A cluster of close to 55 resolutions – totaling $600 million for contracts to provide on-call services for the city’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure won council approval Monday. 

However, two resolutions tied to the city’s homeless operation were tabled for a week. 

Among the approved resolutions were eight contracts, each for $50 million, totaling $400 million, which would provide beefed-up construction capacity and offer the city’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure the flexibility to quickly deliver road, bridge, and other civil infrastructure projects. The remaining contracts varied in value, but also provided on-call services to DOTI for consulting, training for electric vehicle fleet maintenance, construction and more.

Most of the contracts had a three-year term, with the option to extend to five.

“This, probably to the public, seems like a very strange and large set of contracts,” District 10 Councilmember Chris Hinds said. “All of these contracts put together equal about $600 million that the Department of Transportation infrastructure is asking us to give an in advance green light, so that they don’t have to come back to us to vote on it.”

Hinds, who acknowledged the advantage of having on-call services to speed up the delivery of projects citywide, was the sole dissenting vote.

“That would mean that our city council’s purview of voting on anything, any contract that’s over $500,000, would be negated for $600 million over the next five years,” he said. 

Hinds added: “Sure we have the opportunity to allocate budget dollars to agencies, and potentially that means we could try to eliminate certain on-call projects. But that’s not how our oversight works. We give funding to the agency, and the executive director of that agency can spend those funds however they want.” 

District 5 Councilmember Amanda Sawyer pointed out that the council “gets quarterly reporting on the usage of these on-call contracts, which is incredibly important for oversight, but they are also incredibly important to functioning for our city.” 

The council also opted to delay a vote on two resolutions regarding contracts between the city and Urban Alchemy for services related to homelessness. The first resolution is for a $30.4 million contract to operate The Aspen, a former DoubleTree Hotel now operating as one of the city’s largest hotel shelters. 

The second is a $3 million contract to provide community ambassador services to the homeless and those in need of hospitality or safety services, and public right-of-way cleaning services.

Votes on these two contracts were delayed to provide City Council members with briefings from Urban Alchemy representatives, which will be present this week.