Placentia City Council members will vote on awarding a $3 million on-call contract for construction projects throughout the city on Tuesday, after some officials called the move a “blank check” to vendors.
Mayor Jeremy Yamaguchi said the move would diminish transparency by not having individual projects come back before the dais for public discussion.
The contract is slated to come before the council at their 7 p.m. meeting tonight, which can be live streamed on the city’s website.
The $3 million contract will provide the city with a “bench” of six construction management companies who will be given projects in the upcoming years and would cover design, management and construction of capital improvement projects like roadway or sewer construction.
The companies include: Infrastructure Engineers, Berg & Associates, Ardurra Group, Totum Corp., Z&K consultants and NV5, Inc.
Each company would get up to $500,000 total from the 3-year contract.
Yamaguchi was hesitant to approve the initial proposal at the April 16 meeting, arguing that it was too great an amount of the city’s budget to be set aside.
“The philosophy of giving a blank check – a $3 million blank check – where we do not have any oversight over what these people are doing for the next three years, is concerning,” said Yamaguchi.
Council members voted unanimously to continue the discussion to their May 7 meeting.
According to a staff presentation, on-call contracts allow cities to select from a roster of companies for work when their services are needed and speeds up the process.
Traditionally, city council members award money to construction management companies for individual projects.
City Manager Damien Arrula said the million-dollar contract would also benefit any overlap of projects.
“Because we may have different projects launching at the same time, this provides us with options with respect to moving projects forward in a timely manner,” said Arrula at the April 16 meeting.
However, Yamaguchi said he believed the contract would sacrifice transparency for time.
“I understand that we’re trying to make the cause of government move quickly, but at that expense we are going to lose transparency,” said Yamaguchi.
Yamaguchi also expressed concern for former city construction projects, some of which were managed by construction companies on the list receiving the money.
“I don’t know how much I can say without getting in trouble, because I’ve been getting in trouble for talking around here lately,” said Yamaguchi during the meeting. “At this rate, we may need to slow down projects so they are done better.”
Councilmember Chad Wanke also said he previously had bad experiences with the construction companies on the contract list.
“I am not happy with the work that I’ve seen from at least one of these companies. I’m quite frankly surprised to see their name on here again,” said Wanke during the meeting. “We have some really shoddy work that’s been done for the last few years in the city, over and over and over.”
Wanke said that part of the responsibility of the management of construction projects should fall on city staff.
“What I’d like to see happen quite frankly is that city staff drive around the city, look at the projects, see what these groups are supposed to be managing– and see what I see and what the public sees, which is that these projects are not being managed properly,” said Wanke.
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