Southampton School District Considering Purchasing Building For District Office

Southampton School District officials are currently in the process of searching for a building in the village to possibly purchase for a new district office.The current district office is situated on the grounds of the Intermediate School in a 47-year-old structure that, when built, was only intended to be used for three years. Southampton Superintendent Dr. Scott Farina said this week that the temporary classroom building “just isn’t repairable at this point” because it does not comply with Americans with Disabilities Act regulations, it does not have a robust HVAC system, and it simply does not have enough work space.After weighing several options for a new office, Dr. Farina said that the most viable option would be to purchase an already-existing structure somewhere in Southampton. The district has already began a search, he said.“We have started looking around. Certainly there are properties that are on the market and are being advertised for sale, but there are probably other properties out there that people would be willing to sell if they knew that someone was interested in it,” the superintendent said. “We would love to have some type of proposition for the May polling, with the budget vote.”Other options considered were housing the office in an existing district building, leasing space, or constructing a new structure at the site of the current building. For the first option, Dr. Farina said that increasing student enrollment along with state mandates for more instructional programs make it hard to find additional space in one of the schools. Leasing an office building is also not a viable option because the district can only enter lease agreements for no more than five years, making that solution a temporary one. It also wouldn’t be cost-effective: “Looking at fair market value out here, we’re probably looking at $300,000 a year, something like that, which is expensive for a lease,” Dr. Farina said.As for constructing a new building, Dr. Farina said that option was not entirely out of the question, but it was also not the best one. He explained that construction costs would be high due to the Wicks Law, which states that the union-prevailing wage be paid to workers, and the actual building of the structure would create a disturbance to students and neighbors. It is also, he said, almost too permanent of a solution. “If we build a building on site, we can never get rid of it. You can’t divest and there’s no exit strategy,” he said.Dr. Farina stressed that purchasing a new building would not tack on additional taxes for district residents, as taxpayers already approved setting up a capital reserve account in the 2009-10 school year that targeted the creation of a bus garage and a new district office. With the bus garage project completed, there is now $8.2 million remaining in the reserve that officials can use for the new office. Voter approval is required for the district to tap into that money, though, Dr. Farina said.Southampton school officials have talked about a new district office for several years. Dr. Farina said that recently, though, the matter was set aside due to the possible merger with the Tuckahoe School District.“We put this on hold while we were investigating the merger with Tuckahoe. Now that we see that the merger did not go through—twice—we are revisiting this, because it is absolutely a need for the district,” he explained.