By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
Woodlands Development presented an update to the Tucker County School Board pertaining to the proposed development of the Board of Education building partially into apartments with the remaining space housing the board and two current nonprofits.
Tucker County School Board Member Kevin White voiced concerns over the project, especially in regards to the safely of children. “I have real concerns with the fact that we’re putting housing in this building potentially with the fact that we it locally used for sporting events, activities for children and no offense to anybody, but who is going to control the type of people that can be placed in these apartments?” White said. “Because, I’ve seen similar projects that have went way wrong over the years.”
Woodlands Representative Dave Clark addressed White’s concerns at the meeting. “I wholeheartedly agree,” Clark said. “From my prospective, it really comes down to two things as management and I invite anybody who wants to look at any of our other, we own about 30 some properties in the region now, anytime you want to take a look at any of them, we’d be happy to show them to you. Management is absolutely key. We find, honestly early on, you know we do background checks, we do all kinds of screening…There’s a whole host of things. Some people still get through. There are always one or two bad apples that get in. Getting on it right away, nobody likes to evict, but we evict right away and set the tone.”
“A bad apple in a residential neighborhood is one thing,” White said. “A bad apple with school kids is a totally different thing.” “I totally understand,” Clark said. “Absolutely. The other piece of it is absolutely critical, I would say, is everywhere that our projects are really successful – could point to one or two where we’ve struggled with that is where we don’t have wholehearted and general consensus from the community about what to do. If we don’t have community leadership behind us, willing to support us. I mean part of our background checks is going to the local police station and talking to them about the people that apply. If we don’t have cooperation from local folks, it also can’t work. People need to call us right away if there’s an issue with a unit and nobody’s calling us, we can’t do a lot about it. Sometimes you have to be willing to call the police, you have to call in the fire chief if there’s a code noncompliance that is going on and people are reluctant to do that. That can hurt.”
White questioned who controlled the building after the project is done. “But who controls it after it’s all done?” White said. “You got the building and there’s bad apples in it, who controls it?”
Clark said, “We do.” White said his concern is the lack of control the board will have later. “But we have no control. That is my point.”
“That’s true,” Clark said. “But I will say that if you get the police called on you more than twice, we don’t often evict because of that, but we are allowed to. We can certainly, I don’t know if there is anything that we can legally do.”
White was informed that the county school board has a no trespass option for those who are disruptive or a threat to the students and that the policy could be used. “Kevin, one thing we can do that we do similar to what we do at some of our other schools, is no trespass somebody on our property,” Director of Support Services for Tucker County Schools, Jonathan Hicks said. “If it’s become that big of an issue, we no trespass and then they’re not allowed on school property. We can do that if it’s something that is impacting our students or our activities then you know we no trespass them. Hopefully that’s something that never has to come up, but that is something that we would still own everything except for the building… and the parking right here on the building. We still have that ability to no trespass.”
Hicks also said that the board was one major problem away from having to vacate the building. “Maintenance the facility, the finance and we’re one major problem…” “It’s an albatross, I’ll admit that,” White said.
“So that’s where this kind of started five years ago,” Hicks said of the building’s age and problems. “We’re one major issue from having to be gone anyway and we were trying to come up with something that utilizes the space to allow the building to still be here, to allow us to be here. We pay for everything here forever. So, in the agreement would be us being here lease free for a good extended period of time. So that would be beneficial to us as well because we’ve looked around trying to find other space and it’s really just nonexistent. I think your concerns are 100% spot on, but I think that’s just in a nutshell over five years that’s where this started. For example, we redid Davis-Thomas roof pre-Covid, so it’s been a long, $800,000 just for that and that was five years ago. The boiler down there was done before I was here so it’s been 12 to about 15 years ago. I think that price tag was half a million, 400,000.”
White admitted the building was a financial burden on the county. “I can’t argue the fact that is a financial burden,” White said. “I just also have to look out after the wellbeing of the people that I’m representing. I can’t just turn a blind eye to a possible situation.”
Hicks commented also on the lack of control the county would have should the building become vacant. “I think from our prospective too, if the building went vacant completely, we would have less control over what is going on here over the status of the building or what we can do having football field here and other things here at the building.”
There were also concerns over parking during events raised by the board. Clark said the firm would require 1 ½ parking spaces per unit with a total of 30 spaces for the apartments.
The Tucker County School Board voted four to one to approve an updated transfer agreement at the meeting regarding the building. Kevin White was opposed with the reason documented as, “Lack of information.”
The next meeting of the Tucker County Board of Education will be Monday, June 5th at 4:30pm at the Tucker Valley Board of Education Office, 100 Education Lane, Parsons.
