get a little skittish when I see half a billion dollars or $422 million in and and it just happens to be right before the budget drop. So thank you, Daddy. And thank you, Madam President. Thank you. Councilmember Hines. Madam Secretary, roll call. Friends. I. Cashman. I. Each and. Ortega. I guess. Sandoval. I swear. Now. Torres, I. Black. I. CDEBACA Well, I. Clark. I. Flynn. I. Herndon. I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. One need to eyes. 12 Eyes Resolution 728 729 737 3132, 3330 435 741, 42, 43 838 839 853 864 865 866 867, eight, 68, 69, eight, 78, 71, 72 and 873 have been adopted. The next item up is Council Bill 849. Council Member State of Akure. Please go ahead with your question. Thank you, Madam President. I just wanted a quick clarification on what they mean in this bill by the HMO contributions moving to 2021. Is it just that we're waiting or what exactly does it mean? Before I dove too deep into this one for a second reading. All right. We've got, I believe, Chris O'Brien. He's joining us to answer questions on this one. Or also had Heather Britten. Hi there. Hi, Heather. Go ahead, please. This is Heather Britton, director of benefits and wellness for the Office of Human Resources. The only change that the Health Insurance Committee made this year for employee benefits was to remove a health plan that was offered by the Denver Health Medical Plan called the deductible HMO, and they replaced it with a HMO. And really what that means is that employees now will have lower cost at point of service for the new plan because they'll have just co-pays, no more deductibles. And the city is asking to continue with the same contribution we had for the HMO in 2020 into 2021 for the HMO. And it's good news or all around. It results in lower costs for the employee and out of their paycheck and when they go get service through Denver Health. Got it. Thank you very much for that. Sure. All right. Thank you, Heather. The next item up is Council Bill 285. Councilmember Flynn, we need a motion to take us out of order. Please.