Staff recommends the City Council approve the Consultant Agreement with Toole Design to complete the Safe Routes to School Study Update.

The City Council is being asked to approve a contract with Toole Design to develop a Safe Routes to School Study Update. The study was approved for funding and completion by the City Council and ultimately the Policy Coordinating Committee last fall as part of the 2021 Unified Planning Work Program (UPWP for the Billings Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO). The study will analyze opportunities to enhance the safety of students traveling to and from school and increase the number of students walking or bicycling to school. This will be accomplished by identifying challenges that prevent students from walking or bicycling safely and identifying solutions to these challenges. The study will analyze a half-mile radius around all 22 Billings Public Schools elementary schools. At this time, county schools located within the MPO are not included and private schools are not included. This is because of funding constraints. Staff, in future work programs, will look for opportunities to complete studies for those schools. 

Through a competitive RFP and selection process conducted in May 2021, five proposals were returned, one from Alta Planning and Design for $89,916; Sanderson Stewart for $89,530; SRF for $85,000; Nelson Nygaard for $89,870; and Toole Design for $86,623. Based on the scope of work advertised in the RFP, Toole Design was recommended by the selection committee to complete the Safe Routes to School Study Update. The committee then negotiated with Toole Design for additional project oversight committee meetings and enhanced project design, bringing the total contract to $89,924. The full scope of work proposed by the Consultant is outlined in Exhibit A of the contract (Attachment 1). The contract requires the Scope of Work and Document package to be completed in draft form within 10 months of signing with a budget not to exceed $89,924. 

City Council may:

• Approve the consultant contract as proposed; or
• Not Approve the consultant contract. Not approving the agreement means the City Council is not approving the completion of a funded project in the 2021 UPWP that was approved by the Policy Coordinating Committee in August 2020; or 
• Direct staff to negotiate specific changes with Toole Design and return a revised contract for approval. 

The cost of the Safe Routes to School Study Update contract is for an amount not to exceed $89,924.00. The costs are detailed in Exhibit B of the consultant contract. The majority of the funding is through the Billings Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization's Federal PL (planning) funds. PL funds for this project require a 40% local match, which is planned for and provided through the Planning Division's FY21 and FY22 budget utilizing its County-Wide Planning Mill Levy revenues.