Lucia Mar to sell 2 surplus properties
By Natalie Ragus/Staff Writer
With the state budget crisis leaving schools in a crunch, Lucia Mar Unified School District has combed through its assets in search of excess, unused properties to sell or lease.
The district has identified two unoccupied properties that could potentially generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue and fatten its diminishing coffers.
“This is a very prudent and wise thing for the district to be doing,” said Carol Florence of Oasis Associates Inc., the San Luis Obispo company helping Lucia Mar package and ready the two properties for sale to developers.
This year, California school districts have taken a roughly $4 billion hit in funding cuts stemming from a state budget deficit that experts predict will grow to $28 billion by 2010 unless the Legislature takes drastic action.
The cuts have taken a particularly heavy toll on Lucia Mar, which is experiencing the double whammy of lost revenue due to declining enrollment — a phenomenon that continues to worsen daily as young families who can no longer afford to live on the Central Coast move elsewhere.
As a result, Lucia Mar decided to declare two vacant Pismo Beach properties surplus, paving the way for their sale to a developer who will build single- and multiple-family housing units, Florence said.
One 17,150-square-foot parcel located on Price Canyon Road near Bello Street has been earmarked for 10 multifamily housing units, and a 3-acre lot on the Judkins Middle School campus has been earmarked for 10 single-family homes.
Since the properties haven’t been appraised, the district doesn’t yet have an estimate on how much revenue their sale could bring, but district officials say the money would go toward the matching funds needed to build a facility to house Lucia Mar’s new Culinary Arts Academy, among other projects.
“We’re always very aware of using our assets ... for the greatest public good and the best return on public funds,” said Mary Stark, Lucia Mar’s deputy superintendent of business. “That’s our goal.”
Lucia Mar, however, will hang onto two unoccupied properties it owns — one in Nipomo dubbed the Craig property, the other in Arroyo Grande dubbed the Hidden Oaks property — because the district has designated the parcels as a future school sites.
Until enrollment numbers swell enough to make it practical for Lucia Mar to build the schools, the Craig property may become a temporary storage site for portable classrooms so the district can save money on taxes.
State law requires school districts to pay taxes on properties that remain unoccupied or unused, while properties being used are generally tax-exempt.
nragus@theadobepress.com
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