Cotati City Council
Agenda Staff Report
Item type: CONSENT CALENDAR (ACTION)
To: City Council
Subject: APPROVAL OF AN AGREEMENT WITH ARGONAUT
CONSTRUCTORS AND AN AGREEMENT WITH BRELJE
AND RACE CONSULTING ENGINEEERS FOR THE URGENT
WATER REPAIRS PROJECT
Date: August 12, 2025
Written by: Craig Scott, Director of Public Works/City Engineer Recommendation
It is recommended the City of Cotati City Council approve by Motion a Minor Construction Agreement and/or Purchase Order with Argonaut Constructors and a Design Professional Services Agreement and/or Purchase Order with Brelje and Race Consulting Engineers for the Water Repairs Project and authorizes the City Manager to execute said agreements.
Background
The City owns, operates and maintains a public water system and uses a combination of City staff and contract services to perform the duties needed to keep the system operating reliably.
Contract services used include such tasks as water quality testing, maintaining the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System (SCADA), Advanced Meter Instrumentation support services, water main cleaning, servicing process units including chlorine generators and granular activated carbon water filtration system, and replacement of major equipment. Periodically, City staff is augmented by contract services for other tasks including emergency leak repair, replacing damaged fire hydrants, and replacing aged valves. The instances of using contract services occur when there is an emergency needing immediate repair, a staff shortage and/or a spike in the workload.
Analysis/Discussion
In the past several weeks, a car accident took out the fire hydrant on Redwood Drive in front of 6811 Redwood Drive, and a car collided with a hydrant on Pine Tree Circle. One of these incidents was observed by a police officer and a traffic report was taken which will allow the City to place an insurance claim for reimbursement. The two hydrants have been out of service as the collisions broke the underground pipe connecting the hydrants to the water system. Having the hydrants operable again is a high priority to provide sufficient fire protection at those locations. In addition to the damaged hydrants, the City has several service lines that are known to be at risk of failure. Staff recently mapped service line failures throughout the City and 6 service lines in Oretsky Way have been identified as being a high priority for replacement. The City has replaced all the service lines except 6 service lines/8 services on Oretsky Way.
Additionally, a planned street paving project is located in Oretsky Way where water service lines are slated to be replaced and, with a schedule of Spring 2026 paving, there is a tight timeframe to replace those lines.
The urgent nature of this work combined with the City Public Works staffing availability, the City Public Works Director/City Engineer began pursuing contract services for this work. The City reached out to a designer and contractor to scope the work and schedule the construction of these repairs and replacements. Brelje and Race Consulting Engineers prepared plan sheets detailing the work and these drawings were provided to Argonaut Constructors to provide the City with a not-to-exceed (NTE) price. Both Brelje and Race and the Contractor, along with City staff have reviewed the plans and visited the site to discuss the scope of the work. The Contractor has provided a NTE price of $96,000, supported by an itemized list of work items, for this work.
City Staff has reviewed the itemized costs and finds them to be within industry norms and recommends it for approval.
Schedule
Due to the condensed timeframe to complete this work, Staff requested the contractor provide available dates for August and early September. Available dates of August 7th and 8th and the 11th and 12th were provided with the next available dates until after November 1st. Because of the importance of having the fire hydrant brought back into service as soon as is practical and the timing of the planned paving project, staff has negotiated a contract with the Contractor to perform the work for these dates.
Financial Considerations
Funding sources for this effort are to be divided between a cost recovery account and City Water Enterprise Funds. The Redwood Drive hydrant repair costs are to be recovered from the responsible parties through insurance and the Pine Tree Circle was a hit and run and is to be paid for from City water funds. The service line repairs similarly are to come from City water funds.
City Staff recommends moving the Capital Improvement project entitled “Distribution System Monitoring” to a later year and thus making available the budgeted amount of $130,000.
The estimated cost for the Redwood Drive hydrant repair is $22,809.52 (reimbursed by 3rd party insurance) with the remainder of the work time and materials, Not to Exceed (NTE) $73,190.48 to come from out of the available Water Enterprise Funds. This funding would come from the available budget amount of $130,000, leaving no less than $56,809.52 remaining in the Distribution System Monitoring project account.
Under the “Public Project Contracts” provision of the City’s Expenditure Planning and Procurement Policy, contracts of $75,000 or less can be performed by force account, by negotiated contract, or by purchase order.
Environmental Issues
This action is found to qualify for a Class 1 Categorical Exemption under CEQA Section 15301 in that the project consists of the operation, repair, maintenance, permitting, leasing, licensing, or minor alteration of existing public or private structures, facilities, mechanical equipment, or topographical features, involving negligible or no expansion of the existing or former use.