Environmental Review
& CEQA Services

• Organizational Identity: Kimley-Horn is an engineering, planning, and design consulting firm with more than 11,000 employees in over 175 offices across North America. The Anaheim agreement identifies the contracting entity as a California corporation, and it was executed on the firm's behalf by Chief Executive Officer Steven E. Lefton.
• Local and Regional Hub: The agreement is serviced from Kimley-Horn's office at 1100 W. Town & Country Road, Suite 700, in the neighboring City of Orange, which serves as the contractual notice address. The same office has appeared as the consultant contact on CEQA documents for jurisdictions across Orange, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino counties, including Newport Beach, South El Monte, and Rialto.
• Environmental Practice: The firm markets NEPA, CEQA, and state environmental documentation alongside related technical disciplines, including noise, vibration, and air quality studies; Phase I and II environmental site assessments; wetland and stream consulting; and threatened and endangered species work. This allows a single consultant to deliver most of the technical studies an Anaheim CEQA document requires in-house.
• Designated Principal: The contract names Dana Privitt, AICP, as the principal and representative authorized to act for Kimley-Horn. The City states that her experience and reputation were a substantial inducement to enter the agreement, and she cannot be replaced, nor can other personnel be assigned to supervise the work, without the City's express written consent. State CEQA records list her title as CEQA Practice Builder and Shareholder; she began her career in the City of Newport Beach planning department before moving into consulting.
• Incumbency in Anaheim: Kimley-Horn is one of seven firms carried over from the City's prior on-call list. Its record of Anaheim work includes the Townes at Orange Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration prepared for the City, CEQA determination memoranda testing project modifications against adopted IS/MNDs, and a December 2024 SB 743 vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) analysis supporting the Program EIR for the General Plan Focused Update, where PlaceWorks served as primary EIR consultant.
• Housing Streamlining Expertise: Kimley-Horn's Alex Jewell presented a session on housing rules and streamlining tools at the California Association of Environmental Professionals' 2025 Advanced CEQA Workshop, a topic that became directly relevant to this contract when California's 2025 CEQA reforms took effect (see Key Updates & Developments).
• Institutional Recognition: In 2026 the firm was recognized for the 19th year among the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For, named to the PEOPLE Companies that Care list for the fourth time, and received five national American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) Engineering Excellence Awards.
• Recent Expansion: In July 2026 Kimley-Horn opened its first Canadian office in Toronto and added Belka Engineering Associates, a Columbia, South Carolina electrical engineering firm, extending a pattern of geographic and service-line growth.

Exhibit A of the agreement defines an on-call, as-needed scope. No specific project is included; the City assigns work on a project-by-project basis, primarily for private development proposals reviewed by the Planning and Building Department. Kimley-Horn must furnish all services, materials, supplies, labor, and studies for each assignment in compliance with federal, state, and local law and City policy. The deliverables fall into the following categories.

• Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs): The most comprehensive CEQA document, prepared when a project may have a significant effect on the environment. An EIR analyzes impacts across resource topics, evaluates alternatives, identifies mitigation, and moves through public circulation and response to comments before certification by the decision-making body.
• Initial Studies/Mitigated Negative Declarations (IS/MNDs): Used where an initial study finds that potentially significant impacts can be reduced below significance through mitigation measures the applicant agrees to incorporate. IS/MNDs are generally faster and less costly than EIRs and are a common document type for mid-sized infill and commercial projects in Anaheim.
• Addenda: Documents that record minor technical changes or additions to a previously certified EIR or adopted IS/MND when the changes do not trigger subsequent environmental review.
• Consistency Checklists for Prior Documents: Checklists that support a project's reliance on a previously certified EIR or previously approved IS/MND, allowing a new application to be approved within the environmental envelope already analyzed.
• Exemption and Streamlining Checklists: Checklists supporting a Class 32 (In-Fill Development) categorical exemption, or streamlining exemptions permitted under CEQA Guidelines Sections 15182 through 15183.3, which cover residential projects implementing a specific plan, projects consistent with a community plan or zoning, and qualifying infill projects.
• Technical Studies: The supporting analyses that underpin the documents above. On Anaheim assignments these typically include disciplines Kimley-Horn maintains in-house, such as air quality, greenhouse gas, energy, noise, and transportation analysis, supplemented by sub-consultants where needed.
• Health Risk Assessments and Noise Analysis (Non-CEQA): Studies of how the surrounding environment, such as freeway emissions or ambient noise, would affect a proposed project and its future occupants. The scope expressly covers this work where CEQA itself does not require it, allowing the City to address occupant exposure through its planning process.
• Peer Review: Independent technical review of environmental documents prepared by others, typically applicant-retained consultants, so that the City as lead agency can confirm the analysis reflects its own independent judgment before adoption.

The agreement sets a fixed five-year term rather than a project schedule. Deadlines for individual studies are negotiated per assignment, with time declared to be of the essence. The procurement and contract milestones are as follows.

1. 2005 – 2020 Anaheim establishes its pre-qualified environmental consultant list in 2005 and refreshes it in 2010, 2015, and 2020 on a five-year cycle.
2. March 28, 2025 City issues the Request for Proposals for On-Call Professional Services for Environmental Review. Seventeen firms respond.
3. April 25, 2025 Kimley-Horn submits its proposal, which is incorporated into the agreement by reference.
4. June 17, 2025 City Council approves agreements with twelve firms, including Kimley-Horn, on the consent calendar by a 6–0 roll call vote, with one Council Member absent.
5. June 30, 2025 Prior ten-firm on-call list expires. The same day, Governor Newsom signs the AB 130 and SB 131 CEQA reforms into immediately effective law.
6. July 1, 2025 Effective date. The five-year term begins.
7. June 30, 2026 Proposal rates remain fixed through this date. Thereafter, any rate change requires a written request and the Planning Director's prior written approval.
8. Annually, FY 2027 – FY 2030 Rate adjustment requests may be submitted no more than once a year and no later than 60 days before the end of each fiscal year. Late requests will not be accepted.
9. June 30, 2030 Term expiration, subject to earlier termination. Based on the City's five-year refresh pattern, a successor RFP would be expected ahead of this date.

• Rocks Biological Consulting (RBC): Exhibit B includes a dedicated rate sheet from RBC, dated April 2025 and prepared for this procurement, identifying the firm as Kimley-Horn's biological resources sub-consultant. RBC is an independently owned small business based in San Diego that has provided biological consulting services since 2004.
• RBC Service Lines: The firm performs biological surveys, habitat assessments, threatened and endangered species surveys, and wetland delineations. Its regulatory group handles aquatic resource delineation reports, jurisdictional determinations, agency pre-application consultations, California Rapid Assessment Method (CRAM) surveys, and mitigation bank setup and permitting.
• RBC Credentials: RBC reports certification as a California Public Utilities Commission Woman-Owned Business Enterprise and as a State of California Small Business (Microbusiness), and it holds positions on the SANDAG architecture and engineering bench and in the City of San Diego's Emerging Local Business Enterprise program. Principal Biologist Jim Rocks has more than 25 years of experience in biological resources across California and the Southwest.
• Contract Controls on Sub-Consultants: Sub-consultant fees count toward the $1,000,000 maximum (§4.1). The agreement is a personal services contract, and no interest may be assigned, transferred, or sublet without the City's prior written consent (§5.3). Kimley-Horn must certify that any firm it hires is covered by its own liability insurance or carries equivalent coverage (§6.1.5), and its indemnity obligations extend to the negligent acts of its subcontractors (§6.2).

• Award and Bench Composition (June 2025): From 17 proposals, staff selected twelve firms evaluated on methods, experience and references, staffing plans, and fee reasonableness. Seven are returning incumbents and five are new to the list. Three firms on the expiring list did not respond to the 2025 RFP.
• California CEQA Reform (Effective June 30, 2025): One day before this agreement took effect, Governor Newsom signed AB 130 and SB 131, widely described as the most significant CEQA revisions in years. AB 130 creates a statutory CEQA exemption for qualifying infill housing projects and imposes a 30-day deadline for agencies to act on them. SB 131 limits review of housing projects that narrowly miss an exemption to the environmental effects of the single disqualifying condition. Even exempt projects still require agencies to document that exemption criteria are met.
• Anaheim Hills Festival EIR Certified (March 2026): Kimley-Horn is listed among the preparers of the June 2025 Draft EIR for the Anaheim Hills Festival Specific Plan Amendment and authored the project's water demand memorandum. The project replaces a vacant 62,676-square-foot cinema with a 447-unit multifamily building under a new mixed-use development area. After the Planning Commission recommended approval 6–1 in November 2025 and hearings were continued in January and February, City Council certified Final EIR No. 358 by Resolution No. 2026-015 on March 3, 2026. The implementing ordinances returned for second reading on March 24, 2026. The EIR process began with a January 2024 Notice of Preparation, before the current agreement took effect.
• Rate Lock Expired (June 30, 2026): The proposal rates shown in Section IV were guaranteed only through June 30, 2026. Any increase now requires the Planning Director's written approval, and failure to agree on a proposed increase is cause to terminate the agreement. No publicly posted amendment or rate adjustment was identified in our review.
• Anaheim Development Pipeline: In its June 2025 budget presentation, the Planning and Building Department reported that OCVIBE Phase 2 entitlements, including a parking structure, hotel, entertainment uses, and the first residential buildings, were in process; that Disney had begun Avengers Campus expansion construction and anticipated several new projects under DisneylandForward; and that the Housing Element and General Plan Focused Update with its Program EIR had been presented to Council. Each is a potential source of addenda, consistency checklists, and peer review work for the on-call bench.
• Kimley-Horn Corporate Developments (2026): The Toronto office opening and the Belka Engineering addition in July 2026, together with the firm's recurring workplace and engineering recognitions, indicate continued expansion. None of these developments changes the Anaheim contract, which remains tied to the Orange office and to Dana Privitt as designated principal.