Grand Junction City Council has approved a policy allowing the city to self-perform some projects with City Council’s approval.

The vote brings to an end a nearly year-long process of formulating a self-performance policy for the city. In December 2022, City Council and staff met with representatives from the contracting community to discuss 9.2 miles of the Riverfront Trail, which the city was planning to convert from asphalt to concrete using its own staff instead of a private contractor.

Both sides agreed the city should have a formal policy for self-performance in place.

City Council rejected a bid to perform part of the Riverfront Trail project in April in favor of city staff performing the work.

Last month, City Council rejected a portion of an update to the city’s purchasing policy related to self-performance. That policy would have allowed the city to self-perform public projects that cost less than $750,000 and bid on projects that cost more than $750,000 under certain circumstances.

That policy was rejected in favor of the policy approved Wednesday, which will largely identify self-performance projects through the city budgeting process, and require a public hearing and City Council approval before the project starts.

City Attorney John Shaver said additional projects other than those identified in the budget can still be self-performed, but they still have to go through the public hearing process.

Mayor Anna Stout said that part of the policy gives the city flexibility in case a project doesn’t have any bids come in, or if the bids that do come in are exorbitant.

“There were plenty of reasons we didn’t want to have our hands tied,” Stout said.

During public comment, some local contractors spoke out against the policy.

“Is that really a policy or an open-ended check?” said Mays Concrete Executive Vice President Paul Burdett, one of the original people who spoke against the city on the issue.

Cori Elam, co-owner of Asphalt Specialists and Supply Inc., said the city might not be able to do the job as wells as private contractors on projects.

“What pisses me off is when I see shoddy work that reflects poorly on me as a person, as a contractor, as us as a community,” Elam said.

Elam said the City Council should make sure to ask questions when it has self-performance projects presented, and when council members don’t know what questions to ask, they should ask the local contracting community.

“I’m asking you to ask questions like ‘How did this three-year project turn into a four-year project, but after two years isn’t even halfway done?’ “ Elam said. “And oh by the way, people can die.”

Council Member Dennis Simpson, the lone vote against the policy, said he was concerned City Council won’t have additional sources of information besides city staff when projects are presented to council.

“If this comes, how will we ever challenge what we’re being told by staff?” Simpson said. “And I’ve used the term before, I’ll use it again. It’ll be a rubber stamp.”

Source : The Daily Sentinel

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