By BRADEN LAMMERS
Braden.Lammers@newsandtribune.com
CHARLESTOWN —
During a brief meeting of the Charlestown City Council on Tuesday night only a few topics were broached, but one is an issue that has been hanging over the heads of the council for nearly two years.
The council is still pursuing a land-swap deal with Greater Clark County Schools, which allowed the pool near Charlestown High School to be destroyed in order to finish the building’s expansion. In return, the city was supposed to get parcels of land near Jonathan Jennings Elementary School.
A contract was never signed, nor a value of the pool determined to complete the land swap, which has caused some of the issues and delays associated with the deal.
According to minutes from Charlestown’s council meeting Feb. 4, 2008, then-GCCS Superintendent Tony Bennett presented the idea for trading the properties. While no formal action was taken, a subcommittee was formed to work out a temporary replacement the city could use as its swimming pool. The subcommittee included Councilmen Dan Roberts and Mark Goodlett.
No additional action was taken on the swimming pool swap, but in June 2008, an appraisal was ordered by Mayor Bob Hall for the pool and the Jonathan Jennings property, according to the council minutes. However, it was suggested at the next month’s meeting no appraisal was needed.
In September 2008, Bennett presented an interlocal agreement with GCCS to the council exchanging the city pool for land east of Jonathan Jennings. The resolution, 2008-R-9, accepting the interlocal agreement was unanimously approved by the council.
With no land deeded back to the city, the deal is still hinging on determining a value for the swimming pool.
Two appraisals — one by the city and one by the school corporation — are under way to determine a value for the former city property, but reaching an agreeable value has proven difficult.
“[GCCS] has requested their appraiser take another look at his appraisal because they believe there are some things that may not have been fully given credit for the city,” said Mike Gillenwater, attorney for the Charlestown council. “I believe they are recognizing there are some things that could’ve been looked at differently in their appraisal and they’re trying to get them closer together.”
The appraisal undertaken on the city’s behalf also needed to be recalculated.
“When he first came back with it, there were some things that he had not considered,” Gillenwater said of the city’s appraiser. “So, after we visited with him, he was able to re-do his appraisal and raise his figures a bit.”
No value of the appraisals was given at the meeting.
IN OTHER BUSINESS
• There was a public hearing regarding Charlestown’s budget for 2011. Before the meeting, Harold Goodlett pressed Hall on the opportunity the public has had to view the budget before the meeting.
“It looks like we’re going to have to comment on something that nobody seems to know anything about,” he said.
He continued and asked Hall about items absent from the budget, including costs for recycling services, repayment of the debt borrowed from the city’s capital trust fund and whether or not funding was included in the budget to replace the city’s swimming pool.
No detailed or itemized budget was presented or published for the public, but the city did meet its legal requirements as the proposed budget appeared in the Saturday edition of The Evening News.
The budget published is requesting a total of $3.8 million with a maximum levy of more than $2.5 million.
“It will cover everything that would ever need to be proposed, which it will be less,” Hall said. “We cannot go above that advertised rate on anything, so that’s the safeguard to the public. We have to stay below that. The advertising of the budget is one the passing of it is another.”
The final budget will need to be passed before Nov. 1.
• The council approved the lease of three garbage trucks for seven years, at $48,000 per year. One vehicle is a side-loader, one is a rear-loading truck and the third is a bucket truck. The money for lease of the trucks will come from the funding the city has budgeted each year for equipment, Hall said.
