With an eye to the future, the Mid-Prairie school board Monday approved the purchase of two tracts of farmland south of the high school.
The land was sold at a Dec. 6 auction. Superintendent Mark …
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With an eye to the future, the Mid-Prairie school board Monday approved the purchase of two tracts of farmland south of the high school.
The land was sold at a Dec. 6 auction. Superintendent Mark Schneider and Business Manager Jeff Swartzentruber attended the auction with authorization and guidance from the school board.
The first tract of land is south of Highway 22 and abuts the auxiliary parking lot across from the high school.
The tract is 13 acres, and the district purchased the land for $158,600, or $12,200 per acre.
The second tract is 15 acres that are east of the first tract.
The purchase price on that was $15,000, or $10,000 per acre.
“We will have to install a driveway,” Schneider said of the second tract. There is no access to that property. There are no easements.”
Schneider said the two purchases average out to $11,000 per acre.
“That is a premium for farm ground,” he said. “Say 10 years in the future when the district needs the property and it’s in private ownership, we would pay a lot more than $11,000 an acre.”
Over the past month, the board has held a series of closed sessions to discuss the property and devise a bidding strategy and bid caps.
He pointed out that another school district recently paid $29,900 an acre for farm ground.
The money for the purchase of the two tracts will be paid from sales tax funds.
There are no immediate plans for the use of the property.
“The feedback I’ve received from community members has been positive,” Schneider said. “They do want to know what we are going to use it for.
“There is no immediate use for this property. The reason why it was purchased is because opportunity knocked.”
He plans to speak to FFA adviser Elsa Schmidt to see if the Mid-Prairie FFA club may want to farm the property.
“If the FFA club doesn’t want to do that, I would suggest to the school board where we have a process where we would take bids for rent so that it’s fair for everyone,” Schneider said.
He added that he wanted to go on record that he first became aware that the property was for sale was from a phone call from a family member.
