Money woes aside, Lynn to keep vacant buildings

LYNN – Battling budget problems for two straight years, the School Department has been forced to close schools and shut down programs, leaving empty buildings across the city.Despite the city’s struggles to stay afloat as the state budget continues to tank, Mayor Edward J. Clancy Jr. says there are no plans to sell off the vacant buildings in a revenue-generating move.”We are not planning on disposing of any properties right now,” Clancy said Monday. “It isn’t really the real estate market you want if you are trying to sell off property. If we were to do that it would end up being a fire sale and that isn’t what we are looking for.”Budget cuts in fiscal year 2009 first claimed the Washington and then the Fallon elementary schools, both of which closed their doors to traditional students last June. While the Washington was cleaned up and resurrected as a new home for several of the city’s alternative and special education programs, the smaller Fallon School was not so lucky.The tiny school, purchased from the Archdiocese of Boston several years ago, is now nothing more than an underused storage facility on Robinson Street, just blocks away from another former elementary school that closed its doors last year.The O’Keefe School on Franklin Street, known more recently as the Welcoming Elementary School, is one of the city’s oldest relics, housing students for more than 80 years before the school department moved students to the renovated Washington this year. Now, like the Fallon, the O’Keefe is nothing more than a multi-floor storage facility where a school once stood.The fiscal year 2010 budget proved to be even more difficult than the previous year and new Superintendent Catherine Latham was forced to claim another school building in a money-saving effort – proposing that the Ford School Annex close its doors this summer.Located on Bennett Street, the former union hall is home to more than 220 Ford middle school students and a small group of fifth-graders. If Latham’s budget passes a School Committee vote this month, it will join the growing list of empty buildings next year.Clancy said Monday that despite budget problems, past experience has shown that selling off schools too quickly could burn the School Department if it needs space in an emergency situation.”That has a tendency to come back and bite us if we need to use the space,” said Clancy. “You don’t want to start selling off property too quickly.”The city does have a history of re-using vacant buildings – the most glaring example down the street from City Hall at the Fecteau-Leary Junior/Senior High School on North Common Street.The former Classical High School has been home to several programs in the decade since Classical moved to West Lynn, most recently the Classical Freshman Academy – the program designated for freshman while construction continues on the first floor of the new school.With those freshman students set to return home next year, Ford School Principal Claire Crane has inquired into the possibility of using the Fecteau-Leary building as the new Ford Annex, but that idea does not seem destined for reality.Clancy says any idea that saves the Ford Annex will have to come at the expense of another line item in the budget – likely a different school – as simply moving the program to a different building does not make up for such a serious funding gap.”The only real way to (get that savings) it is to close down a building,” said Clancy. “Anyone who wants to come up with an idea to save the Ford Annex that is real must show what other line item they are going to remove if the committee is going to support that.”