The mayor of Westville, N.S. says his town is stuck with a building it doesn’t want, but can’t afford to tear down.
Last week, the Chignecto-Central Regional School Board turned over the keys to the former Highland Middle Consolidated School.
The school closed in April 2012 after students and staff claimed the building was making them sick.
The school board estimated it would cost over $1 million to fix the problem, so they moved the 270 students to another school and closed Highland Consolidated.
School board officials say the school is in good shape - the problem is its longstanding reputation as a sick building. Even if a full and expensive remediation was done, officials say there is still a chance someone could claim the building made them sick.
“The board felt that the risk of having the students and staff return to the building and to have something like that happen and then have them leave was too high,” says Debra Buott-Matheson of the Chignecto-Central Regional School Board.
Under the province’s Education Act, closed schools are given to the municipality where they are located. However, with the shape it is in now, Westville Mayor Roger MacKay says the town doesn’t want it.
“At this moment, we don’t have it in our financial uses right now to be able to tear this building down, or fix it,” says MacKay.
MacKay says he wants the provincial government to get involved.
“We’re stuck with it right now, but we’ve been in contact with the premier’s office and the minister of education and we’re just waiting to hear back from them,” says MacKay.
MacKay says it is simple – his town can’t afford to fix the building and can’t afford to tear it down, and without government intervention, he says it is only going to get worse.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Dan MacIntosh
