TO: HONORABLE MAYOR AND MEMBERS OF THE CITY COUNCIL

FROM: DIRECTOR OF PLANNING, BUILDING, AND CODE ENFORCEMENT

DATE: APRIL 6, 2004

SUBJECT: NCCP PHASE 3 CONTRACT AMENDMENT

RECOMMENDATION

Approve an amendment to the contract with the City’s NCCP consultant (URS Corporation) in an amount of $27,304 for completion of the third and final phase of the City’s NCCP.

BACKGROUND

On May 4, 1999, the City Council agreed to enter into an agreement with a biological consulting firm (Dames & Moore, which later became URS Corporation) to complete the third and final phase of the City’s NCCP Program. Phase 3 primarily involves the preparation of the required environmental review documents and finalization of the Subarea Plan and Implementing Agreement. Recently, as part of the Phase 3 scope of work, the NCCP Draft EIR was completed and is currently being circulated to the public for review and comment until April 20, 2004. Given the resource agencies’ key regulatory role in the NCCP process, more than the usual opportunity was afforded to them to ensure that their issues would be adequately addressed in the draft document before it was circulated to the public. As a result of this extra coordination, the scope-of-work/contract cost for preparing the DEIR was exceeded and, as a result, a contract amendment is necessary.

DISCUSSION

The approved scope-of-work for Phase 3 of the City's NCCP is summarized below:

• The preparation of the NCCP Implementing Agreement and Subarea Plan

• Negotiation of the resource agency permits and authorizations

• The preparation of an EIR/EA to satisfy the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirements

• Attendance at all appropriate meetings, if deemed necessary by the City.

The specific task that is necessitating this specific contract amendment is related to the preparation of the NCCP Draft EIR. As described in the attached letter from URS Corporation (that is also intended to function as the amendment authorization), the CEQA process has taken longer than expected as a result of additional internal review cycles. These additional review cycles, which occurred primarily to address issues raised by the resource agencies, did result in some substantial changes to the internal draft documents. In addition, the City’s consultant was asked to review and comment on the proposed York weed abatement request, an out-of-scope work item. Together, this additional work has resulted in a contract amendment increase of $27,304.

The current contract amount for completing Phase 3 is $97,139. With this contract amendment, the total amount of the Phase 3 budget will be $124,443. Since Phase 3 is the final phase, this is the total budget amount needed to complete the NCCP, provided no other unforeseen circumstances occur.

FISCAL IMPACT

The total cost of the increased Phase 3 scope of work would be $124,443. There are funds to cover this total new cost in the City’s current NCCP budget. As a result, a budget adjustment is not necessary. Furthermore, 50% of all City NCCP expenditures are paid for through federal grant monies. There are sufficient grant funds to cover this increased budget expenditure.

ALTERNATIVES

In addition to Staff's recommendation presented at the beginning of this Staff Report, the following alternative is also available to the City Council:

1) Take no action to amend the contract at this time and direct Staff to prepare a more detailed analysis of the submitted proposal and available funds.

CONCLUSION

In 1999, the City Council agreed to enter into a contract with a biological consultant to complete Phase 3 of the City’s NCCP. Recently, as part of the Phase 3 scope of work, the NCCP Draft EIR was completed and is currently being circulated to the public for review and comment. As a result of extra coordination with the resource agencies to ensure that their issues would be adequately addressed in the Draft EIR, the scope-of-work for preparing the DEIR was exceeded and, as a result, a contract amendment is necessary. As a result, Staff is recommending that the Council approve an amendment to the contract with the City’s NCCP consultant (URS Corporation) in an amount of $27,304 for completion of the third and final phase of the City’s NCCP.

Respectfully submitted:

Joel Rojas,

Director of Planning, Building

and Code Enforcement

Reviewed:

Les Evans

City Manager

Attachments

Amendment to Agreement letter dated March 8, 2004