(Seguin) — The Seguin ISD is officially moving forward with plans to further research and negotiate a land deal for its third middle school campus. The board approved the item after a modified agenda item was brought back to trustees following their request a week earlier.
The board indicated that it wanted to give the public a better idea on the due diligence by the district as it takes steps forward to acquire approximately 42 acres of real property located at 407 Patricia Park Court. The property is adjacent to the Irma Lewis Seguin Outdoor Learning Center – another property currently under negotiations for purchase by the school district.
Ensuring that the district will not leave one stone unturned during the inspection and sale process was partly fueled by some concerns raised by residents living in that area. Residents listed concerns such as noise levels due to the fly zone of Randolph Airfield and flood prone areas.
Ensuring the trustees that this action was not the final purchase of the land but just a step in the process was Tony Hillberg, chief financial officer for the Seguin ISD.
“The property is for 42 acres. It is approximately 1.2 miles away from the air strip in question, but rest assured that there will be some test done during what we call the inspection period. We have a period of 60 days to evaluate this property to address things such as what have been mentioned easements, access, all of those kinds of things as well as soil testing, water retention, flow rates, low water crossings in the area – all of those things will be addressed during our 60-day period of inspection. At the end of that 60 days, what this resolution now requires is that we will come to you with the results of those evaluations, present to you the results and make a recommendation which at that point will give you the authority to approve or disallow the final closing on the property. So, you will have another opportunity to determine whether you want us to pursue closing on the property,” said Hillberg.
As reported earlier, district officials say concerns raised by the residents were not a surprise. Hillberg says it’s the district’s hope, however, to leave those concerns up to the experts during the 60-day inspection period.
“We have to get into a binding agreement that obligates both parties in the transactions so that now we are able to spend dollars on the research, the formal research. We have certainly done some research on our side that is preliminary but it’s not official and certainly, we can’t do something like true soil testing. We can’t do that without equipment. We have to hire someone to do those types of things and to do the property evaluation, but it costs dollars to do that. We wouldn’t want to spend dollars; public dollars and you wouldn’t want to do it with your own money either – we don’t want to spend those dollars if the seller is not obligated to give you a certain amount of time without selling it to someone else. So that’s what this period of time does. This inspection period obligates the two parties to take this time to do the evaluation and then make a decision,” said Hillberg.
The action taken last week only authorizes Seguin ISD Superintendent Matthew Gutierrez to move forward with negotiations with Green Dog Development LLC.
District officials also stated that it did have a couple of other properties up for consideration but that those attempts were still in their infancy.
Although the district doesn’t plan on building a third middle school until eight or 10 years from now, officials believe getting the best deal on land means securing that property now.