Albany Utility Board signs off on Trees Unlimited contract extension

ALBANY — The Albany Utility Board agreed Thursday to recommend that the Albany City Commission increase the city’s contract with Trees Unlimited by $89,000 to fund the company’s services through the end of the year.

Mike Trotter with the city’s Central Services department told the Utility Board that the city’s annual contract with Trees Unlimited for right-of-way clearing and power line maintenance is $450,000. But severe weather events in the community, Trotter noted, had been the primary factor in the company already billing the city $448,000.

“The additional $89,000 will get us through the rest of this year, and then the next year’s contract will kick in,” Trotter said.

Assistant City Manager Phil Roberson told the board January storms, Hurricane Irma and other weather-related events had forced the vendor to increase its workload during the first three quarters of the year. He also noted that some of the company’s cleanup work is reimbursable.

“Without (Trees Unlimited’s) crews, we would have had a tough time keeping up with debris removal,” Roberson said. “But we have been able to add some of the work they’ve done to our reimbursable requests to GEMA. We have received $8 million (in recovery funding) of the $17 million (total) we’ve requested.”

Also at the meeting, the board agreed to recommend approval of maintenance costs of $52,480.66 for updates to the utilities’ server software from Hansen Technologies and OK’d a request by the Municipal Gas Authority of Georgia to sign on to a compliance agreement that Assistant City Manager Stephen Collier said the collective is seeking from all 71 of its member utilities. The city of Albany’s Utility Board joined the collective in 2014.

“What this is is a compliance agreement, where the Municipal Gas Authority is trying to find an equitable way to charge all of its members,” Collier said. “Mr. (City Attorney Nathan) Davis has looked this over, and it’s basically a change in the formula that they use to charge members. It takes into account not only the active meters of each member but the miles of (gas delivery) pipe as well.”

Davis said the agreement is an attempt by MGAG to make sure all subscribers pay an “equitable portion of all costs.”

Collier said that by signing the agreement, the utilities department would receive services from MGAG that include records management, training, required reporting (to federal and state agencies), regulatory representation and regulation compliance information.

Roberson also told the board that a four-person line crew had returned from Florida Wednesday evening. The crew had been dispatched to help with recovery efforts in the wake of devastation related to Irma. They were gone a week, Roberson said.