With many positions in the city's Traffic Engineering Division currently vacant, Moreno Valley has hired STC Traffic, Inc. (STC) to temporarily manage and direct the Transportation Engineering Division, Public Works Director Michael L. Wolfe said in a report to City Council.
The $250,000 contract was awarded for one year on a year-to-year basis and was approved through City Council. Wolfe and Engineering Division Manager Michael Lloyd will oversee STC through the transition.
“The need to fill the positions is the driving need to have the consultant available. Hopefully, within the next week to two weeks, we will be able to get the paperwork completed and they will be able to start providing us with those services,” Lloyd said.
Along with the position of City Traffic Engineer needing to be filled, the Traffic Engineering Department also has openings at both the Senior Engineer and the Associate Engineer positions.
The department, which according to Wolfe, “Handles activities such as the day-to-day traffic operations of the city, transportation-related reviews for development projects, requests for traffic calming features from residents, emergency after-hours response for traffic-control equipment repairs, oversight of the Traffic Safety Commission, and the management of nine CIP (Capital Improvement Plan) projects,” operates on an approximately $5.9 million budget.
Part of the budget involved getting the most qualified consulting company that they could find, and they did that by posting the contract on PlanetBids. According to the report to City Council, the city received four bids, with STC getting the contract based on them being “the most qualified consultant to provide City Traffic Engineer consultant services after negotiation of a fair and reasonable price.”
In addition to managing and directing the staff, programs, and activities of the Traffic Engineering Department, STC will also be providing on-call traffic consulting services for the division and will be bringing their expertise in transportation systems to the department.
According to their website, STC is a full-service traffic engineering firm that specializes in the design, implementation, and operation of high-tech intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and Traffic Engineering and Control Applications.
Past projects of STC have ranged from improvement studies at isolated intersections to the implementation of regional transportation systems. They also state that they have experience in traffic signal design, transportation planning, traffic signal timing, street lighting, signing, striping, and traffic control.
As the city moves forward in its search for its new Traffic Engineer among others, it will slowly start to lose the necessity of having STC as a part of the Traffic Engineering Department.
According to Lloyd, as the positions are filled, the department will slowly lose the need have STC around. If, however, services are still needed at the end of the year, in the letter to the city council, Wolfe said that the current Procurement Policy allows the original agreement to be extended for four additional one-year terms-if the STC provides satisfactory performance of the services, and both the City and the STC mutually agree to extend the agreement.
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