[Vision2020] something for the table

[Art Deco]

Melynda,

Thank you for your insightful comments.  It's hard to understand why intelligent people do not understand the connection between facility design and grade configuration.  Or is this just another excuse to pretend to be pro-education but is really pro-ignorance.

Perhaps the following alternative was discussed and I missed it:  

There is a crying need for expansion of the county courthouse.  Why wasn't a proposal floated to make part of the old high school part of the courthouse expansion and thus saving a lot of money in the long run.  Maybe the alleged need for new facilities by the MPD could fit in here also.  Perhaps the LCSO and the MPD could share a joint facility in the newer part of the old HS thus opening space at the CH and giving the city government more room at the current MPD building;  such a configuration might also lead to some further law enforcement cooperation and efficiency.

The need for the courthouse expansion is another reason for moving the high school location.

Phil advocates using eminent domain to condemn the property across from the post office to keep the HS in its present location.  Phil:  Do you have any idea what the market value of the apartments and business offices across from the PO is?

Perhaps, Phil, instead wanting everyone to do your leg work, you could take a few minutes, go down to the CH and discover and communicate to V 2020 this information.  Also ask a professional appraiser how much below real market value these properties are presently assessed at and report that also.

Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
deco at moscow.com


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Melynda Huskey 
  To: aaron ament ; vision2020 at moscow.com 
  Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2005 2:14 PM
  Subject: Re: [Vision2020] something for the table


  Citizen Ament (hey, Aaron!) writes:

  "grade configuration is not a facilities issue.  keep it separate."

  I'm not sure how to keep configuration separate from facilities.  We can plan our grade configuration to fit the existing facilities, or we can plan new facilities to fit our existing (or future) configuration, but they are pretty closely connected.  After all, who's in the building affects how it's built and used.

  School configuration is a volatile issue--like the bond!--and there's a lot of emotion connected to particular models.  Although it made sense to me to pair a change in configuration with a change in the physical structures, I think it may have been just too much change for some people.

  The rest of Aaron's recommendations rest on the possibility of passing a larger bond than the one which just went down, and doing so after the last bond has been retired, with its concomitant drop in taxes.  It's more expensive to remodel than it is to build new, I'm told, and the cost of getting a remodelled high school which could meet the technological and educational needs of students would not be insignificant.  There's the problem of putting students somewhere while the changes are made.  

  There would certainly be resistance--as fierce and passionate as the resistance from neighbors of the Trail property--from the owners of all the property which the district acquired by eminent domain.  It's a time consuming process, and a painful one, taking people's property away from them.  The community would certainly divide over *that* decision.

  I'm perplexed by what a next step in this business might be.  A larger bond will, of course, be completely unacceptable to many people in the community.   A couple of small bonds?  The first one might go, but I bet the second one wouldn't.  And how to decide which project to take on first?  *Any* bond will be unacceptable to a sufficient number of people to create something of a challenge. 

  I'm afraid we are headed down the road that Troy has walked, and we will find ourselves with a condemned school building, no funding, and a community that's unwilling to pay the ever-growing cost of solving the problem. 

  Melynda Huskey  


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