It rhymes with Shmersher Shmaser!

They go here, we go there. Photo: Andrew Goff.

That’s right: Tomorrow night at its regular meeting, the Eureka City Council will be awarding a half-million dollar trail construction contract to the company whose parking lot Containerville now houses many of the homeless folk displaced from the Palco Marsh. That’s the very place where the trail will now be built!

Many people scratched their heads a bit when Mercer-Fraser generously stepped up to bail the city out of a pickle. The city had been aching to dismantle the Palco Marsh homeless encampment for some time, and the fact that they needed to get going on the trail if they wanted to keep their grant moneys proved to be a useful deadline. But where to offload the homeless folk? Right here in our parking lot, said the Eureka-based construction firm, who partnered with Betty Chinn and the Humboldt Coalition for Property Rights, which together proposed a shipping container-based facility that was quickly approved. Good thing, too, because it became a necessary part of the city’s defense against a federal lawsuit brought by 11 Marsh residents.

Now we see the upside of this from Mercer-Fraser’s end. The homeless had to be out for the trail to be built, and someone had to take the city’s money to build the trail. Win-win.

Lest you think there was some sort of untoward backroom handshake on this, though, the City Council packet includes a breakdown of the bids placed on the project. Mercer Fraser’s came in $7,000 below second-place rival Figas Construction’s:

Bid chart. From the City Council’s meeting packet.

The Eureka City Council meets at tomorrow at 6 p.m. in Eureka City Council Chambers — 531 K Street, Eureka. Full meeting agenda here. The Mercer-Fraser trail contract is on the consent calendar, which means that in all likelihood there will be no discussion before it is passed.