Remove ImagesSchools Spitting in own Oatmeal
December 13, 2012
Guilford County Schools has offered to sell High Point 10 acres the school board owns on Shadybrook Road, next to the High Point Athletic Complex and Miracle Field for children with disabilities, for $335,000.
That is less than the $400,000 the Board of Education previously demanded from High Point, but more than the $255,000 High Point had the property appraised for in October.
High Point Assistant City Manager Pat Pate said he recently received a voicemail from Guilford County Schools Director of Facilities Planning Donna Bell saying that the school board would negotiate to sell the property – which High Point wants to use to add parking, a shelter for children with respiratory problems and a new soccer field to the Miracle Field Complex – for the $335,000.
"I got a call from a couple of the staff people," Pate said. "They called last week and said the school board had told them to call back and ask about an asking price of the appraisal without the discount."
The "discount" is the theoretical drop in value of the property caused by a 2006 shared-use agreement between High Point and the school board.
The $335,000 figure must have been arrived at by the school board in a closed session at its Tuesday, Dec. 4 meeting. At the end of that meeting, the school board went into closed session to discuss and give its attorneys instructions for the sale of real property – almost always land – but did not vote in public session after the closed session.
Guilford County Schools Chief of Staff Nora Carr acknowledged the issue came up in the closed session but wouldn't discuss the outcome.
"There aren't any records of it," Carr said. "There was a closed session on it, but the reason for the closed session is still active."
Nonetheless, a majority of the 11 school board members must have agreed, through a vote, straw poll or "sense of the board" discussion to let the land go for $335,000.
The school board and the City of High Point have been dickering for months over the price of the 10 acres, which was intended for a middle school Guilford County Schools now acknowledges will never be built.
The City of High Point and the school board have a shared-use agreement for the entire High Point Athletic Complex/Miracle Field/10-acre site that would have to expire for the land to be worth $335,000 under High Point's appraisal.
The school board is taking a risk in haggling over the price of the 10 acres, because under the shared-use agreement, approved by a 6-to-3 vote by the High Point City Council on March 23, 2006, the school board gets free use of the High Point Athletic Complex for school games and regional, conference, state and national competitions – and gets to keep the gate receipts from such games.
According to Pate, before the approval of the shared-use agreement, the school board paid High Point $50,000 a year to use the High Point Athletic Complex.
"The assumption would be that if we ended the agreement, we would have to look at what the school board would have to pay to use the property," Pate said. "And the assumption would have to be that it would have to be what they were paying before."
In other words, by demanding $80,000 more for the 10 acres, Guilford County Schools is risking having to pay $50,000 a year to use the Athletic Complex – $500,000 every 10 years, or $1 million every 20. And that's if High Point doesn't raise the price.
If the shared-use agreement is not terminated by either party after the expiration date, it will automatically renew for another 10 years. High Point has no incentive not to terminate the agreement if the school board won't sell the 10 acres and if High Point can get $50,000 a year from the school board. The agreement does not cover the adjacent Simeon Stadium, which the school board owns.
At the school board's insistence, both High Point and the school board have been wasting money on dueling appraisals for the property, each costing roughly $3,000.
The school board commissioned an appraisal in December 2011, which valued the property at $400,000, and which everyone involved on the High Point side of the squabble said was based on faulty information and on the faulty assumption that the High Point City Council would rezone the property for apartments.
High Point City Manager Strib Boynton on April 11, 2012, wrote Guilford County School Superintendent Mo Green offering to buy the 10 acres for the 2011 county assessed tax value of $294,300. On June 13, 2012, Green, acting for the school board, wrote Boynton asking that the City of High Point conduct a separate appraisal of the property.
The results of High Point's appraisal were submitted to the city on Oct. 27, by Michael S. Clapp & Associates. Clapp & Associates valued the property at $255,000. Clapp did write that the property's value would be increased if the High Point-Guilford County Schools shared-use agreement was terminated after its expiration date – from $255,000 to $335,000 – the price Pate said Bell asked of High Point.
Despite the Clapp appraisal, it's still hard to see how the land's value would increase, even without the restrictions of the shared-use agreement, if that agreement expired. The High Point City Council is still unlikely to rezone the 10 acres, which in addition is the watershed of Oak Hollow Lake and subject to watershed restrictions.
As Clapp wrote in his appraisal, "It is my opinion that the subject's zoning could not be changed and that to appraise the subject under the assumption that the land could be rezoned from the existing PI [Public Institutional] zoning to a more intensive zoning such as multifamily would be highly speculative and inappropriate."