Pete Furman

Council approves service agreements with out-of-area firms – Sedona Red Rock News

On May 27, the Sedona City Council approved a set of master service agreements for on-call professional engineering services that will allow city staff to enter into certain consulting contracts with firms without having to seek council approval for each contract.

Contracts will be limited to $300,000 per contract and a maximum of $1 million over three years in each of six categories — wastewater, architecture, general engineering, mechanical and electric engineering, structural engineering and quality assurance services.

Wastewater Director Roxanne Holland explained that her department intended to use the MSAs for “smaller design” work on projects, including pipeline design and replacement and drain bed replacement.

Director of Public Works Kurt Harris said the agreements would be used for “smaller projects … things that we need to be on call and more nimble.”

Out-of-Region Firms

City procurement officer Ian Coubrough said that city staff had received 34 submissions in response to a request for proposals issued on Dec. 30, 2024, and selected 23 of those firms with which to enter into MSAs. The agreements will run through fiscal year 2028, which Coubrough said would “allow for a more efficient contracting process.”

“These are our business partners. We need to work with them and work towards each other’s best interests,” Coubrough said.

“How many of these would you consider local?” Councilwoman Kathy Kinsella asked.

“We’re not necessarily recording that information,” Coubrough said, but added that a few of the firms were operating locally. “We didn’t go through a local buying metric or anything like that.”

“That anecdotal information is sufficient for me,” Kinsella said.

Of the 23 firms selected for MSA awards, none are headquartered in the Verde Valley. Awarded firms and their locations were:

• Advanced Structural Engineering, Scottsdale
• Ardurra Group, Miami, Fla.
• Canfield Engineering and Integration, Chandler
• Carollo Engineers, Phoenix
• Childers Architect, Phoenix
• Civiltech Engineering, Itasca, Ill.
• Coe & Van Loo Consultants, Phoenix
• Consor North America, Houston
• Entellus, Phoenix
• Gabor Lorant Architects, Phoenix
• GH2 Architects, Scottsdale
• GLHN Architects and Engineers, Tucson
• Huitt-Zollars, Dallas, Tex.
• J.E. Fuller Hydrology and Geomorphology, Flagstaff and Tempe
• Kimley-Horn and Associates, Phoenix
• LAST Architects, Phoenix
• Ninyo and Moore Geotechnical and Environmental Sciences, Prescott Valley
• Pacific Advanced Civil Engineering, Fountain Valley, Calif.
• Quality Testing LLC, Gilbert
• Quantum Integrated Solutions, Tempe
• Speedie and Associates, Flagstaff
• Van Boerum and Frank Associates, Murray, Utah
• Western Technologies Inc., Flagstaff

Spending Cap

“I’m a fan of efficiency, but I don’t think I’m a fan of loosening the limits that much,” Councilman Pete Furman commented, and asked why staff had suggested a $300,000 limit on the contract value when the city manager’s discretionary spending authority is capped at $100,000.

“Why is it that [Sedona City Manager] Anette [Spickard] can sign off for $150,000 or $300,000 as it relates to this, but every thing else is still a $100,000 max?” Councilman Brian Fultz similarly asked. “I’m not opposed to bumping up the $100,000 necessarily, but I just kind of want us to have a broader policy perspective about why would we treat this different than any other discretion that we give the city manager?”

“Ian is also working on a broader procurement policy update to bring to council in which that question of signature authority and delegation will be addressed,” Spickard said.

“We don’t write blank checks for a million dollars, and that’s what this is,” Fultz said.

“If you wish to amend the motion that’s before you tonight, you can request that any work orders under this contract return to city council for approval in excess of $100,000,” Coubrough said.

“I think it should come back to us,” Kinsella said, suggesting an alternative cap of $150,000.

“They can at least get through not having to go through the RFP and all the rest of the stuff that they did. We’d have some qualified vendors,” Furman said.

“$300,000 these days is pretty small,” Vice Mayor Holli Ploog said. Councilwoman Melissa Dunn agreed.

“I can go along with the $150,000, but I wouldn’t go any higher without there being council oversight,” Fultz said. “My proposal to my colleagues is, let’s have it come in front of us at $150,000. It can come via the consent agenda.”

Furman suggested adding language specifying that “items over the city manager’s signing authority must still come to council. And then, when that floats, whatever the number is going to be the future for the signing authority, this would then float with it as well,” a proposal supported by Mayor Scott Jablow and by Fultz.

After further discussion about how the process would work, council voted unanimously for approval of the agreements “subject to the approval of the city manager’s signing authority.”

City to add FEMA-funded sirens in Uptown – Sedona Red Rock News

The Sedona City Council unanimously approved an intergovernmental agreement with Coconino County to install up to four emergency sirens around Uptown, which will be funded by a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, during its May 13 meeting.

The agreement provides that the county will absorb the costs for the design and installation of the siren system, while Sedona will become responsible for the costs of the system’s administration and maintenance after the first year of operation. Staff estimated the annual cost to the city would be approximately $10,000. County funding under the terms of the IGA will not exceed $269,200, and ownership of the system will be transferred to the Sedona Police Department on Dec. 31, 2026.

The agenda bill accompanying the agreement stated that Uptown had been selected for siren installation “as it generally has a higher concentration of tourists” who have not signed up for the city of Sedona’s Nixle text messaging notification system.

SPD Chief Stephanie Foley’s executive assistant Jessica Bryson told the council that the sirens may be either pole mounted or roof-mounted and will have the ability to broadcast voice messages in multiple languages.

Coconino County Emergency Manager Tim Carter told the council that the city will have primary authority to activate the siren system but that it will also include “a backup to our county-wide notification system, “a backup to our countywide notification system. That way, for whatever reason, there’s a redundant system that we can set off remotely.”

“It’s not the old air raid sirens that go off every Saturday at noon,” Carter also assured the council. “The testing for that is completely silent. It’s just a systems check of the electronics. The only time they make noise is when we want them to.”

“I grew up near one of the nuclear attack sirens in Phoenix and I’m very happy to hear that they can be tested silently,” Councilman Derek Pfaff said.

Coconino County Emergency Management and Sedona Fire District operate sirens in Oak Creek Canyon and conduct annual tests, usually in July.

Councilman Brian Fultz asked whether, since the project will be funded by a FEMA grant, the National Environmental Policy Act process would be “applicable for a pole in a city right of way?”

“If you want to hang a federally-funded photo on that wall, and put a nail in that wall, it’s applicable,” Carter said. “Unfortunately, yes.”

“Some of the locations we tentatively, preliminarily looked at, would be more of the roof-mounted,which goes into what we’re requesting with some of the companies that have that capability more so than others, and also that meet some of our specific codes to color,” Foley said. “We could also say that, depending on the system, that we could pick three and then add discs for adding additional radius to that location.”

“Is there any risk of those funds being lost at this point?” Fultz asked.

“We have received written confirmation from both [U.S.] Senator [Mark]Kelly’s office, who sponsored this, and from the state Department of Emergency Management that the funding is still there and is still in place, so we should proceed,” Carter said.

“You said if this was successful, we would be looking at whether or not we would want to place additional ones throughout the city,” Councilwoman Melissa Dunn said. “How do you know if it’s successful if we have no emergencies?”

“As far as how the implementation went, that system itself, and then some of the testing,” Foley said. “Ideally we never have to use it. So we might not know.”

“Can you give a timeline?” Vice Mayor Holli Ploog asked.

“I wish I could,” Carter said, explaining the timing would depend on the NEPA review and that county staff intended to score the nine proposals they had received from contractors by the end of the month and award a contract within 30 days after selection, which would be followed by acoustic studies, the submission of those studies to FEMA and finally construction. “If there’s ground disturbance, that could potentially take longer. If we submit a project that’s going on top of an existing building … that usually will be much shorter.”

“The visitor center would be an ideal location,” Ploog said.

“I was looking forward to hearing the chief’s voice beamed down to me every Saturday morning at noon,but I’ll live with that disappointment,” Councilman Pete Furman said.

Councilwoman Kathy Kinsella expressed the hope that residents would sleep better at night knowing they could be woken up by the city.

“Hopefully the system could be transitioned into Yavapai,” Mayor Scott Jablow said. “We would have control of these speakers, whatever it is that they’re speaking.”