WASHINGTON (AP) — North Dakota's federally backed road projects — including an expansion of U.S. Route 85 — will go on as scheduled after Congress passed a patch bill last week. But lawmakers say the legislation that provides highway funds until May 2015 only highlights the need for a long-term fix. "Waiting until the last minute, before we're shutting down construction projects, just isn't the way we should be doing this," said North Dakota Democratic U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp.
Her Republican counterpart, Sen. John Hoeven, voiced a similar sentiment after Congress agreed to fund the Highway Trust Fund through May 2015. Had Congress not passed a bill, the fund would have been drained — leaving states without funding for projects that are already underway.
North Dakota receives federal funds for a number of road projects, but one of the most critical is expanding U.S. 85 to four lanes in a stretch of western North Dakota that's grown rapidly during the state's oil boom. The north-south highway extends to Canada and South Dakota. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
The Town Council has unanimously approved the bonding of $200,000 to continue Berlin’s long-term road repair and replacement plan.
This money, Public Works Director Art Simonian said, will help fund a number of smaller-scale projects under the umbrella of the larger plan. The funds, he said, are needed for bridge improvement projects that will get underway over the next few years to cover design and construction costs. The repair work includes the Park Drive culvert, Spruce Brook design, Burnham Street culvert design and Farmington Avenue bridge construction. Finance Director Jim Wren said the town will use the bond for “relatively small-dollar projects” that are being tackled in a phased approach. He added that the interest rate is about 1 percent on the notes, for which the town has budgeted the money to pay back over time. “These will not be projects that will become 20-year projects that will cost the taxpayers” a substantial amount of money in paying them back, Wren said. Future bridge maintenance and replacement projects are scheduled.
Construction jobs go unfilled locally
WATERBURY — Despite high unemployment, a local job training agency is desperately seeking skilled tradesmen and people willing to learn a trade to work on local building projects and state highway projects. "We've pretty much exhausted our supply of skilled and unskilled labor, yet demand is going up," said Catherine Awwad of Northwest Regional Workforce Investment Board. "We've got plenty of work for people who want it." To help answer that call, the agency is holding a job fair from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at Kennedy High School to recruit physically fit legal Waterbury residents, both skilled and unskilled, to meet the growing demand for construction-related jobs.
The last group of program trainees graduated at noon and went to work at 5 p.m. on a night-shift construction job in Hartford, Awwad said. Another 14 just began the seven-week training program two weeks ago. But after that, the bucket is empty. "Our people, they get jobs," said Ray Sullivan, workforce program manager. "If they are willing to learn, willing to work, we guide them through the exact training needed for the jobs out there. And we stay with them, through that job, and the next."
The agency is looking for both experienced construction tradesmen, like plumbers and electricians and heavy equipment operators, and people who are willing to learn one of these trades, starting off as asbestos abatement workers or laborers. The jobs pay anywhere from $15 an hour for entry-level laborer work to $45 an hour for high-skilled heavy highway construction jobs, like heavy equipment operators. Even an apprenticeship on a state highway job can pay $17 an hour. The agency can help provide childcare and transportation assistance, and gives every program graduate a toolbelt and a set of tools in addition to the certificates needed for immediate employment on a public sector construction job. The agency can place a skilled tradesmen in a local job within one work week, and put them in a training class that can prepare them for a high-skill, high-paying job building state highways or gas pipelines by spring, Awwad said. Awwad hopes that local skilled tradesmen might want to trade in that long commute to out-of-town construction sites for an opportunity to take a long-term job on the state's Interstate 84 widening project or on next year's gas pipeline project.
As always, the agency is also seeking people who are new to the construction field for safety and basic skills training that can put them to work at a city construction project within a matter of months, Awwad said. The agency is already unable to fill every contractor's request for a resident worker for these local building projects, and the demand for entry-level workers to meet the city's local and minority hiring quotas will only increase over the next year, she said.
That is because many of the skilled workers who are doing those jobs now will move to one of the better paying state highway or pipeline projects, creating a skill drain on city projects that will need to be back filled, Awwad said. The city's good job ordinance requires contractors working on city and some federally-funded construction projects to hire a certain number of residents and minorities, but a company can't be penalized if they try to do it but can't find someone qualified. Some of these city projects currently underway include the Rectory Building renovation, the Nova Dye factory cleanup and the Kennedy High School expansion, Awwad said. A string of others, like the Luvata construction project, are looming.