Lind Town Council authorizes agreement with Century West

At their Aug. 8 meeting, the Lind Town Council authorized Mayor Jamie Schmunk to enter into a master services agreement with Century West Engineering regarding the town’s potential road repair projects.

During the July 25 meeting, Century West’s Steve Nelson informed the council Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) obligated $942,225 in grant money to Lind for repairing streets sustaining damage from winter weather.

Lind was the first jurisdiction in the state to have their FEMA grant money obligated for these repairs.

Nelson said the grant money would go toward repairing portions of Third, Fourth and Seventh streets, as well as fixing virtually all of Sixth Street.

The repair work will also fix cracks at the airport runway. Crews will lay down geotextile fabric on the roadway, then add six inches of crushed stone and two inches of asphalt on top of that.

Century West, based out of Spokane, was the only firm who answered the city’s Request For Qualifications for the FEMA projects. TD&H Engineering had expressed interest did not submit an application.

The agreement states the Town of Lind authorizes Century West Engineering to carry out and complete the scope of services in consideration of the mutual covenants set forth in the document.

The scope of services in the agreement include the engineer providing on-call consulting services to the town on the planning, design and construction management for the projects.

The firm will also survey services incidental to the work, infrastructure systems modeling and analysis to related to the projects.

They will also provide direct administration of the FEMA grants, project management and other activities conducted by city engineering departments.

“This is only for FEMA work,” Nelson said, adding Century West will work together with the city’s engineers to leverage funds.

Schmunk said the city’s engineers were made aware of the agreement before it came to council.

Nelson explained the agreement does not obligate the town to pay any money to Century West after it is signed. The firm will prepare a separate task order and fee estimate for the project and not begin any work prior to receiving a task order from the client.

As for the city’s matching amount, Nelson said Lind is currently obligated to pay 12.5 percent. The matching amount dropped from the initial 25 percent, however, the state will pay half of the match with Surface Transportation Program grant funding.

Nelson said he has not heard from Washington State Transportation Improvement Board regarding his request for additional funding, which would lower the city’s match to 2.5 percent.

Even if the town has to pay the 12.5 percent match, Nelson said the repair work could be broken into smaller pieces. Cities initially have 18 months to complete the projects, however the state can grant municipalities up to four years to finish the work.

If the four years have passed and the projects are not finished, Nelson said the town can request additional time from the state to finish the work. He added there is no interest penalty.

“It sounds like a decent proposal considering we’re getting an 87.5 percent grant when we didn’t have that before,” Councilmember Jim Dworshak said.

When asked about the FEMA work potentially conflicting with the town’s Storm Water Project, Nelson said he would meet with Stantec Engineer Alan Gay to coordinate a timeframe where both projects can be worked on at the same time.

Councilmember Paula Bell asked about the current status of the Storm Water Project. Schmunk said Stantec and the Department of Ecology are working on the details of billing for the project.

In regards to the marijuana ordinance, Dworshak told council he spoke with the Adams County Auditor’s Office and it would cost $2,000-$3,000 to put a measure on the February election ballot.

At the previous meeting, council discussed placing a ballot measure asking Lind residents on whether or not they would want a marijuana producer, grower or retail business to locate within the city limits.

Council also discussed issuing a survey through the utility bills, asking residents for their opinion on a cannabis business potentially locating within the city.

Clerk-Treasurer Kim Michaels said she would bring a draft of a survey to the next meeting.

In other business, Schmunk announced Gregory Pietz decided not to take the job of running the town’s Wastewater Treatment Facility. A consultant is helping with the testing and sampling until a permanent plant operator is hired.