Ask Mr. (School) Answer Person: "Wouldn't the purchase of City of Decorah ball field by the School District just be taxpayers paying for something they already own?"

Jim e-mails: "Let me see if this is right. The City of Decorah owns the ball field, that means WE the tax payers own the field.  So the school board, WE the taxpayers, wants to purchase it for the new school building for $700,000 plus. Would we be paying for something that we taxpayers already own? Is this some new math?  

Mr. (School) Answer Person says: This is an interesting, but flawed thought. True, both are public ownership entities. The first thing to note is that the Decorah Community School District goes well beyond the City of Decorah. Secondly, the entities serve two separate purposes and the land owned by the City of Decorah has distinct uses apart from education. Lots of different money pots operating here, going for different taxpayer uses and coming from different sources.

Beyond that, as City Manager Chad Bird points out, with the land in question, there are "opportunity costs associated with the use of the land today and the City would need to spend a certain amount of money to relocate those facilities to another location." Building a new softball diamond/recreational facility is not a cheap endeavor. But that brings up perhaps the bigger question – what would be the fair market value of that property and how much would it take for the City to replace it with a comparable site? Mr. Answer Person doesn't feel qualified to answer that question.

Finally, we don't know what the current offer from the school district will be, and how it may have changed from a previous offer. Stay tuned – that is expected at the City Council meeting next week.