CodeIgniter Expert: PHP code simplification and duplication removal

I have a CodeIgniter project that contains more complexity than necessary and needs to be simplified to make future bug fixes and improvements more efficient. Basically, our site has an infinite scroll feature that loads items by date (starting with today) and displays those items to a user. The previous developer split this functionality into 3 different files for 'today','tomorrow', and 'other dates'. I believe this unnecessary and these three separate files should be simplified into a single file with all redundancies removed and all references to the previous three files cleaned-up. Because the code is fairly complex, in order to accomplish this task the freelancer must have: -- Codeigniter expertise in debugging, architecture, and development -- Their own test environment that can be set up to emulate my live server** (see below -- I can NOT give access to my live server at this time) -- Strong ability to debug another developer's PHP code -- Strong ability to write/debug Ajax and Jquery Due to past experience, I ask that the freelancer awarded the project spend the necessary time to familiarize themselves with the code and ask questions in order to reach a full understanding of the problem and task. I strongly prefer to be e-mailed a hundred questions per day (no matter how trivial) to reach a complete understanding, rather than a developer assuming they understand and not doing the project correctly. I am a developer myself and have some familiarity with the code (though I am not a CodeIgniter expert), so I plan to offer as much guidance as I can to help the freelancer start, and finish, the project with less difficulty. This is not the only improvement needed in my full CodeIgniter codebase, so if the freelancer awarded this project does an outstanding job, we will create future Freelancer jobs and give preference to that person when awarding those jobs. **TESTING ENVIRONMENT DESCRIBED: The developer must have their own testing environment that can emulate my live server. This means they have a L.A.M.P. server running at least MySQL 5.1. My current Linux distro is Centos 6.3, but other distros, such as Ubuntu, will suffice. Once the best candidate has been awarded the project, I will provide the full set of code, instructions, and config parameters to get the server set up as quickly as possible. Additionally, I will provide my database schemas and '.sql' files that can be imported for fast testing.