Emergency Roof Repair at West Valley Jail

SAN BERNARDINO— The board of supervisors this week approved a contract
with Gardena-based Best Contracting Services,
Inc. to repair leaks and severe water damage to the roof of the West Valley Detention Center’s inmate housing units. The board made a finding that the damage is extensive enough to threaten the health of the center’s inmates
and employees and cause further harm to the property. Because the roof has lost its integrity, the board authorized the immediate
repair and signed off on the hasty procurement
of formal bids from contractors that was already
done.
The West Valley Detention
Center’s current roofing system was built twenty years ago and was made up of a rubber compound
called Elastomeric-Hypalon. Over the years the roof has undergone expected deterioration due to normal wear-and-tear and environmental factors. In 2008, the board awarded a construction contract for the gradual repair of the roof as funding
became available, but according to the county’s Architecture and Engineering
Department, the damage caused by the recent
heavy rain requires an immediate response.
On February 2 of this year the county’s architecture
and engineering department received three bids from qualified roofing contractors. The lowest of the three bids was given by Letner Roofing Co., a firm out of the city of Orange, but the company failed to fill out the necessary
paperwork to provide what the board considers a complete bid proposal. At Tuesday’s meeting the board deemed Letner’s bid as non-responsive and award the contract to the next lowest bidder, Best Contracting Services, Inc., which said it could do the job for $395,480.
The total cost of the emergency repair is $512,900, around half the amount approved for the initial, gradual replacement
of the Rancho Cucamonga
detention center’s
roofing system.
The project budget of $512,900 is comprised of the following components:
design costs of $35,450; project management
and inspection costs of $20,000; construction costs of $395,480; and a construction contingency of $61,970.
Any surplus from the emergency fund will be used for continued repair and replacement of the detention center’s housing units’ roofing system.
A county resident, E.T. Snell questioned why jail inmates could not be used to carry out the roof repair. Carl Alban, the county’s head of architecture
and engineering responded, saying, “This is a professional contractor
using trained labor. We don’t have that many trained professional roofers
housed in one of the sheriff’s facilities these days. For a lot of reasons I don’t think using inmate
labor makes a lot of sense.”