Trustees and board members team up to trade
AUSTINTOWN
Austintown Township trustees traded land with Austintown School District board members to keep it from further development and help preserve surrounding neighborhoods of Wickliffe Circle.
In June, the board transferred the former Davis Elementary, on Maple Avenue, and former Woodside Elementary, on Elmwood Drive, to township trustees in exchange for the 911 Memorial Park land, on South Raccoon Road, which holds the school’s softball fields.
Township Trustee Jim Davis said a goal of the swap was to preserve the areas owned by the schools, and to preserve the neighborhoods that surround them.
“If the schools had those properties up for sale, the only way for us to control them is by us holding them,” he said.
Davis referred to the properties potentially going to a new apartment complex or housing development – which is not what trustees want.
Instead of development in that area, Davis said he hoped to turn the spaces into green spaces.
“We are going to allow the space to go back to nature – it sits on a wetland anyway,” Davis said.
Both Davis and Kathy Mock, school board president, said there has been discussion about turning the former Woodside Elementary School property into a community park or walking trails. But there are no concrete plans moving forward.
Todd Shaffer, park supervisor, said it makes sense that the school district now owns the 911 Memorial Park area because that is where the softball fields are.
“It just seemed like a common sense thing to do,” Mock said. “All we have to do is walk across the street and there is the baseball field and a softball field. I alluded to it being the Fitch Falcon Field.”
Davis said the swap was just another example of an opportunity for the board of education and the township trustees working together for the betterment of Austintown.
Past examples of the partnership include two joint meetings between the board and trustees, a the tennis court collaboration.
“We really developed a strong relationship, a partnership, with the township,” Mock said. “It’s been a positive thing for both of us. This is just one of many collaborations and we hope to have many more.”
The township will maintain its two new properties and the 911 memorial part of the park property; and the school district will be responsible for the rest.