By Tracy Ouellette
Editor
The East Troy School Board got into another discussion about the fate of Chester Byrnes at Monday night’s meeting.
Board member Mike Zei said he wanted to keep the building a “civic campus” and community members had been in contact with him about it.
The discussion was a continuation of the topic from the Aug. 10 meeting when district Business Manager Kathy Zwirgzdas updated the board on the search for a commercial real estate agent to help sell the building. Zwirgzdas had sent out several proposals to area agents without much response by the Aug. 10 meeting.
The board directed her to contact a few more commercial agents and look into possibly having an appraisal done on Byrnes and Doubek Elementary School. She came back to the board this week after contacting four more agents and an appraiser.
Zwirgzdas said the appraiser didn’t seem to want to give an appraisal on Byrnes, but told her that her opinion that the “building wasn’t worth much” was probably accurate.
Zwirgzdas also sent out four more proposals to four more commercial real estate agents over the past two weeks after board President Ted Zess and board member Steve Lambrechts both gave her a few more names of agents to contact. She told the board she had received a better response from the new agents she’d contacted, but as of Monday, none of them had completed their proposals for the district.
The sticking point Monday night between the board members came when Zei said he “wasn’t interested in selling” Byrnes and wanted to form a committee to decide the fate of the building.
Lambrechts reminded Zei that the referendum passed by the voters in April stated the district would either sell the building or, if that didn’t happen, demolish it.
“This is bigger than the five of us,” board member Dawn Buchholtz said. “I agree with Mike about opening it up to the community.”
“I thought we were going to get a commercial realtor in place and put it up for offer to the community,” Zwirgzdas said.
“I want this to stay as a civic campus,” Zei said.
District Administrator Chris Hibner told the board members they could put stipulations on any offers that might come in for Byrnes and/or Doubek to keep them for civic use. “That seems to be what we’re trying to do,” he said.
“I have people in the district who want to keep it (Byrnes) in the district,” Zei said.
Zess said the decision as to what to do with Byrnes has “already been made” with the referendum. It’s either sold or demolished, but that the district could not afford to maintain the building any longer.
Hibner said a key part of what the district communicated to the public during the referendum was that Byrnes would either be sold or torn down if it wasn’t possible to sell. He also reminded the board that no referendum money could be used to upgrade Brynes.
“The people voted on what we communicated,” Hibner said. “I don’t want people thinking we’re changing things from what we communicated.”
Hibner then told the board because this topic wasn’t listed on Monday night’s agenda, he thought it should be tabled until it was on an agenda.
There was more discussion of a possible committee to look at Byrnes’ future, but no action was taken by the board and Hibner said he was “uncomfortable” with administration forming such a committee. He said he thought a committee such as this should be formed by board direction.
Zess said keeping Byrnes was a “complete change of course” from what the board decided earlier.
Hibner said the board had complete discretion as to what offers it would entertain and/or accept for the buildings and the process of finding a realtor was a first step.
“It’s a starting point,” Lambrechts said.
The board directed Zwirgzdas to continue seeking proposals from the commercial realtors for the Sept. 28 meeting, which will begin immediately after the 7 p.m. annual meeting. The board told Zwirgzdas to not move forward with the appraiser.
