The Haines Borough likely won’t be selling Mosquito Lake School this summer, manager David Sosa said this week, after withdrawing his request last week that the borough planning commission consider selling the building.
About 30 supporters of the school packed the Jan. 15 commission meeting, using arguments including that borough talk of selling the building is undermining their efforts to find a new use or students for the school.
“To potentially sell the building is disheartening. It rips out the foundation of work we’ve done so far,” said Mosquito Lake resident Zach Jacobson.
The school generated around $50,000 in revenues above costs for the school district in recent years, said commission chair Rob Goldberg, comparing the downturn in enrollment to a bad year of commercial fishing.
“It’s essentially been a contributor all these years… This year we didn’t get our escapement,” Goldberg said.
Sosa told the crowd he’d wait six months before again seeking planning commission action on the school.
Sosa told the crowd that selling the school would require assembly approval and wouldn’t occur suddenly, but he also noted that the state is projecting only 1 percent growth in the Haines population over the next 25 years. “Having a building sit empty for $30,000 a year is not a good use of our funds or use of our property.”
Several people, including Goldberg, countered the state’s population projections. Goldberg said relatively inexpensive property in the upper valley would draw young families there. “There will be more kids up there and if there’s no school, that will be a shame.”
Planning commissioner Robert Venables, a highway resident, said the school was identified as an asset during consolidation of the City of Haines and Haines Borough in 2002.
Venables said he couldn’t imagine ever voting to surplus the school. “Even though the manager is correct in a business sense, being correct is not always being right.”
Planning commissioner Lee Heinmiller also said he’d never sell it.
In an interview after the meeting, Sosa said he hadn’t heard any new arguments for keeping the school, but said advocates seem more organized and focused on developing a plan for the building.
“Hopefully, they’ll follow through with that. We’re going to be going through a budget cycle and a lot of things are going to be competing with each other. (Advocates) need to be showing up at budget sessions with their idea for use of the facility,” Sosa said.
Advocates have between now and May to present their plan and make their case, Sosa said.
Sosa said his extension will likely keep the building off the market this year. “Given the delay, it will be hard to get on the market.”