At the committee stage the commission approved a series of procurement and contract items intended to keep capital and maintenance programs moving.

Key approvals included: a $4,000,000 supplemental funding addition to the prequalified contractor task-order program for water and sewer emergency and larger repairs; a contract for on-call engineering support (Adura Group) to augment project-management capacity; and a roughly $414,000 change order to have SmartWorks implement a new meter data format so the city’s AMI cellular meters feed into the MDM for near-real-time analysis. Director Wes Bynes said the SmartWorks change is needed to integrate new cellular meters and that programmers are already working on the implementation, which staff estimated would take about 60 days.

Separately, the committee approved amendment number 13 to the ESG Operations Inc. contract to continue operation of the wastewater treatment plant as a cost-plus arrangement (staff said the markup is roughly 12% and a reconciliation budget will be payable after an audit). Staff also presented an agreement with CSX Transportation to fund preliminary engineering and review for safety and operational improvements along Bart Chapel Road/Deansbridge Road for an estimated $52,500; legal reviewed the documents and the committee voted to approve.

Other items included supplemental design funding for the Willis Foreman Improvement Project (federally funded at roughly an 80/20 split) and approval of a web-hosted AMCS platform for residential waste collection ($171,006.70 annual usage for an initial five‑year term). Committee members asked procurement and legal staff to verify processes; staff confirmed qualifications and procurement steps had been followed for the major items.

Ending: Several procurement matters were deferred or placed on consent; the landfill-equipment lease-to-own package was moved to the full commission to allow procurement staff more time to review.