CITY COUNCIL: EOC Design Bid, Animal Control, Hazard Mitigation Plan and More

The Half Moon Bay City Council will navigate a jam-packed agenda after tonight's upon the department's by September 1.

Among the 20 items to be discussed on tonight's agenda include cell phone tower policies, the Sewer Authority Mid-Coastside budget, police surplus vehicles, voting on awarding a contract for work in the planning stages of the city's Emergency Operations Center, approving a report on alleviating natural disasters as the city's Local Hazard Mitigation Plan, and approving a contract extension with the county for animal control services requiring additional dollars.

Supplemental information on the latter three items follows:

*Emergency Operations Center: City to vote on amending a current professional services agreement with San Mateo firm CSG Consultants, Inc. The agreemeent would expand the firm's responsibilities with the city to develop a design and construction bid documents for the Emergency Operations Center to be located next to the Half Moon Bay Police Substation.

In May, the city provided CSG Consultants a purchase order for $30,000 on an administrative level to begin the first part of this project. Council will vote to award the remaining $64,315 of a total $94,315 estimated cost so the firm can complete the design and construction bid documents.

*Local Hazard Mitigation Plan: Adopt plan written by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) titled "Taming Natural Disasters" as the city's Local Hazard Mitigation Plan.

"Taming Natural Disasters" has been adopted by ABAG as its Hazard Mitigation plan for the San Francisco Bay Area. City staff report that their staff worked with ABAG to develop an accompanying document to the plan with items specific to Half Moon Bay.

According to the city, adopting the plan and the accompanying Half Moon Bay-specific document will make Half Moon Bay eligible to receive disaster mitigation funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as federal law requires adoption of a local hazard mitigation plan.

*Animal Control Services: The 20 cities of San Mateo County contract as a whole with the county for these services [which, in turn, are mostly contracted out to the Peninsula Humane Society (PHS)]. The current contract between the cities and the county for animal control services expired on June 30, 2011.

According to the contract, animal control services covered include removing dead animals from the public right-of-way (excepting freeways), impound, quarantine, investigation and follow-up on "dangerous and vicious animal complaints as necessary," permit violations, patrol, testifying in the courts and euthanasia "when necessary."

According to city staff reports, all parties would like to extend the contract for four more years to expire on June 30, 2015. Negotiations over the past 18 months have resulted in an amendment being considered to the contract which would increase the base cost of services over these four years and tack on two additional cost categories.

Additional charges are maintenance costs to PHS facilities and county dispatch charges for licensing and animal control after hours, as well as on holidays.

Costs would be shared by all cities (proportionally due to frequency of services) participating in the contract.

Half Moon Bay's share of service costs (including the additional charges), according to the city staff report, is $165,000 for fiscal year 2011-2012 and would increase 17% over the four years. 

Another part of the amendment to the contract is a change in how surplus funds are distributed. In the previous contract, surplus funds were split equally between PHS, the county and participating cities; in the new amendment being considered, PHS would be given the entire surplus for the first three years of the contract and 75 percent in year four. City staff reports characterize the financial impact on Half Moon Bay for this part of the amendment as "unpredictable," but estimated at $10,000.

The last part of the amendment requires that representatives from the cities will meet with PHS three times a year to discuss "long-term options and alternatives to the current animal shelter," according to city staff reports.

The extension to the contract cannot be approved unless all 20 cities approve it; to date, 19 of the 20 cities have approved it so far, staff reports indicate. Staff recommend that the council approve the contract extension.

Update 8 p.m. July 19: Half Moon Bay City Manager Laura Snideman provided an update at the council meeting stating that 19 of the 20 cities have reviewed and adopted this contract extension, making Half Moon Bay the last city in the county to examine this issue.

For the full agenda and related staff reports, click here.

The Half Moon Bay City Council meeting will begin tonight at 6:30 p.m. with a recognition and reception for outgoing Recreation Department Employees. The regular meeting will begin at 7 p.m. All scheduled events will take place at the Ted Adcock Community/Senior Center at 535 Kelly Avenue, Half Moon Bay.