The Monterey School Building is finally ready to be sold. Culver Schools Interim Superintendent Chuck Kitchell says the school board voted Monday to seek bids from interested buyers. “The committee that was put together to discuss what they think the best option is made a recommendation – and the board acted on that recommendation – to put it up to an open-bid type situation, where we will advertise that we would like to sell the property and accept bids and put a timeline on it starting such-and-such a date, ending such-and-such a date and seeing where that goes,” Kitchell says. “So we will start the process of trying to get that going.”
The building is worth about $54,500, according to the average of the two appraisals the corporation received. How Culver Schools would be allowed to use that revenue is still a bit of a mystery. State law regulates how the money may be used. However, the fact that the building was constructed well before the formation of the Culver Community Schools Corporation in its current form makes it a bit more difficult to figure out into which fund that money should be placed. More importantly, though, the corporation believes that selling the building will save about $50,000 a year on maintenance costs.
Additionally, Kitchell says the Knox Community School Corporation has expressed interest in buying some of the building’s old cafeteria equipment. “They want to start a culinary program, and so we just let them come out to the building,” he says. “We showed them what equipment we had in that building, and they were looking at it to see if there was anything they thought they would like to purchase. And so we’re just trying to make some kind of an agreement to allow them to purchase some of the equipment that’s in that building.”
A resolution allowing Culver Schools to sell the equipment will be considered by the school board, once an agreement between the two school corporations is completed.
