The county's assessed value of the full complex at Pocahontas is shy of $11 million. That's inclusive of the new gymnasium, which also houses the Powhatan African American Cultural Arts Museum. The cost to demolish approximately half of the buildings is close to $1 million, with nothing planned to go in their place currently. The school board says this will allow them to have the land on hand IN CASE they want to build something for school use in the future. It appears unlikely that would be a school, as student enrollment has been declining for years, and the county is aging.
The budget for the new elementary school under construction in nearby Chesterfield is $52 million. And if you ask AI what a "very small" new school structure might cost, the number is somewhere between $15 million and $50 million dollars.
One member of the Board of Supervisors, Steve McClung, is one of the few leaders in the county who attended Powhatan Public Schools for all of his formative years. He said this in a recent BOS meeting:
"I don’t know if y’all know this, but I’m the facilities manager for the whole state of Virginia, and I’ve renovated many buildings older and in worse shape than that one right there—throughout this entire state. And they are great buildings that can be saved, renovated, and used for the people of Powhatan."
So, estimating the value of the targeted half of this complex, which is admittedly not new and has portions that are in very bad shape, the current plan is to take a loss of about $1 million on demolition costs on top of the roughly $1 million to $5 million in assessed value of the buildings to be torn down (the value is not assessed separately but is part of the whole complex assessment), and what's left is a piece of land assessed at somewhere between $100K and $250K. Using basic math, that's a loss of up to $6 million dollars in taxpayer assets to get an empty lot. And to make that empty space into anything more than a parking lot would take tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money, as well.
If rehabilitating the buildings would cost less than the tens of millions in loss and new construction, and if rehabilitating the buildings would also preserve valuable history, where is the fiscal logic in tearing them down?
This is what school board member Vicki Hurt said in her attempt to get her school board colleagues to relinquish ownership to the county:
“What disturbs me … where is the common sense here? Where is fiscal responsibility… and doing what constituents want? We already know there’s a petition out there (with) 693 signatures. I believe it’s over 700 today. [It’s at more than 1,000 signatures now.] Issues like this should have nothing to do with personal feelings about another board or other politicians. … It shouldn’t be a battle between school board and board of supervisors. It should be a point where we should be collaborating with each other to serve the citizens of Powhatan County. That’s what we’re all elected to do.”
"I’m concerned because I feel there was never any …good public awareness of the situation that we were dealing with. I don’t recall anybody having any sort of public hearing or meeting with the public to explain the situation. I know that through the years, this has been talked about, what to do with it, but unfortunately, people don’t come to school board meetings or come to Board of Supervisors meetings. That, where the public became aware is when the Christmas mother started spreading the word, ‘Hey, I need to find a place to move to because I’m being kicked out.’ And so in December, all of a sudden … that’s when people started getting concerned … and as you’ve heard, people out of, that don’t even live in Powhatan anymore that are very concerned."
To reiterate—where is the fiscal responsibility?
