Camarillo Firm Makes Low Jail Bid : Public works: The supervisors are expected to choose a company Tuesday. Local labor leaders are happy.

A Camarillo construction firm that has built several projects in Ventura County submitted the low bid Thursday to build the county’s Todd Road jail.

The Merco Construction Engineers’ bid of $31,134,513 beat a bid by HuntCor Inc. of Phoenix by only $394,488.

HuntCor submitted the low bid on the jail last month only to see it thrown out by Ventura County supervisors, who said the firm made mistakes in its calculations.

Supervisors are scheduled to consider the new bids at their meeting next Tuesday.

“If everything is the way I heard it, the (Merco) bid is OK,” said Supervisor John K. Flynn.

Supervisor Maggie Kildee, who made the motion to rebid the project last month, said, “I’m very pleased that it is a Ventura County company that has the low bid, and particularly pleased that they’ve come in a couple of million dollars lower than the bid we had before.”

HuntCor’s bid last month was $33.2 million.

The county must approve a bid by Sept. 17 to ensure that it receives $30.9 million in state bond funds to help underwrite construction.

Merco is a 47-year-old privately held firm that relocated to Camarillo from Los Angeles 10 years ago. It was one of nine companies that submitted sealed bids and the only Ventura County company in the competition.

The bids were opened Thursday afternoon by county Public Works Agency employees at the Ventura County Government Center.

“We’re elated,” said Ben Heirshberg, one of Merco’s owners, when reached by telephone at his Camarillo office. “It’s one of our biggest contracts.”

Merco projects in Ventura County include construction of the Channel Islands National Park visitors center, a fire station in Ventura and sewage-treatment plants in Ventura and Thousand Oaks.

Construction union officials, concerned that an out-of-state firm such as HuntCor would not hire local workers at prevailing union wages, applauded the Merco bid.

Of the 23 subcontractors listed by Merco, seven were based in Ventura County and all were from Southern California with the exception of one firm from Pennsylvania that makes jail equipment.

Nearly all the subcontractors were expected to hire union workers, said Robert A. Guillen, executive secretary of the Ventura County Building & Construction Trades Council.

“It’s a pretty good deal,” Guillen said. “I’ll sleep tonight.”

Construction of the jail, which will be built to house 750 inmates at a site near Santa Paula, could generate as many as 500 jobs at a time when the recession has had a devastating impact on craftspeople in Ventura County.

“About 30% of union carpenters are unemployed,” Flynn said. “It (the bid) looks good for Ventura County. This will generate a lot of jobs. Labor leaders have been looking forward to this for some time.”

Both union officials and rank-and-file workers were angry last month when the supervisors tossed out a bid by the Perini Building Co. of Pasadena. Perini came in with a lower bid than HuntCor for scaled-down versions of the jail.

Perini, which on Thursday submitted a losing bid of $32 million, promised to hire mostly local workers.

Like Kildee, Flynn noted that the Merco bid was about $2 million under HuntCor’s original bid last month. “That’s a saving of $2 million from the county’s General Fund,” he said.