City goes sole-source route to move capital projects along

Nov. 30—At a time when agencies across the state are struggling to spend capital funds due to a tight construction market, the city of Santa Fe is extending two contracts through a no-bid process so it can complete infrastructure projects before funding expires.

"We cannot delay because we don't want to waste the funding, and there is no other funding source," said city capital projects manager Romella Glorioso-Moss.

Over the summer, the city submitted two sole-source request and determination forms for contracts on road projects.

One is a four-year, $2.025 million contract with Santa Fe Engineering Consultants for design and construction work on four projects, including intersection improvements at Agua Fría-South Meadows and reconstruction on Governor Miles Road.

The other is a six-month contract worth $406,000 with Pennsylvania-based Weston Solutions to complete the engineering design of reconstruction at Henry Lynch Road. That project began in April 2022.

Glorioso-Moss said the state funds for the projects expire "in one or two years."

The two contracts replace on-call contracts the city had with each company that expired in late September. City officials said the work could not be transferred to other businesses to be completed because Santa Fe Engineering Consultants and Weston Solutions are the respective engineers of record on the projects.

"Nobody can actually pick up where they're at and take on that liability," said city Chief Procurement Officer Travis Dutton-Leyda.

The Santa Fe Engineering Consultants contract was approved by the City Council at its Nov. 8 meeting. The Weston Solutions paperwork is awaiting approval from the city's legal department and then will begin going through an approval process, Glorioso-Moss said.

Sole-source procurements do not go through a traditional competitive bidding process and are intended for proposals that can only be filled by a single entity. They are published in a database on the state General Service Department's website but are not contingent on approval from any outside agency.

Dutton-Leyda said he was initially concerned about whether going the sole-source route for the two contracts complied with procurement code requirements. After more study, he said, he is confident both fell safely within the regulations. He noted there was a 30-day posting period during which other construction firms could have challenged the city, but none did.

"If there was by chance another company that would take on the liability, they had the opportunity to protest" the sole-source request, he said.

Councilor Chris Rivera said he asked a question about the contracts to city staff earlier and was told the sole-source process was necessary because the work was partially complete.

"The way I think about it or the way that makes sense to me is if you had somebody building a house, would you want to change halfway through and have a different person start building?" he said.

Rivera did not believe it was common for construction work to be incomplete by the time a contract expired but said projects have taken a lot longer recently.

"I think we had a lot of services in-house. We don't have that anymore," he said. "I don't know if that plays into it; we have to contract out more things and they just move slower."

He noted the current construction environment is challenging due to inflation, supply chain issues and other problems.

Dutton-Leyda joined the city in February after working for the state in procurement and construction for more than a decade. He said it was common to receive 40 to 50 bids on construction projects at the state.

"For these local projects, we'll get a handful," he said.

Sometimes, fewer than a handful. At a Nov. 18 public meeting at the Southside Branch Library to discuss a sewer line extension on Vereda de Valencia, engineer Stan Holland said only one of three contractors on the city's on-call list submitted a bid for the project, and it was for more than the project's budget.

Projects going over budget because of increased construction costs is such a widespread problem it's stalling capital outlay spending across the state. An analyst with the Legislative Finance Committee reported in mid-November unspent capital funds are hovering at about $5 billion as project costs continue to grow.

Sergio Valora Sandoval, an engineer associate with the Wastewater Management Division of the Public Works Department, said at the meeting his group is struggling to garner bids.

"There are not enough people that want to work" in Santa Fe, he said, including companies based in Albuquerque.

"We have to hire people from Colorado when we have emergencies because nobody around in New Mexico wants to come and work for our sewer-related projects," he said.