Board plans to sell rink property

By Barbara Brown
The North Branch school board heard a proposal at its regular meeting last week to sell the property where the ice skating rink is.
The district owns the property, valued at about $95,000, and Superintendent Dr. Robert Stepaniak told the board that the district could not see any use for the property.
Stepaniak asked the board for permission to pursue selling the land to the city of North Branch so the skating area might be saved. The district is under no obligation to put the property on the open market, Stepaniak said, and is allowed to discuss the possibility of sale to one party.
The board asked that Stepaniak specify in a resolution the intention of the board to pursue selling the land to the city, especially to the parks board, and any other details that may need to be addressed before discussions commence.
The board is expected to approve the move at its next meeting.
The board gave permission to its financial advisor, Springsted, to go out for sale of two general obligation bonds for the district.
One bond, totalling $14.9 million would start paying for a new elementary school building. The second bond, at $2.855 million, would be a refunding bond, similar to refinancing a mortgage.
Savings from the refinancing would go directly to shaving property taxes, said finance director Randi Johnson.
Also at the meeting, the board was briefed on whether to initiate a project labor agreement (PLA) with the St. Paul Building Trades for construction of the new school.
The PLA, as explained by construction management consultant Gary Benson of Kraus Anderson, is not required to build and Benson said he did not advocate either way, but was there to explain the PLA to the board.
Essentially, a PLA would bind all the building trades on one project to pay prevailing wage to their workers and in return, the trades would guarantee no work stoppages or strikes regardless of what the rest of the union was doing through the course of the project and that the workers would abide by whatever collective bargaining agreement was in place at the time for their trade.
Board member Donna Setter was concerned that if the board awarded a contract for part of the construction to a smaller, non-union shop that it would put undue burden on that contractor to pay out prevailing wage and union benefits even though his workers may already receive benefits through the company.
Benson said that was a risk in PLAs, adding that the last building project the board initiated received a 50-50 split between union and non-union bids.
However, Benson said, he believed requiring prevailing wage ìleveled the playing fieldî for the board.
He said cheaper and possibly less experienced contractors may send in less expensive bids by not offering prevailing wage, but the lack of experience could set back the timetable for the project ñ something the board probably could not risk with an expected school opening in 2005.
Benson said the PLA was not expected to change the estimated cost for completion because the estimates take prevailing wage into consideration.
At the boardís March 27 meeting, scheduled for 6:30 p.m., they will hear a presentation about trends in negotiations and discuss potential budget cuts.
The meeting time for the April 10 meeting was pushed back to 6:15 p.m.

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