Agenda Item Wording:
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Approval for consolidation of services - Authorize the City Manager to transfer funds from the operational budget to employee salary and benefits and appropriate $640,000 for the purchase of equipment to consolidate specific service delivery for trails, basins, and City provided services in the downtown area.
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Deadline for Action: 12/16/2024
Submitting Department: Community Services
Contact Name and Phone Number: Alvin Dias, Parks and Facilities Manager 713-4564; alvin.dias@visalia.city <mailto:alvin.dias@visalia.city> Jason Glick, Parks and Recreation Director 713-4042; jason.glick@visalia.city <mailto:jason.glick@visalia.city>
Department Recommendation:
It is recommended that the City Council authorize the transfer of funds from the operational budget to employee salary and benefits and appropriate $640,000 for the purchase of equipment to consolidate services for specific landscape maintenance, litter cleanup, sweeping of the trails, landscape maintenance of basins, downtown litter cleanup, sweeping of the downtown parking structures, and maintenance of the downtown parking lots.
Background Discussion:
Staff has found increased benefits with in-house staffing that will increase the level of service for the City. The in-house staff can provide seven (7) days a week services to perform litter cleanup at maintenance locations, perform additional cleaning intervals, and staff special events. With these staff members on-site daily, they will be available to respond to issues that may arise throughout the week, i.e. responding to water leaks, safety hazards, and illegal dumping promptly instead of needing to call in the contractor or call back staff that are off duty. These staff members will also be trained and can clean up spills, food waste, and other issues that have been difficult to complete because of the limitations of current contractual services. The additional staff will also alleviate some of the workload of current staff by completing tasks that were requiring current staff to be pulled from their normal assignments and be redirected to the work performed by contractors that had been missed, and/or was work unable to be performed by current contracted services.
Over the last several years staff has seen a large increase in costs for contractual services. Some of the factors that have created this increase are state prevailing wage requirements, state mandated minimum wage increases, fuel and material costs, and the increase in maintenance frequency needed to meet the demands of the rapidly growing community. Other issues that have contributed outside of the state mandated increases and materials costs are additional services needed to deal with the transient population and increase in usage of City facilities which necessitates a higher, more frequent and flexible level of service.
Staff began reviewing the contractual cost increases several years ago with each Request for Bid (RFB) that was advertised and awarded. As these costs continued to increase, staff began performing cost analysis in different maintenance areas to compare the cost of in-house services vs. cost of contractual services. One of the areas that was reviewed in 2022 was the park janitorial services of park restrooms and park litter cleanup. With this analysis, staff found that the work could be completed with in-house staff and increase the frequency and flexibility of service for the same cost as the contractual services being provided. The decision was made to move forward with in-house janitorial services for the parks. As a result, the Parks Maintenance Division transferred funds from contractual services in the division’s operational budget to hire two (2) full-time Lead Custodial Workers, two (2) full-time Park Maintenance Workers, and four (4) hourly employees. With these additional staff members, the Park Maintenance Division has been more proactive with the janitorial services within the parks, by completing regular second checks daily throughout the year. Previously, this was only completed during the summer months per the contract. We are also able to respond quickly to accidents and incidents in the restrooms and perform the necessary cleaning to keep the restrooms more readily available for park users. Another advantage of additional staff has been providing flexibility to have staff scheduled at different shifts to meet the needs for special events, reservations, and sports groups. We have also found that the additional staff have helped to reduce the camping inside the restroom facilities, with staff actively engaging with the transient population regularly and educating them on the park ordinance rules. Because of these factors, staff has seen a significant reduction in complaints pertaining to the park restrooms. Staff believes continuing this trend as proposed will be beneficial to the citizens who frequent these City facilities.
With several contracts expiring and recently awarded contract costs, staff continued to review and perform cost analysis for several maintenance areas. The largest of these areas was the City trail system. The City’s trail system has continued to grow and is now a total of 25 miles of trails throughout the City and growing. There are also several storm basins with walking trails along with the recently installed trail around the East Side Regional recharge basin G. Staff began performing cost projections for a new maintenance contract for the landscape maintenance of these areas with updated costs to include newly constructed locations that were not on the current contract. Staff also reviewed the costs for several other locations with expiring or month-to-month contracts such as the downtown parking lot maintenance, litter cleanup of the Downtown and Parking Structures, as well as trail locations within the City’s landscape and lighting maintenance contract. Based off recently awarded contracts of the same job scope and after meeting with contractors to negotiate their requested cost increases for services, staff completed a full analysis for the cost of in-house staff compared to the contractual services with these additional increases.
After reviewing these costs, staff found that the costs had increased to the level that in-house staff could be hired to not only perform the current level of maintenance but also increase the frequency of maintenance to these areas. The costs would enable the City to hire one (1) Maintenance Supervisor, one (1) Park Maintenance Technician, and nine (9) Park Maintenance Workers. With this number of staff, additional areas could be maintained to further reduce contractual services costs to the City. Staff will also perform the pavement sweeping within the two parking structures in the Downtown and all the trail sweeping. The street sweeping contract had recently been awarded and saw a huge increase in cost because of the prevailing wage requirements, which increases the base cost, plus the overhead to file the appropriate state-mandated paperwork, etc
The cost savings will also fund the purchase of equipment for additional staff to perform the current maintenance and be able maintain future growth of the recharge basins at East Side Regional Park with the purchase of a new tractor and flail mower. Staff also factored in fuel, parts, and repair costs of additional equipment and included a fleet replacement reserve for replacement once the equipment has reached its life expectancy. Below is a list of the equipment and how it will be used.
Maintenance Equipment:
1. Purchase six (6) half ton pickups ($272,000)- maintenance worker vehicles.
2. Purchase one (1) three quarter ton pickup ($65,000) - technician vehicle.
3. Purchase one (1) retired police vehicle ($8,000) - supervisor vehicle.
4. Purchase one (1) John Deere 5130 tractor & flail mower ($175,000)- flail trails, basins, and disc open spaces.
5. Purchase one (1) half ton sweeper unit ($120,000) - sweep trails, parking structures, and trail/park parking lots.
Staff firmly believes that adding the staffing to perform the services listed above will improve the overall maintenance of the areas and the experience of residents using the facilities throughout the City.
Fiscal Impact:
Staff began analyzing the cost for contractual services versus in-house staffing and found that the contractual costs had increased to the point that the in-house staffing would be a less costly, provide higher frequency, and be a more responsivemeans to complete maintenance.
Below is a five-year cost analysis with employee and equipment costs to include an inflation escalator, and contractual service costs over that same five-year period with Consumer Price Index (CPI) cost increases.
Prior Council Action: None
Other: None
Alternatives: Reject staff’s recommendation to provide in-house services and continue to contract services at a higher cost.
Recommended Motion (and Alternative Motions if expected):
recommendation
I move to approve the transfer of funds from operational budget to employee salary and benefits and appropriate $640,000 for the purchase of equipment to consolidate specific services within the trails, basins, and City provided services in the downtown.
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Environmental Assessment Status: N/A
CEQA Review: N/A
Attachments: Trail and Basin Locations and Acreage, Downtown Parking Lot Map