In a unanimous vote, the Vance County Board of Commissioners voted to sell the City of Henderson its interest in the old library on Rose Avenue.
The sale of the building, a former supermarket built in the late 1950’s, is contingent upon the legality of the transfer and the building’s use as Henderson’s city hall.
The cost of the county’s half of the building was set at $163,750. However, according to the most recent valuation of the property by Cushman & Wakefield, its value is $450,000. An earlier appraisal by L. Opie Frazier set the value of the property at $205,000. The figure of $163,770 was arrived at by splitting the difference between the two estimates.
The county accepted the city’s offer of payment in five installments, the first set for July of 2008. The payments will not include any interest. It is unknown when the other four payments will be disbursed.
Board of Commissioners Chair Danny Wright called the purchase “a good move”. He said that the presence of government in a community “is a stabilizing influence”.
Henderson Mayor Pete O’Geary, who was present at the meeting along with city council members Lonnie Davis, George Daye, Mary Emma Evans, Mike Inscoe, and Mike Rainey, said that the purchase “is a plus for our citizens”.
O’Geary noted that residents can use the [downtown] city hall to pay bills.
“What is good for the city is good for the county and what is good for the county is good for the city,” O’Geary told commissioners.
The purchase of the former Perry Library effectively scraps plans to remodel the current Operations Center into a new city hall, a project that was first conceived in 2004 by council member Mike Rainey and actively pursued by the council for the next three years.
After the sale of the current city hall in November of 2007, the plan was to put $250,000 of the receipts into the unrestricted fund balance and spend up to $500,000 for the renovation of the Operations Center.
According to former council member Elissa Yount, the move would not only have saved the city $140,000 a year in upkeep and utilities, but would have also saved the city from renovations of the current facility.
Yount also stated that there was consensus between the council and city management on the issue.
“We all would like to have a new city hall downtown, but it was not financially feasible,” Yount told Home in Henderson. The city is under a mandate from the Local Government Commission to rebuild its fund balance. The city is also under a Special Order of Consent from the state to fix our sewers regardless of the price it will cost. Combining city operations into two large buildings instead of three was a cost savings move for the tax payers.
“While it is true we did not know what the costs of renovation would be, it is also true that we informed the city engineer that we wanted the renovation at the Operations Center to be on budget at $500,000 or less. Following this budget would put almost $250,000 in our fund balance. We were not willing to give an open check book to either the architects or the builders. The debt on the Operations Center is around $320,000 annually and will be paid in full by 2020. At that time, the city may be in a better financial position and could go ahead with plans for a city hall beside the police station.
“Our first goal was to save money and our second goal was to provide an environmentally friendly work space for the city employees and the citizens who do business at City Hall,” Yount said.
No feasibility study or cost analysis regarding the move of city hall to Rose Avenue has been mentioned by city officials, nor has the city publicly announced any spending guidelines or limits for the renovation of the former library.