08-11-2004 Council Agenda - Laserfiche WebLink

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MAYOR Michael 1. Fahey COUNCIL Jim LaValle Matt Anderson Rick Montour Bill Blesener 515 Little Canada Road, Little Canada, MN 55117 -1600 ADMINISTRATOI? (651) 766 -4029 / FAX: (651) 766 -4048 Joel R. Hanson www.ci.little-canada.mn.us MEMORANDUM M TO: Mayor Fahey & Members of the City Council FROM: Joel Hanson, City Administrator DATE: August 5, 2004 RE: Engineering Discussion Attached is a letter from Lee Elfering, formerly of Howard R. Green. As you know, Lee left the employee of HRG a couple of weeks ago. He has started his own engineering company and is interested in working for us. It is staffs opinion the Mr. Elfering has done an excellent job for us. He has been a solid engineer, excellent with the public, and fits in extremely well with the staff. Retaining his services has a number of advantages for the City. They are as follows: 1. He is extremely familiar with the operations and needs of the City thereby avoiding problems associated with transitioning to 'another engineer. 2. The cost proposal he has outlined will save the City significant dollars in major project construction. You will note that he has proposed an hourly charge with a maximum percentage cost of 20% for projects over 3500,000 in value. Most of our improvement projects will easily exceed that amount. Our recent past indicates we have been paying over 35% for these services. On a 3 1,000,000 project, that would translate to 3150,000 in savings. 3. He will be a low overhead operation. At this point in time, he will not have costs associated with rent, administration, marketing staff, or specialty services. This allows him to offer his services to us at a reduced rate. 4. IIe will have the technical tools and support staff to meet our needs. He has indicated to me that another engineer is already on board with him. He is also confident he will be retaining qualified field personnel (inspection). From a software standpoint, he will have all the programs that Little Canada would need in the design and review of our projects. 5. I -Ie will contract with an independent survey crew for field work. It is hoped he will use one of our local firms given their knowledge of the area and minimal commute time. This also offers the advantage of avoiding. the overhead of having an "on staff' survey crew. 6. He has already retained another client (the City of Wyoming) giving him a customer base to generate sufficient cash flow to support his operation. 7. We are at a point with most of our projects that transitioning to another from HRG should be very manageable.