| Today's Feature Committee Recommends Tri-State.
Public Works Committee members
voted Tuesday afternoon to retain the services of
Tri-State Engineering as the City’s contract
engineer. The motion made by Committee Member
Charlie Bastin was to retain the engineering
services at new rates for a three year period.
The contract still has to be approved by the full
Council.
Tri-State has served as the
City’s contract engineer since the 1995/96
fiscal year and did some work for the City during
1993-1995 prior to the contract. Their contract
has been renewed on an annual basis each year
since 1995/96. The current contract expires June
30, 1998.
According to Steve Lett of
Tri-State, there has been no increase in fees
charged to the City during the three years of the
contracted services. Lett said the new rates
which the Committee approved are based on the
percentage increase in City employee salaries
since the 1994/95 fiscal year. The rates reflect
an increase of approximately 10 percent and are
valid for the life of the contract.
"You have at your disposal
all the experience of all the people at
Tri-State," said Lett. "We think that
is a big plus to the City over having one staff
engineer."
Tri-State averages 25 full-time
staff members including five professional
engineers.
Assistant to the City Engineer
Joe Butler spoke in support of Tri-State and in
support of the request that a longer contract be
negotiated.
"It would be better for
the Engineering Department if we knew who we were
going to have from year to year, at least for a
three year period, instead of worrying about it
at budget time every year," said Butler.
Butler gave Committee members a
comparison of the engineering practices of 12
other Southwest Missouri cities which showed
three have a contract city engineer, four have a
licensed engineer on staff and six rely solely on
project engineering on an as-needed basis. One of
the cities, Lebanon, has a staff engineer, a
contract engineer and also uses project
engineering as needed. Of the six cities with a
staff engineer or contract engineer, 3 also use
project engineering on a need basis.
"One of the problems of
having a staff engineer by himself is that he
can’t replace contract engineering services
because he doesn’t have the people to do
it," said Butler. "It would be
inappropriate to hire a staff engineer without
giving him some additional staff to work
with."
Butler offered estimates on the
cost of hiring a staff engineer. Salary,
benefits, equipment, an automobile and 2
additional staff people would cost approximately
$140,000 annually. In addition, Butler pointed
out, the City would still need occasional outside
consulting engineering services.
Engineering fees for the three
years the City has contracted with Tri-State have
ranged from $31,728 in 1995/96 to a projected
$60,000 for 1997/98. Lett pointed out that the
higher number for the current year is a result of
the City requesting help on five specific
projects: Civil War Road, the Mall Sidewalk, the
police station parking lot, Myer’s Park and
the Library.
"We like the situation we
have with Tri-State now," said Butler.
"They’re in the same building, we use
them daily and they use us daily....it works very
well."
"We have something that
works," said Committee Member Larry Ross.
"Can we just go to the Council and recommend
that we continue the service on a three year
plan....if it ain’t broke, don’t fix
it."
"That’s exactly what
came up last year," said Committee Chair
Bill Fortune. "We were looking at changing
and when we started to look at it we
couldn’t find anything that was broken, we
couldn’t find a savings in cost and there
was no valid reason that ever came up as to why
we should change what we had other than somebody
just didn’t like it."
"I think it would be a
bonus, really, for the City if we could lock them
in at this rate for three years," Bastin
commented before making his motion to retain
Tri-State as the City contract engineer.
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