Recommendation to adopt Plans and Specifications No. R-6971 for the Rehabilitation of Magnolia Avenue, between Pacific Coast Highway and Spring Street; award the contract to Sully-Miller Contracting Company, of Brea, CA, for the base bid in the amount of $2,154,780 and the additive bid in the amount of $396,400, for a total of $2,551,180; authorize a 15 percent contingency of $382,677, for a total contract amount not to exceed $2,933,857; authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all documents necessary to enter into the contract, including any necessary amendments thereto; and consider and accept the determination that this project is statutorily exempt from CEQA.  (Districts 6,7)
Item ten is report from Public Works and Financial Management, with the recommendation to award a contract to Sally Miller for the rehabilitation of Magnolia Avenue in the sixth and seventh District, an amount not to exceed $2.9 million. There's been a motion in a second by Councilmember Turanga and Councilmember Andrews Councilmember Ranga. Thank you, Mayor. At my community budget hearing. Last week I heard concerns from residents in regards to local hiring of contractors. I was wondering if Mr. A, I forget. The. Error if he can explain the city's process when it comes to local hiring. Honorable mayor and honorable council members. As I indicated in your community briefing, the city strives to hire local companies to perform contract work. There's a process that finance management is requiring us to follow, and we have done that for this project. In most cases, due to government laws or contracting laws, we have to follow those rules. Also, the laws responsible bidder, which is solely Milner for this project, is not a local company, but they are the lowest responsible bidders. But every local company has an opportunity to bid the project and there were local companies who built the project, but unfortunately they were not the lowest bidder. I'm still looking for. What's the process for local hiring that this company might have or access to? They do any recruiting or any opportunities to local persons to apply for these jobs that might be available to put on this rehab. Well, we follow the city's charter and cities municipal ordinances for local hire. And I think we've done that with this. I don't think there's any mandate for currently in place that mandates that local hires do the job for our if not the lowest bidder to do the perform the job. So there's a conflict that this needs to be resolved in the future. Okay. And also, approximately how long will this project take? Obviously, the concern, of course, of residents around that area would be of getting alternate routes or alternate parking, especially if there's parking in the street that's going to be affected. Has there been an outreach into that community in regards to what is available to them while this work is being done? Thank you for asking that question. Public Works has a very robust outreach program. After the contractors is on board, we have a pre-construction meeting with the contractor, which your office will be invited. You will be part of that process. We we will wait for contractor to give us their construction schedule. We anticipate this project to last approximately six months. But that's not that's that's what the duration for the contract is, including holidays and weekends. After the contractor gives us the schedule, we will coordinate that with your office at no point. The street will be closed for traffic, so there will always be one lane of traffic at all times. We work with the community to make sure that we don't have impacts to parking and to residents accessing their their houses. So we walk each, we walk the block and and the contractor delivers a notice to each household. And we give them information as when the construction will start, what the impacts are. We suspend our parking enforcement during that period of construction. If there are any special needs, we will accommodate the residents with parking on adjacent streets and we coordinate with our street sweeping and also trash collection. So there is a tremendous of coordination that goes on with every single project in the city. And I'm proud to say that we're very successful in managing contracts and contractors and providing the best service to our residents. That's great. Well, one final question. Also, what came out in my budget hearing is some complaints from constituents that there have been a number of projects that have basically gone on result unresolved in the last couple of years. Can you explain the process of how a project gets on the list or on a schedule, and when might these projects get on line to A to be completed? Well, in the past, the practice has been that the council officers have been requesting certain projects to be administered in the city. I'm hoping that with our new payment management plan, we will change that practice. That will come to you with a list of projects that are the most efficient and eminent projects to be performed. And with collaboration with your office will choose a five year CIP program and will include some of those streets, I'm sure, as you know. And you will recognize that the funding for our local streets is not sufficient for the demands that we're seeing out there. So there has to be a careful selection when those streets are paved at what what period of time. Yeah. What was the name of that document again? The payment management plan, Poppy. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Andrews. You know, I to definitely click on with Mr. our councilman Mr. Urunga was speaking about spatial acquiring. You know, I understand what Scully and Miller they're very large contractors and I can see how they can come in is a much, you know, they can bid, you know, with these other small companies, which would have a chance to bid against them. But I think we're going to have to really kind of restructure our hiring practices when it comes to local hiring. And I'm very, very, very, you know, trying to understand, you know, we get these various contractors. We can have to kind of stay locally with our hiring practices because it seems like we can get these big contractors coming to our city and we get nothing. You know, I'm with them that. So I think we're going to be looking deeper to this to see why we bring these contractors in here. We're going to have to stay locally. We know we can't tell individuals how to hire individuals who they are. But at least I think we're going to have to look into this more and let people know that we are contractors here. You're going to have to, like, give at least as some kind of benefits and let some of these individuals work. That's locally in the city of Long Beach. Thank you. Thank you. I see no other comment on this from the council. Any public comment on the item? See none. Please cast your votes. Motion carries nine votes. Yes. Item, I believe. Moving on to ordnances, item 11. Item 11 as a report is an ordinance with a recommendation to adopt an ordinance approving rates and charges for water and sewer services by the Long Beach Water Department effective October 1st, 2014.