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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMN-BPW-2007-05-02BOARD OF PUBLIC WORKS PROCEEDINGS CITY OF ITHACA, NEW YORK Committee of the Whole Meeting 4:45 p.m. May 2, 2007 PRESENT: Mayor Peterson Commissioners (5) - Dotson, Chapman, Schlather, Tripp, Wykstra OTHERS PRESENT: City Attorney - Hoffman City Controller - Thayer Superintendent of Public Works - Gray Assistant Superintendent of Water and Sewer – Whitney Common Council Liaison – Coles Executive Assistant – Grunder EXCUSED: Commissioner Jenkins Assistant Superintendent of Streets and Facilities - Ferrel DAC Liaison – Roberts O’Brien & Gere Contract: Superintendent of Public Works Gray explained that the Board granted themselves Power-to-Act at their Special meeting of April 25, 2007, to vote on a resolution authorizing staff to prepare an addendum to the contract with O’Brien & Gere to cover consulting support services as the City pursues an upgrade to its water supply. He stated that the consultants have been unavailable and as soon as an amended contract is completed it will be provided to the Board for consideration. Commissioner Schlather questioned whether or not the Mayor and City Attorney had been informed about the discussion the Board had at its last meeting. Mayor Peterson responded that she had been in discussions with City Controller Thayer, City Attorney Hoffman, and Superintendent Gray both individually, and together as a group about this project. Commissioner Schlather explained that a capital project of $6 million was established by Common Council and there should be no need to go back to Common Council to request authorization to release additional funding for the project at this time. City Attorney Hoffman confirmed that a capital project was established for the year 2000 in the amount of $6 million for the City of Ithaca Water Supply project. He further stated that it is not clear what authorization, if any, is required to release money from that project to amend the contract with O’Brien & Gere. He stated that he understands that there is historic precedent for the Board to make allocations from capital projects that are in the public works realm, but there is also the fact that most recently Common Council chose to vote and provide the authorization for the allocation of $119,600 for O’Brien & Gere. Mayor Peterson voiced her reservations about committing funding to only one consultant that would be providing all the services for this project. Commissioner Schlather stated that when it was discussed at the joint meeting of Common Council and this Board, they had agreed that given the time constraints, it would be to the City’s benefit to amend the existing contract and proceeding through the process with O’Brien & Gere. City Attorney Hoffman voiced his concern that amending a contract that effectively triples or quadruples the amount of money paid to the contractor without going through any kind of comparison process doesn’t appear to be consistent with the City’s rules and the State’s expectations. He further stated that he understands the argument about why this action makes sense but he still has a concern about it. May 2, 2007 2 Superintendent Gray stated that the process of selecting professional consultants is rarely done on the basis of money; it’s done on the basis of talent and ability to get the work done. O’Brien & Gere was selected through a full RFP process. Commissioner Tripp stated that the increased cost is consistent with the increase in work being proposed as two options are now being studied rather than one. Mayor Peterson stated that she is not inclined to have the Board go back to Common Council for every project allocation; however, there is a question about this contract with O’Brien & Gere. Commissioner Schlather stated that the Board clearly understands that Council has restricted its ability to spend anything beyond what is necessary to accomplish the environmental review. He noted that when Council made its decision that it would be the body to make the final water supply decision, it also made a decision that the Board was to conduct the environmental review. The Board’s intent is to tap into this money only as necessary to complete the environmental review. Superintendent Gray stated that the contract will address three immediate areas of concern: the environmental review, any preliminary design work that may be needed in order to undertake the environmental review, and an engineering support effort for those educational, public, and joint meetings. The contract will also include ongoing engineering services. Environmental Assessment Forms – Water Supply Options Supt. Gray explained that the Board adopted a Positive Declaration Resolution on April 11, 2007 that required further study due to the information contained in the Environmental Assessment Forms (EAF’s). The Final EAFs have not been sent out as staff was not comfortable doing so without Board approval. He explained that the format used presents Part 1 and 2 for each water supply option and that Part 3 combines the two supply options. Commissioner Schlather noted that the most recent version of the EAFs have been corrected and reflect the changes that the Board made at their April 11, 2007 meeting. Discussion followed on the floor regarding whether the Positive Declaration Resolution adopted by the Board on April 11, 2007 had been mailed out to affected agencies; the time schedule that needs to be adhered to for the agency scoping session and public scoping session; and how to keep the process moving forward. Superintendent Gray explained that the EAFs reflect the work the Board did, and they will be attached to the notice of a positive declaration that will put the other involved agencies on notice that the City will be undertaking the environmental review for this project. He further explained that this would provide those agencies an opportunity to respond to the City and request any additional reviews of certain areas. Request for Electricity Superintendent Gray explained that Louis Cassaniti, owner of Louie’s Lunch, submitted a request for electrical use on the Commons in relation to his mobile vending contract. Supt. Gray explained that Mr. Cassaniti would like to sell ice cream as part of his mobile vending efforts, and would like access to electricity for his freezer. The City has received similar requests before but does not consider use of City utilities as mobile vending. The current Commons electrical system is maintained for special events and not for continuous use. Staff has to frequently service the system to keep it operational for special events and does not recommend supplying electrical service to mobile vending carts. Extensive discussion followed on the floor regarding possible solutions that could be considered that would allow the City to sell electric to mobile vendors and or special event organizers. Discussion also included the plans for future re-design and work being considered for the Commons and the need to include this type of request when discussing the design and layout of the Commons. May 2, 2007 3 Commissioner Wykstra suggested that the Board tell Mr. Cassiniti that given the present condition of the electrical system, both administratively and structurally, the answer has to be no. However in the long-term, the City will pursue how to provide electricity in a more widespread and accessible fashion on the Commons. The Board agreed that this would be the best way to respond to Mr. Cassiniti’s request. Water Supply – Draft Scoping Document Superintendent Gray explained that the proposed scoping document was created based on the Board’s discussion and documentation prior to passing the positive declaration of environmental impact for this project. He stated that once this document has been reviewed and the determination has been made that it accurately represents the work the Board wants to undertake in order to create an Environmental Impact Statement, it will be circulated to the other involved agencies for their review and comments. After that has been done the agency scoping document would be available for public review and input. City Attorney Hoffman voiced his concern that this document did not resemble scoping documents that he has seen in the past as it includes quite a few conclusory statements. He thinks that those statements were taken directly from the EAF, and explained that his understanding of what a scoping document is intended to do is to concentrate on what issues need to be explored; not to state conclusions or whether an impact is likely to be small or not. He stated that the mitigations were stated as more definitive than he would have expected in that mitigations are also to be informed by the research that is conducted in the EIS rather than determining that it in advance. He noted that the document is also missing the “Needs” chapter or section, which is required under State and City law. Mayor Peterson suggested the creation of a client committee that would include a mix of staff, Common Council, and Board members. The committee would review the documents, prepare recommendations and bring them to the Board for consideration. The client committee might be able to do more of the detail work since it is difficult to do that type of work during Board meetings while attending to the regular Board business as well. Mayor Peterson left the meeting and Commissioner Dotson assumed the role of Vice Chair. Superintendent Gray stated that it might be useful and more convenient to schedule a conference call between the consultants, staff, Board members, the City Attorney, and the Mayor, so everyone could conduct the necessary conversation related to the preparation of the scoping document and provide input. Discussion followed on the floor regarding the information contained in the draft scoping document, how the Board discussed, reviewed and prepared the information, and what information the City Attorney feels should be included in a draft scoping document. The Board requested direction from the City Attorney as to how they should proceed with the review of the scoping document. Further discussion followed on the floor on when to include the consultants and staff in their discussions as they move forward with the next steps to create a document that reflects the necessary components and review required. Commissioner Schlather stated that he hopes that the draftsmanship of this document would be left to the experts. He thinks the Board’s idea was to spend a lot of time doing Parts I, II, and III of the EAFs so that they would identify areas that clearly were going to be impacted. He agreed that it would be useful to appoint a client committee; however, the Board talked about this idea almost two months ago and meetings were very difficult to schedule due to the availability of the participants. He further stated that he liked the idea of the conference call and requested to be included if one was scheduled. He stated that the Board’s intent was to complete this document by the end of May, including scheduling public meetings. Superintendent Gray explained that he and Deputy Director of Planning and Development Cornish have been participating in weekly conference calls with O’Brien & Gere. The conference calls have been productive as staff members who are working in May 2, 2007 4 the watershed area can call in with cell phones and provide an immediate update on what was being accomplished in the field. The idea behind these conference calls was to expand them to allow a larger, more diverse group to participate, provide input, and receive the most up-to-date information. Commissioner Dotson stated that as the Mayor had suggested the creation of a client committee, the Board should look to her further direction on this suggestion. Commissioner Schlather reviewed the schedule given to the Board last week providing for the draft scoping document to be prepared by April 27, the lead agency needed to accept the draft scoping document by May 9th and then there was a 30-day public agency scoping period that went from May 14th to June 15th. Within that period there were going to be two agency scoping meetings and one public scoping meeting. The final scoping document was going to be prepared between June 18th and June 22nd, and then the Board was supposed to accept it no later than July 11th. He noted that the Board should recall that they were going to try to compress that schedule. City Attorney Hoffman stated that he would urge the Board to make sure it builds in enough time in the timeline for the consultants to digest and respond to public comment. He noted that the consultants are suggesting a month for public comment, and presumably the consultants would need some time to address the comments that they receive, some of which may come at the end of that period. He urged the Board to be sure that the final scoping document makes it crystal clear to the consultant what things need to be addressed in the dEIS. Superintendent Gray stated that he thinks it is fair to say that he and the City Attorney see some of this work very differently and the scoping document resulting from those differences would be significantly different. He explained that his perspective is that the City already has a water system in the watershed, while the City Attorney thinks of that area as the natural area. The result of these differences in thinking affects which direction the scoping document is focused upon. He stated that in his opinion, the watershed is not a pristine area and so how he gets to a valve to service it is something that has been anticipated and done for a hundred years. He explained that three quarters of the raw water line could be accessed without major disruption, but there are a couple areas where there would be noticeable disruption if staff had to make repairs at the top end of the watershed. City Attorney Hoffman stated that SEQR is a legal requirement and there is a lot of case law about what constitutes a hard look at the environmental impacts. The charge to the lead agency is to take a hard look at potential environmental impacts. He suggested that the Board be cautious and produce an EIS that is going to withstand a legal challenge. Commissioner Tripp stated that at this time the scoping document is a draft. It sets off a series of prescribed scoping events and she thinks that if the Board directs the Superintendent to convey their concerns about mitigation and how it might be re- worded, the draft scoping statement would be good enough for its purpose as is. She would like the Board to vote on it next week and move forward with the process. Commissioner Schlather suggested that the Superintendent and City Attorney call the consultants together to address the issues expressed as they have such different perspectives. The scoping document should be broad enough to accommodate all angles of those perspectives. Superintendent Gray stated that over time the Board has made it obvious that they’re approaching this as a one hundred year decision. He further stated he and the City Attorney don’t have to agree in order to produce a very good product that will satisfy all the people. He noted that the City Attorney’s point is a very important one. If the Board adopts the current scoping document it will basically become the index for the environmental impact statement. May 2, 2007 5 Superintendent Gray stated that he would meet with the City Attorney this week so that they can call the consultants to request the incorporation of the needs and concerns raised into a revised draft scoping document. He further stated that he would try to get the updated document to the Board before next week’s meeting. Updates: Superintendent Gray distributed copies of the new “Residents’ Guide” which was produced by the City Chamberlain’s Office and is being distributed to new residents as they register as property owners. He asked the Board to review it, comment on it and provide any suggestions that might be included in the future to him. ADJOURNMENT On a motion the meeting adjourned. Sarah L. Myers Carolyn K. Peterson Information Management Specialist Mayor