The city of Columbus spent more than $1 million on professional services in calendar year 2022. More than two-thirds of that went to only three vendors.

Neel-Schaffer made $397,521.93 from the city in professional services last year, according to expenditure reports and invoices Chief Financial Officer Jim Brigham provided The Dispatch in response to a public records request.

The city spent another $281,880.84 for legal services that year, with $171,952.66 going to Mitchell, McNutt and Sams, the firm for which contracted city attorney Jeff Turnage works. Another $105,410.13 went to the Greenville-based Lake Tindall firm, which provided maritime law expertise in the city’s lawsuit against two companies it claims were responsible for a runaway barge that damaged the pedestrian bridge at the Riverwalk in February 2020.

The two companies agreed earlier this year to pay the city a $4.2 million settlement to repair the bridge, making the payments to Lake Tindall, which also include billables from 2021 and this year not included in the scope of The Dispatch’s request, “money well spent,” according to Mayor Keith Gaskin.

“There are complexities with maritime law that if you don’t have someone with expertise in it, there is a good chance we may not have won that,” he said. “That was a substantial amount of money, and they didn’t want to settle easily.”

Professional services — such as accounting, legal, engineering and certain other vendor services — can be awarded without state purchasing law requiring a formal bidding process. Since the city’s fiscal year runs from Oct. 1-Sept. 30, the information The Dispatch requested for 2022 contains costs overlapping two fiscal years.

Rounding out the top five most expensive vendors for 2022 were Worth Thomas Consultants, which the city paid $73,313.69 for lobbying services in Jackson; and Straight Up Aviation, which made $51,000 each from the city and county as the fixed-base operator for Columbus-Lowndes Airport.

Other vendors of note included Dixie Decorations, with which the city spent $25,807.50 to “refurbish” holiday decorations downtown, Gaskin said, adding it would not be an annual expense.

Signature Sound and Printing made $9,734.54, mostly for social media and marketing work for City Hall; Watkins, Ward and Stafford accountants were paid $8,185 for assisting the city with bank reconciliations; and Joe Dillon made $7,227.83 for camera installation work that was outside the scope of his public information officer duties with the city, for which he is paid $32,000 annually as a contractor. No records pertaining to Dillon’s work as the city’s hazard mitigation coordinator were included in what the city gave The Dispatch.

Engineering
The city’s bill from Neel-Schaffer has increased substantially over the past three years, with the city paying the firm a total of $663,115.90 in calendar year 2022.

Kevin Stafford, the North Mississippi manager for the firm who has served as the city’s engineer on contract since 2013, said that total includes the $397,521.93 in general professional services, plus almost $266,000 in “capitalized projects” that are paid from grants or from other city funds.

For example, designing Propst Park improvements is paid from the city’s 2-percent tourism tax, while other projects are reimbursed through federal or state funding — such as airports projects granted through the Federal Aviation Administration or road projects that obtained MDOT funding. For airport projects, Lowndes County also reimburses the city for half of any out-of-pocket expense, Stafford said.

Still, even the general engineering services have doubled since 2020, Gaskin said, and the city is researching ways to bring that cost down, including studying the feasibility of having a city engineer on staff instead of on contract.

“Even if we had a city engineer, we would still have to have the resources that Neel-Schaffer can provide,” Gaskin said. … We call on them for just about anything you can imagine that’s going on in the city. … “There’s a lot of expertise from having a full-service engineering firm you can reach out to.

“Kevin Stafford is probably more knowledgeable of the inner workings of the city than most of our employees because he’s been doing it so long,” he added. “So there is value in the knowledge that he has.”

The numbers from Starkville appear to bear that out. Despite a dedicated in-house engineering department with a $450,000 annual budget, specialized projects with private firms ran up another more than $600,000 in 2022, according to records The Dispatch obtained from the city. Kimley Horn made up the lion’s share of those costs at just more than $528,000.

Stafford said for “general services,” he fields calls from elected officials, department heads and administrators at City Hall to consult on everything from drainage and road work to repairing bridges. However, he pointed to July 2021, when Gaskin’s administration took office, for when billables started to swell. He believes those should soon begin to decrease.

“The combination of staff changes and learning curves, we’ve probably been at the table more often than not. I fully anticipate it will calm back down,” Stafford said. “I really don’t think much has changed in the way of the council people. I have not had abnormal conversations with them pre or post election. I have spent more time at City Hall. Again, I’ve never been to a department head meeting before this administration.”

There are other meetings too.

“There’s now a work session before every council meeting twice a month that didn’t happen prior to this administration,” he said. There are press conferences after each council meeting. … I don’t go unless I’m asked to be there.”

Also, Public Works communicates more directly with Neel-Schaffer after former project manager J5 walked away from that role, Stafford said.

“We definitely didn’t replace J5. However (Public Works does) have questions at times and they call me when they have those questions. Prior to J5’s departure, I think they got a lot of those questions and were kind of the filter before that got to us. … That filter is completely removed now.”

Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.

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