Title
Contract for General Services, Agreement No. AGR24-46a with Bonfire Engineering & Construction LLC in the Amount of $35,000,000, plus Applicable Gross Receipts Tax, for the Purpose of Designing and Building a County-Owned Fiber-to-the-Premise Open Access Network
Recommended Action
I move that Council approve Contract for General Services, Agreement No. AGR24-46a with Bonfire Engineering & Construction LLC in the Amount of $35,000,000, plus Applicable Gross Receipts Tax, for the Purpose of designing and building a county-owned fiber-to-the-premise open access network. I further move that Council approve Budget Revision 2025-22 and include Attachment E as part of the minutes of this meeting.
County Manager's Recommendation
The County Manager recommends that Council approve this Contract for General Services as requested.
Body
Staff will make a presentation about the Community Broadband Network (CBN) infrastructure project. Note: the presentation includes information about the operating agreement AGR24-46b and will be a combined presentation.
The project background dates back to the completion of a community broadband initiative in 2013. At that time, the project was deemed too expensive to be feasible. The project was restarted at the end of 2021 with hiring a Broadband Manager and funding an updated study. The Covid-19 pandemic dramatically heightened the need for high-speed video capabilities and became a necessity to keep families and loved ones connected. Furthermore, the community suffered a full day outage of all internet and cell phone coverage at the end of 2022. This outage in conjunction with disappointment with the service levels and maintenance of current providers and infrastructure limitations lead the Council to adopt the following goal to: Provide community broadband as a basic essential service that will enable reliable high-speed internet service throughout the county at competitive pricing.
After a public engagement process and completion of the study, a Request for Proposals (RFP) was developed in 2023 to design/build and operate a CBN Open Access Network Fiber-to-the-Premise service. Open Access means that the infrastructure is publicly owned and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will be allowed to use the infrastructure to provide the community members service.
It took two attempts at issuing the RFP at the end of 2023 to obtain responsive responses. Since the evaluation committee chose a preferred vendor, many months and hours have been invested by staff crafting both this design/build agreement and the following operate agreement.
The total cost breaks down for designing and building the system infrastructure is as follows:
Design - $1,24M
Construction - $22M
Contingency - $5.6M
Total - $35M
Timeline:
Bonding Issuance, 4-6 months
Engineering Design, 7 months
Construction, 30 months
The project will be built in phases and as a phase completes it will be turned on for service. Overall, the entire design/build project will take three to five years to complete.
Alternatives
Council could choose not to award the CBN Design/Build Agreement. If this AGR is not awarded, associated agreement ARG24-46b to operate the CBN should also not be awarded.
Fiscal and Staff Impact/Planned Item
The CBN project is funded in the FY2025 Capital Improvement Program. GRT Revenue Bonds will be used to finance the project with a 20 year debt service.
Attachments
A - Presentation
B - AGR24-46a
C - RFP and Amendments
D - Construction Contract Book
E - Budget Revision 2025-22