Riverside City Council met January 22. Photo by Sam McIntosh.

The Riverside City Council voted 3-2 to have MMS Consultants create the final design for extending infrastructure from the city to the North Growth area, a proposed 70-home development.

MMS Consultants presented an agreement that the city and APEX Construction would split the costs of paying the engineering firm for services of annexation, rezoning, and establishing a preliminary plat for the whole 28-acre area, and the final design and permitting for phase one.

Councilmember Tom Sexton addressed concern of a conflict of interest of MMS Consultants working with the developer while also working for the city. Engineer Scott Pottorff responded to Sexton, “I’m trying to say we’re not the ones pushing this Tom, alright? I’m not trying to get sideways or anything but I’ve tried to be as clear as I can that this is unusual. And we need to be transparent if we’re going to go forward doing this this way, that we need to have both parties agree that that’s what they want to do. And our commitment is to the city, Tom, and we’re going into this thinking this is something the city is interested in so that’s why we’re trying to work on this thing.”

Councilmember Bob Schneider pointed out that the city’s only responsibility is getting the infrastructure extended through 12 lots, and that APEX could hire a different engineer to do final plans on the 28 acres. APEX owner Steve Schmidt says he wants to be transparent, and that it would be redundant to hire a different engineer for the rest of the project.The city and developer will split a lump sum cost of $18,500 for phase one plans to MMS.