City Commission - Regular Meeting

You got me going now, this will get me going again. I was very calm until this. Our next item is the, la la la, where did I go? It's H. H, item H, a resolution, mayor and city commission of the city of Hallandale Beach, Florida, awarding bid 25-26-13, EV bus facility site work, the social shaker plates and construction. I'm like, wow, what do they build, restaurants? No, I'm joking. DBA National General Construction as the lowest responsive and responsible bidder in the amount of $1,760,730, whatever, $1,760,730 providing for effective date. This is brought forward by Director of Public Works. Thank you. Good evening.

Jeff Town again, Interim Public Works Director. Is there a particular question that you have? What would you like me to discuss? Because I'm happy to go through the presentation that was attached to your agenda item if that's what you like.

I have quite a few questions. I can ask you my questions or if you'd rather do the presentation first.

Let's do the presentation.

Okay.

Do you mind if we do the presentation?

IT WON'T TAKE LONG. I'VE BEEN THROUGH IT SO MANY TIMES.

PLEASE. I APOLOGIZE.

SO THE DISCUSSION TOPIC IS THE HORIZONTAL THIS ITEM HERE FOR AGENDA ITEM 26-299 IS FOR THE HORIZONTAL WE CALL IT FIRST PHASE OF THE GROUND WORK ASSOCIATED WITH THE EV BUS CHARGING AND MAINTENANCE FACILITY. which is going to be in the southwest quadrant, and I'm going to show that on the map in a minute, of the DPW complex. This portion has to come first. We have to lay the drainage pipe, lay the foundational work, do the paving, curb cuts, and all of that. All right. There we go. So the presentation talks about the project's summer in history. that this is the horizontal phase, which is the site work, the vertical phase, which is the EV building facility itself, and then construction timeline and budget summary. So this is the site that was formally, before we started doing anything to do and planning for the ultimate EV facility to go on the property. Northwest 3rd Street, was just a dirt path after the entrance gate on the top of the presentation here. And then the box that's marked red was where the former stormwater site was. It was basically a stormwater pond that kept all of the stormwater runoff from our site and kept it on site drained through the ground. The bottom portion in yellow is where the EV facility is going to be located within the site. Just to go over some funding, FDOT did award a grant in the amount of 3.4 million for the purchase of nine buses. They also gave us 2.2 million for the EV charging equipment and infrastructure in order to charge the buses. And we also got a federal mass transit grant for 76,000 that we used to purchase some of the portable generators in case we have power outage, so we can continue to charge the buses. We also purchased three others with local funds, so we have a total of five. The stormwater pond in the DPW compound was eliminated because where the EV bus facility sits now is where all our sanitation vehicles go. So what we had to do is put the stormwater underground, level the ground in the upper northwest section of the property so that we could put a parking lot, put our wash rack system to wash our vehicles, and then move our sanitation vehicles to the northwest corner while we now focus on the southwest corner in order to do the construction of this project. Northwest Third Street, again, the only reason why we really extended it down was so that the buses could eventually come down, go past the guard shack, all the way down to the entrance, the furthest northwest corner, take a left into our complex and come in so that they don't have to maneuver around all the parked cars within our, it's long buses and it's hard for them to get through. So we put some gates, hold on, I went back, we put some, new aluminum gates, seven feet gates down in the northwest portion in preparation for this project. Some of the equipment that we've installed, we worked with FPL and a contractor to install the transformer dedicated to the EV charging equipment for the buses and a transfer switch that will allow us to put, if we wanted to put a permanent generator in there, to transfer the power to the generator to charge the buses in case we had to on an emergency. And we put in the new wash rack section in the northwest corner, and one of the savings that we've been working on through this project is eliminating the second wash rack system. We determined we only needed one, so it took out quite a bit of money from the budget that would have been needed to do the facility itself. The northwest section now looks like this. So the road you can see goes all the way in, turns in, and two separate gates, in and out. And the EV charges are against the outer wall on the westernmost wall, and then on that inner wall where you see the three other arrows. So right now we have nine bus chargers that charge all nine buses that we have. They charge in less than a full night's charge when they're fully functioning. So the next morning, they get down to about 10% charge by running all day. And by morning, when the bus drivers come back, charged back up to 100%. One of the other things that we've done, and one of the comments that one of the commissioners made at the last meeting was the need for a maintenance bay. This is our temporary maintenance bay, which is located in our warehouse in the center of our property, which we had to empty. That was used for other DPW operations in order to set up for the EV bus maintenance. They have one lift set up to maintain one bus at a time. We do a lot of repairs on the buses, tire rotations, tire replacements, any type of door, glass, seat, anything internal to the operations. We have the contracted company that does all of our maintenance. They have their own mechanic. And they do that within the bay that's located in the warehouse. It was never designed to be a maintenance bay. We're making it work. It has restrictions in terms of height because of the roof of the warehouse. So we're always like, don't raise the buses too high. We don't want any damage because that's where the batteries are located. But as you can see, it's very tight in there. They have limited storage and they operate out of a small office to the right for the maintenance crew. which is made up of one person right now.

JT, just for tires, how often do you all change the tires?

We change the tires. We rotate the tires, I think it's every other month because of the needs, because the back end of the buses are a lot heavier than the front end of the buses. So we're constantly rotating the tires or otherwise the tires in the back will just wear out and we'd have to replace them. So we rotate them to get equal wear on the buses. And we also had some issues in the beginning, but we've corrected that since on the tires themselves. But we're past that now. But this is the example of the port. There are temporary lifts that are in the system presently that we had already owned in the system. We converted them over so that the buses could use them. So the southwest corner is currently being used and houses a sanitation fleet. It also housed storing, some dumpsters for street material that is ripped up, concrete, sidewalks, pavement. It was tire waste gets put out there as well. We also have... unused equipment or equipment that's not in the field gets stored out there, so we have to move a lot of pieces on our deck, so to speak, for this project to become full into operation. The sanitation fleet will ultimately move to the northwest portion, where the electric bus chargers are currently located, and then the water, sewer, stormwater, vac trucks will also be parked in that section. So this is what the site looks like as of, I think, March this year, with the aerial photo taken by the PD for us. So you'll see the area outlined in yellow is where the EV bus facility is going to be located in the southwest corner. And that's closest to Northwest 2nd. This is what the configuration of the first phase, the horizontal phase, will end up looking like with this contract that's before you this evening. So you'll have spots on the east wall at the bottom of the map here, if you will, that will be car charging, car parking, and could be set up for future EV charging if we need it to be. You'll have the section that's to the west side in the center of the picture where you have the horizontal parking. That's where the buses will be parked. Part that is to the north side of the property or the right side of this picture that's grayed out is where the building will be located, including the offices and the two-bay maintenance garage. And the north section will also have the southwest section here, which is at the top left. we have still our transformer for the bus charging system, our transfer switch, and also we'll have spots for three more buses in case slanted parking in case we decide in the future to expand the electric bus fleet. And then we'll also have seven or eight parking spots that will be for whether it is the two other buses that we have that are not EV buses that we use and any other type of vehicles that might need to be parked there for employee parking. This is what the, I'm gonna go back one. So the section that I showed you that's on the right side of the map, that is where the building is gonna go to. This next slide shows you what the building's going to look like from an aerial view. So the maintenance bay is the biggest portion right in the middle. It's drive through one way and out the back way. One of the most important parts of the maintenance bay that we need that we don't have now is a rear exit. If, as you know, batteries are electric, if we ever had a fire, we would probably burn down our warehouse right now. There's no fire suppression in the warehouse. So we're really in a precarious situation there. This will allow us, and one of the things we had to do is move some equipment that we were going to have on the west wall, if you will, on the top section of this picture where the buses will drive out. so that we could push the buses out into what's called a burn area with nothing around it but concrete. Right now, if we had a fire, we're certainly not gonna have the guys going inside to the back of the thing and push the buses out. It's just not gonna happen. TO THE RIGHT SECTION OF THE BIG WAREHOUSE BAY WILL BE WHERE THE STORAGE IS AND AN OFFICE AREA FOR THE MAINTENANCE STAFF. AND THEN INSIDE THE OFFICE AREA TO THE LEFT SIDE OF THIS PICTURE, YOU WILL END UP SEEING THE OFFICES, A MEETING ROOM, A LOBBY AREA, BATHROOMS AND THE LIKE. SO THIS IS THE HORIZONTAL PHASE CALENDAR, IF YOU WILL. I'M GETTING OLD, I HAVE TO TAKE OFF MY GLASSES TO SEE. The construction, if you approve this tonight, will be awarded this evening for this contract, which includes 10% contingency on top of the contract amount, as we usually do. The architect has been Saltz-Michelson Architects. The construction award tonight, notice to proceed, will be issued within a month. And then construction will start early next month with contamination removal. We have some contaminated soils there. We've parked a lot of sanitation vehicles over the life of this contract. life of this project and in this section. And then the site work will begin in October and should be done by May with wrap up in June. And then that will finish the horizontal portion and be set up for the vertical, which we'll talk about next. So the vertical, I know this is small, but we try to give you an overall picture of what it would look like inside. The vertical, which is phase two of this project, will begin as we go through the planning and zoning board process in November, December timeframe for hopefully a commission approval award for vertical construction in February of 2027. And then it'll take a full year probably to finish the facility itself with the vertical construction. These are some renderings of what the facility will look like when it is done. You see the two-bay garage on the lower left in the back? That's where I was saying this will be the entrance and the exit will be on the other side. This will be the entrance again and the exit on the other side. So as you can see, there'll be a canopy over the middle section above the charger systems, which will also help protect the charger's useful life because, you know, they have a display screen on them. And then the buses will back in. The charging mechanisms on each bus is located in the rear right, so that's where we plug the buses in. So they'll back in to be closest to the charger. They'll be, you know, abolished there from them backing too far in. and budgetary, which everybody always is concerned about. So originally in the budget, we had 3.4 million for the horizontal, not knowing where it would come in, but one of the things we've done is we have valued the design of this for quite a while and have put a lot of resources into designing only what we need in order to build an EV bus charging and maintenance facility that will serve us for a long time in the future. We've picked apart the design, how many wash racks we have, how much foundation we have, how much concrete we have to have, what do the gates have to look like, how many gates do we have to have, the inward constructability of the project. So on the horizontal, we did a lot of homework. We got the design down so the contract before you with contingency is $2 million basically, $2,024,000. That was a lot of hard work. I have to say we spent an incredible amount of time, a lot of staff resources, a huge team committed to this project made up of procurement, budget, finance, DPW, city manager's office, DSD, I'm forgetting anybody's CM. I think that's most of the team that meets regularly, but procurement was heavily involved in helping us out throughout this whole process as well. So before you tonight is a horizontal portion. If we spend according to plan, And if we spend the full amount of the contingency of this contract, that will leave just under $1.5 million available for the vertical construction. We're estimating the vertical construction to be about $3.6 and change, plus a contingency on top of that. and all the furnishings that have to go in it, which is furniture, storage racks, equipment, lifts, forklift for the equipment, all in, we're thinking, $4.5 to $5 million for the phase two portion of this. So the net difference between the two is about $3 to $3.5 million that we need to identify funding for between now and probably February-ish timeframe. The project itself is... Also has an area, I forgot to mention this, also an area inside for educational purposes. We have a walkway with a glassed-in wall so that students can come, learn about EV technology, EV bus transit systems, where we will have guided tours in there for the public, students who want to learn about mass transit and how all that works. So that's a real cool component of this building as well, where it also be educational as well.

Wonderful.

Happy to take questions or answer any that you may have.

You're on deck.

Okay, thank you, Mayor.

So first of all, great presentation.

I just wanna say that it's clear that you guys have done a lot of work just based on the bids that we received back. I'm almost worried that the bids came back so low. The lowest bid relative to some of the other bids was significantly lower, which... almost scares me a little bit about whether we're gonna see change orders coming through. But the work obviously for the horizontal portion is a great value in my opinion. And I think I'm glad that we're doing it. I did read that there was a 15% contingency. You mentioned 10, is it 15 or 10?

There's a certain portion of contingency in this contract. for the soil remediation because we're not 100% sure. Once we dig, if we send it off, it'll be good. So that's the only reason why we added a little bit extra because of the soil remediation.

So it's 10% for the contract, another 5% in cases of soil remediation? Yeah. Okay. And then... the so so um my my overriding concern obviously is the total cost right uh walk out the door uh what are we spending as a city on these uh on these buses and and i you know i think if we could roll back uh the tape to when we first decided to go down this path of electric buses What we did is we took a lot of small steps because they were all reasonable steps, but if we look back and look at the total cost now, maybe we wouldn't have made the choice. I don't know, it's hard for me to say, but maybe we would have said, you know what, even with all of the funding that we received, from outside was it worth the amount of effort and energy and time that we put into our iCloud bus service. I don't know how many residents use it on a regular basis, I don't know off the top of my head. And I don't know what this, even now with the total cost, I'm thinking it's closer to eight million, so two million for the horizontal, five million for the, and we're already 1.3 million for design.

And we had grant funded the full portion of the expenditures for the infrastructure already installed. And we did the stormwater section, but we probably would have done the stormwater section anyways. We needed it for storage.

I think it's great, and I think the horizontal thing is a great value for that reason, if nothing else. I mean, we needed to do it regardless. But this represents significant money, and when I look at the highest and best use of our tax dollars, have we stopped to look back to say, I guess what I'm saying is I don't want us as a city to have our goal is whatever it takes to keep an EV bus system if it's gonna cost us so much more to maintain an EV bus system than to go back to a previous system. And I'm saying that as somebody who's a huge supporter of EV bus systems. I supported this project for that reason. But... If we take... What did we end up with, 10 million after design and everything is all in, eight million total? Probably eight. Closer to eight million in total. So almost a million dollars a bus. We have nine buses, eight million dollars. I mean, those are pretty nice places for us to keep our buses, and obviously very necessary based on your, unless we looked at renovating the facility that is there, right, and trying to figure out a way to do this for less money. I like the way this facility looks. don't get me wrong, from an investment standpoint, but highest and best use, just the number that steps out at me, $5 million for the building, we could fund free Uber in the city for 10 years for $5 million. Now that doesn't address a lot of people who need to use our bus system to get to places outside of the city, like Aventura Mall and Young Circle and the tri-rail. So the other concern, too, is that we are doing, we're continuing to do this in pieces, right? And so what I stated earlier is that every time that we've seen something about EV buses, it's been a reasonable choice. Tonight's choice is reasonable as well. But if we had it all in one package, we might have said no. I don't know. And I would rather have had this item come up when the building was designed and when we had an actual finished design, because this piecemeal process, it lends itself to us saying, well, we've already made this investment, we have to keep going in making these investments. And so, I just wanna be careful about, and it's not, I wanna be careful about where this is taking us and making sure that we're looking at these numbers to ensure that the numbers make sense as a standalone investment relative to what else we could do with those same dollars. So this item for the horizontal part of it, I will support tonight. I think it's a good investment. I think it makes sense for us to do it and I think it's a great value for what we're getting. I would just ask city staff, city manager to take a look at this holistically to ensure that there isn't alternatives. And staying with electric buses, are there outsourcing opportunities that might help us? Or is this going to be the most economical way for the city to continue to provide this bus service to our residents? It's a great bus, it looks great, I'm thrilled with the electric side of it, but at what cost is it to our residents? That's I think something that we really have to take back, take a step back and look at at a much higher level. So all that said, city manager, I think I've made my point. I will make a motion to approve the item And then I hope that before this item comes back for the rest of the construction, for the building construction that we really consider whether there isn't better alternatives that might serve the public better. And maybe this is, after we do an analysis, maybe this still remains the best solution for the city going forward. Thank you, Mayor.

I'll second it just for discussion. I have just a very quick comment to make. Thank you. I think, Mayor, were you the one that asked for the presentation?

Yes. So thank you. I think it shed light more on what we're getting and the multi-purpose use of what we will, at the end, result.

So I appreciate the presentation because you also touched on a process that I'm not familiar with, which is multi, I don't want to say multi-departments that are involved in this, a procurement department, which I wholeheartedly know that, and through the Mayor, CM, Director Luce is, I am sure you're watching every penny and every dollar. So to all the departments in DPW, all the departments that you mentioned, and city staff, thank you very much. I also wanted to add through the mayor, Dr. Earl, This gentleman in front of us is an absolute, you're an absolute asset to our city. I thank you very much for your work. You're a consummate professional. I just wanted to publicly thank you and thank staff. And while I'm doing that, I meant to earlier today when I was driving on Three Islands, I wanted to text, not Three Islands, oh God. Sorry, I'm still with... I wanted to send Dr. Earl a text message and Ms. Finn to just say like, wow, wow. I mean, it's just, it's wow. Thank you to everyone. Finally, we're getting to a place where we can be results when we're seeing our dollars spent and where the money is actually, how it's being spent. But also, you start being proud of this city and the way that it's... the appearance and hopefully it'll drive more people to want to not just transient of driving through to make a shortcut from Aventura, but actually to stop and spend some dollars in the city and maybe even move here. So that's it. I just wanted to share my gratitude.

I was remiss. I missed one very important partner in all of this, which is Dr. Shen and her team of transportation and mobility. Hey, between DPW and transportation and mobility, Dr. Shen and Igor Kaminars, the hours we've spent together trying to work through all the intricacies of, you know, everything, I mean, it's like, Every part of the puzzle has to work all at the right time in sequence, or otherwise this just won't work.

So my comment equally applies to you and your department as well.

First of all, I wasn't going to jump in. My button has lit. You're up. But I agree 100%. Amazing. You know, you've always been stellar. You know, it gives you a heartburn a bit, and you have to recall, and not to, I step back a little bit. This has been ongoing. What did you, this started in when? 2019? 2019? 2019? Yeah, so a lot of these costs, a lot of these costs, and it's interesting, I'm sitting here, I am listening, I'm pretty good at active listening, that I scrolled through, for every dollar deferred in infrastructure and O&M, it'll cost $4 later. so if you do the math and we're getting heartburn over this we know construction costs are so high and the ongoing cost of it but taking a step back saying well what if we didn't do electric buses okay i think they're going to be around for a while i don't think they're going anywhere we just haven't done them But either way, we're going to be able to have a facility that's used that we can actually be able to utilize in the future, whether it's a regular bus or an electric bus. But the thought occurred to me, if we have these charging stations, are they multifaceted? Like if we want to be able to have people come and charge or I'd asked this before, any other, no, but any other agencies, if they end up going to like a multi... No, I'm saying like any, in other words, I said like another partnership with another city or another agency that has electric buses to be able to use it. Never mind. God, he's looking at me like I'm crazy. I know it's a security issue. I know it's a security issue. I know all that. Yeah. But they're not doing during the day. They're on the road.

The only thing that I would say to that is we were looking for ways when our charges went down to find another partner that would partner with us to charge buses. So there is a need for that type of cooperation between agencies with similar infrastructure. I wouldn't open it up to the public because we are a secure facility, but there are times in which cooperative agreements with other communities or the county bus system, if they use the same type of infrastructure for charging during the day, we'd be at least amenable to the thought process.

And I know you laugh about trash trucks, but trash trucks are ideal for electric. Stop, start, short distance. I mean, it makes sense. And I know that they're testing them.

So someday, to your point,

It's very painful to spend money, I know, but if we don't, if we keep kicking the, what is it, kicking our can down? Dr. Earl.

Thank you very much, Madam Mayor. So this has really been a labor of love for the entire team. This began around 2020.

You said it's like giving birth. We're already there. We're pregnant. We've got to finish and deliver.

Yeah, this is, you know, if you hear the term, fits and starts. But, you know, I want to thank Commissioner Butler for his comments. I want to thank Commissioner Lehmertab as well for your kind words. So here's the interesting thing about this project. It started around 2020. And in 2020, we had this big push to be green, and that was a commission directive for us. And so we were gonna make all of our fleet green, and so these buses were a result of that policy back in 2020. Now, the interesting thing with our buses is we have a situation in which we are the last man standing, so to speak, to use that phrase, because when we did the research, on what type of buses we were going to get, Broward County, and I believe those in Miami-Dade County, were using Proterra buses. And we said, no, we're gonna go a different path, and the county was not happy with us when we went that different path. And so we used BYD buses, and sure enough, all the Proterra buses, whether it's in Miami-Dade or whether it's here in Broward County, they don't work. So we made actually the best choice. Now, the commission, this was really one project for years, and the commission even approved the previous site plan and the plans for this one facility at the time. So when it was designed, we then went in to do the costs, to find out what the costs were, and we had been told, in fact, we told, we had instructions to design a project that would cost X. And the project that we got back, even though we had very specific instructions, was a project that was one and a half times, almost two times more than we told our designer to design. So it really was, this was never meant to be piecemeal. Now we know we had $3.4 million in grant money. And I know this commission will remember We messed up with FDOT in around 2019 when we rejected half a million dollars of FDOT funds. I'm sure this commission will remember that. And so we've been playing very nice with FDOT since that period of time. So FDOT gave us $3.4 million towards this project, towards the purchase of these buses. But it really was one project. And the costs, as you said, Madam Mayor, they escalated. And we questioned the costs. And so we came back in and began to value engineer. When we got that $12.5, $13 million number, we said that was crazy, right? Right, because that was what the quote came back in. Remember, we had instructed Fife. So we came back, when we priced it out, it was almost $13 million. And at that time, even though you all had approved the project, there was no way I was ever gonna bring you back a $13 million bus facility. So we then broke it up into pieces that we could manage. And the first piece was a horizontal piece And then the second piece became the vertical construction piece. And as JT in the presentation you saw, it was around $3.5, $3.6 million that we allocated just for the horizontal piece, just to take care of the basic, basic driveway infrastructure of the bus. And I think you remember, Commissioner Butler and Madam Mayor, That retention pond that JT showed, so we are running out of space at the DPW facility. So we had to then pave that over to make more room for all of our sanitation vehicles, our buses, and everything else. So there's a whole design way of thinking that went into this. And then we had to figure out now the vertical construction. And vertical construction, our instructions were to have a metal building That was no more than approximately $2 million. And we are shooting for that, because that was, not to say that's going to come in, I'm hoping it'll come in around less than five, because that's what we said from the very beginning that we wanted, was a metal building, and that's the instructions that we gave, a metal building, because we wanted to reduce our costs. And so now, with the fact that, and I have the same concerns that you did, Commissioner Butler, when I saw the 1.7, but a bit is a bit, and they went through the process, and we'll deal with that. But now that we have a lot more of the money than we did a month ago, in terms of the vertical construction portion of this. And I think we're gonna be able to do that, but I just wanted the commission to understand that this really was one project. You actually approved the site plan. You approved previous designs. We came back in, value engineered, significantly split the project to be able to to to fund the portions that we could and then um i think we are much closer today than we are to that second phase which is the vertical construction and hopefully we'll be able to bring you back something sooner than later but i really do have to thank the team this like when we when we meet on this and If you want to join us tomorrow at 10 o'clock in 219, you're more than welcome to. We have a room full of folks from every department in here because everyone is committed to making this project work. And quite frankly, we all just want to get this project done so we can go and focus on some other things as well. This has been taking up our time. But it's a labor of love. And I believe we have, what, 100,000 writers? How much of over 24,000 writers a month for our cloud system. So we have a significant, in fact, it's 4,000 above our previous average last year. So we have more residents who are using this system. And so when we talk about these maintenance, the maintenance of the vehicles, it's so critically important. for us to do that. So I want to thank you all again for your support. I want to thank staff for all of their hard work. And trust me, they've been working very hard. And just want to kind of give you the layout of how we got to this point. And JT, thank you again for your leadership.

You have a great team, Dr. Earl. We had a motion yet?

Yeah, we did a motion in a second. I just want to say real quick, thank you, Dr. Earl, for that. That's great to hear about the $24,000. It helps the justification so much better, right, when we're looking at the cost of why we're doing this and creating a justification. And that's, I think, what we just need to keep doing. And I appreciate the value engineering that you guys have done. because it does, it can't get away from us. And I don't want us, I know it's a labor of love, but I don't want us to forget why we're doing it, right? At the end of the day, it isn't to have an EV bus, right? It's for mobility of our residents and highest and best use of our tax dollars.

If we're moving 24,000, that's great. So yes, thank you, Mayor.

And thank you, Dr. Earl. And thank you, Dr. Shen and JT.

Vice Mayor Lanzaro is absent. Commissioner Limital? Yes. Mayor Cooper? Yes. Commissioner Adams? Yes. Commissioner Butler? Yes. Motion carries 4-0.