St. Albert Protestant Schools may have the right to sell its surplus school property in Akinsdale, but is such a sale ethical?
That’s the question bothering one area resident who is among several spearheading resistance to a proposed land sale that would result in a 58-unit townhouse complex being built at 70 Arlington Dr.
“From an ethical standpoint, how can a school board that pays nothing for the land turn around and say ‘hey, we can do with it as we please?’” wondered Dave Evans, a long-time Akinsdale resident.
“They may own it … but is it ethically right?”
A search of Gazette archives confirmed the common perception among residents that the school district bought land from Qualico for $1 in 1974. District records show the board also paid about $30,000 in servicing costs, said superintendent Barry Wowk.
The district started paying property taxes on the land in 1996 and has since paid out about $100,000 in taxes, said Protestant district board chair Morag Pansegrau. In 1994 the district also gave the city two acres from the original five-acre plot to use as parkland, Pansegrau said.
“People seem to forget that we had five acres … but we chose to give almost half of it as a gift for park land and kept only three acres to sell,” she said.
Applying inflation to the value of all these costs would likely “come very close to the money we’re selling it for,” she said.
The district has agreed to sell the land to Habitat For Humanity, Edmonton for $840,000, money that would come from the City of St. Albert’s pool of affordable housing funding provided by the province.
This is the district’s third attempt to sell the land in the past decade. City council shot down two previous concepts, for duplex housing and a seniors’ complex, due to public resistance.
In pursuing the current sale the board felt it was doing the responsible thing for the city, Pansegrau said.
“We’ve heard so much in the paper for many years about the lack of affordable housing so we thought that was a very appropriate use of the land, as far as honouring and benefiting everybody in the city.”
Provincial rules require that the board use the sale proceeds for its existing schools and infrastructure, Pansegrau said. With government funding slim in this area in recent years, this money would be a big help, she said.
“It’s ethically our obligation to use the resources we have for the benefit of the students that are in our schools right now,” she said. “So you can also say that it’s not ethical for us to sit on a piece of land that we own.”
Mayor Nolan Crouse said he sees no problem with the free market playing a role in the land sale. The city made a huge profit when it sold land in Campbell Business Park years ago and could do so now if it sold the Badger lands, he said.
“You’re not going to sell land at the value you bought it. We’d be run out of town if we did that as a city,” he said.
Gazette archives show that in 1974 the Town of St. Albert signed a development agreement with the local Catholic and Protestant boards that would allow the boards to acquire school sites for the nominal price of $1. It appears the common practice was for school boards to pay for servicing costs for their sites.
At the time, there was debate on council whether the town should have the right of first refusal to buy back surplus school sites for $1 but there is no evidence that this was written into the agreement.
The land in question was never taken as municipal reserve for the town so it’s privately held and the school board has the right to sell it, confirmed senior planner Lenore Mitchell.
