The Soldotna City Council adopted a resolution that would authorize the city manager to enter into a term contract with HDR Engineering, Inc. for grant consulting services. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is expected to provide significant investment through a variety of competitive and formula grant programs. A previous resolution authorized the administration to issue a qualifications-based solicitation for professional services related to grant consulting work.
The scope of work includes ongoing grant funding research targeted at the city’s project needs, as directed by City Manager Stephanie Queen, who told council:
“Included in the packet, Mr. Kornelis has identified, really, the two kind of scopes of work that we identified. The first was ongoing monitoring of grant opportunities and helping develop a strategy related to seeking individual funding for the city’s projects that have been identified by the council in our capital improvement plan. That task is really going to be ongoing on a time and materials basis. The second task would be grant development, grant writing, and specific project development for individual opportunities that are identified that one of our projects would be eligible for and we believe will be competitive.”
The scope of work includes specific grant application development, for programs that a city is deemed to be eligible and competitive for. After publicly advertising the project, seven proposals were received and evaluated by the city.
A committee found HDR Engineering submitted the highest-ranking proposal, according to Queen:
“The resolution would authorize us to negotiate and execute that contract with HDR. They are really a global firm, but they’ve got a strong Alaska presence. Many on their project team is familiar to us. One of the project members was really conducting the grant writing workshop that was held in Anchorage and had also been tasked by AML of providing grant writing services to the state. Those services will be available to all members, but really this would allow us to have a team really dedicated to our needs and helping us be successful and helping identify funding for our projects. We’re proposing that the funding be ARPA funds. $150,000 set aside of the previously appropriated ARPA funds for this term contract.”
The resolution was unanimously approved.
