Sometimes it’s time for talk and other times it’s time for action. When it comes to building a second high school in Bentonville, the latter is fully in eff ect.
The discussion about what to do with high school overcrowding in Bentonville goes on in the wake of last June’s resounding defeat of a 6.7-mill proposal that would have builta second high school in Centerton. The proposed high school was estimated to cost $94 million, but was part of a $128 million ballot question that included other projects.
Bentonville’s School Board recently pondered how to map a successful path toward the future.
Some suggested a process that might last as many as 18 months for public input. The goal is to diminish the odds of another failure at the polls by ensuring everyone’s viewpoints are part of the solution. Others say the years-long public debate has run its course. The problem, they suggest, isn’t that opinions haven’t been expressed, but that they haven’t been heard.
The matter has, without question, been debated, discussed and dismantled adequately. All of the possibilities are pretty much on the table.
To us, it boils down pretty simply.
Cut the cost.
Make the next vote about a second high school, and only about a second high school.
Build it in southwest Bentonville, where there’s so much student population growth and the district is already building other schools.
Remove the athletic facilities and let the two high schools share Tiger Stadium.
The community definitely wants two high schools and perhaps our brief statements oversimplify the solution. But not by much, and it certainly doesn’t need an 18-month process. The School District is growing far too quickly for that kind of timeline.
This is a case of the School Board just needing to lead the community where it already wants to go.
COMMISSION GIVES CHURCH EARLY PRESENT
It was a pleasure to hear Friday that the Springdale
Planning Commission had sent tidings of joy to the people of Victory Church of Northwest Arkansas.
The congregation for more than two years has faced uncertainty about its future location. Their church sits on land that’s needed to construct a new interchange for Don Tyson Parkway and Interstate 540.
The process has been as slow as Christmas. The church stands to gain more than $2 million in exchange for its property, but the deal requires vacation of the land well before any new church can be built. So the good news came when the church worked out a deal to temporarily hold services in a set of retail suites at Ozark Center Point Place.
That location requires the shopping center’s owner to obtain a city-issued conditional use permit for a church to operate in a building designed to be a shopping center.
That permit was set to be reviewed last Tuesday and would have likely been approved, but due to apparent miscommunication, the shopping center’s representative did not show up. The owner, not the tenant, has to make the request for the permit, so the matter was tabled. That threatened the church’s hopes of holding its fi rst service on New Year’s, and the Planning Commission’s regular meeting only happens once a month.
Recognizing its situation, the Planning Commission has set a special meeting on Monday at which the church request will be considered.
Government gets a rap for being unresponsive and slow-moving, some of it deserved. But kudos to the city for its effort to deliver peace to this congregation for the holidays.
Opinion, Pages 5 on 12/08/2012