The City of Williamsport recently had to reject quotes for emergency owner-occupied housing rehabilitation for two home projects and take action to obtain a reasonable quote.

The resolution was approved by City Council but it first involved a deep discussion about a need for an experienced housing rehabilitation inspector to write up bid specifications for these types of projects.

The quotes were rejected for the rehabilitation of properties at 41 Eldred Street and 428 Glenwood Ave.

“We put out bids for three homes that are involved in this program,” said Austin Daily, city Housing Programs manager at the city department of community and economic development..

“We, unfortunately, received one bid each for two homes and zero bids for the final home,” he said. The city has to reject those quotes per its procurement standard, he noted.

Fielding numerous calls

“We field calls from homeowners who have emergencies,” he said, adding “they can be roof repair, plumbing needs and emergencies that can’t wait for the city to move onto other funding programs or refer them out to other agencies.”

“They come to us, we are able to help them through a limited pool of Community Development Block Grant funds that we have set aside each year,” he said. It was later asked and answered that these are about $75,000 in CDBG funds.

The department works closely with Jamie Shrawder of SEDA-Council of Governments, Lewisburg, who does a lot of intake and then helps the city to procure bids for these homeowners.

The issue that the city ran into this time was that when the city went out for pre-bids, there were a lot of questions received from the contractors, specifically regarding such items as bid specifications, Daily noted.

While Daily did checks with the staff from the Bureau of Codes, more is needed.

“Anyone can go out and see a roof and see a giant hole and say we need to fix this, not have that,” he said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have anyone on our team, whether it’s our staff or the codes department that can go out and say ‘this is how we fix it, this is how much it will cost,’ so “we can go out and get good bids for the city for the homeowner or anyone else who comes through this program.”

Daily said the department was asking the council to not only allow it to reject the bids received for the homeowners but allow it to assist the homeowners and others in the program.

Council asks more questions

“How many contractors would you say had expressed initial interest?” asked Councilwoman Liz Miele.

One of the issues on the third home was it had a lot of roof and plumbing repairs needed and there are not a lot of roofers who specialize in plumbing and vice versa, according to Daily.

“They may have been willing to sub-out whichever they were not qualified for, but without having proper bid specs for them to take to potential subcontractors it made it way more difficult than it needed to be on their end to justify putting in a bid for a singular home,” Daily said.

“We are able to pre-qualify them, able to work them through the income verification process in advance,” Daily said, adding that it becomes an issue if the city does these three homes as an example and has five on a waiting list, and the city has to wait until next year, or try and find other resources – whether it be one of the community action agencies or whatever the case may be.

“What is the proposed solution for the lack of expertise in the department?” Miele asked.

The city has a request for proposals ready to solicit for inspector services where they would be qualified to help the department to identify needs.

In other words, there might be a hole in the roof, but the trained inspector might know what is causing it and be able to give the city an approximate cost because the city already has what is in the allowable range for the funding.

Councilwoman Bonnie Katz observed how the city for years has had a list of individuals who are specialists in electrical. She then asked Daily if it would be to the city’s advantage if it kept a list of people who do roofing and for infrastructure.

“I think it might help you, it might help everybody,” Katz said. “Or is that too overcoming at this point?” she asked.

“No, I think that is certainly within what our staff is working on in coordination with (Jaime at SEDA-COG),” Daily said.

In this initial outreach, the city had lists of contractors that prior staff had utilized, and used the Williamsport-Lycoming Chamber of Commerce listing, Daily said.

“Our goal here is as we are able to work with these different contractors,” he said.

“We will be able to have a list that we know are prequalified and able to be utilized for these types of projects,” he said. “We know that they do good work and are able to put in bids that are affordable,” he said.

That is the goal, he added, but moving forward the city is kind of starting from a blank slate. The hiring of a housing rehab inspector, because of the rules of professional services, does not require council approval.

Conversations taking place

Shrawder said she had a conversation with Joe Lyons who has extensive experience in code inspections, works with the Williamsport Redevelopment Authority and worked in Clinton County. He works for a company that undertakes more than codes enforcement but also does codes assessment. “They do, I can only say, birth to burial,” she said. Lyons is well versed on all of these programs, she said. “It’s very encouraging to Shrawder that he plans to put in a proposal for these programs.

Could the city train the existing workforce?

Councilman Jon Mackey in asking a question clarified that while he is not a codes or building expert he wanted to know if these were skills that could be learned and taught to codes officials as opposed to going out and hiring a third party.

Daily said the city codes officials did go with him on the aforementioned projects.

That is when Valerie Fessler, executive director of the department, clarified more about what the needs are for council.

“Yes, the codes department did go out with Austin and look at all these projects and say ‘this is not meeting code, this door isn’t sufficient, this roof isn’t sufficient,'” she said.

What the department came up against was in the case of an exterior door needing to be replaced, one might come back with an $800 quote for a door, while another a $4,000 quote for a door, Fessler remarked.

“We need someone in the middle who is actually writing up specs,” she said.

In that way, the contractor is told he or she needs to source this material and do this precise job.

“That is where we are not comfortable as a department giving those construction specs,” Fessler said. “That – we were not able to get from the codes department,” she added.

Mackey appreciated the dialogue but probed for more clarity.

“Again, my question is, ‘Is that something that someone at the codes department should already have some knowledge on homes and what it takes to get them up to code?'” he asked. “I don’t know what training is involved in this,” he said.

Fessler said there are a couple of issues at hand.

“I think it’s just a couple of things,” she said. “One, if we just identify someone who is willing to do this work for us and is, for lack of a better word, is baked in to the project, they come out, they do the specs, we are able to pay them with CDBG funds, that is where this money comes out of each year and is a very small cost to incur, in order to have consistent bid specs, and for the city to be able to not have to go back and forth with contractors.”

Secondly, it is the department’s hope that it is able to identify more diverse funding sources that will allow the city to do home rehab projects without using CDBG funds, there are higher uses of CDBG funds and there funding sources that allow the city to do this type of work with much less red tape and less compliance, she added.

“So we are using our CDBG funds to do home rehab projects because there is a great need, and the city has not yet been awarded a different funding source,” Fessler said. “We have already put in some different applications for some other funding sources,” she said.

Fessler acknowledged this is a Band Aid for this year, in order to get through these projects.

“We will take a step back and see whether this program continues with this funding source and if it does what is the best way to make that happen?”

Mackey asked how people in need can find out about this program, and what efforts are made to let the community know.

STEP Inc., for example, serves over 3,700 families, and some of these people are referred to the city by the agency and others simply call in to ask Daily at the office.

Simply put, at this time there appeared to be no need to advertise the program beyond getting referrals from social services, including from the Center for Independent Living Roads to Freedom, which often inquires for people it serves who are seeking accessibility improvements, Fessler added.