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Community Development Agency, Transportation Division, recommending the Board approve and authorize the Chair to sign the First Amendment to Agreement for Services 11-53721 with Sycamore Environmental Consultants for reallocating budget between projects, updating the Fee Schedule, and changing contract language to allow for the Contract Administrator to authorize additional budget transfers between projects, if necessary.
FUNDING: Highway Bridge Program and Regional Surface Transportation Program. (Federal Funds)
Body
DEPARTMENT RECOMMENDATION
Community Development Agency, Transportation Division (Transportation), recommending the Board approve and authorize the Chair to sign the First Amendment to Agreement for Services 11-53721 (First Amendment) with Sycamore Environmental Consultants (Consultant) for reallocating budget between projects, updating the Fee Schedule, and changing contract language to allow for the Contract Administrator to authorize additional budget transfers between projects, if necessary.
DISCUSSION / BACKGROUND
The Board approved the Agreement for Services 11-53271 (Agreement) on May 22, 2012 (Item 21). The Agreement provides environmental services for the Newtown Road at South Fork of Weber Creek - Bridge Replacement Project, CIP 77122 (Newtown Road), the Silver Fork Road at South Fork American River - Bridge Replacement Project, CIP 77124 (Silver Fork), and the Hazel Valley Road at EID Canal - Bridge Replacement Project, CIP 77125 (Hazel Valley).
The Consultant has completed much of the environmental work on both Silver Fork and Hazel Valley. The Silver Fork environmental document was adopted by the Board on February 10, 2015 (Item 11), and the Hazel Valley environmental document was adopted on June 2, 2015 (Item 23). The only work remaining under this Agreement on these two Projects is preconstruction surveys and construction monitoring.
The Newtown Road Project has required more environmental work than the Silver Fork or Hazel Valley projects. The environmental field work began in 2012 and some cultural resources were observed. The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) determined that additional cultural resource investigation work would be needed to satisfy the California Environmental Quality Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Throughout 2013 and 2014, Transportation held a public meeting and worked with the Consultant, Caltrans, local Native American tribes, and affected property owners to evaluate design alternatives and obtain permission to re-enter private property to continue cultural resource field investigations. When the cultural resource investigation work resumed, more indications of cultural resources were discovered. Caltrans again required more field investigations, specifically, additional trenching to determine the presence or absence of cultural resources within the construction footprint of the design alternatives. This additional cultural resource investigation work will require $68,977 beyond the budget allotted for the Newtown Road Project in the Agreement, and will cover planning, field work, and subsequent analysis and reports, and it will provide a contingency in case still more cultural resource investigation work is required.
The Hazel Valley Project has enough budget remaining in the Agreement to completely fund the proposed budget increase for the Newtown Road Project without increasing the not-to-exceed amount of the Agreement. Currently, the Agreement does not allow for the transfer of budget between projects. This First Amendment will change the contract language to allow for the transfer of budget between projects with the approval of the Contract Administrator. The authority to increase the not-to-exceed amount of the Agreement will be retained by the Board. The Cost Proposal and the Scope of Work have been updated to reflect the additional work needed on the Newtown Road Project. Also, since the Agreement was executed 4.5 years ago, Transportation proposes to update the Fee Schedule.
ALTERNATIVES
The Board could choose to not authorize this First Amendment. Transportation would not be able to complete the environmental work on the Newtown Road Project without identifying an alternative for the provision of the required environmental analysis.
OTHER DEPARTMENT / AGENCY INVOLVEMENT
The proposed First Amendment has been approved by Risk Management and County Counsel.
CAO RECOMMENDATION
Approve the Department's recommendation.
FINANCIAL IMPACT
The proposed First Amendment does not change the not-to-exceed amount of the Agreement. The Newtown Road Project is included in the adopted 2016 Capital Improvement Program and has sufficient funding in the planning phase to accommodate this Amendment.
CLERK OF THE BOARD FOLLOW UP ACTIONS
1) The Clerk of the Board will obtain the Chair's signature on two (2) originals of the First Amendment.
2) The Clerk of the Board will return one (1) of the signed originals of the First Amendment to the Community Development Agency Contracts and Procurement Unit for further processing.
STRATEGIC PLAN COMPONENT
Infrastructure
CONTACT
John Kahling
Deputy Director, Engineering
Community Development Agency, Transportation Division