Viewing the April 25 Arlington School Board meeting was akin to experiencing a 20-car pileup on the last lap of the Indianapolis 500: enormously frustrating . . . but you just couldn’t turn away.
The meeting indeed represented the start of the final lap of the Arlington Career Center project, which for 20 years has been on a tortuous path of delays and controversies.
And just as (to mix sports metaphors) the end zone was in sight, the issue finds itself enmeshed in one last roadblock.
Labor activists want the School Board to add additional language to the negotiated contract, part of their push for the school system to adopt new labor requirements for all future capital projects.
That’s a discussion worthy to have, but as the pained expressions of School Board members made clear, it’s one that can’t be had now unless one is willing to see further delays in what is Arlington’s most expensive school project ever.
Quite the pretzel school leaders have contorted themselves into. They don’t want to alienate organized labor, but they don’t want to jeopardize this project, either.
Should make for an awfully interesting May 9 meeting, where the construction contract is slated for approval.
