The Common Council met 01/18/2023. One of the action items separated out for an individual vote was a critical timing 2023 sole source purchase request for Downtown streetscape elements for the Oneida/Lawrence/Durkee/Morrison street reconstruction project. This item was the subject of a special meeting of the Municipal Services Committee meeting prior to the common Council meeting before being taken up by the Council itself for final approval. The item was unanimously approved, although Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) raised some concerns about the city’s downtown streetscape design guide creating a situation where some of the elements the city needed for the project were only available from one vendor.
I’ve prepared transcripts of both the Municipal Services Committee meeting as well as the Council discussion on the item for your downloading pleasure.
The overall project was discussed fairly thoroughly back in November of 2021. It was noted during that meeting that the street reconstruction would adhere to a number of the city’s overarching plans including the, at that time, fairly recently adopted Downtown Streetscape Design Guide. That design guide included specific styles of things like lighting fixtures, benches, tree grates, trash cans, and bike racks.
Because of the specificity of those styles, the city could not request bids from multiple companies and, instead, needed to enter into sole source contracts with specific companies for the street benches, tree grates, refuse containers, and bicycle racks needed for the project. Additionally, the timing on requesting these items from the companies was critical because production lead times had crown to 20-22 weeks. In order to have those parts available when the streets were being reconstructed, the city needed to request them as soon as possible.
Alderperson Hartzheim was concerned that the fewer opportunities the city had for open bidding from multiple suppliers, the harder it was to be responsible to taxpayers and save money. However, the portion of the city that was governed by this strict style guide was relatively small, stretching from Packard to Lawrence and Badger to Drew. For that reason, she was a little less concerned about the sole source nature of the contracts, but it was still any item of concern.
Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) expressed disappointment that the city had not used this opportunity to engage in some rebranding efforts in the downtown area by incorporating some sort of city branding on the streetscape elements.
Mayor Woodford responded, “Cost is always a consideration when we’re designing projects, and as the Council’s well aware, we’ve been battling higher costs on infrastructure projects, certainly over the last 18 months. So just to answer your question about incorporating more discretionary elements in our designs, we had to be careful about that.”
The Council voted unanimously to approve the sole source purchase request for street benches, tree grates, refuse containers, and bicycle racks related to the Oneida/Lawrence/Durkee/Morrison Street reconstruction project.
View full Council meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1064887&GUID=5B72C5D0-B0E5-4C3E-80CC-12C411D6B617
View full Municipal Services meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1076142&GUID=1909BB07-B524-4B19-95DA-E6EA4BD2EA80
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