School Board hears from possible buyer for school
By Tracy Ouellette
Editor
The East Troy School Board met in closed session with a possible buyer for the Chester Byrnes school building at Monday night’s meeting.
The board met with the interested party in closed session for more than an hour and a half in the middle of the monthly board meeting, which is a bit unusual for the School Board.
The agenda item was listed second under the ‘discussion/action items” and the board chose to suspend the regular meeting and meet with the interested party in closed session at that time. Usually the board will hold its closed, or executive session at the end of the regular board meeting, but District Administrator Chris Hibner suggested the board deviate from that for Monday’s meeting because he thought the people in attendance would like to hear the outcome of the meeting as soon as possible.
Because the discussion was a possible negotiation for purchase, the board is allowed to meet in closed session under state statues.
When the board reconvened the members voted to give the interested party until Feb. 8 to have a feasibility study done to determine if the interested party’s intended use for the building was possible. The name or names of the prospective buyer was not revealed at the meeting, nor was the possible intended use.
The board also tabled the discussion on heating the unused portions of Byrnes until after the Feb. 8 deadline for the feasibility study.
The future of the old school has been a bone of contention with some board and community members over recent months. At last month’s meeting several community members questioned why some board members were looking at heating and possibly keeping Byrnes after the referendum to build a new elementary school and move School District administration to Doubek Elementary School had passed.
Scott Seager, who was vocal about his dislike of keeping Byrnes at the November meeting spoke at the meeting and thanked board members Mike Zei and Dawn Buchholtz for taking him on a tour of Byrnes since that meeting. Seager said he could see the potential in the building and understood better why some might be interested in keeping the building, especially with the library looking for a new home, but restated his concerns that the cost to do so would be prohibitive.
Gina Dingman also addressed the board at the beginning of the meeting asking the board members to answer why they were going against what the public voted on in the referendum. She also wanted to know why the board took so long in putting out a request for proposals for the possible purchase of Byrnes and Doubek, which the board didn’t do until the November meeting.
She said she understood that the district hadn’t been able to find a commercial realtor to list the buildings, but didn’t understand why the board took months to ask for proposals from the public for the sale of the properties.
Seager, who stuck around during the closed session, suggested to the board after it reconvened that they should consider a roundtable discussion with village officials and community groups such as the Lions Club, which recently expressed its desire to have their library building back if the village was moving the library to a new home, so everyone could get on the same page with the future of the buildings in question.
