Council - workshop

Great. Sure appreciate the opportunity in front of you. You should have a little leave behind just so you can kind of see our people, some of our people, and some of our experience. What we're going to try and accomplish is we're going to try to show we'd like to build a little bit of trust. But I know in the short time frame, it's going to be hard to build trust. But we know that's really what the decision is going to come down to is who you trust the most to be able to help deliver this project successfully. The good news is you've started with a great foundation, having Robinson Morton as your construction manager and your designer, LED. Calvin does an excellent job. So you guys have a great foundation. And we probably won't be able to build trust, but what we're going to try to demonstrate is we're a trustworthy company with proven results. So if you're looking for that, you've come to the right place. About Freedom, so we were started in 2014. We're an employee-owned, fully 100% employee-owned company, and we're a sister company to Torch Technologies. Torch Technologies is a large defense contractor. They got about 1,800 employees all over the country, and we work alongside them. All right, John. Our combined experience, we bring a lot of experience to the table. A lot of our people came from a company called Turner Construction. Turner's a $50 billion a year construction company. And we moved from Turner, we brought the A-Team over to Freedom, and now a bunch of us are over there. We've worked for the University of Alabama, helping them with some budgets for their new nursing addition. Clearview Cancer Institute, we're working as owner's representative for them, and Decatur. Huntsville City Hall, when I think about a new city hall, we're involved in the Huntsville City Hall, myself and Jack Shimer on the pre-construction side, helping with that project to ensure it got started well. Another one that involved public building authority, they did have the PBA on that as well. Again, that was while we were still at Turner, but we have that experience. Toyota Field, I'm sure everybody's heard of the Trash Pandas. We worked with the city of Madison to ensure that project was delivered on time and well under budget for Mayor Finley and his team. Alabama A&M Student Amenities Building, we've done about six projects personally with Alabama A&M over the last 11 years. And we actually have our client here from Alabama A&M to talk a little bit about his experience. Last but not least, UAH Cybersecurity. UAH trusts us with their new cybersecurity facility. It's about a $50 million project that we're helping as, again, the owner's representative to manage that project. So overall, I mean, we're talking about, you know, $400, $500 million worth of work shown here. There are some of our clients, and we just want to show you a little bit of our people and Gary Mann that you'll hear from as a resident of Florence as well. So... I'm going to turn it over to Gary right now.

Thank you, Tice. Mayor and council, I'm Gary Mann. I'm a resident of Florence, Alabama. Born and lived in this area most of my life. For the last 20 years, I've lived in Forest Hills. As your owner's representative, Freedom's job is to sit on the city side of the table and protect your interest while LED designs the building and Robinson Morgan builds it. We focus on four key risks. Budget risk, we prepare independent cost models at every design, milestone, and rigorously review every change order. Freedom's record is 100% of managed projects delivered in budget. We want to have the public trust. We provide an open book reporting you can share with any citizen. UAH and Alabama A&M will confirm how we operate. Lost momentum. We drive the critical path and bring clear council-ready recommendations so decisions do not stall the project. Execution risk. This is a tight downtown site. Logistics, neighbor impacts, and keeping city operations running will require careful management. I spent more than 40 years in the field, especially on MEP systems with over 30 years with a local contractor. I understand how these systems affect cost and schedule and know the capabilities of the local subcontractor market, having worked with most of them. That knowledge helps us push for better packaging, better competition, better performance from the teams working under Robinson Morton, always with the city's interests first and limited disruption as a priority. I have worked with this design team for your city hall on multiple projects. Here, let's go to the next slide. All right, here's how we perform the owner's representative and management program role day to day. In pre-construction, we review LEDs designed for constructability, run independent value engineering, and validate the budget and schedule before the work begins. During construction, I provide on-site leadership focused on quality, safety, and protecting city operations. We work to minimize destruction of staff, downtown businesses and residents, Mobile, Tennessee, and Pine Streets, as well as the alley behind the project. We maintain real-time open book cost tracking and aggressively scrutinize orders. We use our knowledge of the local market to help the city get strong performance from the subcontractors. At closeout, we manage a thorough punch list, ensure full training of the city staff, and deliver a building that is truly ready by day one. As a resident, I know how important this is to all of us. My commitment is simple. I will treat Florence's money, our money, and Florence's reputation as if they were my own. I want a building that we as citizens of Florence can be proud of.

Yeah, really appreciate that. And Gary is going to be a big part of the project. Freedom is chosen for this. A resident that you guys can trust is going to make sure that the building is built the right way under budget and on schedule. So really, we bring our processes to work here in Florence. to ensure a successful project. And mostly, we know the biggest risks are schedule and budget. And the mayor has made it very clear we got to get going and wants to start getting work in place before the end of the year. So we know there's a lot of work to be done. And we know as well that, you know, we'll come to, if we're chosen, we can be here tomorrow at 8 o'clock in the morning and start working through scope and start working through us being involved to help make that happen because we understand that's got to work fast. And I want to emphasize, again, I know our time has been brief, but $180 million of North Alabama investment. And what that means to you is we own our own buildings. Freedom, we're... We also develop, we have property management. So we're very diversified. So when it comes to your facility, we think of it from an owner's perspective. None of our competition owns buildings like we do. Almost a million square feet of we own around North Alabama. So we're going to bring that experience to you. We look at it with the owner's hat. 200 years of proven experience of being involved in the project, North Alabama accountability, 100% of our work is here in North Alabama, so our reputation is critical. We cannot afford to have an unsuccessful project. Community support, another thing, a big part of our cost of services will be coming right back to your community, going to Gary Mann, that's going to come right back to Florence, Alabama. Project Team Synergy, we've worked with Robins and Wharton. Gary and I have spent a lot of time working with Robins and Wharton on medical office building that they did for us. We're currently working with them on Clearview Cancer Institute in the same role. And then they also, Land Trust North Alabama, we're working with Robins and Wharton there. And as Gary talked about, just the synergy, he's worked with Calvin and LED plenty of times over the years. 100% delivery. We deliver projects on budget and on schedule. I know we've said that a lot, but that is critical to us, and I know that's critical to you. And we can say all this stuff, but we wanted to bring our client from Alabama A&M University, Director of Facilities, Brian Shipp, so he can talk about his experience with Freedom.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Good evening, Mayor Tyler, councilmembers. Um, I'm Brian ship director for facilities, Alabama and university. I arrived in Huntsville in Alabama and university about 11 years ago, and we were in the process of building understanding that we are a state institution. Um, there's a lot of things that we have to do to make sure we cross the T's and dot the I's. And our first building was with project manager by the name of Tice Hudson, who you just heard from. I didn't know him from anybody else. But over that few months, we were able to build a relationship of trust. And to give you an idea, I have built probably about $200 million worth of buildings on the campus since 2015, working with Tice Hudson, who was at that time at Turner Construction. Then as he moved over to, because he moved, I moved with him. I made sure that he was always going to be the project manager. And as you see, it's only, that sheet that you have in front of you only represents about three of the buildings that were built on that campus. One that we've also been very proud of on the campus is our event center, which was done with Tice Hudson as the project manager. The biggest thing about having a company like Freedom on board is to ensure that your project, that all the hard work is actually done before the project ever starts. If you have a hard deadline like we have, in higher ed as a state entity, if we have an $80 million budget, if we have a $40 million budget, if we have a $20 million budget, it cannot exceed that budget. If we exceed that budget, we cannot do that project because we have no more money to pull from. So the thing that they do and the services they offer really, really well is understanding the construction market because they're part of the construction market and being able to give you and keep the actual architect I love architects, but architects can start to get a vision that starts to grow the building, starts to grow the price of the building, the scope starts to creep. They are very good at making sure that that scope stays intact to give you the product that you want within budget and deliver their project on time. And I would not be standing here if I didn't have a personal trust in the ability of freedom to deliver on a project. and as you see we have two right now the student managers building and the science building those two projects alone was a 140 million dollar budget that we had for those two projects and it came in under budget at about 120 million which allowed us to be able to have access to get everything that we wanted and then add all the niceties that we thought we could not afford. So that is one of the shining moments. And any time you'd like to come by or if there's any things that you have that you want to see exactly how they do what they do, it is unreal of the amount of staff that they have that can deliver you a project that would be on time within budget and a product that you would be happy to have.

Thank you, Brian. And we're trying to stay within the 15 minutes, so we'll try to respect your time. Is there any questions that you have for us that we need to address?

OK. There'll be none.

Good deal. All right. Well, we sure appreciate your time. Thank you very much for the opportunity. We're grateful. Whether you select us or not, we wish you the best. We hope the project runs very smoothly and everybody has a great experience. So thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for coming in your presentation. We do have your contact information. So if any other council members have questions, they can reach out to you. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you all. Ms. Allie Lee.

Hi, everybody. Good evening, well, good afternoon, Mayor Tyler and all council members. Thanks for allowing me a few minutes to speak this afternoon. My name is Allie Lee, and I had the privilege of becoming the Executive Director of the Attention Homes of Northwest Alabama in this past January. I have with me your Lauderdale County Chief Probation Officer, Mr. Rob Martin, as well. But I wanted to come today just to kind of explain what we do and also to allow you to put a face to the name. So I stepped into this role following the retirement of Teresa Robertson, who led the attention homes for 42 years, and she left some really big shoes to fill. So I'm gonna do my best. But like I said, I wanted to come tonight and just kind of, we come to y'all every year and ask for funding as a nonprofit. And so I know that the name just kind of slides across the table, but I really just wanted to explain what we do and the impact that it has on our community. So the Attention Homes has been serving youth in Northwest Alabama since 1973. For more than 53 years, we've provided a safe, structured residential program for court-referred youth who are on juvenile probation in Lauderdale, Franklin, and Colbert County. The youth we serve sometimes have made poor choices, they've experienced trauma, or they come from just unstable home environments. while they need accountability supervision and structure they don't always need to be in a locked down detention facility instead they need an opportunity to just step away from the environment that they contributed to their current situation and enter a place where they can focus on making positive changes and that's exactly where we come in So we provide the structure that many of these youth have never had. They attend school every day, so they're involved in the Florence City School System and the Sheffield School System. They participate in individual and group counseling, both at our offices as well as some of our partners like Riverbend and Health Connect. They receive mental health treatment. They learn conflict resolution, communication, budgeting, job readiness, healthy relationships, and other essential life skills while they're with us. We work closely with their families so that when they're ready to return home, they have a stronger foundation than when they arrived. So we're trying to work with their families as well so whenever they do get to go home, we don't see them again and they can stay out of the system. But we couldn't do this work alone. Like I said, we have a lot of community partners like Riverbend, Health Connect, Transitions, the school systems, healthcare providers, our juvenile probation officers, law enforcement, and the courts. It really takes the whole community to help these kids that we're serving. For our community, Florence is home to our girls' attention home. It's located right behind the Coliseum. And Lauderdale County is by far our largest user of the program. So 55% of all the kids that we serve are actually from Lauderdale County, and a lot of those are here in Florence. Last year alone, we served 30 Lauderdale County youth that came through our residential program, and they average a 30-day stay. So that's approximately 900 nights of care that we served for Lauderdale County kids. To put that into perspective, housing a juvenile in detention costs approximately $140 a day. So those 900 days that our kids stayed with us, was approximately $126,000 in potential detention costs that we avoided by providing a more appropriate and less restrictive care for them. But beyond the financial savings are the lives that were changing. These young people who stay in school instead of sitting in detention. And like I said, they just... They're getting to still be involved in the community. So when they're with us, our homes are, they look just like mine in your home. You would not think, there's no metal beds, no cuffs, nothing like that. It works just like a normal home and they're getting to see what a family really looks like. So one thing that we're especially proud of is that we never charge a child or their family for our services. We don't charge our partner counties a daily placement fee. Instead, we do rely on partnerships with our local cities and counties along with grants, fundraising, and community donors. And like every other nonprofit in the community, we are feeling the effects of inflation. as you can imagine having 16 teenagers and feeding them three meals a day can get pretty costly but we also have utilities insurance transportation staffing and programming that's all gone up a lot over the past couple years so we work really hard to stretch every dollar and we do pursue every grant opportunity the city of florence has been a tremendous partner with us over the years and we are really grateful for that So I just wanted to introduce myself, explain a little bit about what we do, tell you that as your new executive director, I do take seriously the responsibility of carrying on the legacy that the Attention Homes has had. And I promise to be a good steward of every dollar entrusted to us to continue strengthening our community partnerships and ensure that the Attention Home remains an organization that the City of Florence is proud to support. So I thank you for your time, for y'all's partnership, and I would be happy to answer any questions that y'all have. If you have any.

I would like to say thank you. You are filling some big shoes for 42 years. She's a dear friend of mine, and we've actually been able to do some serves there in both homes and been a part, and you're doing great work there, and we appreciate you.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I actually did my very first social work internship at the attention homes over 10 years ago. So I found my intern folder the other day. I thought that was really cool. But I've kept up with Teresa ever since. And she's an amazing part of this community. So I'm honored to take her spot. Do y'all have any other questions? No? Well, if you've never been to any of our homes, I do welcome you to come. Feel free to contact me and I'd love to give you all a tour of our program and our home here in Florence or in Sheffield if you'd like. But we just want to be a part of this community. So if there's ever anything I can do, please let me know as well.

Thank you so much for coming and sharing. Mr. Koontz.

Good afternoon. I only have one thing today. It's a contract with Jackson Thornton Advisors. These are the firm that has done work for the department and are currently doing work for the water department. I got with the mayor and we talked about this. They're going to come in and do a study of the Solid Waste Enterprise Fund, take a look at all things involved with it. Obviously, we're in a deficit budget this year. Waste Connections, our contractor, has kind of put the price up quite a bit, so we're going to study that, and that's what this is all about. Does anybody have any questions about this? Anything you want to add?

Tell them if you would, a year ago what you were paying per month to Waste Connections compared to what you are now. Just give them an idea.

We were paying, as you know, probably about $37 a ton for waste to be hauled out of here in 24. Waste Connections came in and that price went to $65 a ton. They all doubled what they charged us to haul our garbage away. That was almost $900,000 per year increase. and so that is what has set us back quite a bit and so we had another cost of cpi last year i do expect one next month three four five percent i've asked again today if they had an idea what that would be contract with them expires august of next year which i would expect a significant increase We do have plans, obviously, for a transfer station. That's part of what we're working toward. These guys are going to look at that part of this, too. And that's kind of where we are.

2024, we've not had a rate increase.

We've had a rate increase in 2024 of $2.50. And we had recommended $25 at the time. It came in at $22.50. And then we did not have one last year.

And they're the only vendor. that's an option for us to haul our garbage away.

We collect it and take it to them. They load it, haul it, and take it away. Obviously, we've looked at other partnerships with other governments around here, and they don't have the capacity to take us and themselves as well. So I feel like a transfer station is our best option for the future. to control these costs. I mean, the more steps we control, the more we can hold these rates down.

Rather than me or David making a suggestion, we want an outside independent contractor to come in and do an evaluation of all of our operations and make a suggestion to the council is what the plan is. Jackson Thornton is about as reputable as anybody that can do that. I trust you, David, but I think it's important we have somebody else take a look at everything.

Any questions about this for us? For me? Thank you.

Thank you. Miss Bulge.

I have item G. It is a payment of invoice and a maintenance agreement for Quadient, which is our envelope sorter feeder. So we just need to get that pay.

Thank you. Mr. Whitten.

Hey, good afternoon. I have 11H, which is renewal of our endpoint protection software. So it's a three-year agreement, $39,442 a year from budgeted funds.

Any questions?

Thank you. Mr. Williams?

Thank you. I have item 11M, which is a contract with Creative Parking Concepts, the exclusive agent for WPS, which is a Nashville company that provides the city software and online support for our ticketing kiosks and gate systems for the parking day. This agreement is an annual agreement. It would be commenced on September the 1st. The cost for that service is $11,600. We changed vendors as I was coming here to work. We were learning that our current vendor was dropping out And so we were scrambling. The fortunate thing for us, the end supporter has changed. But the original company providing software and all of our hardware is, in fact, the same company, WPS. So it's going to provide a seamless continuance of those services. We will also have, and it's, I believe, in your packet, information on the on-site support. Now, that is at the rate of $160 per hour. So, any questions? Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Chad Hood with Volkert. Not here yet. Okay. Okay. It's true. OK. OK. Chase, come on.

Good afternoon. I've got two items today on the regular agenda, 12D and 12E. If y'all, some of y'all may remember October of last year, we brought a contract to full council with Weisner and Associates. That was for the negotiation, the appraisals, negotiation, and acquisition services of right of way at the intersection of Gresham Road and Seville. um these this is a follow-up to that so at that time the direction we got um was to proceed with that acquisition and then when the when the process was when the tracks were ready to be acquired to bring those back council for consideration so that is what i've got for y'all today the first two tracks 12d is for the acquisition of track one in the amount of thirty one thousand six hundred and three dollars and 12e is for track three in the amount of thirty five thousand three hundred and forty two dollars so Any questions for me on that?

I don't necessarily have a question, but I spoke with Mr. Sullivan on, I think it was Friday, that he called me because he said there was another one that he wanted to add. And our last conversation, and this is something that I've shared with all of the council, that he was going to pull these, remove these two. items from that from the agenda okay and i see that that didn't happen so i am asking that these be removed until the council have an opportunity to review okay all right

I may be partly to blame for that. I was under the impression that with the action back in October, we were moving forward with this. There was a third piece of property. So when I talked with Todd, I think we understood that he wanted all three of them added on there to be considered at one time and pulled the one. So there may have been a breakdown of communications. I do hope, as the council moves forward, that we are able to look at considering this and i know we can pull it today the uh we want to get the improvements along that gresham road corridor as soon as we can and i think these around these rights of ways correct me if i'm if i'm incorrect chase they're going to have to be purchased for any roadway development that we do any improvements in that area are going to have to be uh that are going to have to be fixed. So I'm sorry that I misunderstood that. I actually drove through, I was in Madison Saturday, drove through Gillespie Road and Balch Road in Madison. North side of the road had a neighborhood. South side of the road had apartment complexes. It reminded me of Gresham and Seville Street. I actually had a corner with a gas station there, and I did some research, and the Gillespie Road and Balts Road roundabout has 16,000 cars per day compared to Gresham and Seville Street. It's about 6,000 cars per day. Traffic flowed right on through there seamlessly. You know, Madison's a... city full of engineers and they are twice the capacity we are so i think the roundabout continues to be the the best option to help us move traffic through there so if that is something we can revisit at some point i certainly would uh would support us doing so

Okay. I just, I was just at requesting that it be removed today. Okay. Well, that's all I've got.

One thing just to verify the totals on each of these resolution match the appraisals, correct?

They do. Yes. They're in agreeance with the prices. All right.

Thank y'all. Thank you. Mr. Cole.

Good afternoon. I've got three items on the agenda. The first is a contract with JC Hammond Sons. This is at Cypress Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, our SCADA control room. We've been experiencing some heating and cooling issues. Those rooms get very hot because of the equipment that they contain. And so this room does not, it's part of another unit and we would like to add this unit to specifically cool just this room at a cost of $6,525. Any questions on that? If we lose that room, things go south quick. The next item is real estate. This is the contract to purchase two pieces of property, one on Marion Street and one on the Rigwood. The one on Marion adjoins our current property with the gas facilities. The one on Rickwood, we hope to buy another piece of property in between what we currently own and this piece of property. Both pieces of property at a cost of $109,620. That is from budgeted funds.

What's the purpose of purchasing these properties?

To gain more space, we're running out of room where we're currently at. We looked at trying to purchase the 23-acre track that adjoins us to the west and found out that it was not for sale. And then we found out that these two smaller pieces of property are.

How long ago were you approached?

Six months, six or seven months ago. We've been working on it for quite some time now.

Did you know those properties are currently... they had notices sent out for demolition.

Found that out today. Yes, sir. Actually found that out today. So, and that's all part of the plan as well.

What property in between? Are you talking about Rogers Barbershop?

That's correct, the barbershop.

You know that's currently changing ownership.

That's correct, yes, sir.

And you think they'll sell that property?

We're hoping to eventually at some point, yes. The other one already, the one on Marion already attaches. Already, well, yeah. On the back side. Yes, yes. And we would have to vacate some street back there in order for it to work where we could put fencing and all that up. Are you looking to part equipment here? The plan on Marion is to build a storage facility because we are out of room. And then, of course, the plan for Rickwood is going to stem on what we can do with the barbershop property. so um to answer your question we would like that on the warehouse is what we would like to do eventually at some point as far as the rickwood property is concerned and we got appraisals for this that's correct and they are at the appraised they're at the appraised price yes that kind of shocks me yes yes that's the only way we could do it that's i mean that's i mean the track on rickwood is i don't know 30 by 100 or something like that what's the yes the other one is The one on Rickwood is not as symmetrical. I mean, the one on Marion is not as symmetrical because of the railroad tracks, and then the one on Rickwood is more. It's not as big of a piece of property as the one on Marion. If I may have those backwards, I'd have to go back and look.

Just for context, we moved the gas department, gas and water, out of City Hall. They're not going to be considered as part of the new construction. We moved them over there. We knew April. This was kind of a, hey, we're going to move you over there. They've taken up some space. So it was just a part of the long range of, hey, you'll get over there and you have some more space. We don't have to put you in the city hall. It was kind of a part of was to move them over there, save them from having to be in the city hall.

So this property is at the very dead end of Marion?

One piece is, yes, ma'am. That's correct.

Is it the house on the left?

That's what I thought.

So are you going to have a barrier there?

What did you say you were going to put there? If we do end up acquiring the property, we will have to vacate the right-of-way and everything, but we will fence it and gate it.

To block it off from that community?

That's correct, yes, ma'am. Very similar to what it is now. We would just basically be scooting everything up the street is the way it would work. Any other questions about that? Okay. And then the final item I have is This is a project. This is the Broward Cliff lift station improvements. This is a recommendation to award that project to BH Craig for a total of $635,000 and that is from budgeted funds. That's through the SRF funding and that is a desperate need of ours to upgrade that lift station. It's it's on its last last leg. Any questions on that? So the SRF funding is something that we applied for. So this is money that we applied for and were given. And we are nearing the completion of that as far as the wastewater side. We've already completed the drinking water side. And I think I looked today. I think we have around just a little over $800,000 left in that specific fund to do some of the projects with. This, along with the project that we're doing down close to where the fertilizer plant was, we're kind of lumping all this together with part of that funding. But we do have around 800,000 or so left. Of course, we've got plenty of projects planned. We've just now got to determine which projects we can afford to do with that amount of money. And of course, based on need and all the other things that go along with it. Any other questions on that one? All right. Thank y'all.

Thank you. Mr. Wood, if you don't mind, let me go ahead and get our department head from Ms. Mary McDuffer, and then we'll, if that's okay with you all to mind. Okay, thank you, Ms. McDuffer. Then we'll have all the city department heads out of the way. Yes. Thanks.

Thank you. I just have a few items. The first one is an agreement with Central Service Association. As you all know, we're looking at changing our CIS, our customer information, MDM, everything system with the... None disclosure agreement with them before we start this process. Any questions? The second one is a contract with Southern Mobile Welding Repair and Services. This is the company that cuts. We purchased about 400 steel poles from the state of Alabama years ago and we are about to run out of them and some of them are having to cut the size and this is the company that cuts the poles for us. Any questions about that?

Where do you usually use those steel poles?

All over the county. And we use them on our transmission system. And our transmission system ranges from 60-foot poles to 80-foot poles. And so these are 70-foot poles. So where we need shorter poles, these companies will come in and they'll cut the poles for us so we can use them for whatever size is needed. But we use them all throughout the county. Next is a contract with EA Nelson Company. They do the maintenance on our big air compressors in their garage. And so this is the yearly maintenance agreement for those. And then the last one with United Power Services. This is a company that tests our transformers, oil testing. So this is just our yearly agreement with them for our oil testing. Any questions?

Can I ask a question that doesn't have anything to do with this? The whole, you know, a couple weeks ago, the golf course was closed down for TVA, and it was my understanding was to move the poles, but they ended up didn't. What happened? I was just curious.

Um, so I think they got out there, they wanted to straighten the lineup because the polls were not in the middle of the right away. And so they wanted to move them for they'll be centered in the right away. But once they get out there, I think they realize how much destruction it would do at the golf course for them to move them. And so they just made, I think, a very smart decision to leave them where they were and make it work.

It was from what I was told they were actually going to have to use our polls anyways and buy and purchase them from us. Correct.

No, they were going to use their own poles. Oh, they were. They were actually going to give those back to us if they didn't use them. But I think they just realized once they had much damage, it was going to do the golf course. And I think that's one reason they decided just to leave them where they were. We were happy about it.

Well, cut downtime.

And I know you were all happy about it. Yeah. No, it did cut the downtime on the golf course being closed back.

It seemed to go very smooth. It did. Being out there. And I didn't hear very many complaints. I had a few people call and wanted to know why new roads were being put in. Yes. But it went very well.

Yes, it did. It went very their own moving on from there. So we're looking forward to this project finishing up. It'll be a great benefit for us when they get the our largest substation on our system actually have a dual feed into it, not a radial feed. So it'll be a great benefit to us.

Thank you. Thank you. All right, Mr. Hood.

Where do I need to connect it? Good afternoon and thank you for having us here. We appreciate appreciate the opportunity to present to you today. I'm Jonathan Grammar with Volkert and we have several of our team members here from North our North Alabama operations. John hit Summer Coleman, Justin Rutland. Shane was not able to be here today. We got Kerry Wilkerson, Matthew Danner, Anna Keelan Bush were also unavailable this afternoon, but just wanted to show you some of our team members that we have in North Alabama. I serve as our regional vice president for our North Alabama operations, covering engineering and program management. And on the next slides, we'll show you a little bit about the services we provide. Program and construction management, owner's representation, construction manager, advisor, some of the names you may have heard for the service that y'all are considering for your city hall project. Volkert is a top 100 firm, ENR firm with over 100 years of experience, started in 1925. We currently have 70 offices in over 30 states and 1500 professionals across the company footprint. Here in Alabama, we have a team of about 307. You see Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Huntsville. That's our North Alabama operations. Between the engineering and program management group, we have a team of about 50 across those three offices. and corporate is in Mobile, but we have a sizable operation here in North Alabama. Some services that we have here across the top, we start with planning and environmental, design, engineering, and of course, what we're here to talk about today, our program and construction management services, and then that's kind of small to read there on the screen, but any number of disciplines within each of those three categories there are the services that we regularly provide. So I want to talk a little bit about relevant experience. Closest here to Florence would be our Florence City School partners. We have just recently been hired to work with them on their facility condition assessments. We have completed those assessments over the last three or four months, made a presentation and started showing them a capital plan, several options for their capital planning. for the school system and what they can do for renovations, additions or new construction on all of their facilities. Also over here on the UNA campus, we are currently finishing up the design phase of a new engineering building. This is a representation of what that building will look like once complete. The bid is scheduled for a couple of weeks here the first of August, and then the construction will run through the end of 2027 to be operational by early 28 for that new semester in 28. Of course, I'm sure most of you have seen out 72. The project out there with the accent. Work Development Center for the County Commission and then on the next page you'll see the Innovation Center for the Lauderdale County school system so. Quite a few projects right now we have going here in Florence and Lauderdale County and then of course cross the river there in Lawrence County. We've been working with the Lawrence County school system for probably 1015 years now on many of their projects within the school system. Going back to the east over in Huntsville, Madison County, we are working right now on the new Madison County Courthouse project. That's a 200 to 225,000 square foot facility. That's just a rendering there of what that building could look like. That's going to be in excess of $100 million for that project. A very large project that's scheduled to be complete by August of 2030. And then staying in Madison, Madison City Schools. Madison City is actually our longest client we've had. I think we started working with them in 2007 with James Clemens High School renovations at Bob Jones and many of their other schools. So had a really good relationship with them over the years and continue to work with them as they move forward in the growth that they're experiencing over there. Going back south, down in Tuscaloosa, we are working with the city and Coach Saban and Ms. Terry on the Saban Center. That's a STEM center that the city is doing with the Saban family and the state of Alabama. I believe the city put in about $70 million for that project. The state's put in $25 million, and then the Saban family and other donors have put in another $35 million for that project. Very nice project there in Tuscaloosa, be transformative for their education system down there to host field trips and really help promote STEM education and the arts in West Alabama and really all across the state with it being one of the state's certified STEM hubs. And then this one's a little further away. That's that's up in Perry County, PA. Our mid Atlantic region is working with that client and assisting with that. It's a new government building there near their capital of Harrisburg, and that's going to be about a 30,000 square foot building. The UNA engineering building over here is about a 40,000 square foot building. Understand that the new city hall here for Florence, city of Florence, may be somewhere in the 50, 60, 70,000 square foot range. So certainly have experience with projects of all sizes and values to be able to translate that experience to help the city out with the new city hall project. Our approach, we break it down into four phases, just to present, to show how we approach a project. And phase one would be our pre-construction, capital planning phase, phase two, steel pre-construction. That's your design and bid phase. And then we move into phase three, construction, and then in phase four, post-construction. I'll talk a little bit about a couple of these items and things we focus on in each phase to make sure the project is a success for you. Did it die? I got a thumb drive. Will it take a thumb drive? Can you use that? While he's trying to get that back up, I'll just keep talking through the phases. So in the pre-construction capital planning phase, we really look at what the program is that you need, make sure that we know all of the departments that you're going to need to house in the city hall building, and then make sure that we get that program and budget aligned as far as the cost and the size of the building for all of the departments you're going to need in that building. And then moving from there, we'll look at the schedule and see how big the building is, how long it's gonna take to get the design done, and then get the construction started and completed. And then make sure that once all of those are aligned, that we have a good plan for communication and reporting. We want to make sure that you guys understand and know what we're doing at each phase along the way in that phase of it, so we'll make sure that we have clear communication lines and provide the appropriate information reporting as you see fit, be it monthly, weekly, every two weeks, whatever y'all need us to do to keep you informed on what's going on in that pre-design phase. Moving into the design phase, we're again going to focus on communication and reporting to make sure that y'all are very informed on what's going on at all times. We're here to serve you guys and and the citizens of the city of Florence and make sure that this building is what you need and what best serves the residents of Florence. And so we're going to keep that communication and reporting going. We're going to establish the design standards for what you want the building to be like. I know that the design has already been progressed to a certain point. And so we want to make sure that any changes that might be needed with the design where it stands now, that we make sure that your design standards are still met, even if we have to do some adjustments to the design, alternate solutions, things like that. As far as the delivery method, understand you may have decided to use a CM delivery method with a GMP. We can assist in looking at that and see where that is as far as the cost, and then if we need to make any adjustments, any value engineering, cost-saving options to go back and try to get the building into a certain state. budget for you. We can certainly do that, have a lot of experience in that part of it. One thing we do when we get in on the very front end is we'll prepare bid alternates. So you'll have a base bid. You're relatively comfortable. is going to be within your budget. And then you have add alternates to if you get good bids on bid day and you have more funds available, you can award those alternates and set it up like that. That's typically in your design bid bill delivery method. Understanding this one may be a little different with the CM at risk GMP, but we can still look at alternate solutions to get that project in budget to be able to move forward and get you a new city hall bill. Got it back up. And then during construction, what we'll do is we'll have full on-site supervision of the project to make sure that the project is being built the way it was designed to be built. You'll also have your other quality control professionals performing your construction material testing and providing those reports to make sure that the quality is where it needs to be during construction. And then we're going to conduct your OAC meetings, which are owner architect contractor meetings, to make sure that we're all on the same page, working together, moving forward with the project. We're going to be looking for any risks during construction that could jeopardize the cost, the budget, the schedule, and try to make sure that we cut those off and minimize those impacts to the project. and then if there are things that we can't avoid we're going to come up with solutions create solutions to help minimize and mitigate those issues using our experience with our team we've got a really good team that has a lot of experience in the construction industry and so they can use those experiences to help us make sure we deliver a successful project for the city And then again, finishing the project is challenging. You've got to go through all your inspections, pass your final inspections, and we're going to be right there making sure that's where some of our guys are today, finishing up a few final inspections for school to be able to start here in a few weeks. And so we're going to be there during that phase to make sure that all those final inspections are passed and the building is ready to move in and operate. Going back one slide there to the post-construction phase, toward the end of the construction phase, we'll start the FF&E procurement. We work with a lot of different firms that provide your furniture, fixtures, and equipment, so we can help coordinate all of that to make sure you get all of the furnishings purchased in time. When the building's ready to occupy, we can help coordinate and make sure that everything gets set up properly before your staff starts to move in. And then we'll provide all the closeout and final reporting. We use project management software. It used to be called eBuilder. We've used it for over 25 years, but that's an online-based, internet-based project communication software that we use to manage all of our projects that keeps all of the communications communication documentation in one place at the end of the project. If we can keep you on that during the project and then we can give you all those files at the end for operation and maintenance moving forward into the future and maintain the building and then we'll stay with you during the warranty phase. and make sure any warranty items that you have come up in that first year are taken care of and corrected timely. I know that's very frustrating when you move into a new building and you start having issues with it, so we stay there with you, work through that phase of it to make sure that the warranty is worked out and everything is fixed the way it should be, and you get what you pay for in the end. And then we'll continue to provide support. We're all about building relationships and friendships. And even after the project's complete, warranty is done. Hopefully we all have great relationships beyond that. Anything comes up after that, we're right here. We plan to stay in the area. We've been around 100 years and don't plan to go anywhere. So anything y'all might need beyond that warranty period, we'll be here to help with that. And then we have a fairly robust approach to quality. That's one item that we have really focused on in the past, I'd say, five years is really revamping our quality program. Every project has a contract, has a scope of work. Every project manager is required to create a project-specific quality plan. We set clear communication expectations in that, as I mentioned earlier. Throughout that, we do constructability reviews. Within that quality plan, we have certain times during the design phase that we're required to do those constructability reviews. Again, I mentioned protecting your design standards, identifying issues early. All of these things are the goals of really focusing on that quality plan and having other project managers audit the project management team on this project to make sure that this team is doing what they're supposed to be doing. So it's a pretty robust quality plan that our corporate leadership takes very seriously, and we have to stay on top of that at all times. And then customer satisfaction. Again, we're here for you guys. We're an extension of the city and want to be good stewards of your money and your resources. And so we take that very serious in making sure that we take that customer first mindset and do what's best in your interest at all times. Again, focusing on communication and responsiveness and just being organized with it. And our eBuilder software system now, Tremble, that really helps us stay organized and keep all of our files and documentation the way it needs to be to protect your interest in the event that you need all that documentation to deal with issues in the future. and then just really, really wanting to focus on reliable execution of the work and the scope of services and making sure that you're satisfied as our customer. And so there will be, again, with those audits, there will be times where other project managers with the company will want to do audits and do interviews with you guys to make sure that you're getting the value of the service that we're providing and any deficiencies that are identified, that our team improves on that and makes it better. And that's the conclusion. I'll be glad to answer any questions you may have. And thanks again for the opportunity. Thank you.

Thank you for coming. Yes, ma'am. Appreciate it. All right. Mayor Tyler.

Miss Simmons, I'll actually try to be brief and reserve most of my comments for the for the the actual council meeting, the one item I have on the agenda is item 12B, and this is a resolution to approve the tax abatement agreement between the IDB, the Industrial Development Board of the City of Florence, and JAR Properties regarding the construction of the Wilson Hotel in downtown Florence. as short as I can. This is consistent with what we have done with the other hotel project that is going on downtown. I do have quite a few comments that I'd like to add, and I'll save that. I would like the public who's here, whether they wanna speak for or against it, they'll have an opportunity during the meeting, that you'll give them opportunity to do that instead of having to worry about it here. But I will be asking the council to approve these tax abatements and have some follow-up comments once we get into the meeting.

Okay. That's it. All right. Thank you very much. Nothing else come before the council in the work session. We'll take a five-minute break, and then we will start back up.