KINGSTON – Ulster County Legislator David Donaldson, a Democrat who represents the City of Kingston, is urging the Kingston City School district to consider using a project labor agreement on its $140 million school renovation project. He called the decision not to look into the agreement to use local labor “troublesome.”
In a letter to school board members on Friday, Donaldson, who is the vice-chairman of the legislature, compared the future high school renovations to the “jail fiasco,” said labor was not one of the 1,000 things that contributed to the law enforcement center debacle that cost the county double what it had planned to spend.
“A PLA assures project stability, efficiency and productivity by giving a broader management rights provision, full trades’ commitment to the project, and provisions that increase contractor flexibility,” he said.
Donaldson also told school board members that the “real savings may come from your ability to extend an application for a Wicks Law exemption.” The lawmaker said that could translate to a five percent to eight percent savings, or $6 million to $11 million savings. “This may not be attractive to those that charge a percentage based on the cost of the project, but it certainly may be attractive to those of us paying the bill.”
