By Susan Bromley

Staff Writer

Brandon Twp.-

The school board has unanimously approved the sale of a 23-acre parcel of property on Oakwood Road for $184,000, a decade after district officials purchased the property at a cost of $430,000.

“Obviously, we would have liked to recoup what was spent, but the market was not there,” said Superintendent Matt Outlaw of the sale. “We were asking $199,000 and we think (the $184,000 offered) it’s a fair price in this market.”

The board approved the sale at their Nov. 21 meeting. The buyer is a private citizen who Outlaw didn’t identify pending closing of the sale, but said the man was an individual looking to build a house for his family and possibly sell off parcels. He did not yet have a closing date. The realtor handling the sale is Chris Collier of Liberty Way Realty.

The district purchased the land in December 2006 with the intention of possibly building a new elementary school there, but the idea was scrapped due to the parcel’s access location near a curve and concerns about safety. The 23.4 acres has an easement on Leece Road and the north end of the property fronts a pond that takes up about four acres of the parcel in total. Less than five months after buying the property, the school board approved purchasing for $850,000 the 75 acre parcel north of Oakwood Road, east of Hadley Road where Oakwood Elementary School was later built.

The purchase of both properties was made using a portion of the $73.4 million bond passed by voters in 2006. Because the land that is being sold was purchased using bond money, the sale proceeds may have to be used to pay debt, although Outlaw said his preference would be to put the $184,000 in the general fund to be used toward recently incurred expenses. Those include the replacement of two failed heat exchangers at Oakwood Elementary that will cost roughly $65,000 although the district hopes to be reimbursed for up to $45,000 of that from Harsco Industrial, Patterson-Kelley of Pennsylvania, who provided the heat exchangers less than five years ago. The Brandon High School fire alarm system is also in the process of being replaced, at an approximate cost of $100,000.