Cemetery Commission - Regular Meeting

I call the meeting to order. It's 4.06. And I could be the roll call. Bobby Warren.

Here.

Brenda Butler. Here. Cindy Casperis is absent right now. She may join us online. Tim Ballard-Kemper is absent right now. Dave Sullivan.

Here.

Faith Van Gillen.

Here.

Debbie Thomas.

Here.

Hey, Chair, you have a call.

Very much. The first item is the citizen comment period.

We don't have anyone signs.

Let the record reflect that no citizens showed up to comment. Moving on to minutes, consider approval of the minutes or disapproving minutes of last month. Does anyone see any corrections, additions, substitutions, or anything to do with the minutes?

unless they are presented to us in draft.

And we accept the minutes as presented. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. I'm in favor, too. Well, moving on to the next item on the agenda, Agenda is the reports. We will receive a brief report from scheduled commissioners who check the condition of the cemetery.

How is it? Screen mode. They're mowing today and they're going to wheaty and edge and Jean says that Monday or Tuesday it'll be complete. The grass will be growing again. And then by Friday they'll need it again.

I remember there was somebody talking about the grass is growing high over there. But I was over there a couple of days ago, and it would look beautiful to me.

Well, it gets away. I mean, I wasn't up in it. Within three to four days of completing the mow cycle, it is mowing again. Well, that's a problem. Yes.

It's a problem to have.

It's got a lot of deer out.

Yeah, the bucks are getting their antlers.

Yeah. They're all mossy. We saw a weapon for four of them.

So there were two comments we noted. Oh, good. And one of them, and I should have paid attention to the streets, but at the corner of Street A and Street B, and you know where it is, there's a wisteria tree that has some seriously gnarly, ugly, dead branches. And that wisteria tree, I think, needs to be pruned. And so.

I'm going to take this.

Gene has no, we've passed by it twice, so we know right where it's located. And the other thing is I'm concerned about staining on the slab of the columbarium. Now, it has probably been dirt. sitting in standing water for years. I don't know how old that slab is. Five years?

Well, the water tower was there. We repurposed the foundation from the water tower.

Well, but it's been covered. At any rate, there is a lot of discoloration where clearly standing water has been left after a rain, and dirt blowing in the wind has settled in the standing water, and then it's been left to bake in the sun. And I jumped out with a little whisk broom, thinking that it would just be dust, and that it just needed to be swept. It's in the concrete. It is down in the substance of the slab. And so I don't think that it's, I don't think it looks the way we want it to look. I know that there are some light colored areas and some dark colored areas. I believe the dark colored areas represent the areas which will someday be the extensions off of the center column. But that discoloration crosses the dark areas and the light areas and it's ugly. And it needs to be It needs to be documented that this is, I think this needs to be a maintenance item. Gene says he thinks he may know a way to resolve it. And so I would love to find out if Gene's strategy works, but I think it's something that needs to be, it can't be just left like it is now. It's unsightly. And I'm hoping that maybe it can be added as a, Bert's not here, but it needs to be, you know, it might be an annual thing. It might be a bi-annual thing, but it's something that needs to be done. If it can be corrected, it doesn't have to be done after every rainstorm, but I just don't think we want it to look like it looks today.

Okay. And it's not green. It's like almost, it's a black almost.

Well, you know, it's dirt. It's dirt that has baked into the concrete.

And it's actually to bobby dub the lichens. It could be a little bit of old.

It's probably old.

That's where it's old.

We have the same things on the picatinny quartz.

I will spray it down. There's a product that we use on headstones called D2.

It's amazing.

It's fast acting. You spray it on, and over time, and you'll do multiple applications of it, and you can take a darkened, even a white marble. And it's not pristine, but over time, I mean, it makes a – Very conspicuous, very notable improvement. And I'll just have Scott spray some D2 on it. And Bobby, now that said, you don't spray it today and you go up there tomorrow and it's gone.

It's not that.

This is weeks. Weeks. But I've made a note, and I'll have Scott. I've got some D2. I buy that for the occasions that someone wants a headstone. Maybe, you know, spray it on there and that's all we do. I mean, you can take a soft brush, but we're not going to do that on that concrete. I think it'd be ineffective, but I will spray D2 on it. And that'll be even the fact that it's a flat surface and we'll sit there and absorb it to it. So I will try D2. And if we can see an improvement on it at our next meeting, well, then that's our solution. And if we can't, Then the other solution would be a high-pressure sprayer, but the challenge there is you don't have water. Our max water pressure throughout that entire cemetery is 25 pounds, and you don't really have that everywhere. And so water is, for a high-pressure sprayer, I've got a 4,000 PSI water sprayer that will cut that water, literally cut it. Yes, absolutely. But I think you have to be careful with that. But let me try the D2 and see how that works.

No, I guess we do need a cemetery. All right. Well, shall we move on? Item number three is receive a brief staff report on the status of the cemetery expansion project.

So I do have an update. We are currently doing a request for we're doing RFPs. So that's all James told me.

Oh, it's out? They've issued an RFP? That's good news.

Now, what is an RFP? I'm sorry. It's a request for proposal.

Okay. Okay. And they will propose to do what? The work on the project, the construction, so essentially it's right.

Yes. Same thing.

Okay, cool.

But an RFQ is a request for a quotation. Which means they are bound by whoever submits the lowest bid that's qualified response. which doesn't always get you the best. And an RFP is a request for a proposal, which frees the city up to look at all of those and then sit down and negotiate with all the submitters or whomever it is that they, let's say you get six bids and three of them were the most attractive to you. It gives them, The flexibility to sit down, all of us put a bid in, and they're going to sit down with Clay and Clay because they had the 2 best offers and then they'll negotiate a deal. And that's that's the advantage of an RFP. As opposed to an RFQ or an RFB.

So it's not based just on low cost, but qualifications and what type of work is being done.

RFP will generally, Debbie, allocate the bid letting process. There will be a percentage that's based on price, of course. And then there's going to be a percentage that's based on responsiveness, quality, references, right down the list. And so they can take all of those things and combine them because your lowest bid is not always your best.

Exactly. And so I've discovered that.

And so I'm glad to hear they're doing it by our people.

Thank you. Do you have any estimated time? How long does this process take?

I don't have that, but I can find out. Maybe I can email someone.

Well, it's okay. Maybe Gene has some institutional observational experience with it.

Oh, as far as the bid process? How long it takes. They'll have an opening, say. I mean, they'll put the RFP out there. You're generally probably four weeks, maybe, response time for it. Then they'll get in and they'll do it and they'll go through. But from issuance to probably award the contract, two to three months, that's probably more average.

That's better. I was thinking six. Good.

Hmm.

Well, that's encouraging. Also exciting. This is the most exciting cemetery.

Now, I don't want to paint them into a corner, but I've just successfully completed an RFP for the cemetery operations and stuff in Lockhart, where I've been for 35 years. And that was probably four to six weeks. From the time they put it out, you respond to it. And then by the time that they go through and sit down and negotiate with you and then make an award and I signed the contract to that now started probably 4 to 6 weeks ago.

I wouldn't expect this 1 to be a stance.

I wouldn't either.

We don't have an institutional. This is a 1 time hit, right? Okay, moving on to item woman emails or question and answer session with press in public. I see no press in public moving on to item woman numeral five. Your motion to adjourn. I make a motion to adjourn. Second. Second. All in favor. Aye. Aye.

Falling down on the job, Faye. We didn't break up. 4.05, you're 13 minutes on this one.

It's an exciting 13 minutes. Absolutely. It finally happened.