6.4. SR 02-14-2005 - Laserfiche WebLink

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The City Council next met to discuss its organizational structure on June 14 and at this meeting, the public works director and city Engineer Department were a major topic of discussion. At the end of the meeting, the City Council authorized entering into a retainer agreement with Howard R. Green for the full-time services of Terry Maurer in Elk River. The city has two reports on establishing an in-house Engineering Department dated March 29, 1994 and July 22, 1999, that have previously been distributed to the City Council. These reports were most recently redistributed to the City Council with the June 14,2004 organizational structure memo. An overview of these reports indicate that the city today likely has enough work to keep its own in-house Engineering Department very busy. However, while we will be getting additional services, the department will likely cost the city additional money out of the general fund. The city has generally talked about engineering services in terms of a department of approximately four or five; which includes engineering techs, clerical support, a public works director, and an assistant city engineer. The engineering techs are the employees that pay for themselves most often with the management staff being more administrative in nature and being more fmanced with general fund monies (taxes). While we have enough basic engineering and public improvement work to keep a staff Engineering Department very busy, especially now that we are into the pavement rehabilitation program, it should be stated that we will always need consulting fIrm assistance for large projects and special needs projects such as work at the Treatment Plant. Additionally, it should be noted that it is more palatable for developers to be reimbursing a consulting engineering fIrm for services versus reimbursing the city for staff engineering work. Current Services There is no doubt that the retainer agreement for services from Terry Maurer is working out very well. The city is getting a much better deal from Howard R. Green under the retainer agreement versus our previous arrangement of simply paying for Terry's services on an hourly basis. The retainer agreement allows the city to get more hours at a lower cost. This retainer arrangement was and is viewed as a transition or in-between step from our strictly consultant based relationship for engineering services to establishing our own in-house city Engineering Department. This is consistent with past Council discussion in terms of going slow and gradual towards establishment of a department and not doing the entire department all at once. Based on the success of our current retainer agreement relationship, it would be appropriate to start an in-house Engineering Department from the bottom up. The city can save money on improvement projects by spending money to hire in-house engineering techs. These techs would provide a variety of inspection and plan development and mapping functions under the direction of Terry Maurer. An example of how the in-house tech could save the city money is with the pavement rehabilitation program. A lot of these inspections in the field and a lot of the preliminary planning work could be done by these techs versus paying the consulting fIrm to provide these services. Starting the Engineering Department from the bottom up will allow us to get established so that when we hire an assistant city engineer or public works director, they will be able to come into a situation where the department is somewhat established and they will not have to develop a department as well as manage our consultants and do all the administrative work associated with the Engineering Department. s: \ Council\Pat\2005 \ W orksessions \Engineering Services. doc