BUSD reaffirms plans to purchase fire station

When what was at the time the Bonsall Union School District sold a parcel of land on Old River Road adjacent to the Bonsall Elementary School property to what was then the Fallbrook Fire Protection District, the grant deed stipulated that if the land was to be used for something other than a fire station it was to be sold back to the school district for the purchase price of $35,000.

Several changes have occurred since that 1981 sale. The Fallbrook Fire Protection District became the North County Fire Protection District (NCFPD) in 1986 and the Bonsall Union School District converted to the Bonsall Unified School District (BUSD) in 2014, although the grant deed also applied to successor agencies.

A fire station and a parking area were constructed on the property covered by the deed and, now that the fire department has moved into its new Bonsall fire station, BUSD and NCFPD staff and board members have different interpretations whether the repurchase price should consider the improvements made to the property.

"We have to get together with the folks from the fire district and agree on a price," said current BUSD superintendent Justin Cunningham.

At the staff level, the fire district and the school district are both willing to negotiate. The first action from either district board was taken Jan. 13 when the BUSD board voted 4-0, with Timothy Coen absent, to support a purchase price of $35,000. The BUSD board meeting March 19 included a 3-0 vote, with Coen and Sylvia Tucker absent, to reaffirm the district's intent to move forward with the repurchase of the fire station property.

"They definitely want to repurchase the property, and the grant deed is very explicit in how the price should be set," Cunningham said.

The school district has not determined with certainty a use for the land should it be repurchased from the fire district, although it has been discussed as the location for a continuation high school. Fire board members have threatened to continue to use the old fire station rather than to sell it for $35,000, although a docketed agenda item for the Jan. 27 NCFPD board meeting was withdrawn and no official fire board position has been taken. On Jan. 30, the fire district received a certificate of occupancy, which allows habitation and visitors for the new NCFPD Station 5 on Olive Hill Road.

Public agency boards usually discuss real property negotiations in closed session, so any actual negotiations will likely occur in that forum. "We'd like to be able to settle this without having to bring in attorneys and have it cost even more than it should," Cunningham said.