LH board hire firm to complete renovation
Left in the lurch by a Hopwood company, the Laurel Highlands School Board took emergency action on casework left undone in the project to convert the junior high school to a middle school. The board, in a three-part motion read by solicitor Samuel J. Davis, voted Thursday to terminate a contract with VMI Cabinets and Millwork for failure to perform services, agreed to accept a settlement with Fidelity and Deposit Co. of Maryland, surety for VMI, and approved a contract with F. DeFranks & Son Custom Cabinets Inc. to finish the job.
“It is my understanding VMI went out of business. They have defaulted on their contract with us,” Davis said.
He said VMI’s insurance company contributed some funds, and money is left in the contract to pay for the new contractor.
The funds from the insurance company totaled $44,894.73, while $179,281.80 is left over in the initial contract.
In the motion, Davis said VMI went out of business without prior notice or warning, but the district is subject to legal liability with the other contractors if the junior high/middle school conversion is delayed.
He also said educational programs at the school will suffer if the project is not completed timely.
The district will notify the state Department of Education of the situation and ask for approval for the new contractor.
The school board awarded $9.2 million in contracts for the junior high/middle school project, and the VMI award for the casework was for $317,935.
Work got under way in the summer of 2001, and the school is set to open with the addition of sixth-graders to the existing seventh and eighth grades for the start of the 2003-2004 school year. The project features a new wing of 14 classrooms.
In other matters, during a work session before the regular meeting, the school board and the solicitor met privately for about 30 minutes with a group of businessmen regarding the mercantile tax.
Davis gave the reason for the executive session as potential litigation over the tax issue. Joe Thurby, Lawrence Filiaggi, Gary Sisson and Jim Nickman Jr. met with the board, but they declined comment.
Board President Edward S. George said afterward that the men represented a consortium of business owners, and the meeting was an attempt to avoid legal action over the mercantile tax.
He said they discussed having the legal counsel for the two sides get together to consider the issues, including peaceful collection of the past due taxes.
“I don’t want to sue our own property owners. I want to see what we can do in the future to make it fairer and easier to collect,” George said.
The school board, at the request of Central Tax Bureau of Pennsylvania Inc., last October hired the Law Offices of Ira Weiss, Pittsburgh, as special counsel to pursue as much as $400,000 over several years of delinquent mercantile taxes. George voted against the move and later asked the board to reconsider.
Also, the board accepted a $5,000 grant from state Rep. Larry Roberts (D-South Union) for Hutchinson Elementary School.
Superintendent Dr. Ronald Sheba said the money will pay for a teacher’s aide at the school to address class sizes, per the efforts of principal Carmen Galderisi.
Roberts, speaking from the audience, said the grant initially was made for the playground at the Hutchinson school, but the funding was taken away. However, he said the House appropriations chairman ultimately found the money in the education budget for the teacher’s aide to make up for the lost playground grant.
Galderisi had asked the school board for two teacher’s aides, at a cost of about $3,500 each, to help out in the larger kindergarten and third-grade classrooms.
The school board had cut teacher’s aides for all the schools from this year’s budget and denied Galderisi’s request because of limited finances.
George thanked Roberts for the money and said afterward that the teacher’s aide will be covered only by the grant from Roberts, and no more money will come from the general fund.
Further, the school board approved the district’s participation in programs of the National Academy Foundation.
Administrator Dr. Gary Brain said the move allows school officials to start planning an academy of finance and academy of travel and tourism at the high school. He said the planning process takes more than a year, and the programs will not be ready until the 2004-2005 school year.
The school board accepted the retirement notice of Jack Cole as a maintenance employee, noting that he had 30 years of dedicated service to the district. They authorized testing for the vacated maintenance position.
The board also hired Candy Scott as secretary for special education services.