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Public Works Committee recommends United Consulting engineering contract to full council
Summary
The Lawrence City Public Works Committee voted to recommend that the Common Council approve a professional services engineering contract with United Consulting to provide interim city engineering services; the contract caps combined city and utilities spending at $131,200 and will be split equally between the two payers.
The Lawrence City Public Works Committee on Thursday voted to recommend that the Common Council approve a professional services contract with United Consulting to provide interim engineering services for the city.
City staff said the contract, read into the record during the meeting, caps combined city and utilities spending at $131,200 and will be split equally between the city and the utilities. "Pursuant to section 3 of the agreement, the total cost to the city and utilities in the aggregate for the contractor services under the agreement shall not exceed $131,200," a city staff member said during the meeting.
The contract would place an experienced United Consulting engineer, Gretchen Meyer, on site to help the city prioritize and manage engineering contracts, records and projects. "I've worked with the city of Lawrence through my employer, United Consulting, for approximately 2 years, maybe 3 now, helping you apply for funding for a trail project, designing that trail project, and then, seeing it through construction," Meyer said.
City staff described the background for the contract as an attempt to comply with state statute on municipal appointments and to fill a functional need after attempts to hire a permanent city engineer drew limited interest. Staff said the city committee interviewed multiple firms and engineers and selected United Consulting; the contract has already been approved by the Board of Works and the utilities board and was presented to the Public Works Committee for recommendation to full council.
Committee members asked about pay and budgeting. A staff member said the parties initially discussed a salary-like projection of roughly $64,000 from each side but clarified the agreement language that caps the combined cost at $131,200 and splits it 50/50. Staff also described the planned on-site schedule in the contract: an initial period of 40 hours on site that phases down to 32 and then 24 hours, with an eventual on-site presence of two days per week after about 10 to 12 weeks.
The committee moved to recommend full council approval. The motion passed on a voice and roll-call sequence; members recorded as voting yes during the roll call included Councilor Tim Giles and Councilor Shavors, and another member identified in the roll call as "Missouri." The committee chair said the recommendation will go to the full Common Council for final action.
The contract is intended to help the city inventory and prioritize contracts and engineering needs so staff can direct limited resources to higher-priority work and to ensure compliance with funding and regulatory requirements. Details about the contract term beyond the phased on-site schedule and any specific performance benchmarks were not specified at the committee meeting.
