Tacoma City Council
Study Session
Noon, Tuesday, July 15, 2003
Room 16
Tacoma Municipal Building North
728 St. Helens Ave.
Update on computer upgrade
The City Council will learn how the more than 150 employees assigned to the $50 million Business Systems Improvement Project have progressed toward the Oct. 1 Go Live date. The council also will learn how the team identified project risks and mitigation strategies, how they will overcome challenges such as training more than 2,000 city employees on the updated software systems, how they will communicate with the citizens about customer service changes and how staff will manage the system after activation.
Tacoma City Council
Regular Meeting
5 p.m., Tuesday, July 15, 2003
Council Chambers
Tacoma Municipal Building
747 Market St.
Convention center contract
A $1.2 million contract with the architect firm hired to design the Greater Tacoma Convention and Trade Center will go before the City Council for consideration. The council will vote on entering into a professional services agreement with Merritt+Pardini for construction administration services for the convention center. If adopted, Merritt+Pardini will provide field observation, shop drawing and submittal review and administration of contract changes as the building of the convention center progresses. The council will take public comment on the resolution before voting.
Treatment plant upgrade
Should Tacoma use a design-build process for up to $70 million in upgrades to the Central Wastewater Treatment Plant? The design-build process enables the city to take advantage of design and construction ingenuity and to proceed at a lower cost than using a standard contracting process. The council will take public testimony and then vote on a resolution that, if passed, would authorize the following upgrades: Add a peak wet-weather treatment process, increase the capacity of the plant to significantly reduce sewer overflows, add biosolids handling equipment and improve other miscellaneous components. The city held a public hearing July 8 on this issue.
Sidewalk improvements
Nearly $600,000 will go toward improving Tacomas sidewalks if the council approves a contract with Looker & Associates. The Puyallup-based company submitted the lowest bid for removing and replacing cement concrete sidewalks, curbs, gutters and driveways, as well as storm sewer, utility and amenity construction and adjustments and street landscaping on 13 of Tacomas streets. The streets chosen for improvement meet the citys definition of hazardous and were selected based on input from the Tacoma Economic Development and Public Works departments and Neighborhood Business Districts. Looker & Associates meets the Federal Disadvantaged Business Enterprise regulation requirements.
City managers rate of pay
The council will vote on a proposal to set the city managers pay range between $127,787 and $182,988. If the council approves the measure, the city manager will no longer receive longevity pay or deferred compensation. The City Council took public comment on the measure July 8.
Fixing old sewer pipes
The council will take public testimony and vote on whether to authorize a $1.7 million contract with Insituform Technologies, Inc. to rehab approximately 40,000 linear feet of degraded sewer lines in North Tacoma. If approved, the city will fix the 40-year old pipes located between North 17th and South 12th streets, and between Fife and Warner streets. The city will use an innovative technology called cured-in-place pipe that allows workers to do most of the work within the pipe itself as opposed to the more invasive method of excavating much of the area around the pipe. The contract also calls for the city to repair 22 private side-sewer connections to the main line that will most likely fail during the work because of their poor condition.
