Wake County, N.C., school leaders are trying to assuage county commissioners who are suspicious about how the district buys land for new schools. Rosa Gill, chairwoman of the school board, wants school officials to share with commissioners all the information they have about ongoing land negotiations before deals are completed. Gill hopes it will answer questions about why the district is considering certain locations and how much the sites cost.
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EARLIER: Buy a house, and the bank will likely require a certified appraisal to verify the property's value before financing a mortgage. But Wake County, N.C., school administrators, with a construction budget backed by more than $1 billion in voter-approved bonds, don't use outside appraisals when they buy land. That policy is now set to change. County commissioners say they won't approve any more real estate purchases for the school system unless an appraisal is completed.
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Wake County, N.C., commissioners took no action on two school land purchases and deferred the issue indefinitely. The board's inaction came after The News & Observer reported that officials with the Wake County Public School System did not provide commissioners with key details of a school site purchase that was approved last month.
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Last month, a developer bought three parcels of land west of Apex, N.C. The price: about $2.5 million. The following day, the Wake County Public School System bought the 32 acres for a planned elementary school campus. The price: almost $3.3 million. The value of the property effectively jumped 30 percent overnight, from a price of $79,341 per acre to $102,805 per acre.
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