Recommendation to adopt Specifications No. RFP PW17-033 and award a contract to LAZ Parking California, LLC, of Los Angeles, CA, for Citywide Parking Operations and Management Services, in an amount of $7,874,148, authorize a 20 percent contingency in the amount of $1,574,830, for a total contract amount not to exceed $9,448,978, for a period of three years, with the option to renew for two additional one-year periods; authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all documents necessary to enter into the contract, including any necessary amendments; Increase appropriations in the Tidelands Operation Fund (TF 401) in the Public Works Department (PW) by $433,489, offset by departmental cost-savings and parking-related revenue; and Increase appropriations in the General Fund (GF) in the Public Works Department (PW) by $479,331, offset by parking-related revenue. (Citywide)
Motion carries. Okay. Thank you. Next up is item number 29. Report from Public Works Recommendation to award a contract to L.A. Z parking in California for citywide parking operations and management services for a total contract amount not to exceed 9,448,990 978 citywide. Okay. Thank you. I know that we have a staff report on this. I'm going to turn this over to Mr. West. Craig Cogen. Hi, Craig. Craig Beck. And. Come on. It's great. No, I'm right here. Good evening, Mayor, and members of the City Council. We would like to give you a brief presentation. So this is about a parking services RFP and as information, see if we can get this to work. We can advance to the next slide. I don't know. Thank you so much. There we go. So the city does manage 25 different city owned parking assets and that includes seven parking garages. The Aquarium City plays Broadway, Lincoln and 100 Broadway, which is our garden lot behind us. We also have nine different beach lots. So what are we seeking in a parking operator? We're really looking at someone who can provide maintenance for all of our facilities, who can provide customer service, and who can really look to ensure that all of our patrons are safe using our garages. Some of the maintenance work includes sweeping trash removal, regular power washing of the facilities and then minor things paint, touch up, graffiti removal, things like that. To give you an idea of the scale of what we're talking about in fiscal year 17, we anticipate that parking operations will collect almost $9.4 million gross revenue. And our largest structure is the aquarium structure. It receives almost 745,000 visitors annually and generates almost half that revenue, $4.4 million. So quite a big operation. I think. Not only does it support the aquarium, but certainly many of the restaurants and businesses down in the Pike area. We're also interested in supporting our special events. As we all know, Long Beach is a great location for special events. We see our special events growing from year to year. We have some major events in the Grand Prix, our Pride Festival, Long Beach Marathon and most recently we've seen more and more activity occur down on the Queen Mary with the concept of Queen Mary Island. This year's Queen Mary Dark Harbor was so popular that there was special transportation arranged between the aquarium garage where many of the patrons would park to and from the Queen Mary as part of that event. Also need to recognize that we have a lot of filming that happens in our city. Over 500 filming permits are typically issued in a year, and that includes closing down streets and it may include special operations where our parking operator would support. So in seeking providers for this service, we were really honing in on these categories. We wanted our vendors to share with us their experience in parking management, event management, how they deal with customer service, what their customer service plan look like, what their staffing service plan would be for the various assets, especially the aquarium garage, given its high frequency of use. And we also wanted to know their operational plan and what it would cost to provide those services as information. The current parking contract ends in the end of March of 2018. So we did go through an RFP process. The RFP was out to the community in March of this year. We did receive five qualified proposals and went through and those came in in May. We went through interviews with all five firms in June, and in July we we shortlisted two to what we believe were the most qualified candidates, and that was last parking and speed plus. Those two finalists went through a community partner interview where we engaged both the DOJ, the Aquarium of Pacific, to sit on a panel and have a conversation with these two finalists. And then in October, we issued a notice of intent to award for the recommendation of last parking. The city did receive a bid protest. There was a protest issued over the notice of intent to award. Our purchasing group did receive the protest, review the protest and essentially said there was no basis for the protest and moved to support Stout's recommendation. So that is what we have before you this evening. Staff is recommending that council move forward with a contract with LA's Parking LLC. We believe that LA's completely understands the complexity of the parking operations in urban areas and specifically in what we need here in the city of Long Beach. They've identified a personable and experienced individual as their parking manager. Their cost proposal actually came in less than our number two candidate, about $381,000 annually. I think staff also appreciated the focus that LA's has on special events. They have some very notable clients for special events the Emmys, Golden Globes, Academy Awards, and they also support many California operations like LAX, John Wayne Airport and municipal cities in the Bay Area that are listed here, Berkeley and Walnut Creek. So that concludes our presentation and we're available for questions. Thank you. Thank you. I know we have a motion that we're going to, I believe, take public comment first per the request, and so is your public comment on this item. Please come forward. Good evening. My name is Jason Johnson. I'm senior vice president for SPX Plus Corporation. We've been the city's parking operator for the last ten years and unfortunately we ended up on the wrong side of this particular bid. I always hate coming in talking on these items because it always sounds like spilled milk when you didn't win. Right. But there were enough items that we saw throughout the process that we thought we should at least come and have our say. Right. We did protest. The protest was tonight. Hopefully I can give you a few things to think about in a relatively short period of time. So my first set of concerns are around the process, and there's really four items that individually would be concerns. And taking them as a total was an even bigger concern for us. Right. And that was the scoring criteria had no way to get average. Right, which gives a lot of leeway to the folks that are evaluating each of the proposals. We had no scoring sheet was provided. Our FOIA request was denied before this meeting. And then there's a 20% contingency on this contract, which I've been doing this a really long time and I've never seen anywhere anything close to that. And with that 20% contingency, it could take this contract from being less expensive to being considerably more expensive without them without staff having to come back and talk to council. All the value ads that were mentioned in the staff report, we we've recommended to the city over the last few years, we've provided that documentation. So the second set of concerns are with us with the selected provider. They've got no no significant municipal contracts here in Southern California. We have a number of them. They have a history of underbid contracts. That has led to some significant thefts. And we have one that's that's major. And it's come up pretty significantly here recently, which is they had a theft at the MTA in Boston, which ended up in a $5.6 million settlement for that theft. All right. The attorney general for Massachusetts said by failing to implement reasonable revenue controls, laws gave supervisors and parking attendants the opportunity and means to skim cash. So in closing, I'm sure that you guys are all aware that another municipality here in Southern California, Pasadena, just went through the same process. Last was the recommended vendor from staff. City Council rejected that not once, but twice, because they weren't willing to take the chance on someone that has this significant theft in recent history, in recent memory. Right. And so city council voted to extend the contract for another year with the existing providers, and they're going to look at it again a year from now. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. And will the public comment on this item? Okay. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Vice Mayor, esteemed members of City Council. My name is John Special Ed. I'm the senior vice president for parking. On behalf of all of last parking, and in particular our 2000 local valued team members, we wanted to let you know how excited we are to be staff recommendation since the RFP process started. We worked very hard to put our best foot forward. We want to thank staff for all their hard work and diligently vetting all proposals. We sincerely feel that we can bring a renewed passion to the parking operations that result in improved customer service, as well as new technology to improve the user experience. We look forward to working with staff, Long Beach residents and the other stakeholders to improve parking in Long Beach. I know that our competition touched on, you know, our lack of experience here, but we have several reputable clients, both in the municipal and private sector, that we've provided letters of recommendation on to staff. We've been completely transparent and full of integrity throughout this process, and we want to bring that same level of integrity and passion to City of Long Beach if we're so fortunate. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Any other public comment? Okay. So, you know, the public comment will close, public comment will go back to the council. Councilmember Pearce. Yes, I want to thank staff for their work on this. I in the last week have met both with both companies that are here today. Went back to staff for several questions. And I wanted to get a couple of clarifying things for the 20% contingency. On the contract, we had discussed what those might be for. And one thing that I don't think was necessarily elaborated on that is one of the things I'm excited about with Lars is the technology, the ability to be nimble, the ability to think outside the box, in using things like a phone app that says, you know, I can reserve my parking spot ahead of time. Often when people come to a downtown, they find themselves anxious about parking. Even though we know that there is parking, being able to take on private lots. So, you know, we had mobile here that was here earlier talking about if we were to take on a private lot, working with the city to partner with that is really important to me. And so my specific question is, can you clarify what the 20% contingency might be used for? Certainly, Councilmember Pearce, I think it's important to make sure council understands we compared the two tracked proposals apples to apples. So the $381,000 savings annually that I mentioned, that is a comparison of the annual contract regardless of the recommendation that was before council. Whether that was LA's or if if staff was recommended Espn+, we would still be recommending that council provide a 20% contingency to that contract. We think it's important to give us leeway to address some things not only within our structures but within special events. And we believe that that kind of capacity allows us the ability to, say, improve a gate, arm or things that may come up over the course of a contract that we can't foresee at this point in time. Of course, that's all supported by parking revenue. If that revenue is not there to support that additional cost, then that is nothing that we would expend money on. But having that flexibility just allows allows us to move quickly to address issues focused on customer service. So everybody coming in to our downtown and all of our parking assets have the best experience they can. Great. And can you clarify for me, you mentioned infrastructure improvements, security arm. If something like that happens where I know a lot that's in Councilmember Gonzalez, his district often has issues. If something like that comes up, whose responsibility is that? If it's on a city lot? Well, ultimately, it's the city's responsibility. But we rely on our parking operator to work with us. Many times we will use our parking operator to actually procure the equipment. Espn+ has done that for us over the years when we needed to do an upgrade and we worked closely with our parking operator to make sure that we had that ability to upgrade the equipment. And this 20% contingency would allow us that flexibility moving forward. For example, right now we know we need to make an investment in our city place garages, that that equipment is somewhat outdated and we want to improve it for the customer experience. Great. Thank you. I also would like to to highlight, you know, there are several letters in here supporting LA's post, any of the press stuff that has been talked about and following up with those cities that feel really confident and are continuing to sing the praises as one of the other issues, I think it's the right decision for the city, and I look forward to not just having a parking company, but working with you guys in partnership in the private lots and working with you. And how do we take. That. App and make sure that it's on my website, council members website, every business in the downtown and the East Village that we really are trying to to use technology and inform our residents of that. And so I expect you guys at my neighborhood association and my board meetings should this move forward tonight. So thank you for for offering that as a partnership. I hope that my colleagues will support staff's recommendations. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Gonzalez. Yes, I am excited to talk about parking, because I think this is something that especially downtown residents have been wanting to see move in perhaps a different direction. And I have a few questions myself and I too have met with both teams and making sure that I'm getting all my ducks in a row and on behalf of my residents, who in the city would spot, check or audit the contract? Councilmember Gonzales said city staff and public works will manage the contract and will be the primary point of contact for them. Our community projects officer, April Walker, has been involved through the entire RFP. Has been a member on the interview groups as we vetted this whole process. And she'll be the primary point of contact in helping to coordinate any issues that may come up with the contract. Awesome. I was going to say, who's our Luis Maldonado from back in the day? It's now April. Great. Now April. Wonderful. And then given, you know, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority had been brought up, of course. Could you just go over really. Quickly the insurance requirements that we have on our end to help prevent any issues going forward? Certainly, I think that there was a memo that staff sent to council earlier outlining this process. And I want to let everyone know that we really did do our due diligence in reviewing and reached out to Massachusetts and talked to the people involved in this particular incident and every response that we received. Not only commended leis for their cooperation, but also pointed to an individual and this was an act of an individual and not something that was indicative of the corporate environment or the service that Lars provided to the organization. Kind of, as we look moving forward, one of the things that we're requiring of our parking operators is that they have insurance in place that should this happen moving forward, that there's a policy that would cover the city for any incident such as this. Great. And I, too, am very excited about seeing what could occur with technology. So aquarium barcode scanning, entry exits and also special events. And I know that people don't think that that's maybe a big deal, but it absolutely is with our city, especially as we're growing. I just hosted, you know, 7 to 8000 people over the weekend. I don't even expect that many people. But we did with our Day of the Dead event. And to think that the very first thing that people were thinking about absolutely was parking and how we could be more efficient on the coordinating side to be able to relay to individuals how they can get in and out of our city even before getting in and out of our city, which is pretty incredible. And I also had a question about the parking lot map that we had in the memo. It mentioned a few lots that look like they're going to be transferring hands to development. So seventh and Pacific and third and fourth and Pacific. So how will that be transferred? What would that look like? So the contract is before we this evening is based on all of the facilities that we're operating now. As those facilities transition to private ownership, then we would no longer be providing parking services there. And those hours or need for service would be adjusted within the contract. And, and, and if the city were to acquire a lot and, and add a new lot. Similarly, we would adjust the contract to add services to say a new parking lot. Okay, great. And then the final thought that I have is just in relation to maintenance and safety, and that has been a big deal. I know, Craig, we've talked often and we've talked City Place Garages and for us I think that is a key point to ensure that businesses feel safe when their. Employees are. Walking to and from the city garages, as well as residents who want a very streamlined process. I hear online payments will be very easy for individuals to make. I used to rent a space across the street from where I live in the city, post garages, and it was a little difficult. And so to make that a little bit more streamlined and a lot easier for residents, I think it will be key as as well as having the safety and just the little things, maintenance, making sure graffiti and trash and the the the markings are all on point because our city is looking and getting a lot better. I also want to thank Craig Kochen as well. We've been working on this, I know, for some time too, so thank you to all who have been involved. I look forward to honoring staff's recommendation. Thank you. Councilman Price. Thank you very much, Mr. Vice Mayor. So just a couple of questions here. You said that the the contract for the recommended vendor is 381,000 per year, less than the second recommended vendor. Was that right? Yes, Councilmember, that's correct. So based on the experience that we've had with the second vendor, do we think are we concerned at all that this this. Under this estimate of $381,000 less is going to have any operational ramifications or employment ramifications or anything like that. Like how are they able to do it for a $381,000 less? I'm sure you consider that in your analysis. Yes. Councilmember, I'd like to highlight a couple of things in response to your question. First off, I think that there was a concern earlier that was raised about the employees that are currently providing those services. And those employees are represented under an IMU agreement with Local 324 Union. I'd like to say and share with this Council that LAS has exact executed a memorandum of agreement with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 324 to basically honor that agreement, which is in effect through December 31st, 2019. So that collective bargaining agreement that's covering the employees that are providing that service today will continue in place under this new operator. So I think that addresses probably your question about wages and benefits, etc., for those folks providing the service. What we did as part of the RFP response is we asked each of the proposers to give us a staffing plan and an operation plan, and we did that solely to ensure that we were seeing the same level of service from vendor to vineyard, a vendor. And so they a number of hours, the number of individuals, the number of community contacts, project parking managers that were out in the field and available to support these efforts was consistent. And while some may tweak it a little bit between where they have certain individuals, what we're seeing is a like for like hours, number of hours that are provided between the two finalists. Okay. And what's their responsibility in regards to maintenance of the lots? Six of the lots are in city, three on their beach lot. So so under this contract they would provide general maintenance trash pickup if there was some striping improvements that needed to be done. Graffiti removal, you know, normal maintenance that you would think about if it was a larger project. I know right now we're engaged in a large construction project on the ground a lot down in District three, and that would be taken on by the city and public works would manage that effort. Okay. Because that's that's a concern for me going forward when I see a number like $381,000 less per year. What I want to make sure is that the operator understands that there are certain expectations with maintenance of the parking lots, especially the ones that are on the beach, because they are the areas where we see a lot of trash after special events. And that is just completely unacceptable because it really devalues that whole area. So I want to make sure that that $381,000 a year less doesn't mean there's less attention paid to to trash pickup or graffiti removal. And the other things that you mentioned, I will say I did also have the opportunity to meet with both parking vendors, and I appreciate staff answering some of the questions. I did look up as the speaker was talking. I did Google, Pasadena and LA's and so I did read the article. So I'm happy that staff considered that in making its recommendation because prior to that I wasn't sure if staff had already factored that into it. And I feel satisfied that that staff has looked into it and that we're not exposing ourselves to a liability. I would say that if we're having costs come in over the anticipated budget such that the 20% contingency is being triggered, I would want a report back to council. So I would like I would like to make a friendly to my colleagues that if that 20% contingency is triggered, that council get our report back. And so that we have the opportunity to look at what what happened, why was this budget not sufficient and why did we have to tap into that 20% contingency so that we're aware of the situation? Is that agreeable with staff? Is that something you'd be okay with? Certainly, Councilmember Price, I don't see a challenge with that. And let me just give you an example of where that contingency may also come in. Recently, we expanded the number of monthly parking passes in our city place garage and that the number of employees using that greatly increased to almost 800, primarily connected with Molina health care. And with that number of folks coming and going every day, we really needed additional security service and additional maintenance, but we were receiving the revenue to help support that. So we utilized some of that contingency budget to enhance those services, to support that level of service that we were experiencing in that garage. So providing a report to council on those type of items and where we would engage that contingency is isn't a challenge at all. And I think if the maker and the secondary, the motion are open to that, I think that would be good. You know, I'm not worried about the scenario that you just mentioned. What I'm worried about is an underestimation of the actual costs under normal conditions. So certainly things are going to happen that are unusual. That would necessitate us to be, as council member Pearce said, nimble and responsive. But if there's normal operations because they've not had experience in the city of Long Beach, we'd want to know what those what those areas are so that we can improve upon them. The one thing I will say that I really liked about LA's is they have experience with private lots, as Councilmember Pearce mentioned, and they have experience with valet, extensive experience with valet with Coastal Commission, which is an issue that is a major factor for the third district and something that I think is going to become very relevant as we see development with Second and PCH and some of the other restaurants in that and that corridor. So restaurants and businesses in that corridor. So I expect that they will hopefully provide a resource to us in those regards. But I appreciate the presentation from both of the the vendors and I think staff for their work on this recommendation. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. I'm really appreciative of the answers that have been provided today. And I will only add to it that when there are opportunities to use that contingency for new and creative things, that there is also a partnership opportunity with our Parks and Rec director. And I know that Marie Knight and I spoke about. The opportunity to use some of the parking gate technologies at Eldorado Park, and that especially this year as the community has flourished and thrive. Our level of drive at the parks has gone up. We have been faced with some unique parking challenges, specifically at our parks. And so with the two lanes going in and the opportunity to automate a lane for our members and to move away from our old school pasts and the risks and liabilities of our city staff. I'm holding large quantities of cash on those days when other options of credit cards and the automation process especially. I know that I talked a little bit with potential parking providers, that there's a lot of data available. Once you start instituting these pass cards instead of a tag that's in your and your window now you can start seeing how many times a week, a month, a year are our high propensity users using it or people buying it in your past and using it twice? Are they buying an annual pass and using it every day of the week or once a month? And what does that look like? It also helps us start being able to keep track of those that come in on foot if we want them to start using their pass code to get in or out, that that allows us to start seeing the number of users we have. And so I just look forward to some technology opportunities and I'm appreciative that the contingency is mostly used for new things and not as a gap. And I think that that's a really important point, and I thank you for that clarification. Thank you. Councilmember Pearce. Yes. I'd like to thank my colleagues for their comments. I accept that friendly. But I would also I understand that sometimes you see something that's new and exciting and it promises a lot. And I know that we also have a lot of challenges with cleanliness and our lots existing right now. So I would also like to ask that city staff just do it could be a two from four a report back in a year into how the changes have happened. And if we see more opportunities to put in place kind of the vision that we set forward today. Just so we have an opportunity to discuss that. So thank you. Thank you, Councilman Hastert. Yes. I wasn't going to speak this evening, but Councilman Mungo's comments sparked an idea or thought. I know we brought an item before the council. I want to say about a year and a half ago to look at meters and using those meters to bring or to raise money for our homeless programs here in the city. Oh, I would really love that for our our public works department to have that conversation with our new vendor. I expect this to be passed this evening to to look at some some creative ways to engage and help develop that, because I know we received too far from the idea was, I think, a noble one, one that is actually working in other cities. But parking meters and old parking meters in particular in business districts would would, I think, help a lot in terms of raising necessary resources to help our homeless population and provide services and to, you know, avoid panhandling in any way possible. So this just one thought that I had and I'm supportive of the item. Thank you. That concludes comment from the city council. So there is a there's a motion in a second by Councilmember Pearce and Councilwoman Gonzalez, our members, to go ahead and cast your votes. Motion carries.