MUSD loses preferred property for 2nd high school

Maricopa Unified School district ran into an impasse in its attempt to buy its preferred property for a second high school.

“Tonight, we find ourselves without land,” Superintendent Tracey Lopeman announced to the governing board in a sometimes heated meeting Wednesday.

MUSD had tried to purchase land on the southwest corner of Murphy and Farrell Roads in East Maricopa. When surrounding agricultural landowners were required to sign a pesticide covenant, one landowner, Anderson Palmisano Farms, did not sign, creating the impasse.

Kelly Anderson, managing partner of the farm, officially logged his objection to a school being built on that property by reading into the record his letter to Lopeman and the board from May 19.

 

His wife, Torri, who is a member of the governing board, told board members someone from the school should have called her husband and talked about it.

Lopeman said district representatives had reached out.

After the meeting, Torri Anderson restated there was no call from MUSD and no statement of a deadline. She said they were not called until the week the covenant was due when Kelly was out of town.

The school district will restart its effort to find land. It wants at least 60 acres.

“There is not a lot that is not currently developed that we can afford,” Board Vice President Ben Owens said.

Earlier in the property search process, Anderson Palmisano Farms had offered to sell a parcel of land to the district for $55,000 per acre, according to information obtained this month through a public records request.

Board member Patti Coutré said she was “very disappointed” to restart the process. She was one of the three members of the board who voted to spend $45,000 per acre to purchase the Cortona property belonging to the Emmerson family, which is south of Anderson Palmisano Farms. That decision was made in April, when Torri Anderson had recused herself from the discussion to avoid conflict of interest.

After the decision, Anderson expressed several concerns about the Emmerson property during subsequent board meetings and communications with Lopeman. Wednesday, when Board President AnnaMarie Knorr asked why the Emmersons’ Cortona property was not better than the Anderson property, Torri Anderson responded her family’s farm was within school district boundaries.

The Cortona property, by contrast, is within the boundaries of Casa Grande elementary and high school districts despite being in Maricopa city limits. Torri Anderson had asked Lopeman about the overlap in a May 11 email.

Lopeman responded in a document addressed to all board members in June: “I have communicated with both superintendents about the location of the second high school a couple times since the MUSD Board decision. The superintendents relayed that their boards were curious and confused… I sent a map showing the location of the site within city limits and across the street from MUSD boundaries. Since sending the map, I have not heard from either superintendent.”

Coutré said there had been no pushback from those districts. She said she was not concerned because the site was within the city of Maricopa.

Knorr was surprised to hear Torri Anderson say the Anderson Palmisano property had been removed from consideration as early as February. Knorr said if that was a fact, Anderson had no reason to recuse herself and could have helped the effort to choose land.

“If your property was pulled, you could have participated in that discussion,” she said. “We were not made aware that your property was pulled.”

Knorr and Coutré described an arduous process of due diligence in investigating the recommended properties.

“When we started this process, no land was donated to us. We had to seek those owners willing to sell their land,” Coutré said.

She said most of the land presented would have been agricultural acreage with the same infrastructure costs involved. She said the board made the best economical decision and also considered the population growth on the east side of town.

Lopeman said that in the six months since the board’s land selection, property costs have gone up 20%-25% and construction costs continue to rise about half a percentage point a month.

Knorr said it would be worth the district’s time to reach out to Kelly Anderson again to see if he would change his mind and sign the covenant. After the meeting, Torri Anderson expressed doubts that would be successful.

MUSD wants to open a second high school by July 2022. Maricopa High School is currently 600 students over capacity. Lopeman said to remain on schedule, the district would have to have the land purchase in front of the state’s School Facilities Board in November and go to market in the first quarter of 2021.

Exploring other land, she said, “will come at significant cost.”