STOW: After more than a year of negotiations, administrators representing the city and school district thought they’d worked out a tentative agreement for sharing City Hall and saving both entities money.
But the five members of the Stow-Munroe Falls Board of Education visited the City Council on Thursday to make it clear they have no interest in the current offer.
Three board members said the city wanted too much money. Two didn’t like the building wing the city offered to lease.
One board member called the plan “absolutely ridiculous.”
Mayor Sara Kline said she didn’t see that coming.
“The schools approached the city and asked if we could open negotiations on sharing space,” she said after a meeting in which she and Service Director Nicholas Wren gave school board members a guided tour of City Hall. “The city has been negotiating in good faith all this time, that this was something the district desired, and I’m very disappointed.”
Superintendent Tom Bratten, who was not at Thursday’s meeting, initiated the idea as part of his administration’s effort to look for new resource-sharing opportunities. Kline said the former superintendent came to the city in 2012 with a similar idea, although those talks did not produce an agreement.
“I understand both [legislative bodies] would have questions, but the notion that somehow we’re trying to pull the school board here and that wasn’t what they ever wanted is completely and totally inaccurate,” Kline said after several board members spoke bluntly against the collaboration.
School Board President Dave Licate said unless the city agreed there was significant room to move on the rental terms, there would be no need to continue talking.
Jim Costello, chairman of City Council’s Planning Committee, said he would sit on the legislation in his committee until the board officially told him the discussion was over.
For years, the school district has discussed the possibility of moving out of its administrative offices on Allen Road, a building in need of significant renovation.
School officials have said leaving Allen Road could result in a one-time savings for the district of about $500,000 by eliminating improvement and maintenance costs.
The plan on the table called for moving about 20 district employees to the lower west wing of City Hall on Darrow Road beginning next summer, taking up 2,600 square feet of separate and secured office space while sharing common meeting rooms, break rooms, basement storage and the atrium lobby.
The city would spend up to $20,000 to renovate the space for the district.
The 20-year lease called for the district to pay $2,835 a month in rent, with a 3 percent increase each year beginning in 2019. The district would also pay a proportional share of utility costs and building and grounds maintenance.
Kline said having the tenant would save the city up to $60,000 a year.
But the school board members weren’t impressed during Thursday night’s tour to explain the changes that would be made to the west wing and where the displaced city employees would go.
Like a family
Board member Gerry Bettio said the fact that the city was moving eight full-time staffers to make room for the renovation suggested the city didn’t really have the space to spare.
“It seems to me it’s a futile expense on the city’s part,” Bettio said. “...Relocating all these people, their equipment, knocking out walls, cubicles, moving your IT tech somewhere else ... It’s ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.”
Kline said some city departments could easily be relocated and that the space being offered to the school district isn’t empty because there wasn’t a need for it to be empty.
“Like a family in a house, you fill every available space,” Kline said.
As for tearing down walls to create the space the district needs, “walls are easy,” Kline said. “We move walls all the time here in every building. That’s something we do to accommodate operations on a regular basis.”
Board President Licate said it isn’t the board’s place to tell the city where to put its employees or to tell the superintendent how to physically set up his offices.
“Our job is strategy and policy and being good stewards of tax dollars and that’s what we want to do,” Licate said. The tentative agreement as written is a “non-starter for us.”
While board member Lisa Johnson-Bowers also didn’t like the lease, “the concept is amazing,” she said. “It’s a coming-together of the community... It’s out-of-the-box thinking.”
Likewise, Kline said “it’s worthy of celebration” that the city and school district tried to collaborate on something.
“There have been lots of years in the history of this city that the schools and the city have been at loggerheads than embracing each other,” she said. “I’m very proud of being part of that conversation.”
Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/paulaschleis.