MANITOWANING—While the bids were a lot less than they had hoped for, Assiginack council has voted in favour of selling the Clover Valley Schoolhouse building.
At a meeting last week Assiginack council was presented with three bids that had been made for the purchase of the former schoolhouse. The three purchase tender bids were from Mahlon Streicher for $5,000, a tender of $1,006 from Renee Zilio and a bid of $23,000 from Glen Gibson.
“I’m not in favour of the amounts here,” said Councillor Rob Maguire. He explained the township had the building appraised a couple of years ago for $100,000. This appraisal was garnered during the height of the pandemic, so council decided it would tender out the building for $70,000. However, no tenders were received. So, council retendered the sale of the building with no minimum amount attached to it.
“But this bid is less than half (of the minimum that had been set previously),” stated Councillor Maguire. “I don’t think this is being fair. I would rather see the building listed by a real estate agency.”
Councillor Jennifer Hooper said, “from my work experience people are always starry eyed until they see the condition of a building. I’m comfortable with the (purchase) price that has been put forward. The building is going to rot until there is nothing left of it if we don’t do something.” She said there would be high costs involved in fixing it up and maintenance costs on top of that.
Councillor Dwayne Elliott said, “there has been a good argument made on both sides of this issue. I agree this is a low price.” However, “my concern is that the condition of the building will deteriorate even further and soon there will be nothing left.”
The time to move on selling the schoolhouse is now before the building deteriorates any further, said Mayor Brenda Reid. She pointed out the buyer would be required to incur all costs once they have purchased the building. The building has no running water, no bathrooms or electricity.
At the request of Councillor Hooper a recorded vote was taken on the tenders that have been received. Councillors Elliott, Hooper and Mayor Reid were all in favour of selling the building to Mr. Gibson, while Councillor Rob Maguire voted in opposition.
