Joy Harris

Hartselle Enquirer

The Morgan County Board of Education unanimously decided to sale the central office property in a special called meeting Tuesday morning.

The 16-17 acre property will be sold to local Decatur real estate and construction business WLP, LLC for $2.8 million. Future plans for the property include renovating the lot for retail or administrative purposes.

Board member Jimmy Dobbs said the board would have a couple of years before they actually had to relocate.

“This agreement will give us plenty of time to do what we need to do before relocating,” Dobbs said. “We will have a couple years to make decisions and think about things.”

The board has a few different relocation options. After the new Priceville High School is built during the 2016-17 school year, the school board could renovate the existing Priceville Junior High into a new Central Office and move the junior high into the high school.

Other relocation options could include picking out a different building in Decatur that would be move-in ready for the office.

Deputy superintendent Lee Willis said the move could help the school system financially, but it will definitely make the central office more efficiently organized.

“We hope the property is used for retail, and if that’s the case, the schools will benefit from the tax revenues that we weren’t getting from the property before,” Willis said.

“We want to do what is most efficient and effective for the system, and a new central office for little cost to the taxpayers is the best option,” Willis said. “Any new building we have would have much more central business organization. We currently lack this efficient business organization since we are separated into multiple buildings away from each other.”