Below, please find the Guest Opinion column I submitted to the West Bend Daily News, which was published in today's edition.
We all want to find the best use for the vacated UW campus building.
John Torinus, in his column on 8/20, talks about the West Bend School District’s idea of a Smart-Start center, but he refers to it as a proposal. To be completely clear, there is no such proposal from the School District. They have talked extensively about the idea of a Smart Start center, but there is no proposal and the idea appears to still require a lot of time to develop.
The timeline the school district talked about for implementing this idea is still at least a full year away, and that may be overly optimistic. This is after having more than a year to put together a formal proposal. The idea seems to depend on all 5 school districts within our county pooling resources, and the School Board member I have talked to, who is from a district outside West Bend, has serious reservations about diverting their district resources to this idea. I am hearing that school board members in other districts share the same concerns. So while it is an interesting innovation, the plain truth is that it might not be workable.
Right now, the County is spending approximately $600,000 per year on utilities and basic maintenance for an empty building (the UW campus building). That’s roughly $50,000 per month. The rent from UW used to cover that expense, but we no longer receive that rent. We now only have the expense.
The County cannot continue to spend $50,000 per month waiting on the possibility that at some point the School District might submit a proposal, with no guarantee that they will ever submit a proposal. In my mind things are that simple, the time to move forward is now, and the best proposal we have is from OCS. Our county government has always been fiscally responsible, and investing that much in upkeep expenses on an empty building is not at all a responsible use to taxpayer dollars.
I have been on the County Board for 9 years, and during that time the County has divested itself of several buildings. Annex II, the old courthouse, and the Samaritan Health center (which I actively tried to keep) are the three that come to mind. We are also discussing divesting ourselves of the Public Agency Building. For governments, buildings are nothing but giant cost centers that suck up large amounts of tax money for capital maintenance, routine maintenance, and utilities.
We have received only 2 proposals, one from Ozaukee Christian Schools (“OCS”) and one from Accel Learning. The proposal from Ozaukee Christian Schools seems to be the better of the two proposals. They are a local, non-profit, high-performing parochial school and an established community partner.
I know one family who sends their children there, and the parents absolutely love the education their children receive. That family was there at the listening session, quietly listening and supporting OCS, along with numerous other families who send their children to OCS. I have heard only positive things about OCS within the community. OCS comes to my church every year to present on the great work their school is doing. Fifty-five percent of the residents of our community are Christian, and right now West Bend has no parochial high school option. The proposal from OCS would change that, as they were already planning to expand to include a high school at their existing site in the Town of Trenton (and had bought land for that purpose).
We didn’t choose for U.W. to shutter the campus. Instead, this is a situation we inherited. We are now stuck with a building whose original purpose has ended. We have already invested a year and a half to try to determine how to repurpose this building. At the end of all of that, the OCS proposal is the best solid proposal we have.
Overall, I do like the idea of a Smart Start center, and I think the idea holds a lot of promise. I also like that the school district is looking at innovative strategies like this. I sincerely hope the school district will work to fully develop this idea and at some point implement it.
But something important is being forgotten. Nothing in this idea is dependent on the County retaining ownership of the UW campus. Likewise, nothing in this idea is dependent on the Smart Start center existing at the UW campus. West Bend schools will soon be vacating 2 elementary school buildings, and either of them could be great locations for a Smart-Start center that would help high school youth earn college credits. West Bend can also lease space within the community, which may be a better option for an innovative but unproven program. And perhaps OCS would be willing to lease space to the West Bend School District inside the UW building.
The County Board, in my view, needs to do the responsible thing and divest itself of this building.
No comments:
Post a Comment