Loading...
1978 Western Sun article re potential purchaseEdmonds council grilled on purchase of school By PAM WITMER Staff Writer EDMONDS - The City Council adopted a plan for potential use of the Edmonds Elementary School site Tuesday nite, but members of the audience were more concerned about whether the city was going to buy the site from the Edmonds School District. "Is this a serious discussion about the elementary school?" Norma Bruns asked the council. "Are you really serious about buying it? We went through this same procese with the junior high — at what point is there going to be a decision on the part of the council?" Ms. Bruns and other audience members said they didn't want to see a repeat performance of the council's futile efforts last year to buy the junior high from the school district. "We saw this all happen before," said Ray Fischl. He explained the council had gotten to this same stage of negotiations on the junior high site — and then Puget Sound College of the Bible stepped in and bought it. Fischl asked the council if its $200,000 offer was really in good faith when the city knew the School Board's price was $500:000. "We never mentioned a $200,000 figure," said Councilman Tom Carns. "But our offer was based on our appraisal of the site." Fischl said he and others in Ed- monds were concerned about wheth- er the council was serious about buying the school site, particularly since school officials recently said they had two offers from private businesses. Councilwoman Katie Allen, who was formerly on the School Board, reminded the audience that the city has a 60-day right of first refusal. That means if the school district gets a firm offer for the property, the district has to send an official letter to the city to inform Edmonds that the 60-day period has begun. Then the city has, 60 days to meet the school- district's other offer. If the city can't meet the offer, the school district can sell to anyone. City officials have not received any official notice from the school dis- trict, Fischl and Ms. Bruns learned Tuesday night. "Are you fellows really pursuing this vigorously?" asked Laura Hall, a member of the Edmonds Planning Commission. "The public is really in the dark on this. We don't know your plans. Where are we?" Carns replied: "We're in negotia- tions. You don't do that in the newspapers." Councilman Phil Clement said the last time the school district and city officials met, the agreement was that both groups would get new site appraisals and exchange that information. The council had the city's new ap- praisal figures in the members' in- formation packets Tuesday. City .Attorney John Wallace said an exec- utive session held after that meeting updated the council on negotiations. City officials contacted today said they had not yet received their new appraisal figures. No target date was announced for receipt of the new price estimate. "You don't do this kind of thing overnight," Carns told the Tuesday audience. "We're getting our new appraisal and they are getting theirs too. We're working on it." In the meantime, council members said they were doing what they could to assure the residents of Ed- monds that the property would be well utilized if and when the pur- chase goes through. The plan approved by the council at Tuesday's meeting calls for even- tual construction of a new library building including underground parking. There also would be cultur- al and recreational program use of the existing school building over a period of time. The existing library space would be then used for admin- istrative office space. The plan was suggested by a con- sultant hired by the council. The consultant's job was to study the site and come up with a plan that would provide the best overall use of the space. The Edmonds consulting firm of Bailey and Behm will not put togeth- er a step-by-step plan for carrying out the site -use scheme approved by the.council. That work is estimated to take about one more month.