Amador County – Ione City Council voted 3-2 Wednesday to discuss some out-of-scope work that a consulting engineer has done for the city, after learning last week that the company is withdrawing a request for a contract amendment, and says it will no longer work for the city.

Robertson-Bryan Incorporated continues to do follow-up work on a Seepage Discharge Compliance Plan it wrote for the city, and seeks $18,453 for work it has done, as requested by the Council and staff.

RBI’s managing partner, Michael Bryan, supplied of list a scope of work from an Aug. 29, 2011 proposal to the city, compared with “examples of actual service provided.”

City Attorney James Maynard said the city was “within their rights” from the contract being for a “not to exceed” amount. Councilman David Plank said: “I think we have an ethics issue here.” Councilwoman Andrea Bonham said RBI’s list of actual services provided mostly does not seem different from the proposal, but just seemed to just take more work.

City Manager Jeff Butzlaff said the work led to going in a different direction than PERC’s design-build-operate-finance project, and size. RBI in its letter noted that the change in plans resulted in reducing PERC’s $12 million to $14 million dollar project, to one that cost under $6 million, if built.

Butzlaff said the new direction led to crafting a Request for Proposals for a State Revolving Fund contractor, and in hindsight, the city should have restructured the contract at that point. RBI last Dec. 9 notified the city that its contract budget had been exhausted because of the extra out-of-scope work.

Bonham said the council meeting attendances were in the scope, but three items in RBI’s list seemed to be extra work, including meeting with Ted Gaines and work on the RFPs. Bonham was listed during a Dec. 20 council meeting as requesting RBI to develop a project memorandum. Bonham said if she asked them to do that, then the city owes them for that.

Councilman Lloyd Oneto said typically in the not-to-exceed work, companies work right up to that amount, and they usually don’t go under and say, here, we don’t need this 20 grand.

Plank made a motion to direct staff to contact RBI and get additional information on the items. The motion passed with Bonham, Plank and Vice Mayor Daniel Epperson voting yes, and Mayor Ron Smylie and Oneto dissenting.

Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.