The city of Hermiston is negotiating with the engineering firm of Anderson Perry & Associates to have it provide engineering services to the city.
The city currently uses the consulting firm of Kennedy Jenks for most of its projects such as water and sewer line design, street paving and development reviews. The firm, however, is based out of Portland and the city must pay the travel costs of having an engineer drive over to Hermiston to address routine matters. The city pays Kennedy Jenks about $150,000 a year, on top of the travel expenses.
Anderson Perry is based out of La Grande, cutting the travel expenses by about half. If an agreement is reached, the city would pay Anderson Perry $90,000 per year for its services. The firm also does work for Echo and Umatilla and is familiar with the area. The agreement would call for an engineer to be in Hermiston twice a week to work on city projects and field day-to-day questions from staff.
