CHENEY – The City Council found its way to doing some non-coronavirus related business last Tuesday night, passing resolutions approving project engineering services, building a wall on a Light Department building, entering into a medical equipment services agreement and providing data collection for the Kalispel Tribe of Indians Police Department.
The latter is a 36-month extension of an existing agreement between the Kalispel’s and Cheney’s Police Department to provide data collection, storage and sharing services. The new agreement carries with it a sizeable increase in what the Tribe will pay Cheney and a yearly increase.
As a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week law enforcement agency, Cheney maintains a link to the Washington State Patrol’s ACCESS (Washington Central Computerized Enforcement Services System) system so that information such as warrants and protection orders information can be shared between agencies.
The Kalispel’s department does not operate its own round-the-clock dispatch center as Cheney does, and uses the ACCESS agreement for warrant and protection order data entry services. Besides allowing for a 4 percent annual increase in the contract rate, the new agreement increases what the Tribe pays from $29,000 to $53,000 per year.
“How’d you pull that off?” Councilman John Taves asked Cheney Police Chief John Hensley.
Hensley said it was based primarily on workload, along with the fact that the Kalispel’s are Cheney’s “number one” customer for ACCESS services, followed by the Spokane Tribe of Indians and Airway Height Police Department. He added Cheney can show its value more readily now and has a “100 percent” accuracy rating, based on audits of the system.
“We’re getting away from those contracts where we’re doing other people a favor,” Hensley said. “Now it’s a service, a business and we do it better, cheaper, faster.”
Council also approved a $109,992 construction engineering services contract with Parametrix Engineering for work on the upcoming Washington Street Preservation project, which went to out to bid May 13. The agreement was deferred from a previous council meeting, and Public Works Director Todd Ableman said they received approval from the state Department of Transportation to add Spokane geotechnical engineering firm Budinger and Associates to the contract to perform materials testing only.
Ableman said the city had considered doing this testing independent of the contract, but that it would have required a lot of paperwork and hoops to jump through to do so. The project, which involves street preservation work on Washington from Oakland to West 6th Street, is estimated at $800,000 – $900,000, with Cheney receiving up to $731,000 in funding from the federal Surface Transportation Block Grant and Highway Infrastructure programs.
Cheap oil has led to competitive asphalt prices, and combined with traffic control measures likely to be less expensive due to the lack of student and staff on Eastern Washington University’s campus, Ableman and others are anticipating the bids to be competitive and well under the engineering estimates — possibly even under the amount the city is receiving in grants.
Councilman Paul Schmidt asked if that proved to be the case, are there aspects of the project that could be enhanced to use up any remaining grant funds or would Cheney “end up handing money back.”
Ableman said there are elements that could be looked at, such as extra road grinding to lessen the slope of Washington.
Also, council approved a $9,000 contract with Halme Builders to build a wall on the north side of the Light Department’s new storage building. Halme recently reconstructed the buildings’ roof since it was certified by the roof’s manufacturer to do so.
Finally, council approved a three-year product services agreement with Stryker Medical to inspect and repair the Fire Department’s two LIFEPAK 15 monitor/defibrillators. Cheney is still the only department in the county that has the automated chest compression devices, Fire Chief Tom Jenkins said.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].
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