3. Discussion and/or action to add one member (citizen) to the Public Works Committee.

Transcription

1 Public Works Committee meeting October 6, pm Present: Richard G. Harris Mayor Annette Spendlove City Recorder/ HR Director Dave Hulme Planning Commissioner Jim Harris Project Manager Mel Blanchard Public Works Director Kent Jones City Engineer Ed Dickie City Manager Carl Turner Council Member Absent: Ron Flamm Council Member Debbie Cardenas Finance Director Visitors: Fred Duvall Bruce Hall Helen Taylor Neal Berube 1. Welcome Mayor Harris called the meeting to order at 4:08pm and welcomed everyone for attending. He stated that Ron Flamm and Debbie Cardenas asked to be excused. Mayor Harris stated that Jim Harris is the project manager for this project and we are very fortunate to have him with his expertise and experience. 2. Public Comments There were no public comments. 3. Discussion and/or action to add one member (citizen) to the Public Works Committee. Mayor Harris said that Dave Hulme was put on this Committee as a community member but has since been appointed to the Planning Commission. Mayor Harris thinks it would be wise to appoint a new person to the Committee as a member from the community. If the Committee is OK with that the Mayor will consider this. Mayor Harris asked that if anyone had suggestions they should contact him. 4. Discussion and/or action on criteria for site selection. Jim Harris, Project Manager, reviewed a spreadsheet titled Public Works Site Selection Criteria that each member has been given a copy of. There are listed five potential properties though there may be

2 more in the City. He listed several criteria or factors he thinks could be used to narrow down sites. He said if there are things that others think should be on there; he would appreciate any input. If there are questions on what he has listed, Committee member should feel free to ask. Kent Jones, City Engineer, asked about having an item called access in other words, where are the adjacent access streets and adequacies that would serve this facility? Jim Harris said he thought he had that on there; it is a good idea. Kent Jones also suggested distance from center of City; something to do with the general proximity within the City and how well it will work for Public Work activities. Jim said that s a good point and asked what everyone else thinks of that idea. Mel Blanchard, Public Works Director, said he likes this idea and it is important where they are located. Jim, we ll call it location and try to better define that. There are criteria within the topic of location that we could evaluate. Edward O. Dickie III, City Manage said, phasing and access both need to be considered. Phasing is how we are going to phase it. Is there a site that will be easier to phase into? Ed, also said that we should be aware of public concerns. There will always be some concern from the public. Jim said there are two construction experts here; Kent Jones and Car Tuner, that may be more of a construction concern. He said it is something to think about if the site the City selects warrants phasing. If it s just an open 5 acre site it may not be an issue. Rich Harris, suggest that we use it as a factor; it may not have many advantages and therefore importance in the long run, but it could tip a site one way or another. Jim Harris agreed. Kent suggested under topography, adding soils he is not saying we need a geotech on every site but maps of soil types. In the clay you know we will have to import backfill, on the hill we can use native materials for backfill. There could be a cost factor. Jim Harris agreed. He put under topography also steep slope and shallow slope. Jim Harris suggested, how well developed the location is; road width, curb and gutter, those could be factors that may tip the balance for a site. Mel stated that they do have large trucks coming and going. Jim said yes, salt deliveries for example. We have to make sure the thickness of the pavement is adequate for the purpose intended, so we re not rutting the pavement. He also suggest under infrastructure we consider water, sewer and all utilities. Water is the only thing I worry about; if we have a shallow line and drive heavy equipment over it we could drive frost down to the freezing line. I hope we re deep enough. Kent, suggested the impact on adjacent properties. Some of the sites to the west, virtually open fields with nothing around while there are others in town surrounded by homes, churches. Jim, listed zoning there. Dave Hulme suggested neighborhood; zoning doesn t necessarily mean what is built there; just what is intended to be built there. Mayor Harris replied that that is his concern also. He suggested adjacent property impacts. Jim Harris asked how we would define that? Dave said that was his idea behind neighborhood; what does that look like? Could be a few homes interspersed around agricultural properties or high value homes and churches. Kent asked what would be appropriate to minimize those impacts; out west maybe do nothing but if it s in town maybe screening. Dave said that it s not necessarily that you can t put it there but it may cost more to put it there. Jim, replied that we do have commercial development standards. When commercial adjoins residential we require an 8 ft. wall. We are not immune to our own standards. We have to play by the rules too. We will need to take this to the Planning Commission. Jim stated that he will add adjacent property impacts to the factors.

3 Mayor Harris wanted to go through previous set of factors. We had property shape which had to do with the configuration of the proposed building and asked if the committee wanted to consider that again. Jim stated that he wasn t sure that s applicable. Mayor Harris asked about property ownership? Whether the City owns it or not and he is not t sure we need that. Jim replied, I have owner on there. Mayo Harris said, adjacent property and we covered that under Property jurisdiction? He also suggested within North Ogden City limits, that would have some advantage where permits and approvals are handled in house and suggested we put that in for now. He continued through the list: Site access; Adjacent circulation; Phasing opportunities. Mayor Harris felt like the factor are a little more comprehensive now. Dave asked if we should add the word other? A place for notes. Jim replied that the programming firm did a similar thing already. Mayor Harris asked if we need anything with respect to traffic: Traffic studies; Traffic volume; Can the road handle truck traffic? Neal Berube said that one of the things that came up during the meeting several weeks ago was sidewalks and the safety of the school kids that travel the area. Jim said that could be another one. Dave said some of that would be covered under adjacent properties. Mayor envisions that this will be part of the packet given to the City Council next week. Carl asked if will we have definitions of these items? He thinks the City Council would like to have what is included in adjacent property. 5. Discussion on potential use of Real Estate Professional. Jim Harris said that he thinks, once the Committee has identified potential properties and can pare down to a couple, should we enlist the services of a Real Estate Professional. Someone with experience to help us with evaluating the properties, give us some idea of the value of some of these properties. He suggest we use someone who does not have a vested interest in North Ogden already. He has a couple in mind who he knows from working at Weber State. He said that he expects that we would have to pay them. We d have to decide what process we would use to bring that person onboard. Carl asked what kind of fees are we considering; 3% of the purchase; Completely a consulting fee? Jim, we ve done it several different ways. Hourly, a project fee and a couple situations where we wound up acquiring property, we negotiated a fee of the value of the sale of the property, More often than not they would do it for nothing as they had a lot of work from the University. There should be a fee involved of some sort. No idea what that should be. That s a legislative decision that would have to go to the City Council for approval. Carl asked what is the advantage of doing this? Jim, it s more in the investigation, giving us a better idea of the value of the property. Assist us with the negotiation of the acquisition of the property. They can do some more discreet inquiries without giving away who the potential purchaser is for obvious reasons. Mayor Harris said somebody who does that for a living might be able to help us out. Carl asked if this person would be an liaison between the property owner and the City. Jim replied, very close to that. Carl said he would like to know what we re going to get for our money. He thinks the City Council would

4 want to know also. We would need to decide how we re going to regulate hours if we go hourly, flat fee, or percentage? If you come to the City Council without a definition it wouldn t go through. Jim said that he will find out what we could expect for a fee. If we have to compete it then we put an RFP out. You never know. Carl said that architects will work on that aspect of it too. Ed would like to get down to those five or six properties before we go any further with this. If it comes down to those that we ve already talked to; they re going to know it s us. It might not be necessary. He thinks for now that the City Council needs to know we ve discussed this. Jim suggested that there are potentially a lot of properties within the City boundaries that are candidates for a new Public Works Complex and using these individuals can level the playing field quite a bit. He doesn t want to throw it out just yet and thinks it s something to consider when we narrow it down to fewer properties. Kent said that with the economy the way it is we may end up with several property owners competing to sell to us. He said he knows that is the case for a couple of these. It s a different situation that trying to talk them into selling. 6. Discussion on Program Verification Consultant (Architect). Mayor, we talked about using an architect at last committee meeting. Jim, program verification is a way to go through the process more quickly. This is just one more t to cross or I to dot. He said he is still not convinced that we need to do this but Kent brought it up at the last meeting that maybe we should hire an architect. Kent said that if we have someone review the document and that may roll them into being the architect for the job. Jim there are a couple ways to do this. You can hire an architect to do program verification; review and make sure that the points in the program document are still valid points. The other way is a two-step process. Hire someone to do program verification and if they do that satisfactorily then you negotiate with them without further competition. Kent said that to him that way makes the most sense. It seems like as we re trying to fit buildings on the property is the time to have an architect on our team. Jim said he was thinking along that line awhile back. HE is not sure program verification is the way we have to go. Maybe the spending issue more than anything. We re almost there between the expertise combined I m almost thinking we can do without program verification. It s just one more step in the openness in the process. I wasn t convinced that we need to do it. Kent the time Mel spent with them on this was extensive. I m thinking it would be 20-25k that I didn t really want to have the City spend. Thinks we could bring an architect on board with the CC consent when we re down to the final few properties. Ed Dickie said that currently we have enough either to look at property or to get an architect on board. We don t have enough funds for the design. Kent said that he thinks this Committee with Mel s help and our office we can take that document and so some preliminaries on sites and at least take a first shot at it. Jim said that s why he would like to have the topography of the City. Kent said he has some very good topography on the whole City it s a 2 ft. contour. We could just trace it on the site. Jim said he is trying to create a comprehensive overlay of the infrastructure. He is trying to keep the cost down as much as possible.

5 Mayor said the recommendation for the CC is that they give us the latitude to look at these things. 7. Discussion on use of structural engineer to assess current Public Works facility. Mayor, this has to do with our existing building. Jim, not a structural engineer, but has been a designer an dwith Mel and his staff s help we knocked a couple holes in the building. We found very little support. It is of grave concern to him. We are in a high earthquake zone. I don t know if we need to hire one to justify replacing those facilities. From his standpoint, he wouldn t feel safe to be in that facility. In this document the architect did identify several OSHA and ADA violations. Kent asked if the purpose of 7 is to assess how important it is. Jim said he doesn t know if we need to. Mel the fire station was there before the shop and the shop is at least 35 yrs. old. Dave Hulme said his proposal is that if there is not buyoff from the community and we feel we need to go further we can do it then. AT this point the study is pretty strongly worded with re to the necessity of replacing this. I think it s good where it is but doesn t mind leaving the possibility open as something else we can do later. Jim doesn t think we need to do it but if the CC and/or the public feel it s necessary to further justify the project we can do it. It s just a thought. 8. Possible closed meeting to discuss the purchase of property for a public works facility in accordance with Utah Code Mayor said there is some information on a pw facility. Dave move. Carl second. Unanimous. Dave move to reconvene in open meeting to move 10 before 8. Carl second. Jim move. Ed second. Unanimous. Convened at 520p 9. Discussion and/or action on purchase of property. Reconvened in open meeting 540p. Mayor let the record show we discussed the possible purchase of property for informational purposes only. That will go to CC for their consideration. 10. Public Comments.

6 Fred Duvall, 1470 E 2525 N, public works has to encompass a lot of different services and activities. Have we gone through all of those and asked the question could it be done cheaper and better by outside Could we contract some of that out? If there a number of things we could sub contract out it might reduce the size and cost of the new facility. Things we do once a month or just occasionally. There may be equipment sitting idle for long periods of time. We may be better off having someone else do those things for us. Maybe save some money. It could also impact the requirements for a new facility. Neal Berube, said we live in a relatively small city and are surrounded, other than Ogden, by small cities. In the business world when someone can t afford to do everything they want because of its size, they combine and make a unified service group. Is there some way to do that and reduce the costs by creating a unified service situation? Just a thought. Ed said he made the offer to PV and Harrisville the other day that we all combine. They weren t too excited about it. Annette said we reviewed this a few years ago. Bruce Hall said he doesn t think the City will have to justify the new facility. Mel and his team need respectable premises to do their jobs. Ed thanked them for their comments. He said we do a lot of public works that we contract out. A lot of the major work goes out and we do the maintenance. We have looked into it. Helen Taylor said she spent quite a bit of time studying the Blalock study and we are asking for a 30,000 sq. ft. building to store vehicles. This whole study said we re only going to increase our work space by 6,000 sq. ft. The consensus is that this is a done deal that we re going to have this new building. The City has built a new senior center, aquatic center, remodeled the city office. Do we really need to build a facility for when we double? At no time has she heard anyone suggest remodel or renovate the existing 2.5 acres. Store some of the sand and salt offsite so we don t have to build a new site. My question as a citizen is what the cost to remodel is compared to the 6 million build new facility. Can we look at remodeling? I certainly want you to justify a 6 million investment and keep justifying it until I say ok, we need it. Please consider remodeling at a substantially reduced cost. 11. Adjournment. Dave move. Carl, second. Adjourn 541pm.