Riverbed Job Was Done for Fraction of Cost to City : Ventura: In preliminary estimate, engineer says firm cleaned area for nearly $120,000 less than what officials agreed to pay.

The company awarded a $177,000 contract to clean up the Ventura River bottom was actually able to do the job for less than one-third of that cost, a Ventura city engineer estimated Wednesday.

After studying payroll and other documents submitted by California Land Clearing, associate engineer Marquita Ellias said the company was able to clean 40 acres of the riverbed for less than $58,000--nearly $120,000 less than what the city agreed to pay for the work.

While officials cautioned that the estimate is preliminary, City Manager Donna Landeros said the City Council is set to review the matter Monday and decide what, if anything, should be done about the apparently excessive contract.

Councilman Jim Monahan, the only council member to oppose the cleanup work being awarded at or near the $189,000 estimate, said Wednesday the relatively low cost did not surprise him.

“It’s exactly what I guessed,” Monahan said. “I thought it was a $50,000 job at best.

“I think we could have saved $100,000, and $100,000 wasted on a cleanup job would pay for a policeman or a fireman for a year.”

In March, Ventura-based California Land Clearing was awarded a contract to perform the cleanup for more than $177,000, based largely on the city’s estimate that the work would cost about $189,000. The City Council authorized Landeros to award the contract.

A majority of council members concluded last month that the cleanup was an emergency issue because they could not wait the two or more months legally required to advertise and award a city contract.

The cleanup was finished in 11 work days. Another contractor bid the same job at $28,000, but his offer was rejected as unrealistically low.

Ellias said several factors contributed to the lower-than-estimated costs, including road improvements by county flood- control workers that made access to the debris easier.

“I had put in my cost estimate for California Land Clearing to have to do some of that (road improvement),” Ellias said. “Ventura County maintenance gave them a beautiful road.”

Better access allowed cleanup crews to more easily stockpile the man-made debris used to construct campsites used by former residents of the Ventura River bottom, Ellias said.

“When I was down there, there was a lake, and the debris was like an island,” she said. “But (California Land Clearing) was able to bring their trucks down into the lower levee road.”

Wednesday, Landeros said the initial estimate of $189,000 obviously was high, and that she was preparing a report to the City Council. Half of the $177,000 contract was paid by the city when 50% of the work was completed. The balance is due when the city signs off on the work.

But there may be little the city can do to avoid paying all of what it agreed to pay to the land-clearing firm, City Atty. Peter D. Bulens said.

Because the contract was a lump-sum agreement, as opposed to a time-and-materials pact, the city will be hard-pressed to get any kind of rebate, Bulens said.

“The only way (changes) come in would be that if something in the contract wasn’t done,” the city attorney said. “That change has to have resulted in their not doing something that was required in the contract.”

California Land Clearing President Douglas J. Muelder said he could not comment on his profit margin because he has not seen the city engineer’s new report.

Nor has he completed his own review of the job’s cost to his firm, he said. “I don’t know where those (city) numbers are coming from,” Muelder said.

The city engineer’s analysis came days after a number of contractors complained that the $177,000 contract was too high.

Fillmore general contractor Jack Saunders, owner of the only other company to bid on the river bottom cleanup, said Wednesday that the engineer’s new cost estimate proved that his $28,000 bid was closer to the actual costs.

“I think it could have been done for even less than ($58,000),” he said.

Several other factors contributed to the lower-than-expected cleanup cost, Ellias said.

Most of the material collected by California Land Clearing crews was removed after dark by former river bottom dwellers, who recycled the debris or used it to build new shanties, she said.

The weekend before dump trucks were scheduled to cart off 225 tons of debris, transients returned to steal as much as 80% of the recyclable and usable material, Ellias said.

“The homeless were allowed during that time to go down there and remove material,” she said.

Truckers hauled away just 45 tons of debris, according to her estimate. Also, significant rainfall between her March 8 river bottom visit and the date work began may have washed some of the debris away, she said.

Mayor Tom Buford said Wednesday that if mistakes were made, he would work to ensure they do not occur again.