The Town of Kingsville has provided insight to residents on options moving forward for the three permanently closed school properties.
Town administration held a public information meeting on Monday night, which saw dozens of people from the community attend, for what to do with the land of Kingsville District High School, Kingsville Public School, and Jack Miner Public School.
The two options provided include to either purchase or not purchase one, two, or all three of the schools. The Town currently has approximately $3-million set aside to potentially acquire the land - if council so chooses to.
Benefits of not buying the land include avoiding debt and tax hikes, and focus on infrastructure. Drawbacks include lack of control over for the future, vacant buildings, and zoning issues. Benefits of buying the land includes control over development, potential profit from selling to developers. Cons include uncertain building conditions, demolition costs, and tax hikes.
The condition of all three buildings are unknown. The Greater Essex District School Board has "Building Condition Assessment" engineer reports for each building, but will not provide these reports to the Town.
Municipalities can no longer automatically purchase closed schools in Ontario, they must now either compete in open market or purchase for a "provincial priority" such as affordable housing or long-term care facilities.
This Kingsville resident says the Town should consider purchasing a couple of the properties.
"If these two downtown sites are allowed to slip away, that would be the next huge missed opportunity for the Town of Kingsville to plan what the future downtown should look like, make it special, make it attractive, create some kind of landmark."
This resident says if the Town purchased the land, they should use majority of the space for affordable housing.
"I would love to see the Kingsville property - not 10 per cent as you said you were hoping for, but more like 70 per cent of the property - going into affordable housing, so that we can get our young people into their own homes."
Ryan McLeod, Director of Finance and Corporate Services for the Town, says he doesn't believe purchasing the land would result in a significant tax increase, but other projects would be put on hold.
"If we decide to make school properties a priority, then that's probably going to result in our infrastructure funding taking a little bit more of a back seat. So it really comes down to choices of how we want to spend our tax dollars."
John Norton, Chief Administrative Officer for Kingsville, says they have asked the school board to provide the building assessment reports and they won't.
"When they go to list the properties for sale, they will provide those assessments to everyone probably 30 days, or 60 days, before you have to submit your bid. So, for a municipality that's a very short period of time. Developers can often react quickly - but we can't. As you can imagine we have to have a council meeting, we have to make decisions."
Norton says there is the option of turning the land into affordable homes.
"That would at least, in terms of this process, allow us to get to the front of the line. We wouldn't have to go through that open market competition. But if that doesn't work for us, if we decide not to do that, then we can still have an opportunity to buy it when they list it for sale. They'll go through an open market competitive process where they essentially will receive bids, and they'll sell it to the highest bidder."
The Town would need to acquire the properties at Fair Market Value. Currently, KDHS is valued at $2.4-million.
It was also stated during the meeting that demolition costs will be significant: ranging from $1.5-million to $1.9-million for KDHS, and Kingsville Public ranging from $600,000 to $800,000.
Council will ultimately have final say whether or not they want to purchase the land.
Residents can also have further input on the HaveYourSayKingsville.ca online portal, which will be open to collect public feedback until the end of August.