By Jessica Keller, The Courier-Herald
It's been a long time coming, but the ball is rolling in the design phase for the wastewater treatment plant upgrades in Buckley.
At their April 13 meeting, City Council members approved a professional services contract agreement between the city and Cosmopolitan Engineering Group for the wastewater treatment improvement project.
"This is big because it will let us eventually go out for bid on the project," City Administrator Dave Schmidt said after the meeting.
The scope of work provided by Cosmopolitan Engineering
Group was broken into nine tasks that begin with preliminary design and go through post construction. Tasks one through five address the design of the various components and six through nine address bidding, construction management and post-construction services.
The initial agreement the council approved, however, is not for the completion of the entire project. The agreement is for design services for the first two tasks only.
Schmidt said this is because the city does not have all the information it needs yet to approve all of the tasks and the state department of social and health services has not appropriated their portion of the funds for the project yet. Schmidt said two of the tasks in the scope are associated with the reuse of the state land near Rainier State School, which has been WSU property, and the development of a compost facility, which will be built on that property. The city is interested in negotiating a sale with DSHS for the land, and then look into building the compost facility.
"So we didn't want to commit to the full scope of work for those tasks and the fees associated with it until we knew that the state appropriated the funds," Schmidt said.
Schmidt said once the status of the WSU property is resolved and DSHS has obtained adequate appropriation or mutual agreement of the scope and fees for the rest of the tasks, an amendment of the agreement will be taken to council.
The total fee for the first two tasks will not exceed $786,430 unless the City Council approves spending more. Once DSHS enters into the agreement for their portion of the project, Buckley will pay 76 percent or $597,687. The money for the first two tasks are coming from the city's sewer capital, which has approximately $1,446,035. Schmidt said, however, the city doesn't know how much the entire project will cost. That estimate will be presented by the engineers as part of a later task.
Schmidt said the two tasks should be completed by April, 2005. Then the city will advertise and go out for bid for the construction of the project in May.
Jessica Keller can be reached at jkeller@courierherald.com
