City Council - Public Works and Natural Resources Committee

um sorry for the delay we are back in Chambers and getting ready to start with the next committee meeting which is public works and natural resources um Hannah Stone serving as chair and I joined by council members Anderson and lillquist we have a number of items before us this afternoon so the first of which is a noise variance so this is agenda bill 24290 again noise variance Washington State Department of Transportation work at i5 and State Route 542 the Washington State Department of Transportation wash do is requesting a variance from the requirements of the city's noise ordinance for construction related to roadway preservation projects the work will be at night in the residential area in the vicinity of the I5 northbound to King Street ramp the Ohio Street to I5 southbound ramp and State Route 542 from approximately McLoud road to Britain Road wash do has requested to complete the work at night to to minimize traffic impacts and to ensure the safety of both workers and residents wash doot is in the process of hiring a contractor to perform the work and the noise variance would allow for seven non-consecutive work nights between July 8th 2025 and September 25th 2026 staff confer that completing the work at night is in the public interest um so for this item I'm first going to turn to inter own Public Works director Joel fun good after afternoon chair Stone council members so um this work is part of a larger set of Maintenance preservation projects being performed by

wash do that's why you'll see that large um window of when they're going to be performing the work uh staff estimates estimates that about it probably should take them a night each to perform the work on each of the ramps and maybe four nights for the the work on um Mount Becker Highway Sr 542 um so that seems like their request is reasonable from that perspective as well and uh with that I'm joined by Mike Wilson assistant director for engineering to answer any questions Council M list you know seven non of work nights over 14 months this does sound like there's going to be hopefully minimal impact for important work I would move that we recommend approval thank you very much so there's a motion before us um any questions from from staff I just wanted to confirm because in the packet right it's outlined like Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Saturday string of dates right and well without specific dates but in times and so just confirming that the seven non-consecutive nights is seven total not seven for each project is that correct correct that's our understanding yeah okay great um council member Anderson um just to verify because we've dealt with uh noise variance for um inside Bellingham projects whether it's public works or it's one of our contractors I'm assuming the same rule would apply with the do that there would be notification to any residents within so many feet from that area of work so that they would know what night um may be disrupted would that be

the expectation washt I'm Mike Wilson city engineer assistant director of Public Works over engine ing the uh wash do has three different ways they go about that and two of them include notification what they proposed here is not notification they would have a copy of the noise permit on site and contact information for the proper contacts on site so that's what they proposed in their in their request letter so there's not a mailing or direct um Outreach to impacted neighbors within so many feet um not at this time unless we were to go back to them okay thank you I believe at this time I mean the dates as you stated are unknown and sometime between that quite long period of a year and a year and two months so um so hopefully that impact will be minimal but we have a motion before us to move to approve the noise variance if there's no further discussion I'll call the question all those in favor say I I I any opposed or extensions okay seeing none that passes 30 and I'll bring forward that recommendation this evening thank you Mike the next item before us is agenda bill 24291 this is a bid award for job order Contracting so Construction Services number 60 b-224 the city issued a request for proposals for General construction work under the city's job order Contracting jock program the city's request specify that up to two firms would be awarded contracts the city received four responses which were publicly opened on September 3rd 2024 for qualifications and on September 17th

2024 for pricing Forma construction and Dawson construction submitted the two highest scoring proposals per state law the contract is subject to a maximum term of three years and a maximum contract price of $4 million per year apprenticeship requirements apply in accordance with state law for programs um so for this item I'm again going to turn to interim Public Works director Joel fun so thank you um I'll just start out by saying that the job order contract um or jock program as we call it has been very successful for the city for smallish projects um it's a streamlined alternative delivery method for us to get um get stuff done and we've been able to work collaboratively um to execute a lot of different contracts a lot of different projects um and in many many times we can have uh discussions and coordinate with the contractor which speeds the work along and makes it so we can deliver it as efficiently as possible um it's been shared through groups throughout the city we've used it for Parks we've used it for facilities we've used it for plants and just a few quick examples um we used it at the Anna Arie Hanah pool for recoding the pools we used it to install the port lose this uh last year and then also for various work at City Hall for both repairs and remodels and then also used it for pavement markings and loop um and loop repairs so um the and then a little bit more detail on the um apprenticeship requirements is the state law requires that any project over $350,000

for um uh that that uh for any single trade I get that correct um is uh is where those um those apprenticeship requirements would come into place and in the past we have not done that kind of over $350,000 um with this program but in this case since we now have our own apprenticeship program up and running it um it made a lot of sense for us to expand to that um that $500,000 limit yeah and now uh Mike Olinger uh co-director interim director of Public Works just to add to the partnership so it's any project that's over $350,000 and includes over 600 labor hours in a single trade so that that's kind of the trigger for that and and Joel's right in the past we've tried to stay under the 350,000 because we didn't have an apprenticeship program to help manage those requirements now that we're doing apprenticeship and and the majority of our projects we didn't see any reason to try to steer away from it and so we're going to embrace the higher the higher limit and we'll meet the apprentiship requirements as as we need to Anderson thank you um one of the things that I tend to keep an eye on and why I always ask about apprenticeship and and other things with jobs an example is the hpack did we have any staffing for that position and the threshold wasn't quite in that particular contract that we could sustain hiring somebody with that background you know but if over time we start spending more it would make more sense to hire someone so my question is um has this been um communicated

with the heads of our unions to ensure anytime I see maintenance and knowing that we have maintenance folks in the trades um I understand that some of the work may not be identified yet but as the work is being identified will those particular job projects be discussed with the Union to ensure that we're not Contracting out what would typically be their work because we're kind of giving you a blanket approval for funding and I want to make sure because we're not going to have that oversight um on those particular projects um how collaborative are you working within with our unions to ensure that you're not Contracting out work that should be theirs and then we end up in a unfair labor um complaint I I just want reassurances that that communication is really good and as a project comes forward they'll be having an opportunity to weigh in whether or not they think that should be their work before we hire somebody to do it yeah so for for each job work order that's put together supervisors and managers are working closely with their staff to make sure that it's not maintenance work that it is truly work that is outside of the normal scope of our day-to-day operations folks just to follow up besides just that supervisor giving the green light that they don't think it's our work is it communicated with our unions to ensure that the trades people below that supervisor are also believing that that's not their work historically we have not engaged with the the bargaining groups for

jock projects but that's something that we could look into again I'm just concerned that a certain level can have communication but the workers below that may see things differently I just want to make sure that this is successful and a good path way for us and that we're not finding that we're getting unfair labor complaints and then that could kind of NX going forward with this type of uh Contracting in the future so I highly recommend having that communication with them to avoid unfair labor um complaints coming forward um I've seen it at other locations not in our city per se but in other institutions where some similar like this goes forward and it's really the union and the people who do the work who didn't agree with management and then we get not we but they fielded those unfair labor complaints and the state agreed with them and so I want to make sure that we're avoiding that pathway with good communication yeah thanks for the clarification as I read it it does say it's for General construction work and I'm glad to hear that it's not supplanting maintenance which is done in house um one of the things I like about job order Contracting is it's a process where really hiding a general contractor under state law it says that what a minimum of 90% of the projects are actually completed by subcontractors and state law encourages the use of local and small minority-owned businesses in the community so this is a general contractor who's then directing that work to um local

subs and I like local so um I would uh move the we wor the contract which is to the two highest biders Dawson and formal Construction thank you very much we have a motion before us to award contracts to form a construction and Dawson construction any further questions or discussion okay seeing none all in favor will say I I I any opposed or exensions okay seeing none that passes 30 and I'll bring forward that recommendation this evening the next item before us is agenda bill 24292 so this is a bid award for indefinite delivery indefinite quantity overhead door repair services this is Bid number 67b -224 the city issued a request for bids for overhead door maintenance and repair services to be performed under an indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contract an idiq contract is an on call contract model that allows the city to procure work efficiently as needs arise by issuing individual work orders for each discrete project each work order is priced based upon the labor and material markups provided in the contractor's bid the city received one bid which was publicly opened on September 24th 2024 Overhead Door of Bellingham was the responsive bidder who submitted the lowest responsive bid of 155,000 47586 this bid amount is based upon a hypothetical set of jobs for bid comparison purposes the contract provides a three-year term and a not to exceed amount of $250,000 all of our contracts seem to be over a million dollars so now I'm used to adding those extra zeros um for

this item I'll first turn to interim Public Works director Joel fun uh this uh thank you this is another um alternative delivery method that we're using that allows us to be more responsive and particularly uh in the area of like Overhead Doors garage doors and things like that where it is um you know could be a very small item where uh we have need some specialized services but these are also security issues where we want to make sure that we um are securing our various buildings and so it's nice for us to be able to respond quickly coun Mist yeah normally I see a red flag if there's only one bidder however I happen to know my own Condo building there's not a big world out there of of local contractors and so understanding that and understanding the strangely large expense for some of those doors I would move approval of the contract for idiq thank you very much any questions or discussion from Council okay without that we have a motion before us again to move to award contract for bid number 67 b-224 to Overhead Door of Bellingham all in favor say I I I any opposed or exensions seeing none that passes 30 and I'll bring that forward this evening the next item is agenda bill 24293 this is a contract award for little squalicom water quality retrofits this is phase one bid number 22 b-224 EV 173 this project will construct new enhanced storm water treatment systems at locations along Lindberg and gnome Street in the Birchwood neighborhood the city received five bids which were

publicly opened on September 18th 2024 Faber Construction Corporation was the responsive bidder who submitted the lowest responsive bid of 1,147 619 58 cents including any applicable Washington state sales or use tax the engineer estimate was 1, 34,2 7765 and the project includes an apprenticeship hour requirement so for this item I will again turn to in public works director Joel fun so for this one I'm going to turn it on over to assistant director Mike Wilson and Freeman Anthony project engineer to provide a little bit of background about this project thanks Joel uh again Mike Wilson city engineer and assistant director of Public Works over engineering uh two things I want to point out and then I'll hand it off to Fritz and that is that uh this is ID this Project's identified in the surface and storm water comprehensive plan that was completed in uh 2020 and uh inside that Ness inside that is this particular project which came from a study a year prior to that so this is a 29 2019 Genesis of this project we've got funding in part from the Department of ecology that came into uh the city's hands in February of 200 uh 21 as well and so um we've got the St monies are funding about 41% of this overall project budget so with that set up Fritz tell us about the design and construction thank you Mike um Freeman Anthony uh engineering this uh project and let me get the there we go um so I guess we'll go a little bit of background here the Birchwood neighborhood um largely uh

devoid of storm water treatment it's one of the later parts of Bellingham to develop and wasn't really subject to any uh heavy storm water uh treatment or flow control requirements um a lot of it flows down through BTC and basically creates the flow that you see in little Squalicum Creek um so over the years uh especially NR has really been taking a look at this and how we can do a better job through this area um that was coupled with the little squal Estuary project so you have this great Improvement uh you know that helps a lot of uh it's a restoration produ uh effort but then you have untreated storm water coming from Upstream so as Mike said uh five years ago we started looking at okay what are we going to do here for from a storm water treatment standpoint it scored well with grants and so we're basically working our way Upstream it's uh I think four or five phases total to get uh most of the uh drain AG area and I will show you most of this is all Birchwood here a lot of this area largely flows down through um BTC right on in this Zone and so this is the first phase takes a look at this uh dashed red line here um and then as you zoom in we have more detailed look here so it's not particularly crazy um at this point Downstream a lot of your storm water lines are fairly deep and out of the way you don't have a lot of opportunity to do green infrastructure as much as we would like um limited right away yada yada so what you've got in these Green Dot locations are

underground vaults that basically intercept the storm water line um because at this point all your storm water Upstream is basically co-mingled right it's all you know it's all in the same pipe um so we're pulling what we can from the side and getting in intercepting the main pipe specifically at gnome and putting that into concrete vaults that have various filter media in it um pulling out nutrients um and the like and this will be the first one of those we'll basically work our way Upstream in later phases uh departmentally we're going through phases two and three we've got some Consultants that we're looking at for various design work so it's um it's a little impactful because you do have to kind of close the road and dig a big hole and drop it in the ground but it doesn't last a whole long you know it's not like a transportation Corridor project where you're out there for um you know 3 or four months it's generally each one of those spots will take us well the spots over near the creek will probably take us a week or two at most the one at gnome is a bigger structure and that's quite deep so that'll probably be uh more impacts but again I expect the whole thing to take probably three or four weeks um you'll have a big Crane That plops it in the ground and then you'll put things back together um we have talked to BTC about this so this is on their radar um and we award it today uh fabrication of these large units can take a while so even though we might be off to the races

today we might not see any rail action over there for at least two to three months so you're actually looking at probably quarter one um where you really have some physical work on site but some of that is subject to just how fast we can get things in the contractor schedule so that's the gist of it thank you Freeman any questions or comments from Council council member list a small question so in the lake walkom Watershed we have specialized filter media that's that's aim at removing phosphorus in this case um I assume it's non-specialized Media or rather maybe what is it specialized for what are the contaminants of concern in this case it's it's not special in that way but we are we're currently using the term enhanced treatment is still what is uh what we would use for defining the level of treatment and that's an ecology definition um you have basic and then enhanced so you're going after nutrients you're also going after settled solid any solids that can settle out obviously trash um and then um any floatable um basically like petroleum prod products oils and that sort of thing um the what's on the horizon is going to be tire dust and so this isn't doesn't consider that yet but that's something to be looking forward to that would apply um where ecology is going to say and this is the next level so right now we're at enhanced is is is the def is the level of treatment can I follow so um after it is treated it then goes into the bay and are the standards then basically

designed around the impacts in the bay I'm thinking about the young fish and the shallows is are the standards that ecology is coming with currently or will they in the future be directed at those those habitat concerns are they already directed those habitat concerns and will they be more directed those habit had concerns what I can say I mean it enhances currently the the Rama ecology says this is what you you know if you this is the the level of treatment and it considers that everything is inevitably going out into the bay but it doesn't mean that they're not looking future forward to the future for how can we make this even more effective okay so that's the stuff I'm talking about is is projected out there and it's certainly something that we're looking at internally um pretty closely ecology is still figuring out how to lay it how to kind of roll it out so for this one we're sort of vested in the enhanced level of treatment that's currently on the bus and I'm assuming that these vaults are designed so that you can change the filter immediately we're not like doing some weird proprietary thing yeah in this day and age there's three or four different companies that make uh you know vaults that meet these needs um and our team can generally respond to all of those we have the ones that we like but we're increasingly um our the maintenance folks are generally geared to deal with whatever ones are out there because as cost comes down on one or some new thing comes out we

want to be you know sort of open to the the other options that are out there because a lot of folks are trying to build a better mouse trap when it comes to this kind of stuff council member Anderson thank you um you had mentioned um at um gnome street that the vault is much larger and after the last couple of days and I think I have great new gutters on my house and they were not substantial for the amount of raring that we had um are they is it engineered to be able to handle the volume that we're going to be expecting with these atmospheric Rivers as you know climate change I mean are they substantial um looking forward or um I'm just thinking volume the amount of water that's going to be going through and also is the output has to be able to handle the Vault size but um just a little bit more information on that is this going to be like looking 24 year you know 20 years forward is that engineered substantially enough or we really eventually going to have to look at more type of retention in this area because it's doesn't necessarily flood a ton in here I know Downstream under Eldridge it does um this I'm assuming doesn't have an impact on that Squalicum Creek area that floods at the end of um Squalicum way but just a little more information sure well they're all designed with an internal overflow so and that pretty much every structure every storm water concentration point that we have in the city has got some sort of you see the beehives and then these things have an

integrated overflow um it's not a bad question by any means um you know we have our basic design criteria so the consultant says okay here's your flow into this and interesting thing about these vaults is that we will just feed that information to the suppliers and they'll calculate it and then say okay here's your here's the flows that we're getting and then our Consultants model it in uh basically an approved storm water modeling software that department of ecology says yep that's the one you can use that they upgrade the um inputs to the modeling software routinely um and that happens I want to say every six months where based on historical flow data um the models will say and I think you know if you if you want to get into the nitty-gritty I think Jason Porter uh has a lot of good background on this but they're able to kind of real time update what we're seeing for historical flow data so each time you run the model then you've got as current as you have now having said that the model was Run for the design for these probably 18 months ago um so they would have taken that at that moment in time and said okay here's how we're going to do it and then we finish up the drawings and plans and all that stuff so it's prescriptive but it definitely includes those types of features um and then anecdotally I mean it runs into a very large pipe system that's under BTC and we haven't historically had any issues with that um so I think in general we're we're pretty good the vaults do

act to attenuate the storm water flows because eventually because they collect it all and then they actually meter It Out by virtue of going through the treatment process so each time you put one of these into the system it slows things down a little bit so collectively you're you're kind of Shaving off those Peaks so it helps but it's it's a good question as far as like what are we going to be like in 5 years you know it's hard to say follow questions no move approval okay so we have a motion before us to move to award the contract this is for bid number 22 b-224 to favor construction um any additional discussion okay seeing none all in favor we say I I I any opposed or extensions okay seeing none that passes 30 final item before committee this afternoon is agenda bill 24294 this is an electric avenue bridge emergency repair update so during a June 3rd 2024 special inspection of the electric avenue bridge it was discovered that multiple structural elements had substantially degraded since the last inspection requiring immediate closure of the bridge the bridge was reopened on a single Lane to single Lane of traffic on June 12th 2024 and then on June 17th 2024 city council approved a resolution declaring an emergency to accelerate Bridge repairs to D restore two-way traffic on September 9th 2024 the city closed the bridge again for an anticipated two-e construction period the emergency repairs were completed ahead of schedule and the bridge reopened to two-way traffic on

September 18th 2024 City staff will provide an update on the emergency repair work and plans to replace the bridge in the future so for this item I'm going to turn to the co-directors Michael are you gonna take this one thank you chair Stone committee members uh yes so Public Works is back to council today to give an update on the the emergency repairs that were done at the electric avenue bridge um Ram Construction did those repairs for us under that emergency declaration and we came in at a total cost of about $14,000 for the work that Ram did that does not include the the work that some of our crews did to assist Ram or any design work and we're still working to gather those those costs but all in all we're probably going to be right around that $250,000 Mark for all the repairs to Electric Avenue Bridge so those repairs included the installation of three piles and a new pile cap to provide support to that I guess it would be kind of the Northern end of the bridge um the Northwestern edge of the bridge Bridge um and so what that has allowed us to do is to open up the bridge to two-way traffic the bridge is still load restricted really that doesn't mean a whole lot to any of us about the only vehicle that in the city that's limited to that bridge right now is our fire ladder trucks um otherwise concrete trucks are okay dump trucks are okay um WTA buses school buses ssse pretty much the rest of it and then any specialized loads would would need a special permit in order to

use use the bridge um what what this temporary repair does not mean is that the bridge is okay so this did not change the rating of the bridge we're continuing to move forward with um funding options and Grant applications for replacement of this bridge we are working with our partners at wash do and with our Consultants at trantech to come up with a Grant application for this next series and we're pretty confident that we will be awarded for for replacement of this bridge so with that we're open to any questions that you might have do committee members any questions regarding the update no just yeah good work to the the team that was able to act quickly and um at least get the bridge into a stable condition for the short term um and we'll be hopeful that we can secure some grants to to bring that work to completion in the um in the future so no timeline at this point for a followup is that correct the the timeline right now is I think that the funding cycle will be the end of 2025 so if we get funded at the end of 2025 it would be up for replacement probably in that 2027 time frame which would mean a substantial closure of Electric Avenue probably for much like Eldridge um a six to nine month closure of that street and that Grant Source was that was through the state that's through fhwa so it's through the state and fhwa okay great okay well thank you very much for coming forward with the update yeah mayor Lind you know we still occasionally get emails from time to time

about community members wondering if it's safe to take their dog into the lake or if they can go into the lake and the city did its best to message about um impacts from the sewer contamination at the repture of the line but that has been open for a long time now so I just want to take this opportunity to remind Community it is safe to go in the lake thank you very much for that make sure to add that to my notes as well it doesn't help that that reinforcement um especially if people I mean this time of year maybe there's not as much activity in the lake but certainly with yeah with dogs and just wanting to enjoy that area so okay thank you very much anything further from staff at this time no okay thank you very much I appreciate it um so with that I just wanted to mention that um those were the final items for the public works Committee just wanting to um highlight that there is one consent agenda item not seeking to pull that item but just wanting to highlight that agenda bill 24302 is on the consent agenda this is just interlocal agreement between the city of Bellingham and watcom Council of governments to help fund the um watcom smart trips program so again that's $25,000 for this fiscal year so just wanting to highlight that those Partnerships continue um and so with that we will take a brief pause um to allow the change over to the next committee and then after the pause we will resume with Parks and Recreation which is chaired by council member Williams so one moment