Czar costs included in tonight’s consent agenda
(Editor’s note: This is part of an ongoing series that tracks the city’s expenditures which appear on the upcoming Santa Monica City Council consent agenda. Consent agenda items are routinely passed by the city council with little or no discussion from elected officials or the public. However, many of the items have been part of public discussion in the past.) CITY HALL — Elected officials are expected to spend nearly $1 million tonight, mostly on fixing up Big Blue Bus operations.
Just more than $700,000 is expected to be allocated to the Big Blue Bus for work to be done on bus transmissions, detailing services, body repair and painting, and cleaning up the bus yard.
While another $200,000 will be earmarked to pay former Los Angeles County Supervisor Edmund Edelman, the city’s new homeless czar, by far the biggest expenditure tonight is City Hall’s expected reinvestment of its bus fleet.
GUSSYING UP THE BUSES Topping the list for the Big Blue Bus is an annual $300,000 expenditure to hire three different companies at hourly rates of between $32 and $38 to repair buses that have been damaged in accidents. The services are “essential to preserve acceptable customer service levels,” according to city staff. The companies that most likely will be hired are Carlos Guzman, Inc., Smith & Hartford Coach Works and Westway Industries.
Next on the list is a contract with S&J Chevrolet, Inc. for $190,000, which will include a year’s worth of work to replace Allison transmissions on buses, plus applicable sales tax. The transmissions used in the Big Blue Bus fleet are usually overhauled at 300,000 miles, according to city staff.
The third expenditure is to hire UNIS- ERVE Facilities Services Corp. for an annual contract of $115,000 to detail buses on a regular basis. The interior and exterior of the buses will be cleaned and waxed to “maintain the award-winning appearance of the Big Blue Bus,” according to city staff in a memo to the City Council.
The remaining expense relating to Big Blue is a $100,000 annual contract with the Resource Collection, which will clean the bus yard. The work includes cleaning the parking lot, repair shop, fuel island, bus wash and the warehouse at the bus yard.
All of the contracts provide two one-year renewal options and the contractors have agreed to comply with the city’s living wage law, which mandates that its employees working for the city of Santa Monica be paid $11.50 an hour.
THE COST OF A CZAR It was announced last week that Edelman was hired as City Hall’s homeless czar. He will have a one-year contract and will focus on seeking solutions to homelessness on a regional level — essentially to take the burden off of Santa Monica and find incentives for other nearby cities to help shoulder the problem.
City staff describe the timing of Edelman’s hire as a “pivotal moment in which an effective regional approach will be achieved or missed.” That’s because a special panel of more than 80 Los Angeles leaders in early 2006 will present its 10-year plan to end homelessness in the region, and officials from the city and county of LA are reconsidering governance of homeless initiatives. The flow of Proposition 63 mental health funds to LA County also will commence, bringing new resources to bear on the dually diagnosed homeless, among other beneficiaries, according to city staff.
New City Manager Lamont Ewell, who was hired last month and will begin work in January, will oversee Edelman, whose contract may be extended for an additional six months, city staff said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 13, 2005. Read the original PDF.