The Santa Paula City Council on June 30 approved an amendment to an on-call professional services agreement to increase hours and raise the annual contract cap for engineering services, council members and staff said.

Councilmember Crosswhite moved approval of agenda item 4A and Councilmember O'Nellis seconded; council voted to approve the amendment. Staff explained the change reflects an expanded scope of pavement-management and public-works projects and the need for more design and construction management hours while the city hires permanent in-house engineering staff.

Public works staff explained the amendment increases available consultant hours to meet a rising workload tied to pavement-management projects. "It is an increase in hours," a public-works representative said, "and the reason for the increase in hours is because of the increase in the scope of the roads, the P and P projects that we're going to be working on and managing the design, managing the construction." The speaker said the city currently bills consultants on a time-and-materials basis and that bringing a city engineer and associate engineer in-house would, over time, reduce consultant hours.

Finance staff told the council the contract cap had been authorized previously at about $250,000 per year (as discussed in the meeting) but that staff is recommending raising the maximum to $400,000 to account for multi-year capital projects that carry over unspent amounts. "Those are specifically only for capital improvement projects because those budgets stay with those programs," a finance representative said; the same staff said finance will not pay invoices that exceed available budgeted amounts.

Council members pressed staff on how the increased cap would be controlled. Staff and legal counsel responded that task orders and budgeted amounts limit consultant work; if no budget exists, the consultant cannot proceed and finance will not process payments. The amendment also clarified that the on-call agreement does not guarantee a minimum number of billed hours.

Councilmembers discussed operational impacts: making consultants available for more on-site work — the conversation referenced increasing the typical on-site presence of an associate engineer from about one day a week toward two days a week — and the use of DocuSign to route documents when staff or consultants are off-site. Staff said they hope to co-locate an associate engineer within Community Development at the counter to reduce permit-processing bottlenecks.

Staff noted there is a backlog of reviews, particularly from Community Development, that the current one-day-a-week engineering coverage cannot fully handle. They said the amendment is intended to address that short-term chokepoint while the city hires additional in-house engineers, a process staff expects to continue into the fall.

The council approved the amendment on the consent calendar without recorded dissent.