Oktibbeha County will make a $1.5 million offer for the former district health department building on Lynn Lane after supervisors approved the measure in a split vote on Monday.
The building, situated just south of Starkville High School at the intersection of Lynn Lane and Victory Lane, is being eyed as a potential location for administrative offices for the Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District.
Under a proposed land swap arrangement with the school district, Oktibbeha County would buy the Lynn Lane property then trade it with SOCSD for the vacant East Elementary, East High and West High school campuses.
Board of Supervisors President Orlando Trainer proposed the offer, with support from District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard and District 5 Supervisor Joe Williams. District 1 Supervisor John Montgomery and District 4 Supervisor Bricklee Miller opposed making the offer.
Howard said he thinks the county needs to look to some sort of office space. He said the Greensboro Center, where school administrative offices are currently housed, is aging and has already had to be partially vacated in the past to accommodate for repairs. With the county’s responsibility to provide office space for the district superintendent, Howard said, it made sense to look at a more structurally sound building when the county may be faced with expensive repairs in the future anyway.
“I think this solves the problem and I think it solves it for years and years down the road,” Howard said. “It won’t be long before we’re hunting for somewhere to house them until we can sink a couple million dollars into repairs or something.”
Why a land swap
School board attorney John Hill and attorney Johnny Moore, who is representing the owner of the Lynn Lane property, visited the supervisors on Monday at county attorney Rob Roberson’s request.
The land swap is under consideration, according to Roberson, because the county cannot give land away for nothing and the trade of property has to be roughly equal.
Many moving parts remain to be sorted with a potential land swap, such as if the county and school district will do a full land swap, or potentially lease the respective pieces of property to each other, or if the county will seek special legislation to get relief from statute-mandated county payments for utilities and phone service in the new administrative offices, if Lynn Lane property is acquired. Roberson said the three school properties also have to be appraised to ensure a land swap would be roughly equivalent.
Roberson also noted, while there has been some consideration that the county could use one of the campuses as a potential counseling center, there’s still some work left to be done to determine what would be done with all of the campuses.
Moore said his client, who he didn’t identify, would like to know if the county will move ahead with a potential purchase. He said he understood that many pieces of the land swap are still to be worked out, some of which could take months, or up to a year. However, Moore said his client is not interested in waiting that long without knowing what’s going to happen.
“We don’t want to hold it a year for all of this to transpire,” Moore said, ” because through no fault of this board, this has been going on a while. So it’s probably best for everybody to make some kind of motion to put this thing forward or put it to rest, and either proceed or everybody go about their business in a different direction.”
Trainer then proposed the offer, which passed on a 3-2 vote.
A low offer
After the meeting, Trainer said he knows the building is appraised at more than $2.2 million. He said he wanted to make the offer, which he acknowledged may be rejected, to try to get some aspects of the potential deal moving. He said he believes funding for the purchase can either come from the county’s budget, or the county could borrow money for it.
“I just seem to think that if we can get it for $1.5 (million), I think that would be a great opportunity for the county,” Trainer said. “That’s a considerable amount below what the appraised value is.
“Now, hey, he may not take it,” he added. “And if he doesn’t take it, that offer is out of the window and he can make a counter offer and see if the board will take it.”
Trainer also said that, should a trade go through, the county would get all the education building, next to the Oktibbeha County Courthouse Annex, where some school offices and county 911 offices are housed, for county office space. He said county administrative offices, which are currently in the courthouse annex, could be moved to that building, which may allow court offices to be expanded.
Montgomery said he had doubts that the $1.5 million offer would be enough to secure the building. He said he also thought the county’s money could be better spent elsewhere.
“It’s obvious that there’s a lot of moving parts with this,” he said. “At the same time, I just don’t feel it’s a good move for either party, especially on the county’s side. I don’t think $1.5 million is going to get it. It’s going to take more than that to get it done.”
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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