The utilities committee met on September 18, 2025, chaired by an unnamed chairman (with Councilwoman Spencer excused). The committee considered six emergency ordinances related to the Department of Public Utilities and received updates on operations, including a water main break on the Shoreway. All ordinances were approved unanimously without recorded votes.
Calling the utilities committee to order. Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll? Present. Right? Here. Here. Present. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Can you please also uh excuse Councilwoman Spencer? She had a prior engagement today. And to the committee, I I want to thank you for being uh on time so we can start at 10 o'clock. I really appreciate that. You know, I am in tiding. So thank you very much for being on time. Director, if you'd like to come on up, we're gonna get things going. Ordinance number four ninety-one, twenty twenty-five by council members Casey and Griffin by departmental request. An emergency ordinance authorizing the director of public utilities to enter into one or more requirement contracts for landscape materials, equipment supplies, and services needed for testing, maintaining, installing, repairing, and replacing landscaping at city-owned or leased Department of Public Utility facilities and city rights away for the division of water, water pollution control club and public power, and the Office of Radio Communications, Department of Public Utilities for a period of two years, Director. Thank you, Chairman, members of the committee. Department of Public Utilities has a number of facilities, including office buildings, water filtration plants, home stations, sewer lift stations, electric service centers, substations, yards, towers. That require landscaping services. Uh over the two years, approximately one million dollars. We do break up the contracts into typically around four by not only geographic locations but also by size in order to try to get a more diverse pool of uh vendors that put in for it. We do publicly procure these contracts, and the current contracts do expire uh in the first part of 2026, so we would like to get out on the street as soon as possible. All right, Director, and are are these for ongoing maintenance purposes or are these like one-time landscapes? Uh Chairman, these are for ongoing regular routine cuts, maintenance, cleaning up, um, debris removal, so on. All right. Um this would be at all of the water plants. All of them. This is chairman to the council members, so it is all water. It is all water pollution control, office of radio communications. Right. But then we do end at uh the Medzenti Plaza at twelve oh one. Yeah. 1825 down the street at on Lakeside. Um we do go out separately for the power because it of its location to typically a substation. Right. Um, but yeah, it would be all of DPU minus the high voltage. So the the actual um the um just want to clarify that so the substations, who's who's gonna who maintains those inside the fence? Inside the fence CPP laborers, okay, because you know we have some issues there. I'm well aware, okay, Chairman of the Councilman. Now on the plants, Mr. Chairman to the director. So we have no we no longer have any ground crews working for the city. Each chairman of the councilman, each water plant has a crew of laborers that do regular routine snow removal, uh cleaning up, um, but because of the size of these properties, right? You've seen them, you know them. The landscaping of that would take a standalone crew, okay, and then what would they do after the grass was cut? So we try to mix both full-time and these contracts to do those uh regular cuts and maintenance. Because obviously, you're you're very aware uh very well aware of our concerns about outsourcing work from the standpoint of the council. I just want to make sure that with this legislation, you're not eliminating any of the present employees or internal maintenance that we're doing. Chairman of the councilman, absolutely not.