City Council - Regular Meeting

later.

So, let's go ahead and get started for animal shelter funding. Janine, I'm hoping we can throw that to you to set that up.

Sure. So, Council, we would like to visit with you about the Metro Animal Shelter Replacement Project, which was funded by your spec tax, which just expired, as we know, last week. And Krista Johnson, our Public Services Director, will talk us through where we're at in terms of estimating the cost of that project. And the funding deficit and the plan for how to fill that deficit.

Mayor, councillors, as you guys are aware, Metro was one of our four tax projects. And with that, in 2024, there was an estimate of $7.3 million for that project. everything included in that. So that would be construction manager at risk, engineering, and construction itself. So since that time, staff have been working with Animal Arts, who was the one who kind of came up with a vision for what this facility could look like, and then hired Amundsen and Associates, their architecture to come up with more defined design. And through that, the Amundsen had provided an estimate a while back of over 11.3 million, and we knew that this was not what Council or our residents were wanting with that spec tax, and it did not meet our budget as well. So staff worked hard with both Amundsen's the construction manager risk and amongst themselves to reduce that cost. And at this juncture, we are at a total expense of $8.688 million. And that puts us with a funding gap of $1.388 million. Staff have looked at other opportunities to find savings on this project. And with those, they're starting to impact the functionality of the building. Two options that are still on the table would be reducing the kennel count to 16. The plan was for, I believe, 32. And that would put it at a smaller dog handling capacity than the current metro. So we didn't feel like this was appropriate. Additionally, modifying the mechanical system could save $127,000, but we needed, it was designed to have two HVAC systems so that air between the feline area and other areas were not shared because they can carry certain diseases that are airborne. So with that, we've come up with an option for funding this. Part of that being the SPECTACS. Because SPECTACS ended But after we had fully funded these projects, there's an anticipated unaccounted unallocated spec tax amount of $768,280 that would be specific to the Metro projects. It's proportionate to the amount that. Each of the projects were originally budgeted. Additionally, there are unappropriated Metro funds. Each of the entities that use contribute to this fund and so that would account for $535,017. Additionally, in 1 cent 17, there was an HVAC project slated for the current Metro facility because we're working towards the new facility and the current HVAC can get us through. We're proposing a project to project transfer of those 1 cent funds. All of this gets us to a total balance of 0 if that is the direction Council chooses to go. It should be noted that this is these are still estimates we with the construction manager at risk in the coming two months we will get a guaranteed maximum price and with that we will better be able to pivot. But we wanted to have Council's guidance on the direction to move forward with given that if we need to downsize it would Change the course of with engineers and the construction manager risk are doing currently.

So I'll just add to that. I should make her at Council the unallocated portion of respect tax. Just so you know, allocated on a percentage basis against all of the four projects that were on the ballot before the voters. The amount that the director has shared with you is the 40% share of all spec projects that is attributable to Metro. And I guess lastly, we do have representatives from the shelter. We have our shelter manager, Jody Decker, and Captain Dabney both here tonight if you have any specific questions about operations or future functionality.

So many questions for staff.

Yeah, go to me. Chris, I apologize, but could you could you repeat again that what you said about the unappropriated Metro funds? Originally allocated for replacement of HVAC on the building, but you held on that was the project to project. That's the project. OK, so what word is the unappropriated patrol funds?

Mayor, counselor, I mean, where does that come from? I mean, is that just out of your budget or I might pull Jill in on this one. This is her house more than mine. Thank you.

What a great question. Mayor, counselors, thanks for having me. So the unappropriated fund balance in the Metro Fund actually comes from previous to our current contracts with the other agencies that pay into Metro. They were paying depreciation. So whenever we would have a capital project, the city would fund the capital project and then they would allow the agencies to pay overtime through depreciation. That's how we would build that fund balance. So a couple of years ago, we actually changed how we do those contracts where now the agencies are required to pay their portion at the time that we buy the capital asset. So we no longer have a need to continue to build that balance for any kind of capital purposes, because we have it built into the contract. So that's where that money came from. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Joe. That helps.

Anybody else?

Appreciate the info. Christa, I did want to make sure it was mentioned because it was not in the memo. And I was semi distracted. So apologies if you mentioned it. But It was discussed in our Metro Animal Shelter Task Force meeting last week with Councillor Pollack and I that most of the reason is the increased costs of structural steel. I mean, you can Google it or ask your favorite AI agent. You know, general structural steel project material costs have gone up 15 to 25% just since the beginning of this year. So, you know, it feels like this happens every year. Unexpected, unforeseen. Huge jumps in commodity and raw material costs, but it is what it is. So appreciate you guys pivoting and offering up a solution problem.

Yeah, just to tag on to what Kyle said, it was explained to us that this is a steel building, and so it's particularly sensitive to that price increase. Not super stoked about that, but I do think the funding plan, I mean, the 768,000 must go to this project. So that's a, you know, that's a no brainer. Since we have changed our structure, we have that kind of half a million hanging hanging out, I think that's a super appropriate use. And then the project project transfers, I think the solution is good. And and is a really appropriate use of the dollar. It's just unfortunate that you have to do that.

The questions. Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Yep.

Awesome.

Council, I will keep her sick and another project and similar issues. Originally the project estimate is showing now lower than the cost of the project. This is for the North Platte River Pedestrian Bridge. We were fortunate to be able to secure a sizable additional grant and also will seek your authorization for a small contribution from the riverfront to fully fund the project. Hello, welcome back, thank you.

Counselors.

Again, we are tonight we're going to talk about the Poplar Street pedestrian bridge. I know this has been somewhat of an interesting project, and we have had a number of funding sources to go into this. Originally, this project was estimated in the amount of $3.5 million, and with that we were receiving a Wyoming outdoor recreation grant award grant for the design of the partial construction of this initial cost estimates as we got farther into it. were 6.1 million, and this also included the ability to take water and sewer across that bridge. Taking water and sewer across that bridge takes it off of the Poplar Street Bridge, which is a YDOT bridge that has been part of their plan for replacement that keeps on getting pushed out farther and farther. Putting this on our own infrastructure allows us to not have to do it at a time that is convenient for them, rather a time that works well for us, and to have ownership of that bridge for the maintenance and operation of that critical infrastructure. This project started and we had a construction manager at risk. With that, we often gain efficiencies and lower pricing because they can identify opportunities to reduce costs. Unfortunately, this construction manager at risk didn't perform in that manner. And so we had to cancel that contract and alternatively finish the design rather quickly and go out for traditional design bid build approach. With that, when the construction, when it came in for the construction costs. The total expenses, including that construction manager at risk that we did have to pay for, construction contingency, permitting and design, and the bridge construction itself, we are at $8.129 million. This project with the federal award grant, which are ARPA funds, and the one cent funds, as well as water and sewer funds, Our budget is $6.44, leaving us with a gap of $1.688 million. Since we received that original bid from the contractor, staff have been working really hard with WARG to obtain more grant funding. Fortunately, we were able to gain 1.354 million in additional grant funding for eligible items. There are things that are ineligible, including lighting of the bridge, water and sewer infrastructure. But with that additional work funding, and it leaves us with a deficit of $334,474. Staff, we are proposing to use River funds to fill this gap so that this project may move forward in the packet for tonight's work. Tonight's Council meeting is the approval of the contract with. Average builders to perform this, so upon your approval of this that that contract will be awarded. If not, we will not work on

Questions about that? Oh, go ahead. You have something.

I was just going to add, Council, there is a deadline to award this contract of July 21st. If we are going to meet the grant deadlines, that will be applicable to the ground funding for this project. So we're in a two-week time-sensitive period if you want this project to proceed. If we don't award the construction contract by July 24th, we would, 21st, excuse me, we would need to potentially rebid and lose the locked-in price that we have.

Thank you, Mayor. And I guess as a follow-up to City Manager's comments, can you remind me, Krista, this Wyoming Outdoor Rec grant funding, doesn't it need to be expended by the end of the year?

Mayor, Councilor, that's correct. We do have to expend it by the end of the year. Our plan and communication with the contractor is to have everything billed by the middle of November so that we make sure that we have everything submitted and we don't any of those grant funds. Additionally, this project is phased so that we can procure the work. Procure the materials ahead of time and spend those grant funds now and actually perform construction during the next construction season. So that we could make sure to spend all those funds during the allotted time.

Thank you.

Michael, thanks Krista. I don't know if this is a You question or a joke question again, but can you remind me where the the River Fund is that money that came from the wildlife? Wildlife trust. That we got way back years ago or you know where that's just says River Fund where I'm just wondering where the origin of that money is.

Mayor counselor, I'll give you some of the items that I know go into it, but I will ask Jill to help with that. I do know that the two-fly foundation has been instrumental in helping fund the river restoration project. So a lot of two-fly funds have gone in there. Additionally, I believe there have been some one cent funds that have gone in there previously, but I will leave to Jill for the rest.

Mayor, councillors. So the actual fund balance that's sitting in the river fund is one cent money. So the council has In each one cent cycle will put money into there. The purpose of that fund is to have a match for grants, so the two five Foundation actually offers grants and then we supplement those grants with additional one cent money. Thank you, that makes sense.

Any other questions?

Thank you, Mayor. I thought. I'm not seeing it in the memo. Maybe it's in the memo for our regular meeting. Maybe it's a slightly different memo, but I thought I remembered reading some sort of discussion about, you know. Economy, you know, scaling the bridge product. Looking at. You know, be more frugal in certain areas, and so I was just curious if CPI or anyone might have any feedback to offer, but I know Tom real stuff. Tom in the audience too. I know originally the design for this bridge, there was kind of a variety of designs considered. And so I'm curious if, you know, in the face of, you know, needing to come up with additional funds and stuff, did we reevaluate the design that we landed on? Or are we too far along in that process to kind of go with a different bill?

I guess that's my question. Mayor, Councilor, I do know that when we evaluated different bridge options, there were different costs associated with that. We landed on a bridge that was one of the lower cost ones. There was further value engineering of those structures so that they were much less expensive than they were originally designed to be. But with that, I might involve Ray Cavalier with CPI as he's been a part of that design lead.

Yeah, so there was quite a bit of value engineering that went into the project. Originally, we had designed a 20 foot wide bridge deck. And through the value engineering process, we brought that down to a 16 foot wide deck that still served the purpose of being able to move traffic across the bridge. And also in the event of an event, you could have an event on the bridge and still have space for people to move back and forth. By reducing the width of the bridge, we were able to take quite a bit of dollars out of the projects just because of the steel prices or steel quantities and sizing of the members and things of that nature. We also changed the coating system. The original painting of the bridge was designed to a wide out spec that wasn't really applicable to this bridge. So we were able to change that to more of a standard coating spec, which dropped the price down almost half a million dollars. So there was a number of other things that came up. We had some concrete form liners on the bridge abutments, and we removed those to the tune of almost $100,000. So there was quite a bit of talk along the way of what can we do to trim this project up. So that was just a few of the big ticket highlights.

Thank you for the additional context. That was kind of the crux of my question was whether we were going to go with that white kind of painted you know, finish or if we were considering something a little more, you know, like akin to the new pedestrian bridge out of my neck of the woods over off Robinson Road. So I guess, yeah, that's my question. Will it still look like those images that we discussed last year or is it going to have a different finish?

No, it'll still have that white, the white finish. It's just a different coating system. Okay.

project is just starting to make me nervous. Seeing the additional cost, the timeline makes me a bit nervous. I'm not going to say that I won't vote for it, but when I look at the full $8.1 million all in on this project, it's starting to feel like, is that really the best path forward here. And I mean, super amazing that work was willing to up the ante and help support this project further. So really grateful to them. I mean, they're really carrying most of the load on this project. And so like that helps ease the friction that I feel around it. But and so thanks so much to them. But it just it feels like, you know, that this is really expensive bridge at this point. And I'm not sure that it adds enough value to be worth what we're paying.

I think I can add a little bit more. The cost to add the utilities to the YDOT bridge was over $7 million. So when you just look at the ability to move pedestrians and multimodal traffic across the bridge and the addition of the utilities, you're getting a better value for your money than you would have paying YDOT for YDOT prices, which we found on numerous projects in the city is they're not the same cost that we pay for a normal city bid project. So that directly answers your question, but just give it some context. Yeah. Thanks.

Thank you. Just kind of following up with Councilor Pollack's comment, making sure that we're all doing our due diligence. I was looking for clarification. All the Wyoming Outdoor Rec grant funding I know it was only eligible for qualified census track, which is essentially everything north of Poplar. I'm sorry, north of the river and so I just looking for confirmation. I guess that this Wyoming outdoor rec grant funding is not funding that we could utilize for. I know we're already doing a ton of work at Marion Kreiner, also the ball fields. It's pretty much the only amenities we have north of First Street in the river, but. The bulk of this funding is the Wyoming outdoor rec grant funding. It's not funding that we could use for any other city project. Is that accurately saying?

With that, unless Kristen is the answer, I think I'm gonna have to lean on Alex or perhaps Lima. My understanding is it was not, but I don't want to speak out of turn. Yeah, this funding cannot be utilized for anything else.

Like Kristen mentioned, the end of this year, the funding goes away. So this is really the only eligible funding we can use for this bridge.

And that's because it's ARPA funds, which we all know what that is. Yeah.

I want to make sure we get to our meeting in time. But so yeah, essentially, if we don't utilize the Wyoming outdoor rec grant funding to make this pedestrian bridge, it's going to expire at the end of the year, in which case we'll simply have to piggyback on to Y dots bridge project again, which If it was $7 million four years ago, we might have to pull $8, $9, $10 million out of only our water and sewer funds to make the project happen. Is that also fair to say?

Yeah. I think the YDOT project, just for some historical context, bid out in 2022. It came in about 65% over their $22 million estimate. and $36 million. So there was a lot of different things happening there with the environmental constraints and permitting and everything else and the uncertainty raised those costs. So waiting would just, I think, increase the cost.

Thank you.

It sounds like we have a plan to get the money spent by the end of the year. How confident do we feel about our ability to do that?

Mayor, Councilor, we're confident. I know if we wait much longer, that time span diminishes. We are going to have some concerns with our time frame with our CMAR. So that's why we chose the design and build route. And then, like Chris had mentioned, we separated into phases with the procurement starting now. so that we can get that rolling and we can order materials and start the bridge abutment work, start the pathway work, and then we can reach that point and we reimburse before the end of this year and get reimbursed by December 2026 and then the other portions of the project will be formed. We don't have a lot of time for sure, but we're we're fairly confident that if we can get it awarded here this month that we can start that process and expedite. Procurement of a lot of the major bridge components.

Go ahead.

I'll be a yes, because I'd rather spend 8 million on this than 7 million. So why not? I mean, that's really kind of where I was going.

Still makes me nervous. I'm still nervous about this project. Any other clarifications or questions for staff? Thank you, appreciate it. So, um, has everybody feel about moving forward to this? This is on the bridge bridge, yeah. Alright, um, anybody have anything pressing for a gender review today? It's like a pretty straightforward meeting. OK, we'll see you guys out there in five.