COMMENTARY (by Susan Wilkins): I agree that building a middle school at Redmond Ridge is a good idea since many students live nearby and they could walk to school. The issue is that the district already has Evergreen Middle School (EMS) that those students can attend. If the district's plan were to build the new middle school at Redmond Ridge and get rid of EMS, that would make sense, but the district's proposal is to tear down and rebuild EMS with space for 1000 students and that means that students who live in downtown Redmond and on the east side of Education Hill will be bussed out to EMS. Evergreen is 3 miles outside the city limits on Union Hill Road. I live near Hartman Park and my entire neighborhood would likely be zoned for EMS. The trade-off is that Redmond Ridge will get a "walkable" school and my neighborhood will be bussed to far-away EMS. I don't think this is a reasonable solution. Read More>>
The district just bought 21.57 acres at Redmond Ridge for the new middle school in January 2015 for about $14,000,000. Was this a wise decision? The price does seem rather high. In August, I made multiple public records requests to the school district to get information about the planning and negotiating that went into the Redmond Ridge land purchase. It appears that the district didn't get an appraisal so they may have overpaid. Documents received as a result of the public records request make it clear that the school district gave no consideration as to how a new school at Redmond Ridge would affect feeder patterns at EMS.
The district has said that it cannot find a 20-acre parcel of land in Redmond where a new middle school could be built. There is no specific requirement by the State or OSPI that a middle school must be built on a 20-acre parcel. The State requires that the middle school be built on 20 acres if the school district wants to receive matching funds (see WAC 392-342-020.) A new middle school would easily fit on a 12-acre parcel, but the district would not get state matching funds. Matching funds are typically $2-5 million per school so the additional cost of acquiring a full 20 acres would probably exceed the matching funds received from the state.
Large parcels of land inside city limits have become scarce. Even 15 years ago, a 20-acre parcel was nearly impossible to find. In response to the shortage of large parcels, the major residential construction companies such as Burnstead, Buchan, Camwest, and Yarrow Bay began buying up groups of adjacent parcels until they had accumulated 10, 12 or even 20 acres. They would then create planned residential developments with 50 - 100 new homes. Every time a new neighborhood was permitted, the city or county planning department would send the school district a notice that the new development was being built and the district received impact fees for each unit constructed. Surprisingly, the school district never asked how the developers were able to find 20-acre parcels when the district could not find land to purchase. Apparently, nobody at the school district was alert enough to figure out that four 2.5-acre parcels located next to each other could be cobbled together to create a 10-acre parcel or seven 3-acre parcels would add up to 20+ acres.
Note that the new housing development in North Redmond at the corner of NE 116th Street & 172nd Avenue NE that is currently under construction will have 51 large homes on 11.56 acres. That development used to be 6 separate residential lots. The lots ranged in size from .86 to 2.48 acres and were purchased for a total of $7.3 million in 2006.
Over the past decade, the school district has had the same opportunities as the developers to purchase land in Redmond, Kirkland or Sammamish but were too unknowing to employ the typical land acquisition methods used by residential builders. Instead of identifying land inside Redmond for a new middle school, the district threw up its hand and declared that it couldn't find 20 acres and instead decided to buy 20 acres of vacant land at Redmond Ridge. The district needs to add an additional high school, probably in Redmond, but it now complains that it can't find 40 acres for a high school.
The school board members will tell us how hard they are working for our students and that the district's highly experienced facilities planning department is doing an excellent job. I think that the board's lack of oversight and the current and previous superintendents' lack of leadership has backed the district into a corner and available land is now scarce and extremely expensive. We'll be paying for this for years to come.
One more item: the $775,000,000 price tag can be found on the LWSD.ORG website under [School Board]/[Board Study Sessions] for October 5, 2015. Click on "Enrollment Update and Future Planning PowerPoint" and go to page 16. There is a list of proposed school construction projects along with the $775-900 million cost estimate.
Commentary By Susan Wilkins
The school district is not entirely to blame here. They have a 20+ acre parcel next to Perrigo park at the site of the old Nike missile base (parcel# 0525069036). A middle school could have gone there, but the county disallowed developing that site in 2012, yet allowed development at the Evergreen site. The site can be developed if that decision is reversed or if Redmond annexes the site to bring it within the UGA.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.kingcounty.gov/elected/executive/constantine/initiatives/school-siting-task-force.aspx
http://www.kingcounty.gov/~/media/exec/constantine/documents/2012/SchoolSitingTaskForce/FinalDocuments/FinalReportAndRecommendations.ashx?la=en
http://your.kingcounty.gov/ftp/exec/CD-Appendices-Combined.pdf
Susan, this is FANTASTIC information! Where did the $14 MILLION come from?
ReplyDeleteHow has the $12-$16 MILLION been spent that the District reports wasn't used from the 2006 and 2011 Bond funds?
When is the District planning to build the elementary school on the property the District ALREADY OWNS (Called #28 Pope Property on the Capital Facility Plan)? The Capital Facilitiy plan (Tables 5 and on) show several properties the disctrict already owns, but does not have any plans to have schools completed until 2018.
So, The District has created the problem for years by building only 3 new schools in 10 years, and "modernizing" existing schools at existing enrollment levels, then putting temporary classrooms in within a couple of years.
And now they want another BAJILLION DOLLARS.
Anonymous pointed out that the district owns a large parcel across from Perrigo Park where the command center for the Nike Missile site used to be located. Anonymous suggested that a middle school could be built on the site, but because of rules put in place by the School Siting Task Force that was convened by King County in 2012, the land cannot be developed.
ReplyDeleteIt needs to be noted that former superintendent Chip Kimball was a member of the 2012 School Siting Task Force and he could have requested that the task force classify the Nike parcel as having an immediate need for school development. He chose not to ask for that classification so the task force declared that the parcel could not be developed. Note that the table on page 6 of the "Final Report with Appendices" shows that the Nike parcel #052506-9036 was sold in 1987 for $337,795 and then re-acquired by the district in 1996 for $337,795.
What the table omits is that significant toxic contamination was discovered on the Nike site and the school district was forced to buy the land back after being sued by the buyer. The contamination was supposed to have been cleaned up by the district, but additional contamination may still be on the site. Maybe Chip Kimball chose to let this parcel remain undeveloped because of the risk of encountering additional contamination.
Also, while King County was holding the School Siting Task Force meetings in 2012, the King County Department of Development and Environmental Services (DDES) was holding the hearing for the Conditional Use Permit appeal for the (Tesla)STEM School. At the STEM School hearing, Forrest Miller had the district's environmental consultant testify that the STEM School could not be built next to Dickinson and Evergreen (called the Mink Farm by the school board) because of native growth protection easements, wetland setbacks and other critical area development restrictions. So although the School Siting Task Force gave the school district permission to put a school on the Mink Farm site, the land is unusable because of environmental restrictions.
Perhaps the Nike site cannot be used for other reasons. But the site LWSD had requested to be allowed for the middle school, a mile up the road (3326069010 3326069009) was disallowed as well. Yet another site east of Avondale Rd (7273100245 7273100250) was disallowed. So its not as if the district does not have land at hand. Sites exist, but they are not allowed for development with changes to land use policy.
ReplyDeletePaige...
ReplyDeleteAt the May 5, 2014 Study Session Meeting, the school board was informed that the district still had $55,500,000 in unspent funds.
The breakdown of the money was:
$12,000,000 - Unspent 2006 construction bond funds
$13,000,000 - Unsold 2006 bonds
$28,000,000 - State construction assistance (still waiting on $8 million from State)
$2,500,000 - Impact Fees
Total: $55,500,000
The district spent $14,000,000 from these funds to purchase the Redmond Ridge site. The district is also using the surplus funds to add a 6-classroom addition to Redmond Elementary and to add portables all over the district.
WAC 392-343-120 prohibits the use of State Matching funds for purchases of land or portables. It's pretty clear that the district misused State Matching Funds for land and portable purchases. I reported this to the State Accounting Office in late January 2015 and got email in April that their office was backlogged and that I should try to investigate the matter with OSPI on my own. (This was around the time that the Troy Kelley mess was going on.)
The district still has $13,000,000 in unsold 2006 bonds. This money - combined with additional surplus funds - could have been used to build a new elementary school in North Redmond at the corner of 172nd Avenue NE & NE 122nd Street (called the Pope property by the school board) or to build a the new elementary school at Redmond Ridge. The district facilities department will not build any new schools unless the next bond measure passes - and note that most of the bond money will be dedicated to replacing schools, not building new schools.
Responding to Anonymous ... the Growth Management Act was passed in 1990. King County has prohibited housing developments east of Avondale Road for 25 years so all these land parcels that the school district owns are far from where anybody lives.
ReplyDeleteThe 3 elementary school out east of Redmond (Wilder, Alcott and Dickinson) are all filled with kids who are bussed from inside Redmond. Why would we want to build more schools on the vacant land out in the rural countryside? Just try walking to vacant parcels 7273100245 & 7273100250 north of NE 116th Street. That site would need new roads and a sewer that would cost a few million dollars. Who would pay for that? And then we would have to bus kids there. Parcels 3326069010 & 3326069009 along Novelty Hill Road are next to the Redmond Watershed and have wetlands and old growth timber so development is restricted by the CAO. You also can't walk there from Redmond Ridge so kids would have to be bussed to school.
If you've ever listened to the school board talk about their rural properties, they make it sound like they were robbed by not being able to put schools out there. Jackie Pendergrass has been on the Board for 20 years and Nancy Bernard has been there for 18 years. The district has had 25 years to buy better properties that were located inside Redmond but they didn't. Why do they think it's acceptable to put schools out in the middle of nowhere and expect students and families to struggle to get to school? The entire school board seems to be completely tone deaf to this issue.
Perhaps LWSD employees, Dr Pierce and the School Board used CMP (LWSD's math curriculum) to figure out if 20 acres was a reasonable answer for putting together a plot of land from the following acreage: 2.2 + 2.5 + 2.1 + 3.1 + 2.8 + 1.5 + 1.2 +1.8.
ReplyDeleteObviously, they guessed that 20 was NOT a reasonable answer (but the developer$$ could!) and makes for a compelling argument to return to old math.
LWSD is in dire need of space at ALL grade levels. It is time that the School Board puts the idea of new-in-lieu on the back burner. Old schools are better than severely overcrowded schools.
ReplyDelete>> Why do they think it's acceptable to put schools out in the middle of nowhere and expect students and families to struggle to get to school?
ReplyDeleteBecause the land is cheaper than inside the city. The land is bought with the expectation that eventually the city grows and the land is used for newly arriving students.
Can they buy urban land? I'm sure they can, but are we going to pay for it when so far we haven't?
Also, to the point in the blog post, Evergreen Middle School is closer to Hartman Park and southeast Redmond than to Redmond Ridge.
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=hartman+park+to+evergreen+middle
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=redmond+ridge+to+evergreen+middle