A cafeteria expansion project in Arizona that has been caught up in a legal dispute for three years is finally moving forward.
The $1.3 million project hit a snag in 2011 when a group sued the Cave Creek Unified School District, saying the district could not use bond proceeds to fund a renovation project, the Arizona Republic reported.
The case went all the way to the Arizona Supreme Court, halting any progress on the school’s cafeteria in the process. Last year, the state’s high court affirmed a lower court’s decision that the bond could only be used for new construction since that was the one purpose that voters approved in a 2000 bond election.
The work, which will nearly double the size of the cafeteria, resumed after the district sold an old elementary school earlier this year and generated about $900,000 to go toward the work. The district plans to pay for the rest with money from the school’s capital fund.
The old cafeteria could only hold about 400 students, and there are 1,700 students enrolled at the school, which has two lunch periods. The student newspaper reported that students had to wait in line 15 to 20 minutes for their food.
