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Placerville council authorizes RFP for on-call CEQA/environmental consulting services
Summary
Council directed staff to prepare and issue a request for proposals for on-call environmental services to support CEQA compliance, citing reduced in-house capacity; staff said applicants would generally pay consultant costs and the city would apply a 15–20% administrative fee if it administers work.
The Placerville City Council on Aug. 12 authorized staff to prepare and issue a request for proposals for on-call environmental consulting services to help the city handle CEQA compliance for future projects.
Planning staff told the council recent reductions in in-house capacity have limited the city's ability to prepare environmental documents such as initial studies and mitigated negative declarations. Ms. Kendrick said outsourcing these services and recovering costs from applicants, plus a proposed 15–20% administrative fee when the city oversees the work, would reduce staff workload while maintaining defensible environmental documents.
Council members asked how much additional cost this would impose on applicants; staff said peer-review and initial-study work by consultants could run in the low tens of thousands for projects requiring peer review and that having an on-call consultant could speed project timelines. "It actually doing something like this benefits the applicant. Applicants oftentimes time is money and they want efficiency," a staff speaker said.
After public comment supportive of the approach, the council voted unanimously to direct staff to prepare and issue the RFP. Staff said the action to issue an RFP is administrative and not a CEQA project because it has no direct environmental impact.
