Good afternoon, everybody.

Thank you for joining us for today's meeting of the infrastructure committee.

Today is uh March 15th, 2018, odds of March, and today is the true start of March madness for everybody following.

I think our Aztecs are getting ready to play here in a couple hours, so our goal is to be done before then.

Let the record reflect that we have Councilmembers Alvarez and Zaff here today, Councilmember Ward will not be joining us.

We also have our city attorney representative, Tina Ray, our IBA representative Jillian Cassie, our mayoral representative empty chair, and our infrastructure committee consultant for the last time, Lee Friedman.

Unfortunately, we are losing Lee.

However, he will be moving four chairs down.

He will be in his new role starting when Monday?

Starting Monday as uh infrastructure policy manager uh for Mayor Faulkner.

So I just want to thank Lee for all of his hard work uh uh dedication since this committee's been around and since uh since he's been working in my office since the beginning.

So uh we appreciate all that and and his dedication to uh to infrastructure and all his hard work, and of course he'll still be here helping us out in uh a different capacity.

So uh with that said, uh, I'd like to thank everybody who's here in person or watching on City TV.

We'll start as always with non-agenda public comment.

And I believe we have three members of the public who would like to speak.

We will start with Kathleen Higgins, who has time suited to her uh by Michael Zucett for a total of four minutes.

Great, good afternoon.

I think this is the first time that I've spoken to this committee, but I watch I watch from home on the TV there.

Uh Kathleen Higgins, I am the governmental and labor representative for MEA.

And I wanted to come down and speak on a very serious matter, sound an alarm for you all.

I happen to have watched the meeting a couple of weeks ago, the very animated meeting about the discussion of cost overruns or the cost of CIP projects, and you wonder what the heck am I doing down here?

Well, one of my jobs at MEA is to monitor what contracts, what work is being performed by consultants as is as it relates to city employees.

So this morning we had a very uh good meeting.

Today we have what is called an Article 73, and what that does is MEA trying to be the good partner we are.

We basically are allowing the city at this point in time to contract out city work in public works to consultants so that your CIP projects can get done.

We're doing that in good faith that one day things will turn around, but right now we've got a booming economy and we have a problem, and here's the problem.

We have our engineering series classifications, as well as our land surveyor series.

If you were to look at the vacancies and the problems with the recruitment and retention with these types of classifications, we are a feeding ground right now for both the public and the private sector.

They are coming over and they're taking our best and brightest.

And right now, we're wanting to sound that alarm because something will be discussed, I believe, in closed session next week related to SSAs that MEA is moving forward, specific to recruitment and retention.

But one example of a senior civil engineer right now, when the city did their own salary survey a few years ago, um the senior civil classification came in 40.9% below average in in their salary, which means our senior civil engineers are 24th out of 24th as compared to other agencies and cities.

They are very low paid positions right now, and so it only makes sense when the economy is booming that they'll leave and take take their job with them with that with that job that comes that expertise.

So I want to make it very clear that MEA, that is my role to come down and tell you before it gets too bad.

When you talk about going from $500 million of project works this year, and now you're talking about going to 1.1 million dollars, billion dollars, pardon me, in projects.

They want to get it done for the citizens, but you have to understand if you don't have that expertise in-house, then you're going to see delays in these projects.

And right now I try to I I try to work with a ratio of 70, 30, 70 percent in-house staff, because quite frankly, city employees right now are a lot cheaper than consultants.

So you want to use your in-house staff.

So a 70-30 is kind of the norm.

Nagelboard or anybody else right now the numbers I have is about 5050.

So you're paying a whole bunch more for consultants.

And you say well yeah Kathleen that's why you're here for the union.

No, we want you to be alarmed about your recruitment and retention in these specialized classifications.

And I want to just put for the record here to prove I've got resignation forms this past year from some of our best and brightest and for the record I'd like to submit these and if you'd like to look at them and see why they're leaving they're leaving they're demoting to go to the county and getting a $30,000 pay raise.

I know you can't pay that I know you can't do that.

But you have such great employees and we we want to stop this trend that we are experiencing right now.

We want to build all those beautiful libraries and parks but again I'm sounding an alarm to you that you've got a real significant problem.

Thank you.

Thank you Ms.

Higgins I certainly appreciate those uh remarks and and share those concerns and appreciate your uh your advocacy and look forward to having a meaningful discussion about that topic uh on a future agenda next up is Martha Welch come forward you have two minutes I I see these roads all the time poor condition and I don't think it's fixed that Broadway is really up it's torn up and leaving and tenth all to all kind and I see it everywhere I go in the city.

Turquo has one but um Lord he said we get we we be fixed.

I hope so I'm gonna look at that I'm looking out I'll look at that in Turkle make sure it does that because um I've seen these roads all over in Turku also um it's really bad you fixed one sinkhole but there's another one and one other road hasn't been fixed why we don't know uh because we don't have people you know I've been here for three years uh investing you guys and I don't see a budget for all the to bid out private I don't see that here all you have is consultants and all that stuff you don't have in-house a lot of people I don't think she was talking about that uh it um you don't have that's how if you want to be private you have to have like if you have a 10 million budget you build it out and somebody will take it over and maybe uh and work out how that but you don't do that here no we that's why you can't um call the public works fix this road because we don't have workers to do that stuff the operation um had tenths before because there's nobody in that that place so it proves that it's empty because uh you didn't need that uh it's wrong and you always talk about transnet you know that's sales tax another word for sales tax and sales taxes the county I know the problem but we only voted one time for to go up in 2004 for th 40 years but uh two um percent only so where's the other one every time you vote for tax it went down down but it looks like if the voted for it goes on there so we vote but what we vote for doesn't work well you don't if you don't vote if then it goes on to you guys and it works that way.

That's what happens the city you don't you don't stand up the right thing and say you shouldn't do this stuff and you're you're in the accounting with this thank you that concludes non-agenda public comment turning to the committee would any member of the committee like to make a comment at this time seeing none how about uh city attorney IBA or mayoral staff comments seeing none the uh we'll move on to our adoption agenda our meeting minutes from February 14th meeting will stand approved as distributed unless there are any objections.

Hearing and seeing none those are approved we'll now turn to our consent agenda we do have two items on the consent agenda today and I would entertain a motion to approve it.

So moved by Mr.

Alvarez seconded by Ms.

F.

All in favor please say aye.

And that carries uh three to nothing with uh Councilmember Ward absent we have one item on our discussion agenda and one informational item so we will first start with our discussion item which is a report from public works uh regarding changes to Municode section 22 related to minor public works project this is item number three on our agenda please introduce yourself for the record and proceed good afternoon um councilmember council members thank you for having us my name is James Nagelvert I'm the director of public works and your city engineer and joining me is our deputy director that heads up our public works contracts unit the division Al or Shaney we have an item here for you that is a streamlining item and uh let me just set it up right um and it's gonna take a whopping less than five minutes to present to you.

And I'm gonna have Al Al walk us through the presentation.

This request is for how in for a housekeeping amendment to ensure municipal code acknowledges the award of public works contracts on the $250,000 to emerging and small local business enterprises by soliciting price quotes.