When state Rep. Jen Benson updated the selectmen at their Sept. 19 meeting on the three home-rule petitions Harvard submitted to the state Legislature last year, it was apparent that one was going nowhere: a petition seeking relief from procurement and prevailing wage laws on small projects.
House Bill 3771, sent to the Legislature by 2016 Annual Town Meeting, asks that Harvard be exempt from procurement and prevailing wage laws for projects with an estimated cost of $50,000 or less. The current law requires that towns seek three bids for any project more than $10,000 but less than $50,000, and the job must be awarded to the lowest qualified bidder. There are no project dollar limits for prevailing wage.
The town has found it difficult in recent years to get bids for smaller projects, even those in the $50,000 to $100,000 range. In 2015, no bids were received to replace the windows at the Hildreth House. When Lorraine Leonard, who was the town’s finance director at the time, asked representatives from companies who came to the prebid inspection why they didn’t bid, the answers varied from too little money, too short a time frame, and too complicated a job. Luckily local residents volunteered to do the work, and only the windows themselves had to be put out to bid again.
This summer, the school received no acceptable bids for the plumbing portion of the renovation of two science labs. Superintendent Linda Dwight told the School Committee that the only plumbing bid was for $121,000, nearly four times the amount paid for plumbing two other science labs last year. The school has since received new plumbing bids (see In Brief, page 6), but the process has delayed the project.
After Benson’s update, Selectman Stu Sklar cited the science lab project as an example of why the town needs relief from the current laws, and she agreed. She said that in 2009, she tried to modify prevailing wage districts in the state so that small towns would not be subject to the same wages as urban areas. For example, Benson’s efforts to redistrict were unsuccessful, but she said it might be time to try again.
Time to band together?
Benson also suggested that over the next year, Harvard and other towns in similar straits band together and craft a bill that would benefit them all. There are currently two other towns seeking relief from prevailing wage laws via home-rule petitions. One is Chatham for projects less than $50,000 (House Bill 2374), and the other is Holyoke for projects less than $40,000 (House Bill 3459). In addition, four state representatives are sponsoring House Bill 1034 to eliminate a clause from the state’s prevailing wage law that forces all towns to pay the highest hourly wage in their district for various trades and occupations.
Benson said that, instead of towns going the home-rule petition route, she would love to see a small-town coalition that could work together on one piece of legislation that addressed all of the procurement and prevailing wage laws that small towns grapple with. Barring that, Harvard could draft a bill and get other towns to support it. “It’s helpful to have multiple voices,” she added.
Update on other petitions
Harvard’s other two home-rule petitions, also sent to the Legislature by the 2016 Annual Town Meeting, are faring better. House Bill 3773, asking that Harvard be allowed to pay bills from the prior fiscal year until Oct. 31 of the current fiscal year, has been making progress and is currently in the House Steering Committee. House Bill 3772, which gives Harvard’s town administrator the authority to sign the payroll and vendor warrants, has passed the House and is currently on the Senate’s calendar.
