Recommendation to adopt Specifications No. R-7137 and award contracts to CJ Concrete Construction, Inc., of Santa Fe Springs, CA, Bitech Construction Co., Inc., of Buena Park, CA, and Kalban, Inc., of Santa Clarita, CA, for as-needed concrete repairs and related improvements, in an aggregate amount not to exceed $30,000,000, for a period of two years, with the option to renew for three additional one-year periods, at the discretion of the City Manager; authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all documents necessary to enter into contracts, including any necessary amendments; and Accept Categorical Exemption CE-19-020. (Citywide)
Motion case. Item 17 Report from Public Works Recommendation to award three contracts for as needed concrete repairs and related improvements in an aggregate amount not to exceed 30 million citywide. There's a motion and a second. Councilman Austin. So I'd like to get a quick staff report. Sure. Let's get a staff report, please. Craig Beck? Yes, ma'am. As city council, this continues our contracting work to allow us to deliver ADA projects. If you recall earlier, we actually late in 2018, in December, there was another item that came forward related to city curb ramps. And at the time, staff made a recommendation that we award to two contractors. That was C.J. Construction and Caliban. That contract specifically addresses new ADA ramps that need to be installed throughout the city. This particular item before you this evening is for sidewalk repair. And if if you recall, the city did agree to a settlement with under a class action lawsuit to allow us to prioritize different ADA work across the city. Part of that settlement agreement also included conducting a self-assessment. You may or may not have had an opportunity. We we do have a draft self-assessment out in it. It's starting to articulate in detail where we have deficiencies citywide. So we do have a lot of work before us. I know one issue had come up before about one of the contractors on this list, and that is C.J. Construction and the questions related around local hiring. This particular contract was not bid under any of our play guidelines that we have for many of our projects. But we did connect with all three of the vendors listed here and asked for them to commit to working with our workforce development team for any new hires. So the new hires that they they would bring on board related to these construction projects would come through our workforce development team. And as you know, they're integral in the pre apprentice work that we're doing in our city with our residents who are interested in entering into the building trades. That concludes my report and I'm available to answer any questions. Thank you, Councilman Austin. Thank you. And I certainly understand the need to turn to work contracts to meet our needs for for sidewalk repairs in response to litigation as well. You know, I don't recall it being as much as $30 million, though. Is that is that new? I think what staff's trying to articulate is it could be upwards of $30 million worth of work. When you look at some of the street projects that we have in a five year term. And this is over a three year period. Three year +21 renewals. Okay. And in in relation to the your comments regarding the the the local hiring and hiring practices of the contractors, it does I am encouraged that that that we're being proactive in moving forth with the workforce in this meant for to to work with these contractors to provide them with a good candidate pool of. Of individuals who they can hire. I just would always emphasize that that that candidate pool be reflective of the diversity of the city. And, you know, I love to. I'm looking forward to getting some data back on on the place that we've also entered into over the last few years, just to see how how those those hiring practices are working out. But those are my comments for now. I salute. Thank you. A vice mayor. Yes. I just like to connect the sentiments that the council asked them speaking about, especially on local hiring. I think that's extremely important, especially in this day and time. And thank you. And I second that motion. Thank you, Councilman. Councilwoman Gonzales. Yes. Thank you for the report. I know that there was a two. And thank you for addressing the issue with compliance, because that was going to be my my question. But I do know that there is from the two from four that was sent out a few weeks ago, there was still a pending issue. Do we know if that's been resolved at all? It looked like there were four or five issues outside of the city and four of them had been resolved and one of them had not been resolved. Councilmember Gonzales, the the last issue, from what I understand in our conversations with C.J. Construction last week, is they are close to a settlement, but it is not finalized yet. And is this regarding apprenticeships? Can you explain that a little bit? So we have a full understanding of what this. Yes. So just in general, all of the contracts that we work with on construction projects are required to pay state prevailing wage. And underneath that state prevailing wage guideline, there are opportunities for apprenticeship placements. And so that's really where we see a lot of local hiring happen. So when you're able to get folks who are interested in getting into the building trades, they typically start as apprentices. And so those apprentice opportunities exist on on every job I believe in. I'm trying to remember that this city that they were having some challenges in one of the cities up up the 17 freeway. From what we understand from the data, we were able to collect that they did hire some apprentices, but they they didn't pay them. The right wage passed a certain number of hours. Apparently, if an apprentice works beyond a certain number of hours and I apologize, they don't have those hours in front of me, but then you have to pay them at a different rate. So a journey level rate and the CGA construction did not pay the journey level rates for some of those hours beyond that minimum threshold. Okay. And you had mentioned about this not being included under our play. Is that correct? Yes, that is correct. Because it's all. But it's 30 million. Correct. So is it can can you explain that? I'm just trying to get that clear in my head as to why this. We are so were these are on call services. And so really what we're asking for is the authority to spend up to $30 million on multiple projects. And typically when a scope of work is developed, it's small segments of sidewalks. So for example, in the first District, I think there's ten or so different sites that are being worked on right now. And the cumulative amount of of that site work is less than the $500,000 threshold that we have for a play contract. So it doesn't meet that minimum threshold for the play agreement. Okay. I kind of have an issue with that just because I think that we are you know, I know that we this the limit is up to the 30 million. We may not get to that 30 million, but I still think that it should be covered overall because it's the same sort of services for the same contract . So I with that, I think I would love to see and I know that we're going to be taking up the project labor agreement 2.0 and do we know when that will be coming back to council? I know it was supposed to come back this month and it's not. We're looking at early to mid April. So with the we have a number of very large items coming your way in December. In March and April. And so April it will be. Okay. I would prefer to have seen this. After that we established all of the new kind of rules or any other discussion we had on the play first before we saw this new contract. Just because I think and I know that it's timely, but we also just approved another 30 million, almost close to 30 million back in October for the same contractor. So I think at this time, I may be voting no. Just wanted to let you know that. But I appreciate the information and I think it'd be good to know this information as to the lawsuits and additional information about contractors that are not playing well, even if it's not in our own city . But thank you. So I do want to clarify that this is $30 million over a potentially five year period of time. So we're we're essentially talking about $6 million annually split, but three between three contractors. So I want to make sure that everyone understands it's not $30 million for one vendor, but it would be split. Between three contractors. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Councilmember Pierce. Thank you. And I want to thank Councilmember Gonzalez for raising this issue for me. And I have a I guess, a couple of thoughts. One is, yes, that we have a play policy. I know that we're overhauling or not overhauling. That is definitely the wrong choice of words that you guys are bringing back a report on the play and that there are some conversations around how do we make sure that we strengthen that pipeline. And so I know that when those conversations come forward, there will be more conversations about how we work with good contractors. And so I would like what I hate is being up here on the dais and finding out right before we're about to vote that we have a contractor in front of us that doesn't have the best practices and history and that they're in the middle of settlement agreements around labor practices. So I don't want that to continue to happen. So I'm just saying that on record so that we can work on that in the future. I agree that if we're going to spend $30,000, even though it's different 30 million sorry projects, even though it's different projects and three different contractors, that if we as a city are saying that we care about having our residents get into good jobs, that we need to use every opportunity that we can, even if it's not a requirement. So I'll be working with your office and with economic development just to continue that conversation so that we don't find ourselves in that situation again. Is there a timeline crunch on this? Is there a need for you guys to have this vote today? Yes, Councilmember. Currently we don't have a contract in place for any ADA sidewalk work. We don't have a contract place. When would this work begin? With approval tonight. We would move forward, finalizing these contracts and have these in place. I would imagine in the next 2 to 3 weeks. Can we continue it for another week? Mr. Beck, could it be continued for a week? My recommendation is we move this forward. I'm not sure what changes in a week. Well, at least I'll have some time to understand more about this contractor and work with you and your office to see what practices we're putting into place to make sure that we don't have another you know, that they don't have more lawsuits on their hands on one of our projects. So you're up. There is a two from four regarding this contractor specifically that went out about a month ago or maybe two months ago, and that has all that information. So. I don't think there were anything new based on the 2.4 that went out a month ago. And I'm not sure if you haven't had a chance to to read through the two form four memo yet. There were no incidents of any wage issues or labor compliance issues for any of the work that C.J. Construction did in the city of Long Beach. We have a very robust labor compliance group here in Long Beach, and we wouldn't be sitting here in front of you making a recommendation, move forward with this contractor. If we didn't believe that this contractor would meet all of its obligations under under this proposed contract. So, Mr. West, I think I think the you know, what I'm hearing from from a couple of the members is just obviously, it's a large contract amount. This is you know, this is a it's significant. And so you feel confident and the review that you have made that that this one operator or this one contractor, that we should be concerned about the the issues as they relate to labor practices. Absolutely. We've had numerous discussions with this contractor, reviewed their history and we feel very comfortable with them. Councilman Austin. Yes. I think this has been thoughtful. You know, we didn't just just approve this went on without without some thought here on and we still have it. I'm I'm in supportive of moving this forward under with the understanding that that this this contract is awarded and gives some discretion to our city staff to award contracts as needed 2 to 3 different contractors. And so this doesn't necessarily or maybe the question is, does this mean that every contractor is going to get an equal amount of the contract, or will they be contracted as needed as available to to do the work for the city? So we have a lot of work that needs to get done. We fully anticipate working all of these contractors to their available resource limits. We're hopeful that we can catch up with some of the delays that we've had in addressing some of our sidewalk issues. As I mentioned, we haven't had a sidewalk contract in place since November. And what what sort of and if you can answer this is great, but what sort of interaction has already occurred or has any interaction occurred between these contractors and our workforce investment Pacific Gateway to talk about hiring local folks. So there has been a pre-meeting with contractors and an introduction to a liaison through our workforce development team and talking about what the pipeline looks like and where those placements can occur. And Mr. Beck, is it possible and I know this doesn't fall under the play guidelines that we approved, but is it possible to track the data for the local hiring or those within the Long Beach zip code that actually work for these particular contractors or any of the contractors that we we work with? Yes. So one of the requirements when paying prevailing wage is that the contractors must provide something called a certified payroll. And so the certified payroll essentially lists all the members that are on the payroll, on a given job and the rate of pay that that individual received and their address. So through the certified payrolls, we would be able to understand who's working on the job and where they live. I don't think I've ever seen a report like that. Is it possible to produce something like that for the council? Maybe a year out? Yeah. I can show you a copy of a certified payroll. It's not something the city produces. These are things that come from the contractors as part of their prevailing wage requirements. But certainly we receive have the opportunity to review them and we can share those with council if that's council's interest. Well, I think that's that's I as part of my motion to accept this, I would love to just just ask that that that kind of information be disclosed to the to the to the council moving forward so that we can have some accountability on the contractors and contracts and understanding that we send a message loud and clear that we are serious about Long Beach residents, local folks getting jobs, and particularly ensuring that the workforce is diverse. So I move to support this. With that in mind. Thanks. Thank you. Councilmember Pearce. Um, yes, I wanted to ask two questions. One is, could we move forward with the first two countries, first to contractors that don't have the labor practice violations while we. No. Okay. That's why I saw you for the record. I just want to point out that we have to abide by state law for contracting. And C.J. is the low bid, so they are the low bidder. And the other two were added on. So that's the reason why we would not be able to do that. Okay. So they are the low bid. Okay. I would like to I know that I just met today with John from Economic Development and his team about the work that they're doing. So I would ask that the work that they're doing inside Pacific Gateway that we just make sure that they're partnering. Echo What Councilmember Austin said, that they're partnering and that we do get a chance to look at those numbers and that if there's I think there's future discussion on a good contractor process that we can move forward on. So. Thank you. I guess maybe to address some of the questions that have come up, I would offer that staff can provide this council and update report at maybe the six month mark to share with you what kind of work has been done and how the contract dollars have been distributed and what the certified payrolls look like. Yeah. Worth mind. I love those are the solutions for. Did you do that item already? Oh, okay. Okay. Got the one with the little hearts or angry eyes. Okay. Any public comment on this item? Seeing none. There's a motion. And second, please cast your vote. Motion carries.