Councilors signed off on the $128,500 purchase for the Holly Street site.
AUBURN – Councilors helped take another step closer to a new Lake Street Elementary School Monday.
The City Council authorized the School Department to purchase James and Pamela Larouche’s 37 Holly St. property for $128,500 and moving expenses. That property is one of eight the school department needs to expand the elementary school.
School Department Business Manager Jude Cyr said the property will be purchased with school fund balances. That money will be reimbursed by a state bond issue if voters approve plans for the school expansion.
“Now we need to continue with the remaining three properties,” Cyr said. “We’re still in negotiations with some other abutters.”
Councilors and School Committee members met briefly in a joint workshop Monday evening. That meeting culminated in joint executive session to discuss negotiations for the properties surrounding the school.
“Councilors just needed a heads up to see where we are,” Cyr said.
Councilors added the purchase of 37 Holly St. to the regular meeting agenda Monday night after the executive session and then passed it by a vote of 6-1. Councilor Belinda Gerry voted against the sale, saying she disagreed with putting it on the agenda and voting on it one night.
“Most of what we voted on we talked about in executive session,” Gerry said afterward. “The public doesn’t know just what we did or why we did it.”
The School Department has agreements to purchase about half of the land necessary to make the school expansion happen, Cyr said. Plans call for expanding the nearly two-acre school lot to five acres, and that means purchasing up to eight neighboring properties to fill out the lot.
Of those eight, the district has signed option agreements to purchase four properties. The department is negotiating three others and Cyr said he hopes to have those settled by October. That’s when the state Board of Education can next review the expansion.
“I think we can set a target date for September 2005,” Cyr said. “With that in mind, I think we are still on target to start construction next June.”
The proposed expansion would add 12 classrooms, art and music space, a gymnasium and a cafeteria. It would also create separate areas for buses and parents to drop off students, and for children who walk to school to enter school grounds.
Comments are no longer available on this story