Borough of Youngwood v. Pennsylvania Prevailing Wage Appeals Board

In Borough of Youngwood v. Pennsylvania Prevailing Wage Appeals Board, 596 Pa. 603, 947 A.2d 724 (2008), the Supreme Court expressly stated the general axiom that maintenance work is to be considered a lesser or minor form of repair, a street resurfacing project involved the physical removal of several inches of road surface, the subsequent treatment of the roadway, and the complete resurfacing thereof with several inches of new material. The Supreme Court concluded that this work involved construction, reconstruction, demolition, alteration and/or repair work, and did not collectively involve only the minor repairs that constitute maintenance work. Thusly, the Supreme Court concluded that the resurfacing project was subject to the Pennsylvania Prevailing Wage Act. In Youngwood, the Supreme Court relied upon multiple precedents of the Courts in concluding that the replacement of worn facilities was not Act-exempt maintenance work, even though the facilities at issue were not enlarged or altered by anything more than the industry standard of replacement materials. The road milling and repaving at issue therein was held to not constitute maintenance under the Act, with the exception of minimal patching of a street; further, the fact that some of the work, standing alone, could constitute maintenance work, was held to be not separable from the total work, and did not serve to render the entire project as maintenance work. Youngwood, 596 Pa. at 615-619, 947 A.2d at 731-734.