City Council - Public Works and Natural Resources Committee

okay okay we'll go ahead and get started with our standing committee meetings here for Bellingham city council today is July 15th we have three committee meetings this afternoon Public Works and natural resources planning and Committee of the whole followed by an executive session around uh just for 3:00 this afternoon so I'll go ahead and turn it over to uh Public Works and natural resources chair uh council member Hannah Stone thank you very much president Hamil good afternoon everyone so this afternoon I am join on the public works and natural resources committee um by council member soliloquist and then I believe council member Williams had offered to sit in thank you very much in council member Anderson's absence um so before us this afternoon we have a number of items the first of which is agenda bill 24181 so this is a contract award for padon Creek restoration this is 24th to 30th Phase 2 e058 bid number 38 b-224 so the padon creek restoration 24th to 30th Phase 2 project is a continuation of the city's efforts to improve fish habitat in padon Creek phase one was completed in 2022 between the foot bridge and Connelly Creek phase three when funded will extend from the foot bridge to 30th this phase involves changes to padon Creek between 24th Street and the Confluence of Connelly Creek from a channelized section to a new channel with Natural Pools large wooded debris and improved riparian buffer the city received two bids which were publicly opened on July 26th 2024 um

Mania contractors was the responsible bidder who submitted the lowest responsive bid of $ 68,7 59 including any applicable Washington state sales or use tax the engineers estimate for this project was $ 3388 um just to note that this project is not subject to the apprenticeship requirement since it's less than the $1 million threshold um for this item I'm first going to turn to Public Works director Eric Johnston thank you Miss Stone members of the council so uh uh Mike Wilson and sorry Craig Mueller I couldn't remember his last name for just a minute craigg Mueller will have more details on the construction of this particular project just want to call to the council's attention this is one of a number of projects that have been constructed either by the city or the Washington State Department of Transportation along padon Creek over the last 10 or 15 years or so uh we're very pleased to see this moving forward phase three is also on the list to come forward in the next couple of years these little three-phase projects were broken into smaller pieces to maximize the use of of of state grants uh so that we can put those dollars to our maximum use but that certainly is not only three phases there's many other projects including the I5 uh fish passage was done a couple years ago replacement of the bridge on uh on Fair Haven Parkway the Estuary projects and the storm waterer quality projects further down by 8th Avenue uh and we be happy to have Craig talking about a few details

our staff recommendation is to award the contract yes uh Craig Mueller Public Works uh project engineer this project uh as as was mentioned goes from 24th Street to the Confluence of Connelly Creek and what it does is where you can see on the figure the and brown that is the existing Channel which is it's a very channelized section there's no structure or uh or sinuosity or pools in that section so what this project will do is fill in a portion of the old uh the old Channel and reroute the channel farther to the South farther away from homes uh creating pools large Woody debris uh some invasives removal uh and uh repairing uh repairing improvements through replanting m m just one one correction in the agenda bill that Mike just pointed out to me the bids were opened on June 26 2024 not July 26 2024 so since we're not there yet there apologize for that any questions or anything further from staff before I turn to council okay any questions Council list this I do appreciate you pointing out that this is part of a a long series of projects going back to the daylighting the portion that was actually in a tunnel which was really unhealthy but as you say this has been a channelized shot that just got couldn't handle changes in in the rain and did Flood those people's backyards um the ecological benefits are wonderful the flood control benefits are wonderful um and this goes back I think probably 15 or 20 years correct that land was acquired um by the city um I would move approval

of awarding the contract thank you very much so we have a motion before us to award the contract to mdia contractors any further discussion or questions anything from other council members no okay if not I'll call the question all in favor we'll 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 very much thank you so the next item before the committee is agenda bill 24182 this is a contract award for the Donald Avenue water quality retrofit project this is ev71 Bid number 42b d224 so the Donald Avenue water quality retrofit project will construct a new phosphorus optimized storm water treatment system facility with the public right of way at the corner of Donald Avenue in Northshore Drive the project will enhance treatment of urban runoff in the lake watcom watershed the city received three bids which were publicly opened on June 26 2024 Premier Services Inc was the responsible bidder who submitted the lowest responsive bid of $82,700 um once again this project is not subject to the apprenticeship requirements either since it's less than the $1 million threshold required for that um so at this time I'll first turn to Public Works director Eric Johnston thank you bone Jessica Bennett the project engineer will have a couple of details on this so I wanted to point out that this is yet another like like padon Creek a yet a series of projects that the city has been conduct constructing within the

lake Wacom Watershed using grants available from the state and federal agencies to improve water quality the project is consistent with the city county and Lake Wacom water sewer district joint management of the lake and it's consistent with the tmdl and the city's efforts to remove pollutants notably phosphorus from discharge into Lake Wacom so I think it's worthy in context of the conversations the council had with the uh uh Silver Beach moratorium the city is pursuing grants and the city is pursuing actions to remove and and construct water quality treatment facilities uh this is just one of a series of actions the city's taken over the last many years and yet another project to move forward Jessica's got some specifics on the project you sorry about that Jessica Bennett Public Works project engineer um this project is part of a like I said a larger program this was a highly ranked retrofit project is why it's called that is there is an older facility kind of located to the south on a city property this is a new facility replacing that um and is very is targeted for phospherous removal to help us implement or meet our uh total maximum daily load goals for phosphor specifically thank you very much anything further from staff okay any questions or comments Council list um I like this project that's not the question is is this uh outside is no it's really close um it's about the the property if you can see that property the house on the right far right side that's really

close to City Limits but it is within the city limits um about half the B and area is within the city and miss benett that was my next question um I only have this little map here um what is the size of the area that is being treated is it like twice the size of what I see in this map three times uh two to three times it's about 15 Acres okay yeah and I'm trying to read what this map shows it it shows those dotted lines that then end in the little circles is it tying in what is it terminating and I assume those are pipes yeah so this Basin flows into open ditches along Northshore and Donald that you know there's some culverts in there but largely they're basically ditch lines along Northshore and Donald and so this is basically the low point we're collecting the the that inflow into that the treatment Basin there um this was end up being sized and located here it's as close as we can get the most Basin we can collect with while staying above the the Lake walkom water level it's pretty high here and so that was part of the complexity of of putting in a treatment facility here is to be able to maximize our drainage area and I think I read the map backwards I was imagining the water was flowing across the street or or North you're saying it's actually flowing y it's Direction yep flowing to the facility and then it's discharging into Northshore so that last manhole is connecting to an existing outfall location that drains to the lake after it's treated okay after treated exactly

makes a lot of sense yeah sorry this this graphic I was trying to get a kind of a picture of where facility is and how that interacts if I was an engineer I sure I could understand it but I didn't Jessica can you put the mouse pointer on that that round circle there so that that circle is the structure is a manhole that will Connect into an existing pipe which currently discharges into Lake Wacom so all of the flow that's being picked up off of norshore drive or Donald Avenue or the catchment area the 15 Acres will eventually go through that Tre treatment facility and then over to that new structure that new manle which is in the city's RightWay and then discharg to the lake so that the round circle is a structure it's a manhole connects to that existing storm drain pip yeah any other questions no but seeing as how I am very familiar with that area I will move approval thank you very much councilman Williams so we have a motion to award the contract to premium Services Inc any further discussion or questions okay seeing none all in favor we'll say I I any opposed or extensions okay seeing none that passes three Z and I'll bring that forward this evening thank you very much so the third item before us is agenda bill 24183 this is a contract award for fire station number five rof project this is Bid number 43 b-224 so fire station 5 re project will replace the roofing and install a new fall arrest protection system the city publicly opened five bids on July 2nd 2024 SRS roofing

company was the responsive bidder who submitted the lowest responsive bid of $49,500 th000 the project is not subject to the apprenticeship requirements since once again this is less than a million dollar threshold in addition there were solar solar panel installation was considered but due to the age of the building and the surrounding significant trees um it was not included in this particular project um for this item I'll first turn to Public Works director Eric Johnson thank you Miss Stone we have nothing further to add staff recommendation is to award the contract any questions or discussion from councel oh president Hamill yeah thanks I don't serve on this committee but I have a question regarding the B versus the engineers estimate um there's a a huge separation between the bid and the estimate I'm just curious as to why that might be uh we've been asking ourselves um Joel fun um assistant Public Works director Transportation um we've had this uh kind of variation on a few Roofing projects in particular lately and so we are we did notice that as well and we are going to be circling back with um the folks we're using for estimating and seeing a little bit more about what's going on we had the similar Gap with the last fire station project too so we'll be looking at that but we don't have a good understanding of the particulars of that right now we'll note in the in the in the final bid opening report of the five vids we received the 149 was the low bidder the second

bidder was 191 the high bidder was 273,000 so all the bids came in substantially lower than what we are what we guessed at for that estimate uh we're not particularly concerned about the 149,000 even though it is quite a bit lower they are a reputable roofing company they are bonded we have the insurance that they will meet the terms of the contract thank you further discussion councilman Williams I'm just I'll move I'll move approval of this contract okay um so there's a motion before us to move to award the contract in this case it's SRS roofing company um any further discussion seeing none all in favor we'll say I I I I any opposed or exstension seeing none that passes 30 and I'll bring forward that recommendation this evening so the final item before the committee this afternoon is agenda bill 24184 this is a noise variance for Lumen telecommunications work so Lumen telecommunications is requesting a variance from the requirements of the city's noise noise ordinance which is BMC 10.24.19 for construction related to telecommunications infrastructure the work will be at night in the residential area in the vicinity of Ellis Street and Sunset Drive Ellis Street and Plymouth Drive and coolage drive in the Cornwall Park and Sunnyland neighborhoods between August 5th and September 6th Lumen on behalf of their contractor north sky Communications has requested to complete the work at night to minimize traffic impacts and to ensure the safety of both workers and residents staff

concur that completing the work at night is in the public interest as it minimizes disruptions to traffic and provides for the safety of the public and contractor so for this item I'll first turn to Public Works director Eric Johnston and Mike Wilson City Engineers probably got the details on this but this is rather a per code required item the contractor has requested the uh night the noise variance recommendation of staff is to authorize that noise variance between August 5th and September 6th we do not expect the contractor working every night between those periods of time and they will certainly not be in the same location for the entire period of time but allows some flexibility for them as they work through their their construction saging to get that work done uh and Mike can answer any questions that we may have thank you very much I'll turn to committee council member list yeah I'm wondering Mike if you have some more details on that guesstimate it's entire 30 days they could work in but they're not going to work every night about how many nights disruption might a typical resident actually experience the uh details of exactly where and when are not entirely clear they haven't shared that with us but there's over 20 different uh uh potholes for the conduit there going to be so they'll be sequencing from one location to the next it's all not set up in one location for the whole duration they'll be moving along the neighborhood so it would be intermittent to your point

that not everybody will be experiencing the whole five weeks uh along that window I would also add that uh the work on Ellis is the primary underground work that'll be affecting the the traffic there's work on coolage and Plymouth that is largely aerial in nature and won't have the same excavation requirements uh so that'll mitigate some of that activity as well what is the noisiest thing they're going to be doing I think the most prominent complaint we get is backup alarms um and uh then just general equipment noise not like jackhammering or blasting or anything no just to ech what Mike had to say generally when we receive the complaints about the noise it's the backup Camp the backup beeps which are required on those pieces of equipment or the tailgates that bang on the heavy trucks the the the low Rumble of the background noise can be disruptive to the person right next to the property but those backup alarms can be heard for a long ways but they're a safety function for the employee particularly at night so they are unnecessary evil I'm going go ahead and and move approval of the noise variance thank you very much council member list um so we have a motion to approve the requested noise variance for nighttime construction again this work to begin August 5th and to conclude by September 6th 2024 any further discussion okay seeing none all in favor we'll say I I any opposed or extensions seeing none that passes 30 and I'll bring forward those recommendations this evening

with that there's not any further business before the committee um we will adjourn and I'll turn it back to you president Hamill uh thank you council member Stone uh our next meeting uh committee meeting is planning that begins at 1:50 and we are required to recess until that time so I'll go ahead and put us in recess and we'll see you at 150