The Washougal Faculty District has deserted its plan to buy a 32-acre rural property as a future college website.
The varsity district had meant to make use of the property to construct a faculty sooner or later, however Interim Superintendent Aaron Hansen stated Clark County’s environmental report revealed that the property has potential riparian setbacks alongside three streams operating throughout the positioning.
“It is unclear how much work would need to be done to mitigate impacts or work around the setbacks,” Hansen advised college board members through the Jan. 28 assembly. “With the setbacks, assuming no mitigation to reduce them, we are not sure this property can work for our purposes.”
The varsity district entered an settlement with Kysar Improvement in 2020 that gave the district an choice to buy the property by Dec. 31.
In October, the college board accepted a decision authorizing the district to train its buy choice to purchase the property for $1.025 million.
Opponents additionally stated they had been involved that the property lacked elementary infrastructure, similar to a sewer system and first rate roads, that might be required for any future college improvement.
“We are not taking a position of ‘not in my backyard’ mentality. This is really about the property itself. Will a school work in this type of topography? We heard about wetlands. We heard about slope. It’s just not a well-suited piece of land,” Washougal resident Rick Jarchow stated through the board’s Jan. 28 assembly.
In late December, district leaders negotiated with Kysar Improvement to increase the option-to-purchase settlement to June 30 to offer extra time to request extra environmental assessments of the property and to succeed in out to residents who is perhaps impacted by the acquisition.
On Jan. 28, the outcomes of the brand new environmental report and questions posed by neighbors prompted the college board to halt the property buy. Hansen stated college district leaders will proceed to seek for websites that might sometime accommodate a brand new college, parking zone, athletic fields and recreation areas.
“We want to thank the community for helping us understand the property out there in a way that I don’t think any of us on the board understood six months ago,” college board member Jim Cooper stated. “We do have an obligation to look forward and try to secure the resources we need to educate a growing community if we’re going to grow, but I appreciate the community input.”