The Sea to Sky School District will be selling a house Pemberton students helped build as part of an educational project for potentially $1.35 million.
This would result in a net profit of about $405,000, school board staff said.
"The sale of this property would help boost our local capital funds to be used for any renovation or capital projects the board would like to pursue, including the funding of a future construction education program," reads the School District 48 staff recommendation.
SD48’s school board unanimously voted to sell the property that resulted from the Pemberton Residential House Construction Project during their Dec. 14 public meeting.
The Pemberton property came about from a project that began in 2018 under the previous superintendent, Lisa McCullough. The project saw students work with tradespeople to construct a home in an effort to apply their learning to the real world.
At the time, $775,600 was allocated to the project, according to the website of Pemberton Secondary School.
The resulting home is a two-storey house. Floor plans show that it’s designed to have three bedrooms, a master suite, a double garage and a secondary suite, among other things.
At the board meeting, secretary-treasurer of SD48, Danielle Haverstock, explained that the alternative choice, renting out the property, would net approximately $51,000 per year in profit.
“Our recommendation would be to sell it,” said Haverstock, speaking on behalf of SD48 staff. “We put together a recommendation here, but it's up to the board to make the decision.”
School board trustee Lisa Turpin, asked if selling a property was a slippery slope for the school district.
“How many little portions of district property are we going to end up selling, potentially selling, because we can't repair the roof?”
But Haverstock viewed renting property as a tenuous arrangement.
“I think there's actually a slippery slope the other way if we start renting out a whole bunch of things. We don't have capacity in our school district to be dealing with rental properties,” she said.
Staff said the potential downsides to renting the property were time needed for upkeep, maintenance, and preparation and administration of a lease. Furthermore, district staff believed it would create inequity across communities.
“We didn't build houses in Squamish, we didn't build houses in Whistler and they also have a lack of housing,” said Haverstock.
Additionally, rent would need to be listed at market value, because the property could not be restricted to staff of SD48.
“It’s not staff housing per se,” said Supt. Chris Nicholson. “We’re not talking about a subsidy because of the costs involved … so I don’t think we would actually be able to restrict it to employees only.”
Nicholson acknowledged that there had been some misinformation in the community about the intention of the property once finished. Still, the intent was always to consider these two options at completion.
After the board voted to sell the property, school board trustee Cynthia Higgins, shared her praises for the people involved in the project.
“A big congratulations to everyone for all of the work it took and especially when you’re doing something new and novel,” she said. “I really appreciate that you would take the risk to provide students with a unique and meaningful learning opportunity.”
**This story has been updated to reflect the intention of the profit if sold**
