Municipal Services Committee Approves Plan Review Services Contract With E-Plan Review, Reviews And Approves Additional Agenda Items

The Municipal Services Committee met 02/21/2022. Outside of the No Mow May Resolution which they voted to hold until the 03/07/2022 Municipal Services Meeting and a resident’s appeal of a $75 tire removal fee which the committee voted to deny, there were a number of other action items on the agenda.

Of those remaining items, the one that took up the most discussion time was item 22-0191, the request to approve Plan Review Services Contract for Large Projects to E-Plan Exam.

A city staffer explained that the Inspections Division does plan review for commercial projects when those projects are small—under 100,000 cubic feet for remodels of existing buildings and 50,000 cubic feet for new buildings.

While the city has an architect on staff and could theoretically perform large plan reviews, they do not have the staff time necessary to do that. As a result, all of those larger projects go to the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services. The state has a slow turn-around time and takes 4-8 week to do a plan review. That compares to Appleton’s average turnaround time on smaller projects of only 7 days.

The city solicited bids from two private companies to do the plan reviews, McMahon, a local company, and E-Plan Exam which he said was based in Franklin, WI.  One was McMahon, a local company, and the other was E Plan Exam, they’re a company out of Franklin. [To be pedantic, their website lists their location as Brookfield which is close to Franklin.]

Based on the companies’ proposals, city staff was recommending that they go with E-Plan Review. There were some differences in the proposals, but the biggest difference was that while Appleton would not have to pay a fee for the services of either company because each would charge the customers directly the same fees the State of WI would charge them, E-Plan Review would give Appleton 10% of those fees whereas McMahon would simply keep the fees. Just by letting E-Plan Review provide the services, Appleton would get 10% of the fees.

Staff was recommending a 5-year contract which had already been put together by the legal services team.

Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) who is not a member of the committee but was present, pointed out that the memo indicated E-Plan Review had a 14-day turnaround and opposed to a 7-day turnaround for McMahon. She was curious if that was something they should be concerned about.

The staffer answered that both turnaround times were better than what the state could provide. [And it seems to me there is a difference between “attempting” a 5-day turnaround like McMahon proposed and “guaranteeing” a 14-day turnaround like E-Plan Review did.]

Additionally, E-Plan Review would provide more services. McMahon’s proposal was only for Building and HVAC plan reviews whereas E-Plan Review could Building, HVAC, plumbing fire sprinkler, and fire alarm plan review, so the Fire Department would benefit from this also.

Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) who was a member of the committee said he appreciated the staff working to make the plan review process quicker. Out of curiosity, he wanted to know what it would take for staff to be able to review these plans in-house. Would they be looking at adding positions to be able to take on that extra work?

The staffer responded that they did have an architect on staff and could perform all plan reviews if they wanted to, but that would mean their commercial building inspector would do nothing but plan reviews, and he wouldn’t be able to keep up with that. They didn’t have close to the number of staff needed to do these big plan reviews.

Alderperson Doran asked hypothetically if they added staff, would the fees charged for the service cover the cost of that additional staff.

The staffer said he couldn’t answer that off the top of his head and would have to run some numbers.

Alderperson Doran also wanted to know if there had been other firms they looked at besides just these two or were there other firms in the area that provided these services.

The staffer said that they knew about McMahon because they perform plan reviews for Grand Chute and Oshkosh. There are possible other engineering firms around the state that would do this, but McMahon was local. E-Plan Review just started performing this for cities in the area. He thought Kaukauna currently had a contract with them. They did not solicit proposals from any other firms, and he wasn’t aware of any others right now who did plan reviews although that didn’t mean there weren’t firms out there.

Alderperson Doran wanted to clarify that the fees these companies would charger were going to be the same as what the State currently charges.

The staffer said they would be with one exception. E-Plan review didn’t like the state’s fee schedule for plumbing, so they had their own.

Alderperson Doran asked if a contractor didn’t want to pay the extra fee to E-Plan would they still be able to go to the state, or would they be required to use E-Plan.

The staffer said that the draft contract they had put together gave the city a lot of flexibility. The city could do any plan review they wanted, they could give E-Plan review the smaller ones that the city is currently doing, and a contractor could go to the state if they wanted. The contract gave E-Plan Review non-exclusive rights to do plan reviews. 

Alderperson Doran asked if there was any liability on the city’s part of contracting this work out.

The staffer said he talked to the attorneys and the contract language included indemnifications and required that insurance be in place.

Alderperson Doran asked if staff had done any outreach with industry groups, stakeholders, or developers to get their input on this.

The staffer said he hadn’t talked to any himself, but he knew that they had been approached over the years by people asking if Appleton could start doing what Grand Chute and Oshkosh were doing.

Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3) who was the chairperson of the committee piggybacked off of Alderperson Doran’s previous question regarding what they would need for staff to do this in-house. He wanted to know, if they did bring this in-house, if the work would be consistent or if there would be periods of heavy workloads and minimal workloads throughout the year. Would there be enough steady work load to justify looking at that possibility of adding staff?

The staffer said it could certainly keep something busy but agreed the amount of work was not consistent.

There were no more questions and the committee voted 4-0 to approve the contract.

They then moved on to items 22-0192 and 22-0193. Both of these items were connected.

Director of Public Works Paula Vandehey explained that they had hired Walker Parking Consultants to help the city look at what they might do in regards to ordinances, policies, and operations to help make sure that good, convenient parking was available for the new library.

Two of those recommendations were (1) to permit overnight parking in the Yellow Ramp on only levels 6 and 7 and (2) to no longer allow city owned vehicles to be parked for more than two hours in the library parking lot.

These changes were approved 4-0 with no questions.

The last item to garner any discussion was it 22-0195 a “request from Greenfire for a street occupancy permit for a crane and construction staging area to extend 30 feet into the Oneida Street right-of-way at 103 W. College Avenue through December 31, 2022.”

Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) who was a member of the committee said that she had noticed on the permit that it listed the occupancy type as “permanent” and she wanted that explained more fully.

Director Vandehey answered that by Council policy, staff was allowed to approve a temporary street occupancy permit which, by definition, was less than 45 days. After that it was considered permanent and needed Council approval, but the definition of “permanent” in that situation was not what would normally be considered “permanent”.

The remainder of the items were pretty straightforward and garnered no comment from staff or questions from committee members, and all of them were approved 4-0.

• Item 22-0194 Request to replace hotel signage on the College Avenue Skywalk with sign for Vince Lombardi’s Steakhouse.
• Item 22-0201 Approve parking restriction change on the 800 block of W. Eighth Street (Badger Avenue to Pierce Avenue). Follow-up to six-month trial period.
• Item 22-0202 Approve parking restriction change on the 100 block of W. College Avenue adjacent to Houdini Plaza. Follow-up to six-month trial period. 
• Item 22-0203 Approve installation of STOP signs on Locust Street at Oklahoma Street. Follow-up to six-month trial period.
• Item 22-0212 Preliminary Resolution 1-P-22 for Concrete Pavement, Driveway Aprons and Sidewalk Construction be adopted and refer the matter to the Finance Committee to determine the assessment rate.

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=922397&GUID=189A4237-2841-4AF6-A758-ACF6AEDFE307