Oxnard parks manager asks council to approve three landscape maintenance agreements with Green Coast Landscapes

Brandon Lopez, Oxnard parks manager, told the City Council on May 6, 2025, that staff recommends the council approve and authorize the mayor to execute three service agreements with Green Coast Landscapes for citywide street and median landscape maintenance.

Lopez said each agreement would begin July 1, 2025, and run through June 30, 2028, with an option for two consecutive one-year extensions that would extend the agreements through June 30, 2030. The three contracts have individual not-to-exceed amounts of $3,819,000; $4,294,000; and $3,527,000. Staff said the total cost for all three agreements during the maximum five-year term would not exceed $11,640,000.

The request follows staffing reductions before the 2019–20 fiscal year and a plan developed after Measure E passed in November 2020 to restore routine maintenance through contracted services, Lopez said. He described the contracting approach as intended to deliver routine, weekly maintenance while allowing remaining city maintenance staff to focus on repairs, landscape renovations and irrigation modernization.

Lopez outlined the procurement history: the city divided services into three roughly equal regions, issued Request for Bids No. 2561 on Dec. 4, 2024, held a mandatory job walk on Dec. 11, 2024 (seven contractors attended), and received six proposals by the Jan. 7, 2025 deadline. Green Coast Landscapes submitted the lowest responsible bid for each region, Lopez said. He also said staff verified Green Coast’s city business tax certificate, insurance, corporate filings with the California Secretary of State and that the firm already provides landscaping services to other city divisions, including water, wastewater and environmental resources.

Lopez described the scope as weekly arterial street landscape maintenance — turf management, shrub and ground-cover pruning, hardscape maintenance, litter and debris removal, weed control, minor tree care and additional on-call services. He said additional on-call services would only be performed after issuance of a staff-approved task order and verification of completion; those additional services are budgeted at 50% of each fiscal year but are not guaranteed to be requested.

Staff provided several budget figures during the presentation. They stated the individual not-to-exceed amounts above and the $11.64 million five-year cap. The presentation also included two monthly figures that appear inconsistent in the transcript: a line that Green Coast’s lowest monthly bid was $121,790 per month and another line saying the final monthly rates for all three regions totaled $216,053 per month. The transcript also recorded an implausibly large figure, "$9,624,002,276," described as an "estimated final expense;" that number appears to be a transcription or clerical error and was not supported elsewhere in the presentation. Lopez told the council, "based upon the available information and research performed to date, staff believes that this vendor is capable and satisfactorily meeting the needs of the city."

Lopez said the agreements allow an annual price increase not to exceed 3% with supporting documentation and that funding for fiscal year 2025–26 and subsequent years will be requested through the city’s annual budget process. The presentation did not record a council vote on the recommendation in the provided transcript.