BY MARK J. CRAWFORD
Bradford County will be spoiled for choice when it comes to consultants for engineering and related services, including the possible replacement of North Central Florida Regional Planning Council’s land planning services.
County commissioners approved a slate of nine companies, all of which responded to a request for qualifications for engineering and/or surveying and mapping services. After applications were received, reviewed and ranked, all were found to be responsive.
By entering a professional services contract with each, the county will be able to assign projects to the company best suited for the job, according to Commissioner Chris Dougherty.
The top ranked firms included CHW, which has had an ongoing contract with Bradford County. The others at the top with an average score above 90 points were North Florida Professional Services, Gresham Smith and Halff. The other five were Kimley Horn, Ticoi, Mittauer and Associates, JBPro, and Team Fishel.
Their engagement was further discussed after the board declined to renew an agreement with the North Central Florida Regional Planning Council for comprehensive services.
Confidence in the council’s dedication to serving the county has been questioned before, but some on the board appealed for the council to be given another chance. The primary complaint was responsiveness — that the planning council didn’t have the workforce to deal with local matters in timely manner. To maintain its agreement with Bradford County last year, the council also lowered its annual price to $13,000.
County Manager Scott Kornegay has been in favor of a change.
“So that’s something we need to consider as we move forward,” Kornegay said when Dougherty asked that the agreement with the council be pulled from the consent agenda for further discussion. “I do know there’s been some problems with the current planning council that we’ve just not been able to overcome. I know they lowered the price for us last year, and we were going to give them another year to for their performance to improve. … (Zoning Director Randy Andrews) isn’t here today, not to put words in his mouth, but he and I both believe that that we could do better.”
Once specific example was a request from the commission for the council to draft changes to the land development code requiring new subdivisions to have paved roads so no future neighborhoods are left with impassible dirt roads following storms. The county cannot spend public money to improve private roads, leaving residents to fend for themselves.
According to Kornegay, Andrews made the request months ago, but there has been no response from the council.
“That’s one of the big hold ups, and there have been a couple others as well,” he said.
Dougherty said the council, which services as the Gainesville Metropolitan Traffic Planning Organization, has also had issues complying with requests from the Florida Department of Transportation. One concerned the planning council’s budget.
“The 80-20 rule basically means within their budget that they have to spend at least 80% of that funding. So within that funding, they were way low of that 80%, and part of that 80% could have been for them to be able to hire additional staff, which we all know that that’s been an issue as far as response from the planning council and not having anybody there to answer any questions at any time,” Dougherty said.
The discussion will be continued as Chairwoman Carolyn Spooner pointed out the issues with Alachua County were news to the rest of the board, and she didn’t want to make an uninformed decision. But the agreement with the council was pulled from the agenda.
The board did approve engaging with all nine engineering firms for ongoing services, with Kornegay saying commissioners could select one of them or all of them.
Spooner pointed out the scoring for many was very close, complicating the selection of just one. Dougherty moved to approve the entire list.
“We’re going to find that some of these provide services that some others might not, and when it comes down to a particular project or anything that may apply to their particular discipline, then I think that, it’s good to be able to just pull that book out of the library and say, ‘Here’s a company that does that service,’ and we’re ready to go. We’re under contract with them, and we move forward,” he said, adding he has worked with counties that have dozens of contracts with consultants they can call upon as needed.
There is no cost to the county for having these ongoing agreements. The county would only pay for services performed, one of which could be planning. Kornegay said he would look at which of the companies provide comprehensive planning services and bring that list back to the board for consideration.
