News Photo by Temi Fadayomi The Alpena Public Schools Board of Education discusses the Wolgast corporation change event during their meeting on Monday.

ALPENA — The Alpena Public School Board of Education unanimously voted not to approve the change order for Northern Valley Electrical Service Inc. at their board meeting on Monday.

The change event was related to the added electrical work that NVESI did on Besser and Lincoln Elementary and Thunder Bay Junior High as a part of phase two of the APS’s Safe, Warm, and Dry bond from the summer of 2023.

When discussing whether or not to approve the change event, board member Andrew MacArthur brought up that the request wasn’t really a change event at all since, instead of laying out the work that the company was going to need additional funding for, everything in the form was for work that had already been completed.

“This isn’t how businesses ran,” MacArthur said. “They did the work and now they’re telling us we got to pay, just a minute here, that’s not how this works with a contract.”

Additionally, MacArthur brings up how none of the responsibility for the expenses should fall on APS since they weren’t responsible for the errors that led to the additional expenses.

According to APS Associate Superintendent for Business and Operations Mary Lyon, who was filling in for APS Superintendent David Rabbideau, the additional electrical work consisted of a new machine to assist with light bulb installation, the de-energizing of existing lights, and the installation of temporary lights for the abatement crew as they removed asbestos pipe installation, re-locate existing Enercon wire above the ceiling that was in the way of the new office Roadtec air handler duct system, add extra conduit and electrical boxes for offices SR door entry released buttons under the news casework, the removal one exhaust fan, and rewire and reuse the existing APS store current access hardware on the main entrance to work with the new automatic power opener. The total cost of the changes was $12,158.84.

“The exhaust fan and the extra boxes and stuff like that, that’s architectural,” MacArthur said. “I would say, we vote no on this and punted back to Wolgast.”

The rest of the board agreed with this assessment and unanimously decided to not approve the event change.

IN OTHER BUSINESS

The Alpena Public Schools Board of Education on Monday also:

*Unanimously decided to table the approval of the Continuity of Learning Plan, to discuss outdated information in regards to some procedures regarding COVID-19.