11/08/2005: "Quall To Meet County School Boards In FH"

ig_Dave_Quall-1 (9k image) (Official photo)

Dave Quall, our local State Representative for the 40th District will take part in a special county-wide meeting with the School Boards of San Juan County. The meeting is scheduled to start Wednesday, November 9, at 12:00 P.M. and run to 2:00 P.M. The meeting will be held in the Gubelman Room of the San Juan Community Theater.

The agenda item to be discussed is: "Current Challenges facing San Juan County Schools – (A discussion with San Juan County School Board Directors, Administrators, and Concerned Citizens with Representative Quall"

One aspect of "current challenges" that may come up is a recent bill sponsored by Quall that allows schools to be included in the state list of "essential public facilities", and for the San Juan School District this bill may make the process of constructing new athletic fields a bit less costly and more likely to be approved by the permitting process; a process that has already begun, and is scheduled to be heard by the Town of Friday Harbor Council this month.

"This issue was brought to my attention by the Burlington-Edison School District," said Rep. Dave Quall, sponsor of the legislation. "Faced with tremendous growth, property values in Burlington proper are prohibitively expensive. This bill will provide a cost savings to school districts and address the problem of locating affordable building sites."

The legislation (HB 1169) would add public schools to a list of other essential public facilities such as airports, state education and correctional facilities under the Growth Management Act. It will allow counties and cities to include public school facilities in their long term planning.

"We want to give our public schools the same status as others on the list. This provides flexibility that the school directors asked for," said Quall who chairs the House Education Committee.