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HomeMy WebLinkAbout4B 06 25 2019 Special City Council Minutes 1 4646 Dakota Street SE Prior Lake, MN 55372 SPECIAL CITY COUNCIL MEETING MINUTES June 25, 2019 CALL TO ORDER Mayor Briggs called the meeting to order at 3:00 p.m. Present were Councilors, Thompson, Burkart, Braid and Erickson. Also, in attendance were City Manager Plante, City Attorney Schwarzhoff, Assistant City Manager Olson, Finance Director Erickson, Police Chief Frazer, Community Development Director McCabe, Public Works Director/City Engineer Brotzler, Assistant City Engineer Monserud and City Clerk Orlofsky. PUBLIC FORUM Briggs: Reviewed the process for the public forum and explained that items scheduled for public hearing or items for which a public hearing has been held but no final action taken, are not eligible for discussion on the public forum. No Members of the Public Spoke. APPROVAL OF AGENDA MOTION BY THOMPSON, SECOND BY BRIAD, TO APPROVE THE AGENDA AS PRE- SENTED. VOTE Briggs Thompson Burkart Braid Erickson Aye ☒ ☒ ☒ ☒ ☒ Nay ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ Abstain ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ Absent ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ The motion carried. NEW BUSINESS 3A – Review of CSAH21/TH13 Project Bid Brotzler: Provided the background information on the current bidding conditions. Plante: Added that when you look at the project costs over all the City and the County carried the brunt of the project increases from the higher than expected bids. The MNDOT portion came in 1% over what the engineers estimate was. The City and County did ask MNDOT to consider in- creasing their contribution, and they have agreed. That has not been reflected in the funding sources before your today only because it is not a guarantee. However, a case has been made to seek additional funding to com form MNDOT which would benefit both the City and the County. Erickson: Asked if this was rebid in the fall would it help bring the cost down. DRAFT 06 25 2019 Special City Council Meeting Minutes 2 Brotzler: Explained that there is a risk to rebidding the project. The risk is that the bids would come the same. He does not believe that the rebidding this would change the total. The price of materials and the labor challenges that contractors are facing have impacted bids across the board this year. This year in total they have seen bid projects 15 – 20% over bid. The recommen- dation as a PMT would still recommend moving forward with this bid because there is more risk in delaying the project and potentially not realizing a significant enough savings to have made it worth it. Erickson: Added a follow up question to Brotzler comments that Scott County may not have the staffing levels to be able to oversee this project if it is delayed. Brotzler: Explained that it was a note that Scott County had made as they are administering this project that if this project was delayed to 2020, it would create staffing challenges for them with what they already have scheduled for projects in 2020. Those challenges would add more cost to the project with having to hire consultants to help administer this project. Brotzler: Asked for feedback on the idea of removing the monument signs from this project and have the City look to undertake it as a separate stand-alone project after the main project is com- plete. Braid: Asked for point of clarification that the City of Prior Lake is not doing a reconstruction pro- ject this year. This is the reconstruction project that will occur in 2019. And, he asked staff to clar- ify that they already are moving around other projects around to try and accommodate for funding this 21/13 project. Brotzler: Explained that the City does have a small rehabilitation project going on right now over on Fish Point Road near Fire Station No. 1. When the City looks at the 2020 Fish Point Road Pro- ject it will actually be a 2021 construction project from a funding and time standpoint. Burkart: Stated that he is comfortable with the bids received and he does not want to move for- ward with the monuments, and he asked if the monuments were same as the art installations and what were the minimum requirements for art as a percentage of the project. What does the City have to meet? Brotzler: Clarified that the monuments are the representation of sailboats, those are the items that would be deleted from this bid project and taken on by the City had a different time. Thompson: Asked if the banner was also included with the monuments. Briggs: Thought the overhead banner was also included with the monuments. Brotzler: Explained that he would clarify whether the banner was included with the monuments or not. Thompson: Questioned if the electrical would be completed with this project in anticipation for the sailboats to be done as a stand-alone project later. Brotzler: Clarified that was correct, electrical would be installed with this project. Erickson: Stated that he supports the bid received. He agrees the monuments should be pulled out and approved as a separate project at a future item. Thompson: Stated that it was unfortunate the bids came in so high, but it does happen. She thanked staff for looking for other opportunities for funding this project. She feels it is imperative that the City move forward with this project. She agrees that is fiscally smart to hold off on the monuments, however, she would like a guarantee that the monuments would be completed within a short time frame. She believes the monuments are an important element. DRAFT 06 25 2019 Special City Council Meeting Minutes 3 Braid: He is comfortable moving forward with the project and having staff looking at ways to move projects around to help fund this project and he agrees with removing the monuments and rebid- ding them as a separate project. He would like to see the monuments completed. Brotzler: Explained from a project timing stand point construction would start early August. Stage 1 would be under construction and completed by the middle of November 2019. Stage 2 would take on the work this year if they have the capacity and/or they wait until the spring of 2019. Stage 3 would start 2020 for construction. The overall completion would be July 2020. Briggs: Asked Director Brotzler to share what the County’s cost share adjustment look like. Brotzler: Explained that the increase cost to the City is about 45%, the County cost increase is about 44%. The City and County are seeing comparable cost increases. Briggs: Added that the City has the option of pulling out the monument piece, whereas, there are not pieces the County can pull out. Plante: Added that the County is actually buying down City expenses through their sales tax pro- ceeds in the neighborhood of $992,000.00. The recommendation from the County PMT is to move forward with this project as well. They will primarily be utilizing transportation tax dollars for this project. Prior to this project Manager Plante was informed that the County had 1.8 million dollars in unallocated funds. This will eat up the lion’s share of the cost overage. One reason the PMT recommends moving forward with this project is that they are anticipating this bidding environment to potentially be around for a period of time and if the City does move forward at this time, those transportation dollars may not be available. Therefore, if the project was pushed back to a later date the City’s cost share portion could go up significantly simply because those transportation dollars would not be available to buy down the City’s participation in that. The County is similar to the City in that they have a 10-year Transportation Plan and it is probable that they might also have to do some adjusting of their own projects that might not have the funding they once antici- pated. So, Manager Plante views this as the City’s opportunity to make sure this project gets done. It might not be the time frame the City likes, it might not be the dollar amount that the City would prefer but it is getting down and it’s buying down the City’s portion to the tune of one million dol- lars. Briggs: The County has been working on this project and fully committed partner with the City of Prior Lake the entire length of this project. Briggs is supportive of moving forward. Briggs stated that the monuments are essential. He is uncomfortable not bidding them in at this time, but he un- derstands it is the responsible thing to do for the City. Briggs asked staff when the best time to bid the monuments out. Brotzler: Recommends asking the County’s consultant to work with the City to coordinate this specific piece of the project. The work is already done, and the consultant has the documents, so they could easily put a bid package together for late 2019 or early part of 2020. Brotzler added that the delivery of the materials has about six months window so bidding the project early and al- lowing time for that. Briggs: Clarified that by bidding this separate in November, it is still reasonable that this work could be completed at the same time as if we bid the project together. Brotzler: Explained that was correct. Briggs: Asked staff if it is possible to give authorization to accept the PMT recommendation of moving forward with the monuments not included and at the same time authorize staff at the time staff elects to prepare bids for the monuments. Briggs is comfortable with that direction because DRAFT 06 25 2019 Special City Council Meeting Minutes 4 he feels that this is one project and the uncoupling is purely to do the best thing for the tax payers financially, yet still delivering the same project that was promised to the public. Burkart: Asked if there was a commitment for art installations within road projects as there is in federal projects. Brotzler: Clarified that are not requirements for art installations for in the road project budgets. Burkart: Stated that government doesn’t have a budget, it’s just too easy to spend another per- son’s money. Burkart explained that the bid timing was a fail, the schedule was a fail, the cost es- timates were a fail and it makes it hard to trust estimates in the future. Burkart doesn’t not want to support the monuments. He would prefer to not seek citizen input without having a price tag on the options they are selecting. The art is extremely high for what it is, and he thinks the City could have chosen something different. Burkart gave kudos to staff for picking up the pieces and navi- gating through this sticky situation. Burkart agrees that the City should move forward with the pro- ject without the monuments. Braid: Pointed out that this Council already approved this design with the monuments previously as a whole. When he looks at this project and the amount of community input that was taken in an effort to be transparent. When he looks at this project and the transparency that the public input was meant to provide so that the Council could have a project that the Community would support because they have attempted this project design several times. While Braid may not agree with every piece of this project, he believes the time for debate has already passed because the City went forward with the bidding portion of the design that was approved by the Council. He feels the community was presented and sold the project design that was bid, and it would not be right to build a lesser project on a longer time frame. He is in favor of getting a bid on the street scaping and asking staff to move other projects around to make this project work. The community has spoken, and the City has to move forward. Erickson: Stated that he never heard from the community about the monuments. He doesn’t think the residents care if they are there or not. He thinks the monuments are a separate item and should be addressed by a future Council. Thompson: Disagreed with Erickson. She explained that she was on the Design Committee for this project and they discussed the street scaping a lot. Thompson added that the monuments were always a part of the project. She clarified that the monument bid came in at over a half mil- lion dollars and the City is saying no to that bid and hoping to get the monuments for around $200,000.00. This is our downtown and we have one shot to get it right. The investment will pay for itself over time. She would like to see the monuments as a part of the vote tonight. Burkart: Complimented Braid, Thompson on their comments. Burkart decided that he could com- promise. It likes that the City is taking the General Contractor out of it and just going straight to the art installer. MOTION BY BRIGGS, SECOND BY THOMPSON, TO MOVE FORWARD WITH THE BID AS RECIVED LESS THE MONUMENTS, AND TO AUTHORIZE STAFF TO PREPARE AND RE- LEASE THE BID DOCUMENTS AND TO PROCEED WITH BIDS WHEN MOST APPROPRIATE. Burkart: Asked Briggs to accept a friendly amendment to add a clause to the monument bid documents of not to exceed a certain amount. Briggs: Does not want to accept the clause because he doesn’t want to rule out a public/private partnership to pay for these monuments. DRAFT 06 25 2019 Special City Council Meeting Minutes 5 Burkart: Explained he does not have an emotional tie to the monuments. He thinks the cost is beyond reasonable. He does not want to support an open-ended bid. Braid: Explained that the City has simply approved going out to bid, the Council is not approv- ing the monuments. He doesn’t want to see any constraints on the project. Burkart: Stated that it’s not responsible to move forward when the costs are already coming in over budget. Briggs: Added that the Council is being fiscal stewards to the residents by pulling it out of the bids this evening and rebidding it separate. Plante: Explained that it was confirmed by the PMT and the Contractor that the bid on the mon- ument was a bad bid. They were hoping to see 4 bids on the project; however, due to timing is- sues only one bid was received because other contractors already had projects lined up. It is envisioned that the price on what is designed should come in around $200,000.00, there was a little bit of cushion built in at $250,000.00. Plante doesn’t feel the one bid taken should not re- flect the market for this item. VOTE Briggs Thompson Burkart Braid Erickson Aye ☒ ☒ ☐ ☒ ☒ Nay ☐ ☐ ☒ ☐ ☐ Abstain ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ Absent ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ The motion carried. ADJOURNMENT MOTION BY Thompson, SECONDED BY Braid TO ADJOURN THE MEETING AT 4:07 P.M. VOTE Briggs Thompson Burkart Braid Erickson Aye ☒ ☒ ☒ ☒ ☒ Nay ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ Abstain ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ Absent ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ The motion carried. _______________________ Michael Plante, City Manager