City Council - Public Works and Natural Resources Committee

good morning and welcome to Bellingham City Council meetings um president Hamill did you want to do introductions or do you want me to just start um I can I can get us moving here um thanks everyone for allowing me to zoom in this morning I had a a kitchen accident over the weekend I'll be in this afternoon um this is the regular meeting on March 25th 2024 and we're going to go ahead and start with our committee meetings here this morning at 10:00 and our first um our first committee meeting is public works and natural resources and that is chaired by council member Hammer Stone thank you very much president Hamill good morning um I am joined on the public works and natural resources committee by council members Anderson and lillquist we have a couple of items or had a couple of items before us this morning um the first of which has been pulled I just wanted to mention briefly so agenda Bill 2449 this was a noise variance for wurn Street sanitary sewer replacement Paving um just due to a change in schedule from the contractor this will be rescheduled for an upcoming meeting likely April 8th or or 15th so that will be tabled for now um and the next item we have before us is agenda Bill 2450 this is a contract award for the electrification of Transportation Phase 2 es 567 this is Bid number 10 b-224 so the electrification of Transportation Phase 2 project consists of the installation of 38 electric vehicle charging stations with 71 plugs at 20 locations throughout Bellingham

level two Chargers level three DC fast Chargers and solar powered Chargers are being installed work will include new electrical condu concrete work and site restoration the city publicly opened bids for bids on March 6 2024 and Summit Construction Group Incorporated is the responsible bidder who submitted the lowest responsive bid of 1, 2,971 186 the contract includes an apprenticeship requirement and note that phase one of the project installed eight chargers at six locations for a total of 16 plugs so the total project cost of both Phase 1 and Phase 2 is estimated to be $3.5 million um for this item so I will first turn to Public Works director Eric Johnston thank you Miss Stone so a couple of things about this this has been a couple years in the making and want to acknowledge first of all that this is not simply a public works project this involved lots of different staff within the city not the least of which are staff who are currently now in the office of climate so Seth V Clare were part of this conversation when it was first initiated several years ago this was a project that we first contemplated doing uh in the climate action plan that was developed by the city uh the climate the transportation fund that was approved by the voters included funding for conversion of the of Fleet over to Electric uh options uh we took advantage of an early call that the Department of Commerce put out for Grants to inst tall charging stations and we applied for a $1.5 million Grant

with a half million doll match from the Transportation fund so we wanted to note in the agenda bill that this is some really good work we're pleased to see this moving forward nearly 90 new plugs at multiple charging stations at multiple charging locations uh with some variety of Technologies the level two Chargers are are are pretty they're they're twice as fast as your level one charger the level threes are a different technology but we're also excited about the solar panel option that's coming we're going to give that a shot uh but I wanted to make to point out the uh a couple of things here this this project has been in development for many many years so we started just before co co through the world into chaos so it took some time from that uh to move that forward but the costs have been more significant than it anticipated when first anticipated when we when we applied for the grant we did it with a very um applied for a grant without much knowing all of the details that would be needed to move these types of project forward this is a relatively new thing for the city to undertake uh so the uh the um the total project cost is coming closer to three and a half $3.6 million it was originally anticipated at about a $2 million project and that's due in large part to the complexities that are associated with installing these types of charging stations at the locations that we're trying to install them uh and Mr Freeman anthy is going to go through some of the specific

locations may be able to answer your questions you might have about that uh but this is phase two of that project the first phase was completed a couple years ago uh but this now completes the work associated with that initial Grant also wanted to point out that the uh because of the increased cost of that our ability to use the transportation fund for additional types of charging stations is going to be limited we're seeing additional requests from the WTA to increase funding to their to their portion of that Transportation fund for conversion of their electric Fleet as well their costs are also going up we're planning to come back to the council with some interlocal agreements authorizing those increases but these these charging stations they're not they're not inexpensive uh they need to be done but they're quite uh costly in terms of both time and effort and resources and uh some pressure on the transportation fund portion that has been set aside for for funding of these types of things so that's not to say we want to continue to do them there's certainly more Grant funds out there uh but our ability to do that is going to be somewhat limited from the Transportation fund uh as a single funding source for those types of things we are recommending approval of the of the award here uh as is stated in the agenda bill this these bids are awarded to the lowest responsible bidder responsibility is defined both in the contract under state law and any provisions that are measures

in terms of performance of the contractor are laid out in the contract and we will treat all of contractors fairly and equally and uh make sure that our needs and objectives are met by the terms of the contract with our uh professional inspection and uh Engineering Management staff that we have on these projects and with that i' like to turn to Mr Freeman anthy to kind of go through some specific details on locations and be able to answer any questions you might have about that that's better thank you um yeah so phase two the phase one we selected uh and just for the the record there we selected we'll call them six easy sites just to see what those were like the easier ones are where you have an existing meter uh so like P of City Hall you saw those show up um but phase two was the much heavier lift um General summary here um about the project we've commented on a few of these items already um I do want to point out uh item three we have a Ada accessible location as part of this phase um that's going to be down on Harris AV um in Fair Haven um you know you've seen Ada spots for a van drop off they take a bit more width of your ride away they're generally near a sidewalk they have some spe specific ramp considerations um so we'll be doing that down in Harris um when we took a look at the project when I say we I had nothing to do with it that was Seth vdna and his team but we really said okay we're going to look at either right away or city facilities so you had Parks um City

rideway uh in um you know oper you know opportune locations you didn't want to mess with parking too much but you had uh places that people would visit uh and then uh part uh like I said Parks shut up a lot other City facilities operations and that sort of thing so um the next round who knows what that looks like a big question is going to be who can use these and I think we've touched on this before but I'll go through it again um this project installs what we call forward-facing uh Chargers so they have the full charge point orange kind of thing and so um they are fully programmed to take payment from either a fleet vehicle or public person who could also be a employee so this gets your employees covered because some of the locations are in regulated parking so like the back of City Hall um and the Federal Building also has forward- facing ones even where our Fleet is because someday we may not have Fleet there um so there's a handful of spots that are in what we called controlled access areas so the fire station police station uh the employee lot will have them again they'll be forward facing and that's so the employees can use them Fleet can also use them as needed um and then the parking pit just over here and we're actually you know the county is going to be able to use their Fleet there they'll be set up with their own payment uh approach um we do have enforcement via State RCW and that'll be uh parking services and they're getting more and more accustomed to this as

as we deploy these uh General lay out in town just to give you a sort of spatial understanding where things are going to go the red ones are phase one so those were those are already uh out there and functional um the little suns are where the solar ones are um as a fun fact the solar are being delivered this week um so they're coming up from Southern California uh they're on flatbeds uh those because of the procurement we just went ahead and got them and they are going to be operational as soon as we plunk them down and the fine folks from uh Beam Technologies get the solar panels up throughout the project of phase 2 we'll make the grid connection to those and what that allows them to do is function as a level two charger even if the sun even if it's at night and the battery is is is down so each of the solar ones has a battery so it can charge in the evening but it will have limited capacity when we do the grid tie then it can be used all day long and all night even if the battery goes down and then I'll point out that the solar actually look at the solar ones in a second um DC fast Chargers um so that's the little purple icon we'll be putting two of those at Civic field two of those over at uh operations and one of those will go in the WTA Cordata parking lot those we've pre-procurement up it's that big metal plate you plunk it down on a parking spot uh they'll have two plugs so you can drive under the solar panel and plug in but it also has another you know another level

two plug so you can sit right next to it um they have a battery and then the cool thing about these is the batteries can also could also power Emergency Equipment if the grid goes down so you actually have this city-owned battery that sits where it sits at the four different locations so if you're at Civic field for some emergency scenario and you don't have grid power anymore you could plug in your lighting you could plug in Communications equipment to the solar charger because it has the little like 220 box in there so kind of a nice little um added bonus um and then the beam uh the solar panels come pre-loaded with a charge Point Unit so they're forward facing just like anything else because you have to pay for use them and so on so forth um typical rideway um charging station here um you're installing the charging station basically right between the sidewalk pedestrian area usually in a planner strip um such you can also serve the cars so those are diagonal ones there that's down on Mill so on the other side of this is the Fair Haven Village Green um this is a handful of locations where we are um and we did talk about this before but uh where we are upsizing the service so we can add more along the street in the future so but yeah it's a generally if you install it behind City Hall it's about as cheap as it gets it's pretty simple you're just going through the wall hooking to an existing panel the rideway stuff gets might gets quite a bit more expensive because now you're

taking out sidewalk and you're replacing sidewalk and you have a lot more Associated costs um and those are the tough things to get your brain around when you're scoping it you know three years ago four years ago pre-co so um you know a spot like this I'm getting psse to do a new service right so service application and that's usually at least $20,000 just in the psse fee to get that new city meter provide that so the right way gets a little trickier uh Parks is pretty similar sometimes the parks facilities will have a meter we can use but other times not so much um and there's your summary of the uh you know what we're bringing to Bear here uh in solar chargers like I said those will be going in later this week so those will pop up you might get some questions uh the four solar locations are Padden down by the pump station in the dog park Civic field gets one and Civic field has one of every charger that's kind of going to be our demonstration location so you can see all of them right there uh squal Creek Creek Park yes squal Creek Park and then Cordata Phase 2 that is still not open to the public um but that'll also get a solar charger so those will be down and operational by the end of next week or by the end of this week with that I'm happy to take questions project scope thank you very much council member list I have several questions start with an easy one there are three DC fast Chargers I can't tell exactly where they are you could could you tell me where they are so

the DC fast Chargers are at three locations but there's two at Civic field there's two at Public Works operations then one at WTA Cordata we kind of did that because the level level three they can actually plug a bus into that now they are doing their own bus charger project as we speak but it gives them a little redundancy if they needed so those are where the DC fast Chargers go and those take a lot of juice uh a new service for a level three is like $75,000 that's uh much heavier Duty powder Power so it takes more for psse to sort it out more little question uh yeah so uh this is more expensive and I think it's for the reasons you were indicating in part all the the infrastructure and the supply utilities that maybe not have considered um and so I wanted to ask about that you've already alluded to it Mr Johnson about the usual protections we have for performance um but I'm just worried about cost overruns because it's a newer project because there are things we haven't done um there has been history with the principal uh who is the lowest bidder um in the past I think we fixed those problems I don't expect any performance problems this time but can you outline the protections on further cost overruns both maybe the work Mr Anthony's done and kind of making sure we got all the specs and then protect and protections during performance certainly and and I'll uh avoid speaking to specifically to the contractor that's that's kind of outside the scope of consideration here but

generally speaking the city of Bellingham has a very robust contract structure to make sure that our requirements are met and we are assured from the get-go as a as a responsible bidder that they are responsible in part because of the bonds that are proposed by by the bidder so what what the bonds essentially do is provide a guarantee or an assurance to the city that the contractor is viable capable competent and has the financial resources to complete the project changes on construction projects are inevitable so even good contractors will request change orders from time to time bad contractors do the same the city requests changes from time to time when when we get into these projects we find things that were not anticipated either by the city or by the contractor and change order processes and mechanism to make sure that things can be done to meet the intent of what we're trying to achieve uh sometimes there's a negative connotation when it comes to changes and and unforeseen conditions but that they are a tool that the city can use to make sure that we get our work done what we do not do is we do not approve changes or requests for for funding from contractors that are not justified and so we have experts on staff which include folks like Mr Freeman and Mr Wilson here as well as our city attorney's office who helped and rigorously defend the city against those uh those claims which have no merit and typically we find that uh when those claims come in that they are they

just don't come in we certainly don't pay them but we will we will achieve the goal of what's at light in the project is to achieve the usable function of those things that are are outlined uh but there are processes we go through through to ensure that we get that without paying more than we are needing to uh generally speaking we try to keep those changes at a very small percentage of the to overall our contract but that can cut both ways that can be both an overage on the contract and an underage so so sometimes those changes are to the benefit of the city sometimes the benefit of the project and sometime the contractor uh is is entitled to some compensation for things that were not envisioned for that so that's really a kind of a roundabout generalization of an answer I apologize for not being to be more specific on that but without knowing what the specific questions is about what the change might come it's hard to answer that but uh we do we do have a very good track record of making sure that our contracts are brought in uh within a reasonable approach to changes as they come up and like I say most of the time those are to the benefit of the project uh not to the contractors's uh bottom line if you will Council Anderson I was just going to let Michael go if he's on a flow but um I did have a question about the solar chargers a lot of the expense here is a lot the infrastructure going in um I'm kind of wondering what the battery life is for this CU I know solar

batteries there's pretty expensive for replacement um I'm just kind of wondering the overall cost of the actual apparatus what's the cost of replacement of the batteries and if you know what the lifespan of those batteries would be because I'm interested in eventually if this is a really good technology and it's sustainable and it's cost effective over a lifespan that we put more in around the community but if it's not as cost effective because of uh replacement cost either through damage or the panels or the battery then um we might not want to push for that until technology um gets a little more cost effective a little more information please before we get to that so I beforeit get specific of that question um when we initiated this project and and uh the the you've heard me talk in the past about not wed to be first in this case we're first right so we are one we are one of the first agencies in the state to do this scope of project which is part of the reason why it was a little more expensive than we had anticipated uh but I think in part due to to to some leadership of our internal staff and I think Seth V and Claire and Fritz and Eli and and and other folks were part of the conversation to develop put this project together we're pushing the envelope a little bit here uh these are not the most cost-effective way to do to do things right so we are going to be learning how these how these systems function and work uh but as expensive as these things are it would be

cheaper to do something different that doesn't meet our climate goals so in in in meeting the goals that we've outlined as a city that's going to require us to be Forward Thinking push the envelope be first in a couple of places and spend more money than we would normally spend then to try these types of Technology is out we we have a history of doing this in the city of Bellingham you know 20 plus years ago we bought one of the first generation Priuses uh and at that time there was a big conversation about uh the batteries are going to die out and that didn't hold true uh so we're willing to give these a shot there's an there's an investment to make these things happen but it's worth it to meet the climate action goals that that the city council set forward and it's consistent with the funding that was outl in the transportation fund so just in terms of context it it's going to be more expensive I would suspect um but it's worth the investment based on policy Direction Council has given it to us so Fritz has probably got more specifics than that I don't have any more specifics well there you go now that's a great question and we would happily follow up with like the replacement costs because that's something I I don't know like the battery life y the battery life I would assume that the manufacturer gives you an estimate um and then because we're piloting this we're going to be able to track whether or not that's correct yeah that's a great question but we let us we can get

that together and get it folks cuz yeah I think that that makes good sense to look at that I will add that we have got some early indication of what the maintenance needs on these stations are so when the when the station went in in front of the Federal Building as part of phase two within the first week somebody had ripped the plug off right so so the regular use and maintenance of these things is going to be difficult and you know this is why we can't have nice things is a good phrase to keep in mind sometimes uh but it's GNA it's going to take some money to operate and maintain these stations that's a little bit of the concern because of some of the locations and I know Vandal is abely ongoing replacement I was wondering how expensive these type of units cuz I'm hoping it's eventually cost effective because this would be a great direction to go um but I'm assuming you're going to be tracking it we we will be tracking it and Council may recall that we that there was a fee schedule set by the council for the use of the stations uh and and part of the tracking of that the operations of Maintenance sees was was considered when those fees were set what we don't have is the long-term history of what it cost us to maintain and operate and replace you know just regular use let alone somebody misusing a facility like that but but the but the intent is to track that and is a fee set appropriate for us to operate maintain and pay for the power from psse to use those facilities so

we've got it'll take a couple of years of of data collection to see if whether that's worth it um it is it is fair to say though that that these types of projects to meet that Global change that we have aspired to meet uh are difficult to get to bottom line line right we we know that the solar panels that we put at the I'm getting off topic here a little bit I apologize for that but the uh the Water the solar panels at the water towers or up at wam Falls had about 150,000 150 year return on investment life right but that's not the reason to install them these is to reduce our footprint using fossil fuels and Reliance on our own systems rather than somebody else so that's so they're going to be more expensive but they're going to be beneficial to meet our overall climate goals uh and the goals that Community has set for us so getting back to the agenda Bill our recommendation is to a the contract to the lowest bid contractor and I will be supporting any motion to award the bid but I do have a I have sort of a question here but maybe a question later during the um uh later item under committee h on climate action this is my interest in future opportunities for EV charging generally what we're doing here is we're pursuing um opportunities on publicly owned land because we could go ahead first with it um oh I don't have it up right now but there's a statistic that basically says there are more EV charging stations the United States right now than there are gas stations it's a

little bit of a fake statistics of gas stations you have many pumps at them but there's a lot of charging stations but I want to make sure that we have as many as we need wherever we need and I don't think we can get there just with using public uh locations nor maybe necessarily relying upon where private ones tend to go go which right now is sort of also opportunistic like the parking lot by Whole Foods that may or may not be the best location so I have an interest in opening up the possibility for further charging curbside charging and in curbside charging we're doing some curbside charging but more generally city right away would be available to a private provider as well they would need to go through a permitting process they would need to meet public requirements um in looking through and again goes later item the climate work that we're looking at under EV charging it it only it only once refers to EV charging under uh clean building implementation and not really under electric vehicle plan so I guess I kind of want to talk about or I don't know whether to ask it now or not but it's like what do we do what's next in EV charging if it isn't more of the same on public land where we may have done the opportunities how do we create more EV charging opportunities are we just going to rely upon new buildings put in EV charging that doesn't seem to be a way to really retrofit our EV charging um I want to bring it up now during this discussion because I think maybe the city's

gone as far as we have gone so here I'll make it actually a question do you professional staff think we've gone about as far as we can in terms of opportunities on publicly owned land like this so I think that question probably needs to go to uh Mr Seth VD in the climate office and maybe would ask if that conversation occur later this afternoon during the climate action uh planning Grant process uh because I think well just leave at that I was just going to say it's definitely well beyond the scope of this particular agenda bill just with the award of this contract but with the later agenda item this afternoon I think it would be right for discussion with that I would move Award of the contract great so we have a motion before us to award the contract to Summit Construction Group Inc any further discussion or questions okay seeing none I'll call the question all in favor we'll say I I any opposed or extensions seeing none that passes 30 and I'll bring forward that recommendation um this afternoon thank you very much Mr Anthony um for the presentation thank you to staff that concludes our work this morning in public works and natural resources I'll turn it back to you president Hamill thank you council member Stone our next meeting is Parks and Recreation and that will begin at 10:35 that's shared by council member skip Williams and we'll go and take a brief break and we'll reconvene here just in about 9 minutes