09-20 and 09-21-10 Special Called Regular Meeting of Fiscal Affairs Committee

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CITY OF LA. PORTE, TEXAS Agreed Upon Procedures - Five Points Town Center Project (Continued) September 21, 2010 5A. Recommendation The City and EDC should ensure that any meetings conducted which involve Council or Board members in sufficient numbers to constitute a quorum are conducted in accordance with the requirements of the Open Meetings Act. 6. Review URS Contract and Supportin2 Documents for Accuracy and Compliance: Summary URS was selected to provide engineering and architectural professional services on the Project. Concerns were raised by the public related to invoices submitted by URS for payment. Allegations included errors in invoices, charges submitted for travel expenses on days URS employees were not working on the Project, and the possibility of charges not allowable under the contract. We reviewed the URS invoices provided by the City for accuracy and compliance with the contract and found that, while the invoices submitted appeared to be accurate in most respects, there were several items which appeared questionable or could not be evaluated for accuracy or reasonableness based on the documentation provided. It should be noted that, both individually and in total, these items accounted for a very small percentage of the total Project costs of approximately $3.0 million. In addition, these items appeared to be largely clerical or typographical in nature and did not appear to constitute an intentional distortion of the amounts billed and, in some instances, were to the City's benefit. Some of the items that could not be evaluated based on the information provided to us included: . Reimbursement for mileage expenses - the contract documents provided do not specify how mileage is to be calculated (actual, city limit to city limit, straight line, etc.). . Reimbursement for toll expenses - reimbursement appears to have been done based on toll plazas rather than dates and it could not be determined whether individual tolls were directly related to the particular Proj ect. . Hours billed - job titles were not included on the submitted time sheets so hourly billing amounts could not be matched to hourly rates in contract documents; job titles for two URS employees did not match any of the job titles included in contract documents. Detail of Procedures Performed and Individual Findings We reviewed invoices charged to the Project. Each invoice was recalculated in order to determine accuracy. We also compared the items on these invoices for compliance with the contract with URS. We have included these invoices as Exhibit 10 through Exhibit 18. Exceptions found are summarized below: . On the 2/20/2009 invoice, URS appears to have incorrectly allocated 1.5 hours of time to the Project which belonged to a different client's project called "QP RLC Fire Training Facility Project Management" (see Exhibit 11, page 178). The employee, Moises Cinco, is billed at $120 per hour resulting in a possible overcharge of $185.40 including the three percent communications fee added to all personnel billed to the Project. . The 2/20/2009 invoice (see Exhibit 11, page 132) includes a travel expense report for URS employee Bill O'Brien requesting mileage reimbursement for travel from Dallas to La Porte. The URS Contract does not specify how mileage is to be charged to the client (actual mileage, straight line, city limit to city limit, etc.). Mileage submitted was 650 miles. To gauge the reasonableness 12