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A Resolution of the City Commission of the City of Coral Gables, Florida, authorizing the continued engagement of Stantec Consulting Services, Inc. for work on the citywide conversion of overhead utilities to underground as an exemption from the Procurement Code pursuant to Section 2-607(24) of the City’s Procurement Code.
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On May 28, 2019, after a presentation, the City Commission adopted Resolution No. 2019-132 directing the City Manager and City Attorney to request “ballpark” estimates to underground all power and utility lines throughout the entire City from Florida Power & Light (FPL) and other applicable utilities and present said estimates to the City Commission after September 1, 2019.
On April 25, 2019, Stantec Consulting Services, Inc. (“Stantec”) was retained by the City Attorney’s Office in accordance with Sec. 2-607(6) and (24) of the City Code in order to provide consulting services in preparation for the presentation made to the City Commission on the Citywide Conversion of Overhead Utilities to Underground Project (“Project”).
On November 12, 2019, the “ballpark” estimates were provided to the City Commission as part of a presentation and City Commission adopted Resolution No. 2019-346 directing the City Manager and City Attorney to proceed with: (1) preparing potential strategies for methodologies to use to assess or charge a fee to property owners; (2) preparing detailed vignettes, scenarios, and renderings, as well as communications to be utilized for stakeholder engagement; (3) engaging community stakeholders which may include community meetings, charettes, written or oral surveys/pools, and other feedback; and (4) considering with greater specificity the scoping and phasing of the projects.
Consequently, significant and additional work is required of Stantec. Given the strict and fast-moving timeline for accomplishing the next steps in the process, the City Attorney’s Office, under Sec. 2-607(6) and (24) authorized continued work by Stantec on the Project. On November 26, 2019, Stantec received authorization to work on assisting with the public engagement and informational campaign up to $25,000 and on December 13, 2019, Stantec received authorization to work on the financial assessment and analysis up to $25,000.
Stantec’s work on the Project has been of significant value and the City Commission wishes to Continuing engaging Stantec for an amount not to exceed $60,000.00 for the remaining consulting work on the Project, from the date of the adoption of this resolution up to the time of a voter referendum.
Under Sec. 2-607 of the Procurement Code, entitled “Exemptions,” “(24) Consultants for professional services with special skills, abilities, expertise or of a technical nature as determined by the procurement officer” are exempted from the requirements of the Procurement Code.