Oil City Council members on Thursday awarded a contract for repairs to the roof of the city garage.
Homan Specialty Roofing of Oil City submitted the only bid for the work for $217,400 and received the contract.
City manager Mark Schroyer noted that Homan Roofing is a reputable company that has done good work for the city before.
Prevailing wage, Schroyer said, is a policy set in the early 1960s by the state legislature and not reviewed since then that requires municipalities and school districts to pay “high union wages” to workers on construction and infrastructure projects.
The bid threshold triggering prevailing wage requirements has been $25,000 since the 1960s, according to Schroyer.
The cost of the city garage roof without factoring prevailing wage was estimated at about $170,000, Schroyer said.
In other business Thursday, council approved the Council of Governments joint proposal for tar and chip that the city has participated in.
Schroyer said the city has about $12,000 budgeted for tar and chip this year. The streets that will be tar and chipped have also been selected, he said.
Council also gave its approval to a grant the Oil City School District is submitting to fund a school liaison officer.
Police chief Dave Ragon said the grant would provide funding for many things Oil City police are already doing in the school district as well as expand opportunities to interact with the students by paying for officers to have lunch with students and show up at sporting events.
The grant also requires and pays to train officers as school liaison officers, Ragon said.
