City Council
Report
City Council Regular Meeting: October 13, 2015
Agenda Item: 3.O
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To: Mayor and City Council
From: David Martin, Director, Planning and Community Development, Planning and Community Development
Subject: Contractual Services Agreement for Parking Management Services Recommended Action
Staff recommends that the City Council:
1. Award RFP# 34 to SP+ Municipal Services, an Illinois-based company for operation and maintenance of the City's off-street parking facilities, and to provide ancillary parking related special event services;
2. Authorize the City Manager to negotiate and execute a contractual service agreement with SP+ Municipal Services, in an amount not to exceed $26,500,000 for five years, with two additional one-year renewal option(s) in the amount of $11,731,376, on the same terms and conditions for a total amount not to exceed $38,231,376 over a seven year period, with future year funding contingent on Council budget approval.
Executive Summary
The City operates a complex parking network pursuant to a consolidated management agreement. The current parking management services agreement expires on December 1, 2015. On April 21, 2015, the City issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for parking management services. After reviewing the six bids received, SP+ was selected as the best qualified by a selection committee made up of various internal and external stakeholders. The agreement would be for an amount not to exceed $26,500,000 for five years, with two additional one-year renewal option(s) in the amount of $11,731,376, on the same terms and conditions for a total amount not to exceed $38,231,376 over a seven year period.
Background
On April 7, 2009 (see attachment A), Council authorized a contract with Central Parking System to operate the City’s off-street parking locations. The contract was under a three year term with two one-year extension options. The contract was modified on April 16, 2013 and July 2, 2014 to execute the first and the second one-year extension options. On April 8, 2014 Council authorized consolidation of the Parking Operations function moving the Division from the Finance Department into the Planning and Community Development Department (PCD) (see attachment B). As a result of this 2 of 8
consolidation, on April 22, 2014 Council authorized an extension of the contract to December 1, 2014 to ensure a smooth transition to a new parking operator planned for the fall of 2014 (see attachment C). This plan became infeasible due to the departure of the City’s Parking and Traffic Manager on September 2, 2014 and the Parking Administrator on September 12, 2014. On November 11, 2014 Council authorized a seventh modification to the contract on a month to month basis to December 1, 2015 to provide additional time for PCD staff to initiate an RFP. The current contract is scheduled to expire on December 1, 2015.
Discussion
The City operates a complex parking network 24 hours per day 7 days per week, and has done so pursuant to a consolidated management agreement since 2000. The current parking management services agreement was entered into June 1, 2009 and expires on December 1, 2015. The new agreement would be for an initial term of 5 years with 2 one year extensions due to the complexity and scope of services provided for in the agreement. The City’s off street parking portfolio consists of 14,283 spaces within 13 parking structures and 30 lots, of which 18 of the lots are located on the beach (see attachment D). Additionally 16 million parking transactions occur annually in the off street parking facilities, with revenues of $43,529,456 collected in FY 2014/15.
The parking operator is responsible for ensuring a high level of customer service in its interactions with the public, providing strong revenue controls, and maintaining parking facilities so that they are both clean and free of hazards. The operator maintains a customer service counter for patrons 24 hours per day, manages monthly parking permits, assists with parking equipment vendor management, and provides special event services, including on-site set up, directing of vehicle traffic and pedestrians, compliance monitoring, and web based pre-paid parking services. The operator is also required to work with stakeholders, including but not limited to Macerich, Downtown Santa Monica, Inc., Beach staff, and the Pier Tenants Association.
In addition to the day to day operations, the parking operator would also serve as a strategic partner in incorporating parking management into the City’s overall circulation 3 of 8
and transportation demand management goals, in keeping with the LUCE and Draft Downtown Specific Plan.
The City maintains a staff of seven in-house employees and a public counter dedicated to providing residents, City departments, and private events with other parking and permitting related services. City parking staff will monitor the parking operator’s performance to ensure compliance with the agreement through spot inspections and audits. Staff will also initiate a request for proposals to identify an auditor to perform routine financial audits of the parking operator, as well as other parking office vendors who conduct financial transactions on behalf of the City.
Following the implementation of a new Parking Management agreement and in preparation for the arrival of Expo Light Rail, staff will provide Council with an update on the City’s strategies for circulation and follow up on the implementation of the recommendation from the 2009 Walker Downtown Parking Program study and the 2012 Walker Parking Rate Study. Staff is currently scheduled to present this report to Council in April or May of 2016. The report will focus on the relationship between the various Transportation Demand Management initiatives, including recommendations for updates to pricing in our parking structures and lots with a focus on strategies to maximize utilization of parking inventory.
Vendor/Consultant Selection
On April 21, 2015, staff issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for parking management services. The RFP was posted on the City’s on-line bidding site, and a notice was advertised in the Santa Monica Daily Press in accordance with Chapter 2.24 of the Santa Monica Municipal Code. In addition, it was also advertised on the International Parking Institute’s RFP webpage. Sixty four vendors downloaded the RFP. Eighteen firms attended the pre-bid conference and 6 firms responded.
The RFP aimed to identify an operator to provide parking management expertise in day to day customer service, maintenance, asset management, and revenue operations of the City’s complex parking network of structures and lots; to provide additional services 4 of 8
such as bike valet at the farmers markets and special events such as the Twilight Concert Series; as well as provide staffing and expertise with parking related services surrounding events and peak demand periods, such as the Go With the Flow program.
The RFP was posted on the City’s online bidding system and six responses were received. A selection committee comprised of staff from Finance, Public Works, Transportation Demand Management, Parking Operations, Macerich, and Downtown Santa Monica, Inc. evaluated the proposals, taking into consideration criteria including but not limited to the quality of the services offered, the ability to perform the service, the capacity to perform the service, the applicability of the respondent’s experience as it relates to the RFP’s scope of work, price, and whether the respondent would have available resources to accomplish all elements of the scope of services.
A mandatory pre-bid meeting was held with prospective bidders on May 8, 2015. In response to a request from a bidder, staff extended the response date from June 8, 2015 to June 22, 2015, to provide additional time to review the answers to questions and incorporate them into proposals. On June 10, 2015 staff posted the names of the committee members to provide bidders with an opportunity to submit objections to any member due to potential conflicts of interest; no objections were submitted.
The evaluation committee facilitator shared the names of all potential and final bidders so that committee members could also identify any potential conflicts. After reviewing the list of bidders, all committee members completed the Finance Department’s form certifying that they did not represent a conflict of interest in being a member of this Evaluation Committee. As a precautionary measure, two existing Parking Operations staff members were excluded from the Evaluation Committee proactively by PCD management due to their prior employment with Standard Parking and Central Parking; these two companies merged and are now SP+, our current operator.
Of the 6 firms that submitted proposals, 3 did not meet the minimum threshold of an average of 80 points from each scorer. Following is the initial ranking of the 6 bidders:
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Rank Company Total
Score
Average
Score
Proposed 1
st Year
Budget
1 SP+ 537 90 $4,664,555
2 Parking Concepts, Inc. 531 89 $3,436,619
3 Joe’s Auto Parks 513 86 $5,861,279
4 Santa Monica Parking Associates 396 66 $5,404,416
5 ProPark America 393 65 $4,902,732
6 Parking Company of America 331 55 $3,725,891
In accordance with the RFP process, companies that did not meet the minimum threshold of 80 points out of 100 possible based on the criteria outlined in the RFP, would not be considered. As such, SP+, Parking Concepts, Inc., and Joe’s Auto Parks were the only companies considered for this opportunity. The 3 qualifying companies were invited to provide oral presentations to the evaluation committee.
The following is a ranking of the companies based on the results of the oral presentations. The oral presentation scores are added to the previously awarded scores.
Rank Company Total Initial
Score
Oral
Presentation
Score
Total
Final
Score
Proposed
Budget
1 SP+ 537 27 564 $4,664,555
2 Parking Concepts, Inc. 531 24 555 $3,436,619
3 Joe’s Auto Parks 513 15 528 $5,861,279
Joes Auto Parks
Joe’s Auto Parks did not demonstrate the organizational capacity necessary to oversee the parking operations of the diverse and complex parking operations of the City. The company management also did not demonstrate an understanding of the City’s transportation demand management goals and the relationship of our parking 6 of 8
management program to these goals. The company was also not able to demonstrate that it had the capacity to support the City’s needs during large events. The company does own and operate its own parking facilities, however, it lacked strong municipal experience relative to the other two bidders.
Parking Concepts, Inc.
Parking Concepts, Inc. demonstrated strong expertise and qualifications in managing the day the day operations for the City’s parking program. Its customer service program and understanding of the community were impressive and the company had credible municipal experience. During the oral interviews, the company demonstrated strong management experience and professionalism. However, the company lacked innovative solutions as compared with SP+ and a limited capacity to support the City’s needs during large scale events, particularly as it relates to the types of value added services provided by SP+, to assist with executing our transportation demand management goals. Although Parking Concepts, Inc.’s proposed budget was the lowest of all the 6 bidders, after a more detailed review of the proposal, the budget did not adequately account for the staffing needs for the City’s parking operations, and underestimated supply expenses. The companies proposed budget was 30% less than the average of the budgets proposed by the other 5 companies. Although the proposed budget was less, the budget is not adequate to support the parking operations of the City and would likely have had to be increased to account for actual needs.
SP+ Municipal Services
SP+ was the clear and unanimous choice of the evaluation committee as the best qualified to provide the full scope of parking operations and management services based on the company’s ability to meet the requirements of the Parking Management RFP including its extensive experience in parking operations, staffing service plan, customer service plan, operation plan, operating budget, internal controls, and event experience.
The company demonstrated a greater scope of experience than the other bidders in not only daily parking operations, but with its management team, events experience, and 7 of 8
technology solutions. The management team did not only understand the city’s transportation demand management objectives, the company provides services that support these objectives as a specific service offering through its Game Day division.
The company provided examples of assisting customers with reducing total vehicle counts during large events by incentivizing carpooling.
SP+ Municipal Services operates more than 4,200 locations in over 400 cities throughout the United States and Canada. SP+ Municipal Service employees are represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Union Local 911. It is a publicly traded company, collecting and reconciling more than $4 billion in annual parking revenues on behalf of its clients. It is subject to oversight by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and is subject to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. SP+ Municipal Services is a dedicated division of SP+ serving only municipal clients and its key staff are Certified Administrators in Public Parking (CAPP) The company also provides SP+ Gameday Event Logistics which assists with traffic circulation planning, parking planning for events and peak volume periods, and includes Click and Park technology which allows the advance purchase of parking online. Large event experience includes the last 15 Super Bowls, the Daytona 500, and the 2012 London Summer Olympics. The City’s existing contract does not include the event logistics services, however, Parking Operations has utilized staffing from this service to support the Los Angeles Marathon, Go With the Flow, and the Twilight Concert Series. The SP+ proposal and management fee includes the full range of the services and would serve to assist in the integration of parking into the City’s overall transportation demand management strategies and improved communication and on-line services.
The services would also include a new customer service accountability system module that will assist in the monitoring of key performance measures. The system is an online sharable work order platform that provides a real time information sharing platform for the operator, City staff, and key stakeholders such as Macerich and DTSM to report and monitor issues, and to serve as an accountability tool.
The implementation of a parking management agreement, over a five year term with 8 of 8
SP+ Municipal Services is estimated not to exceed $26,500,000. The first year budget proposed is $4,664,555 for daily operations and $274,786 for staffing of special events.
Revenues collected for parking operations in FY 2014/15 were $43,529,456.
Financial Impacts and Budget Actions
The contract to be awarded to SP+ Municipal Services is for an amount not to exceed $38,231,376. Funds in the amount of $4,415,464 are available in the FY 2015-16 budget in the Planning & Community Development Department. The contract will be charged to account 01417.555010. Future year funding is contingent on Council budget approval.
Prepared By: Lynn Wolken-Gonzales, Principal PCD Analyst Approved Forwarded to Council
Attachments:
A. Attachment A - April 7, 2009 Council Meeting
B. Attachment B - April 8, 2014 Council Meeting
C. Attachment C - April 22, 2014 Council Meeting
D. Attachment D - Parking Structures and Lots