McALLEN — Creating a place to take a walk in a park is proving to be anything but a walk for the McAllen Independent School District Board of Trustees.
After a tense and often contentious meeting Monday, the school board voted 6-1 to take no action on approving a resolution authorizing the sale of the former Crockett Elementary School to the city of McAllen. The board’s ultimate goal in that sale is to create a park or public space.
That lack of action is just the latest lack of action in the decade-long saga of the studentless elementary school.
Crockett was closed to students in 2011 and has since housed a handful of district departments that can be consolidated into other facilities. It needs significant renovations and is a $120,000-a-year financial drain on the district.
An interlocal agreement has allowed much of the 12.41 acre parcel to be used as a park since 2014.
There’s a walking trail and a native tree garden, but not much else. It’s easy to drive by it and mistake the underdeveloped park for what it formerly was — a schoolyard— rather than a publicly accessible greenspace.
The property does have the potential to be built up into a park or public space with a variety of amenities, a prospect that prompted the board to begin negotiations in May with the city to sell it to them for that purpose.
The board, it turns out, isn’t quite willing to part with Crockett just yet.
Although the agreement stipulates the city will use the park as a public space, that it won’t sell it to a charter school and that it would buy it as is, the agreement doesn’t stipulate much else. Several trustees voiced a desire to have more input into what the final product will look like.
Members of a three-trustee committee also described being jilted by the city in negotiations about the property. They described a first meeting being productive and a second meeting being notably brusque.
“I don’t read any of what we discussed in our meetings here in this agreement,” Trustee Sofia Peña said, holding up a copy of the document.
McAllen Assistant Superintendent Arely Benavides said that although that meeting was short, the purpose of the committee was to see if the city was interested in buying, a task it accomplished.
That didn’t matter to those committee members or most of the rest of the board. If the district sells land expressly to become a park, the district should have some say in what kind of park is built, trustees said.
“I think in order for us to vote for this, we have to at least have some kind of layout or a plan or a presentation of what this is gonna be,” trustee Marco Suarez said. “If we sell this blind, just on their word — and not that we shouldn’t take for granted their word — but I think that we have a responsibility to our taxpayers to at least know what they’re gonna do.”
Those discussions reopened chasms that had been bridged when the board voted to sell the property in May, and it appears the deal with the city may even be in jeopardy of losing board support — which would send Crockett back to square one.
Danny Vela has been on the fence about listing the property since the idea was first floated. Peña and Debbie Crane-Aliseda have both said they’d rather develop the property without selling it, perhaps through a memorandum of understanding. Those opinions were reaired Monday.
Tony Forina, the sole person to hint at supporting private development in the May meeting, beat that drum louder Monday. The land could host apartments and be an economic boon, he said; a private developer could be required to preserve greenspace and make walking trails.
“I have been a little apprehensive since the minute that we said we would only deal with them,” he said. “I think for us we need to expand the horizons, and we’ve seen what can come about if we were to open it up for bid process.”
A potential buyer even spoke in public comment: Tim Wilkins, property tax consultant and 2021 candidate for commissioner of McAllen District 1.
Wilkins said he would — and had even tried to — offer $1.5 million for the parcel, significantly more than the city’s offer.
“The district has been stating meeting after meeting that you’re fighting attrition of students, you’re fighting increasing expenses and dwindling revenue,” he said. “If the city buys Crockett, tax exempt, you’re gonna have very little to no control of what the city does with it. They’re making some grand promises.”
Fear over the prospect of the city not coming through on a park and those core differences on what to do with Crockett made for a tense meeting. There were interruptions and retorts. Some hinted at accusations that the three-trustee committee negotiated in bad faith, while others rebutted that insinuation.
At one point during a discussion on Robert’s Rules of Order, Vela leaned back and stared at the ceiling, visibly frustrated.
“What I’m sensing then, I’m sensing now, is that we probably don’t have a consensus that we want to sell it,” board president Sam Saldivar said.
Some trustees disagreed with Saldivar’s appraisal; others were silent.
The sale is not dead yet, and none of the trustees voiced opposition to more talks with the city. Saldivar said the board should revisit the item before the end of August.
With the exception of Forina, all of the trustees said they want essentially the same thing: a pretty park the district can claim a role in creating. They want it badly, and they’re willing to spend some time bargaining and brawling over what they feel is the best way to do that.
“We waited 10 years to sell Crockett,” trustee Conrado Alvarado said. “I don’t think if we wait another couple weeks, couple months, it’s gonna do anything.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: This post has been updated to reflect that Tim Wilkins ran for McAllen’s District 1 city commission seat.
