Low Bid on Jail in Castaic Is Bypassed for Sake of Speed

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors bypassed a lower bid Tuesday and agreed to pay $99 million for a 2,100-inmate, maximum-security jail at the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho in Castaic to the firm that promised to build the facility fastest.

Supervisors awarded the lucrative contract to the J. A. Jones Construction Co. of Orange by a 3-0 vote. The firm estimated that it could complete the jail within 622 working days.

State law allows the county to reject the low bid in contracts that warrant accelerated construction programs such as the jail, said Richard B. Dixon, the county’s chief administrative officer.

Supervisors Pete Schabarum and Ed Edelman, although voting to award the contract to the Jones company, expressed reservations about awarding contracts to the fastest worker.

Olive View Problems

Edelman said county officials, at times, have gotten into trouble when they have tried to move ahead too quickly. He pointed to problems that have delayed the opening of the Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar, built under a similarly accelerated program, as an example.

Jones Construction, the second-lowest bidder for the contract, has “a strong record for completing jail facilities on time,” Dixon said. The lower bid of $94.5 million to build the jail came from the M. Golden Construction Co.

Opening of the trouble-plagued, $120-million Olive View Medical Center has been delayed for almost a year because of mechanical and design problems. The delay was caused primarily by problems found in the building’s air-conditioning system. Those problems prompted the county to file a $5.1-million lawsuit against the companies who designed the hospital.

The lawsuit, filed against Olive View Medical Center Architects & Engineers, the Luckman Partnership, Syska & Hennessey and Welton Becket Associates, is pending in Los Angeles Superior Court. No opening date has been set for the hospital.

‘Sorry Situation’

“It’s a sorry situation at Olive View,” Schabarum said, “and all because someone neglected to see that a proper air-conditioning system was installed.”

He asked Dixon if he would take full responsibility if the jail project came in over budget and the Jones company failed to complete the jail on time.

“I and those who work for me will,” Dixon said. He said county officials will hire a professional jail-management firm to oversee the construction. The contract with the Jones firm also stipulates that the company will pay the county $12,500 a day for each day it runs over the promised time limit.

“This is nothing to cause us concern,” Dixon said.

William F. Stewart of the county’s Facilities Management Department said the new jail should be open in less than two years and will alleviate crowding at other county jails.

Part of Package

As part of the jail package, the board also awarded smaller contracts totaling $7.8 million to other firms. The subsidiary contracts cover services such as soil and material testing, climate control, construction management, and electronic security and communications inspection.

The contracts awarded Tuesday, along with preliminary work already under way on the construction site, brings the total cost of the expansion program to about $110 million.

The daily population in the county’s eight jails is from 19,400 to 20,000, almost double the number the state Department of Corrections has rated them to house, said Capt. Raymond E. Gott, head of the minimum- and medium-security operations at Pitchess.

Built for 1,900 Inmates

Pitchess was built to house 1,900 inmates but has a daily average population of about 5,000, almost three times that many, Gott said. With the maximum-security jail and a $10-million, 1,200-inmate medium-security jail under construction, the population at the Castaic rancho will swell to more than 8,000 inmates by 1989.

The Santa Clarita Valley Citizens for Fair Prison Sites pointed to expansion plans at Pitchess during its fight against locating a state prison in the area.

At least two unsuccessful bills naming Castaic as the site for the 1,700-bed state facility were introduced by Democratic legislators opposed to building the prison near East Los Angeles. The battle over the prison site, which started in late 1985, still is unresolved.

Santa Clarita Valley residents maintained that they have more than their share of jail inmates because of Pitchess and several small prison work camps in the mountains above Saugus.