Sunday, December 8, 2019

The common sense courthouse option

I realize that this alternative was never on the table but I feel I must bring it up again. We need to not throw good money after bad and need to abandon all previous options. None are very good and the old hospital option is the worst of all.
We purchased land out by the new hospital to build a new grade school on as we are outgrowing the current school. Grade schools should be centered in town so kids can walk or bike to school from all parts of our community.
This would be impossible out east of town and also very dangerous for our children to cross 9th street. Bad idea.
I propose we build a new, state of the art, energy efficient high school at that location. Once it is built, we move the middle school kids to the existing high school and move the grade school kids to the middle school.
We then turn the existing grade school into our courthouse. It is already handicapped accessible and we could use the playground for plenty of parking, something that is woefully lacking at the old hospital.
Why in the world would we want to spend money remodeling a dump that has no parking (the old hospital) and then spend more money on a new school in the future? Let’s do this once and do it right.

Ric Hanson