Iberia, Johnsville land might return to communities

Rachel Mendell — Staff

Inquirer Reporter -

The land on which the for­mer Iberia and Johnsville ele­men­tary schools stood will return to the com­mu­ni­ties, pend­ing the North­mor Board of Education’s approval of the win­ning auc­tion bids.

About 30 peo­ple gath­ered at the North­mor high school cafe­te­ria for the Sat­ur­day morn­ing auc­tion Feb. 18, their low chat­ter mix­ing with the shouts from an inter­me­di­ate boys’ bas­ket­ball tour­na­ment hap­pen­ing in the gym across the hall.

The Johnsville fire depart­ment bid $13,000 for the vacant land at 7478 County Road 242, just around the cor­ner from the fire department’s cur­rent build­ing. The old school ball fields were not included in the bid, which cov­ered only the roughly 2.75 acres where the school build­ing and park­ing lot used to be.

“The board gave us the ball fields but we never accepted them because we didn’t know who would get the land,” said Glade Bachelder, a Johnsville FD board mem­ber. Now, he said, the fire depart­ment wants to accept the ball fields as well, assum­ing the board approves the department’s bid for the old school land.

The fire depart­ment plans to build a new fire sta­tion on the old school land within the next 3 years, Bachelder said.

The old Iberia school lot was auc­tioned off to the Wash­ing­ton Town­ship trustees for $10,000. The 2.5 acres on the cor­ner of County Road 30 and Iberia-Bellville Road were also sep­a­rate from that school’s ball fields.

The trustees already man­age the ball fields and plan to use the land to pro­vide restroom and drink­ing water facil­i­ties for teams using the fields. In the future, the trustees also want to add park­ing and pos­si­bly a pic­nic area on the old school land, accord­ing to trustee Dave Lester.

“We’re def­i­nitely pleased that it went to the Wash­ing­ton Town­ship trustees and the Johnsville fire depart­ment,” said North­mor super­in­ten­dent Brent Winand.

The Board of Edu­ca­tion will decide whether to accept the win­ning bids at a spe­cial meet­ing March 15. The board had set no min­i­mum bid before the auc­tion but reserved the right to reject bids.

Posted by Sarah Einselen on Feb 20 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.