JAMESTOWN, PA. Board seeks injunction to halt high school project

This action came after incoming school directors requested a scope reduction.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
JAMESTOWN, Pa. -- Work has begun on a $7.8 million Jamestown High School renovation/expansion project, but some incoming school directors are hoping they can still get the scope of the project reduced.
The four school board members-elect have asked Mercer County Common Pleas Court for an injunction to halt work on the project until the matter can be resolved.
Job contracts were awarded June 30 in a 5-4 vote, despite protests from a local taxpayers group and the four incoming school directors -- Joseph S. Williams, James L. Owens, James G. Routh and Beverly J. Riley -- who ran as a team opposing the project's scope.
Neither the four nor the taxpayers group are opposed to the entire project, but they wanted the school board to eliminate a new gymnasium and related facilities, reducing the overall cost by an estimated $2.5 million.
Williams, Owens, Routh and Riley won nominations on both the Republican and Democratic tickets in the May primary and are virtually assured of election to the board in the November general election, barring any write-in campaigns.
They feel they have the votes, along with board member Debra A. Miller who voted against awarding the contracts, to halt the project. Miller appears assured of re-election based on primary results.
Hearing scheduled
They won't take office until December, however, and they need to stop the project now before it goes so far that cutting out the gymnasium work will be impossible.
They asked the court for an emergency injunction last week to stop it, but Judge Thomas Dobson refused.
He did agree to have a hearing on a temporary injunction at 10 a.m. Aug. 21.
The injunction request named the five school directors who voted to award the contracts, the school district and the five contractors doing the work as defendants in their action. Judge Dobson struck the individual board members as defendants, however.
The injunction request is expected to be revised to list the school board, rather than individual directors, as a defendant.
Other resolutions
Atty. Robert Kochems, who filed the request, said case law in Pennsylvania has shown that incoming school boards can't be bound by a contract for school construction enacted by a predecessor school board.
He said the current school board could resolve this by removing the gymnasium work from the project, although that would require renegotiating the agreements with the contractors.
A second option would be to rebid the entire project, minus the gymnasium work, Kochems said.
Contractors would have to be paid for the work already completed in that scenario, he added.
District taxpayers are faced with tax increases between 5 and 7 mills to pay for the project.