The Municipal Services Committee met 06/21/2021. I already recapped the updates to the sidewalk maintenance policy, the discussion about the considerations that go into determining street widths, and the vote to ban pole buildings and shipping container storage sheds in Appleton, so I thought I would try to cover the rest of the action items in the meeting that had discussion or comments which were:
- Approve update to Municipal Code Section 4-392 related to electrical work by a home owner
- Anticipated award for Unit Q-21, Pavement Marking Contract (paint). Bids to be opened Monday, June 24, 2021
- Request from U.S. Venture for a street occupancy permit for the northerly 12 feet of temporary parking lot on Lawrence Street be approved through December 31, 2022
Regarding the update to the Municipal Code related to electrical work by a homeowner, Inspections Supervisor Kurt Craanen said he considered this change to be “housekeeping” and providing clarification to an ordinance that already exists. In 2008 they recommended that the code be changed to prohibit homeowners from installing their own electrical service—i.e. WE Energies turning off power to a house at the pole and then the homeowner installing their electrical panel themselves. He said they had trouble with homeowners not being adequately trained to do something like that and the inspectors then being placed in the tough spot of trying to figure out how much help or advice they should give. Inspectors should really just be checking the work, but often when inspectors come through to inspect they educate homeowners and help them through their projects. However, providing that education for a project as big as the installation of electrical service was causing some issues.
He said that it has already been code since 2008 that homeowners are prohibited from installing their own service unless that homeowner has an electrical contractor’s license. Recently they had some questions about how the ordinance is written so the update would be to clarify the code and refer to some state statutes and codes outlining what is required. Basically it clarifies that a homeowner who wants to change their own electrical service has to be a license contractor and be supervised by a master electrician according to state code.
None of the committee members had any questions. Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3) said he thought this definitely made sense and that people messing with the service line in an amateur manner was probably not something the city wanted. He was somewhat surprised that it happens as often as it does and guessed that people think it will be easy and end up biting off more than they can chew.
The update was approved unanimously
They moved on to the “anticipated award for Unit Q-21, Pavement Marking Contract (paint). Bids to be opened Monday, June 24, 2021.”
Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) pointed out that the date was wrong, and it should have been “Monday, June 21, 2021.” The committee was told that could be administratively fixed [which meant that they didn’t need to amend the item].
During the 06/05/2021 committee meeting they had awarded the Unit P-21 Pavement Marking Maintenance Contract which was the contract for their more durable, epoxy pavement marking contract. There were only a few companies in the state who provided that service, but, thankfully, they all tend to do very good work. It was not a Public Works bid but rather a quote establishing unit prices for the project that they were aware of. They typically over-award the budget for the project by approximately 10% with the expectation that there will be other things that come up along the way that will need to be marked. The winning bid was approximately 13% below what the city engineers had estimated the costs would be, and the committee approved the contract for $100,000.
This week, the committee was voting on the Q-21 contract. A staffer explained that this was the sister contract to the P-21 contract they voted on earlier in the month. The earlier contract was an epoxy contract; this one was a waterborne paint contract which was typically going to be for retracing transverse markings such as crosswalks and stop lines. The equipment needed and application methods used are completely different from the epoxy markings, so the city bids these out separately because the contractors are different that those who do the epoxy markings. He said this was probably the 10th year in a row where they received only one bid. But, the company consistently does really good work and have kept their prices at a level that the city thinks is reasonable. There was about a 15% spike in unit prices this year which was consistent with what everybody is seeing and was related to the price of fuel, materials, and global logistical problems. As with the epoxy contract, the city always looks to award the contract for an amount slightly greater than the quoted price because the city always ends up having more, unforeseen work that needs to be done, so that we set that “not to exceed level” slightly higher to allow for that.
Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) asked for some clarification on the 15% increase in unit prices and the increase in contract limit for anticipated work.
The staffer explained those were two, mostly unrelated things. The unit prices did increase, which they had expected. They also award a higher “not to exceed” value to the contract in order to give them flexibility to deal with unknowns and not have to keep coming back to the committee if they need $100 more to do a crosswalk, for example. He said they might spend that extra money or they might not.
Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) wanted to know if this constituted the bulk of the entire amount of pavement marking work for the year. Or if they had the opportunity to do more would could they do more work?
The staffer said, “In the world of pavement markings we’re actually, um…we’re in a pretty good spot right now.” [I kind of love that there’s a world of pavement markings.] He said that in about three years the city was going to see a relatively large spike that corresponds with all the markings they put down for bike lanes 8-10 years ago, and they will have to pay the piper to refresh those. But, right now, in 2021, they have adequate funding to do what they need to do.
Alderperson Doran was just curious if the reason they were consistently only getting one big was, perhaps, they didn’t have enough work for some of those other companies.
The staff said this was just a hyperspecialized filed. There are a lot of companies that do waterborne paint on parking lots, and the city does solicit quotes from several local companies but has consistently not received bids in response. Marking city streets is different than what most of those companies do. HE said it was one thing to go into the Home Depot parking lot at midnight, rope it all off, and stripe it; however, it’s another thing to be on College Avenue between 10pm and 6am dealing with impaired drivers. Additionally, the city’s markings have to be retroreflective, so the glass bead application is another step that makes it different from what the local companies do.
The committee voted 4-0 to award the contract to Crowley Construction Corp in an amount not to exceed $43,000. Alderperson Fenton abstained because she was appearing remotely and had not been able to review the memo related to the contract which had been handed out in Chambers.
The committee then moved on to the “Request from U.S. Venture for a street occupancy permit for the northerly 12 feet of temporary parking lot on Lawrence Street be approved through December 31, 2022”
Director Paula Vandehey explained that this was a very unusual situation. A couple weeks ago, U.S. Venture had dedicated 20 feet of right of way to the city for the construction of a new Lawrence Street (https://allthingsappleton.com/2021/05/16/city-plan-commission-votes-to-approve-rezoning-and-street-vacation-applications-for-us-venture-project/), but now they were going to have a temporary parking lot and they wanted to use part of what they just dedicated to the city as part of that parking lot. The plan was that that would go away when the city moved forward with the Lawrence Street reconstruction in a couple years. It was an unusual situation but city staff had no problem with it.
There may have been some chuckles from the committee members, but they voted unanimously to approve the request.
View full meeting details here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=859284&GUID=765DEFC6-4104-46C7-AC95-F5445C5C27A0&Options=info|&Search=
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