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The order came after Halifax lawyer Ron Pink filed a Motion for Judicial Review of the sale from the city to Jono Developments. Pink is representing the North End Community Health Clinic, the Mic Mac Native Friendship Centre and the Richard Preston Centre for Excellence Society.

In his submission, Pink argues that:

1. Halifax Regional Municipality failed to follow its Policy and Procedures for the Disposal of Surplus Schools in the following manner:

a. by not deeming the St. Patrick's Alexandra School surplus;
b. by not making a request for proposals from community groups;
c. by not taking the proper steps to obtain the approval of Halifax Regional Council to put the property on the market;
d. by approving the sale to Jono Developments Ltd.; and
e any other elements as may appear.

2. Halifax Regional Municipality failed to provide procedural fairness to the applicants by ignoring its Policy and Procedures for the Disposal of Surplus Schools approved and publishes September 5, 2000;
3. Halifax Regional Municipality breached the legitimate expectations of the applicants by ignoring its Policy and Procedures for the Disposal of Surplus Schools approved and published September 5, 2000.
4. Halifax Regional Municipality acted in a manner that was unfair, arbitrary, and was in bad faith;
5. Halifax Regional Municipality made wrongful assumptions about the applicants and acted upon stereotypes about the applicants and their communities;
6. Halifax Regional Municipality was biased in its decision-making;
7. Such other grounds as may appear in the record.

Besides the Motion, Pink included three court cases he argues backs his position. Each of the cases deals with emergency injunctions staying sales of property, and in each the appeals courts ruled that it is proper for the court to do as much, so long as there is some question as to the validity of the sale.

It should be interesting following the arguments and counterarguments as this works up to the February 16 hearing.

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• Metro Transit manager Eddie Robar

But asked last night about his own salary and raises, Metro Transit manager Eddie Robar refused to answer the question. In Halifax, unionized workers' pay is public record, but management salaries are not. Reporters spoke with Robar outside a city council meeting; I'm the one asking directly what Robar's salary is; hear him evade discussion of management's pay here:

Update, February 1, 10am: While Robar is silent on his exact salary, he is a "Director Level 1," at the city, meaning he makes between $120,000 and $145,000 annually.

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Wages are not an issue in the contract negotiations. The city has offered a 0.5 percent wage increase for this year---for a conventional bus driver, that's a raise of just 12 cents an hour from the existing $24/hour to $24.12/hour. That pay rate would apply to all drivers, no matter how long they've worked for the company; a 30-year veteran makes the same as someone who's been driving for one year.

A similar wage increase of 0.5% has been offered for all transit workers, including ferry operators, Access-A-Bus drivers and mechanics. The city's offer for the second year of the contract is an across-the-board pay increase of 3.5 percent.

The city's offer is for just a two-year contract, retroactive to the expiration of the last contract in September; past contracts have typically been for four years, and once for six years. That means if the union agrees to it, as soon as the ink is dry on the contract, the two sides will start negotiating for the next contract.

Still the union is willing to accept the poor wage offer. “What is the point of striking over wages in 2012?" asks union president Ken Wilson. " I know the economy’s bad. The state of the economy---everyone’s going through a downturn---we understand that.”

Rather, the union is rejecting three other demands from the city, which roll back existing agreements, some of which have been in place for 40 years. The major sticking points are:

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Karl Risser, union president of Local 1 of the Canadian Auto Workers-Marine Workers Federation, says it’s too early to divulge the details, but they’ll be aiming for a higher standard of living. “Obviously we want a better quality of life for our workers, we’ve just been awarded a billion-dollar contract---we want to increase some of those benefits,” says Risser.

Skilled shipyard workers currently start at $20 and can move up to $30 an hour with full benefits. Risser says that’s a comparable wage locally, but explains that it still falls short of wages in other regions.

While Harper was feting the expected 11,500 jobs, CAW president Ken Lewenza was criticizing the prime minister for refusing to comment on the locked-out workers at a London, Ontario Caterpillar plant, who were turned away after they said no to an unprecedented take-it-or-leave-it 55 percent wage cut offer (from $34 down to $16.50), despite the company’s high earnings. Lewenza described it as unprecedented.

In 2008, Harper showcased that plant in photo-op and handed the executives a $5 million federal tax break, saying that a low-tax environment was the way to Canadian job creators’ hearts.

“From the provincial standpoint, we’d want the anti-scab legislation from our NDP government at some point, but as far as lock-out protection, the employer has the right to lock us out and we have the right to strike, that’s how the system works.” says Risser, “But I mean, more and more you’re seeing the government of Canada invade that system.”

“Every time I look at Harper I get worried---he’s the next generation’s Mulroney,” Risser says, “He’s decided to take on the labour movement as a whole.”

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• ANGELA GZOWSKI

A council policy adopted in August 2000 outlines a process for how to handle surplus schools: community groups are to be offered the opportunity to put together, within 90 days, a proposal for the property, and only if council finds their proposal deficient is the school put on the open market for sale.

But in the case of St. Pat’s-Alexandra community groups were not given the opportunity to put together a proposal, and on December 13 of last year, council approved a sale to Jono Developments. The city won’t disclose the sale amount, but it is rumoured to be $5 million.

The community groups---the North End Community Health Clinic, the Mi’kmaq Friendship Centre and the newly formed Richard Preston Centre for Excellence---objected to the sale and, citing concerns about the policy, council voted January 10 to reverse the sale pending a staff report on the issue. That report was issued last Friday.

The report, say the groups, unfairly characterized the situation. For example, it assumed that the groups would have no money to maintain and operate the buildings, which the report said would cost the city $633,000 annually. “Six-hundred thousand dollars?” asked the NECHC’s Jane Maloney rhetorically. “We spend much more than that right now, on our own buildings.”

In fact, the groups collectively own three buildings on Gottingen Street and rent a fourth, and have a long history of sound, professional financial management, but councillors Tuesday suggested otherwise.

“If we go back and give 90 days to a group of volunteer organizations where--no disrespect, but not real business people---who will struggle to put together plans...are we giving them false hope?” said councillor Gloria McCluskey. “Maybe they get there and they still fail...How will make that make them feel?”

“It’s insulting to say I don’t have the business acumen,” said reverend Rhonda Britton of the Cornwallis Baptist Church, one of the organizers of the groups’ effort. “I had two business degrees before entering the seminary.” Representatives of the health clinic and friendship centre were likewise taken aback at the suggestion that their staff can’t properly manage their operations.

Council Tuesday refused to go back and offer the groups the opportunity to put a proposal together as per the policy, opting instead to scrap the policy and move ahead with the sale to Jono. Councillors voting for the sale were Blumenthal, Fisher, Hendsbee, Hum, Karsten, Kelly, McCluskey, Mosher, Smith, Streatch, Uteck, Walker and Wile.

At a meeting the community groups held last Saturday to discuss options, lawyer Ron Pink, who is representing the groups, said then that the effort would be to force council to abide by the 2000 policy. “If they don’t follow the policy Tuesday, we’ll sue them on Wednesday,” Pink said.

“That’s certainly on the table,” said Maloney after the council vote.

The sale to Jono won’t be finalized until council takes one last action next Tuesday. Presumably, if the community groups do take legal action, they’ll need to convince a court to stay the sale before next Tuesday; if not, it’s likely Jono will raze the school buildings at the earliest opportunity.

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The contract vote was unambiguous. About 700 of the 763 transit workers cast ballots, with 98.4 voting against---fewer than 10 people voted to accept the city’s offer, says Ken Wilson, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 508, which represents local transit workers.

The city’s contract offer was “an insult” to the workers, says Wilson, who maintains that the city has acted in bad faith since the union’s previous contract expired in September.

The city offered a small pay increase, but that wasn’t the sticking point, says Wilson. “What is the point of striking over wages in 2012? I know the economy’s bad. The state of the economy---everyone’s going through a downturn---we understand that.”

Rather, says Wilson, the city is trying to turn back previous agreements over scheduling, the use of part-time employees and, most importantly, contracting out entire job categories like mechanics, Access-A-Bus drivers, ferry staff and potentially even regular route drivers.

At the first contract negotiation meeting in September, management proposed 270 changes to the previous contract. Rather than bargain over terms, in October management called in a concilliator; with the concilliator present, the two sides met just twice in December and four times in January.

“Let me be crystal clear: there was absolutely no bargaining taking place at any of these dates,” says Wilson. “This employer never came to the table to bargain; they came to the table with one mandate only---to take from us.”

Wilson uses as an example a conflict over ferry operations. “There was something that the employer wanted, and there was something that I wanted,” says Wilson. “And I said, ‘OK, what are you prepared to offer?’ And all of a sudden they threw their pens down and said, ‘We’re not here to offer nothing.’ I looked at the concilliator and said, ‘This is not bargaining; this is demanding.’”

The concilliator’s report is not public record, and Wilson will not divulge its contents, but other union members have told The Coast it’s highly critical of the city.

The union made a counter offer last week, which was rejected by the city, and so Wilson had no choice but to take the city’s offer to membership for a vote.

Wilson is not surprised at the lopsided vote to reject the offer. “My people are extremely offended,” he says. “This employer has basically slapped their employees in the face with this offer.”

After the vote, the city issued a press release saying it was “disappointed” at the outcome. “We put forward a contract package, inclusive of wage increases, that would allow us to build a sustainable, reliable transit service for the future,” says Metro Transit manager Eddie Robar in the release.

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• ANGELA GZOWSKI

In the face of that anger, council reversed the sale on January 10, and directed staff to bring back a report on what went wrong with the sale.

The staff report is now completed, and was released Friday as part of the agenda for this coming Tuesday's council meeting.

It is a despicable document.

If the community was angry in December, they should be boiling mad now. And people not directly part of the north end community should likewise be disgusted that their government officials are engaging in a straight up racist attack on fellow citizens; the broader community should be just as indignant for what's being done in their name.

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That’s the case laid out in a letter from Halifax appraiser Mike Turner to premier Darrell Dexter, in which Turner urges Dexter to make sales information public. The letter echos concerns raised by The Coast in three years ago (see “Public secrets,” April 2, 2009), in which we argued that because sales information is kept from people wanting to buy, there is an uninformed market and house prices are likely artificially inflated in Nova Scotia.

Turner points to a massive fraud case unfolding in Yarmouth.The RCMP has charged 11 people with 147 counts of fraud and forgery related to a $6 million mortgage fraud scheme. Those charged are alleged to have forged MLS listing sheets and sales agreement between themselves, then use the bogus sale information to get inflated mortgages for the same property. The scheme would not have been possible if sales information was readily available to the public.

“There is another issue here: one of accountability.” Turner tells The Coast. “I get tired of reading that HRM has bought or sold such and such property but they cannot release the price because of confidentiality reasons. A case in point is this mess they have got themselves into over the school here in the north end.”’

Turner also suggests that because sales info is not public, the province likely paid too much for woodlot land it bought to bail out forest product companies, and that property assessment are “rubbish.”

Update, 19 January 2012, 6pm:

After this article was published this morning, several readers sent links to the website viewpoint.ca, which is indeed a very useful tool that only became available last year. But as Turner explains:

Viewpoint.ca only shows MLS sales from the Nova Scotia Association of Realtors' system (I don't think that the Annapolis Real Estate Board makes their information available to Viewpoint), So while Viewpoint.ca provides a great public service it does not show any sales unless they are sold through NSAR's MLS.....and the continued availability of sales via Viewpoint is dependant on the co-operation of NSAR. There is no public data source for sales as there is in the other provinces.

Some readers insisted that government sales information---that is, the sale price when the government buys or sells a piece of property---is public, but those readers obviously don't work as a reporter. It's my experience that actually getting at sales information is nearly impossible, and even successful pursuit of that information entails filing specific public records requests, waiting many months for response and otherwise battling a bureaucracy that doesn't want to give up the information. This process is of no use to someone trying to get a state of the market generally in a timely manner.

Turner elaborates:

HRM does publish information on some of their sales in their industrial parks, on their web site, but I am not aware that their other sales/purchase data is published....every time I read about a sale/purchase in the media the price is suppressed. Nor is the appraisal, upon which the sale/purchase decision is based, made public (nor can it be at present since it contains information on "confidential" sales).

The provincial Department of Natural Resources now publish sales information in the media on their acquisitions of woodland and are to be commended for doing so. However the appraisal on which those purchases are made is not published. So far as I am aware there is no web based source, listing sales/purchases by the province.

The Federal Government does not publish sale/purchase information on transactions in which they are involved.

Private sales

Private sale information---those sales where neither buyer or seller uses a realtor who uses the Multiple Listing Service---is also completely off the radar screen, which leaves prospective home buyers in an impossible situation. As I wrote back in 2009:

Capitalism, the argument goes, is the perfect economic system because informed markets lead to the most efficient allocation of resources. But here we have a system where only one side of a transaction---the seller, and only some of those---knows how the product is valued. Buyers are uninformed, so the market is likely skewed against them.

It'd be as if every time you went to the grocery store, you had to separately negotiate the price of eggs and you were not allowed to know what eggs sold for at the grocery store down the road. It's the antithesis of an informed free market.

Turner zeroes in on another problem with secret sales info: It makes it nearly impossible for a homeowner to challenge an assessment. He writes:

Virtually every transaction (public or private) is shown as being sold for $1 in the deed, so Property on Line, the provincial registry of deeds service, is not available as a source of sales data. The municipalities that collect deed transfer tax insist on knowing the sale price because they base their tax on it. They then pass this information along to the Property Valuation Services Corporation, the body responsible for assessing property in the province. The PVSC is an "independent" organisation whose Board includes municipal and provincial representatives. However the sales information is collected by the municipalities for deed transfer tax purposes, not so an "independent" organisation can calculate your property assessment. PVSC's property assessment is purportedly based on the value of the property, two years prior to the assessment year. The taxpayer, you, I and your readers, do not have access to this sales information and PVSC will refuse to provide it....so you have to fight your property assessment in Appeal Court without the benefit of the very data on which PVSC based that same property assessment.....and the burden of proof is on the taxpayer! You have to prove that PVSC has incorrectly assessed your property...yet you are denied the sales information on which they based their assessment. This is absurd. In New Brunswick the provincial Ombudsman was so incensed he ordered Service New Brunswick, PVSC' s equivalent, to publish the information...all of it. They now do so.
[emphasis in original]

It's true that Turner and I have some degree of self-interest in wanting to have public access to real estate sales information, but I'm curious what objections readers might have to releasing the information---present your case for continued secrecy in the comments, if you like.

But it's worth noting that every other jurisdiction in North America---every US state and every Canadian province---has decided that the public good rests with making sales information public. Most Canadian provinces have made the information public for at least 40 years; PEI became the penultimate province to end sales secrecy when it changed its policy last year.

Turner recaps:

Whilst some provincial purchases may be published in the media, and HRM publish some of their own sales in their industrial parks on their web site.....and yes, thanks to Viewpoint and NSAR, the NSAR MLS sales data is available, all other sales information is kept secret....except to the PVSC. This is manifestly unfair to every property owner who wishes to challenge their property assessment but (1) it also means that public bodies can hide behind the institutional veil....this renders civil servants and politicians less accountable with respect to the disbursement of public funds, (2) it renders appraisers less accountable and ensures that their appraisals are less accurate...sometimes little better than a guess, (3) it breeds fertile conditions for mortgage and other fraud.

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The keen and cheery 55-year-old has served as a firefighter for 26 years, starting out in Toronto in 1985.

Trussler retired as North Vancouver’s fire chief after he was selected from a list of both internal and external candidates to replace former chief Bill Mosher.

Mosher promptly left the gig earlier this year shortly after a poll found wide discontent with the men at the top---97 percent of workers surveyed indicated strong disapproval of the management team.

In 2009, several black firefighters filed a human rights complaint, alleging racial discrimination, such as pay decreases for employees who had taken part in a special recruitment program for black firefighters---while white firefighters received a pay increase---repeated use of racial slurs among personnel and training where black firefighters were subjected to racism and humiliation.

“We obviously want to start working on a fire service that better represents our community, so I’ve been tasked to look at our recruitment process,” says Trussler.

“We want to get our message out to all the different communities and break down some stereotypes that you have to be a white male and you have to be 5’10 and 175 pounds to do the job---that’s not true.”

While the department is waiting on the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission’s decision, there’s no official comment on specific changes. In the meantime, with a few grievances remaining, Trussler plans to meet with the union president and representatives from the black firefighters to chat.

“I think everyone just wants to move forward, we don’t want to dwell on the past, we want to move forward,” he says.

“A lot of it goes back to the style, you’re going to find a management team here that is more inclusive and more participative,” he explains; “sometimes a lot of issues are because people don’t feel they’ve been listened to, that their issues haven’t been resolved---there’s no communication, no follow-up---that’s all going to change.”

In 2009, there were 20 black firefighters among the fire department's career force of nearly 500. Today there are 19 people who identify as a visible minority.

However, Trussler says any hiring won’t begin for another three years or so---when the department is in a position to spend again. This year’s fire budget is $55.55 million; city hall expects a $1.8 million cut for next year. Trussler says he’ll meet that target through reorganization and efficiencies that may come in the form of attrition, but not through job losses.

Trussler is also setting his sights on attracting, retaining and training volunteer firefighters, a force of over 700 that the department heavily relies upon; a system unlike Toronto’s or Vancouver’s all-paid workers.

“The honest truth is, we can’t operate without them. To staff those stations with career firefighters is cost-prohibitive” he says, ballparking that figure around $55 million---more than their existing budget.

Trussler’s HRM salary is a plum $175,000. A small step up from his Vancouver North earnings, and quite a piece more than the mayor’s $138,000-per.

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• Bill Estabrooks, Peter MacKay and Peter Kelly (left to right) celebrate the opening of the over-budget Washmill underpass.

The three probably have a dozen PR reps between them, and yet it was collectively decided that it was a good idea to draw attention to the scandal-plagued, over-budget project that violates at least the spirit of the city's regional plan, which calls for a slowing-down of suburban sprawl in places like Bayers Lake.

The underpass project originated in a disgusting power play in which the federal Conservatives and their provincial brethren didn't even try to put a fig leaf over their dicking around with taxpayer funds. As I explained in detail back in 2009, for brazen political purposes, the Harper government rejected the city's request to use economic stimulus funds for the four-pad arena in Bedford. The Conservatives then cherry-picked items to fund from the city's 25-year capital project list, apparently basing their decision on how the funding would play in expected federal elections---funding for sidewalks on the NDP-held peninsula was out, funding for sidewalks in Sheet Harbour, the one bit of HRM in MacKay's district, was in.

The Washmill underpass project was way down the list of potential city projects---city bureaucrats told me they thought it might be necessary in 20 years--- but the site is in the federal Halifax West riding, which the Conservatives thought they could take from the Liberals by running Peter Kelly as candidate, and so it was funded. (Kelly was abruptly dropped from consideration just before the 2011 elections, when he became embroiled in the concert scandal.)

No one had made any coherent cost projections for the Washmill project, beyond just a ballpark figure of $10 million, but that's the price tag that stimulus funding was pegged at. One-third of the $10 million was to come from the federal government, one-third from the provincial government and one-third from the city. But, crucially, all cost overruns were to be borne by the city.

And boy howdy were there cost overruns. In a remarkable piece of impropriety, former CAO Dan English failed to tell city council that the project was some $8 million over-budget, and secretly approved an $8.1 million contract that left the underpass only half-complete. Then, English's successor, Wayne Anstey, kept the cost overrun from council for another six months, putting councillors in something of a pickle last spring: they could either refuse to fund the completion of an underpass, and lose the federal and provincial match, or they could pony up the extra dough, throwing good money after bad, to get the finished project. They chose the latter.

In total, the city will end up spending about $11 million of the project, while the federal and provincial governments spent $3.3 million each. The PR folks are so embarrassed by the cost overrun that they ignored it completely in the press release distributed at the photo op, noting the federal and provincial contributions but omitting the full costs to the city.

At the site today, MacKay, Estabrooks and Kelly posed and smiled, made small talk with each other, while the obliging media took pics. "Any questions?" asked Kelly, and none of the assembled media said a word... well, except me. My questions and the responses are here:

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The Council of Nova Scotia University Presidents view the program as a positive, one of the few in the MOU, but Mark Coffin of the Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations sees it differently, “They’re not really investing $25 million into the system, they’re cutting $25 million from the annual budget and a putting a one-time investment of $25 million and spreading it out over three years.”

The Excellence and Innovation Program, according to the MOU, is to develop “a range of projects that will, through their combined impacts, reduce the total annual cost structure of the university system by $25 million.” Essentially they’ll be spending $25 million to find ways to cut $25 million.

The sad truth, revealed at the tail end of the press release, is that the province isn’t really injecting any new money into universities, they just want to find out new ways to cut university spending. The biggest blow to university education delivered in the MOU was that the operating grant for 2012-13 would be reduced by a further three percent after having been reduced by four percent the previous year. Universities have lost over $16 million, without taking inflation into consideration, in funding over two years. Sadly the new MOU allows universities to raise tuition rates by three percent this year thus passing the squeeze on down to the students.

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• Aaron MacKenzie
• John W Doull

The move of JWD from the St. Paul building at the corner of Barrington and Prince Streets to 122 Main Street in Dartmouth is a loss for downtown Halifax and those who walk around; for folks in cars, or coming from Dartmouth or out of town, it's great news: near arteries, free parking. More than twice the space.

The new location will be, as Doull says, "a little more domestic." First timers walking into JWD books may recall the amazement on the faces of Carter and Carnavon the first time they got into Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922. The number of books is staggering. Some shelves go twelve high, and atop every bookcase is another stack of books. The poetry department is 17 (at least) (an accurate count of anything here is difficult) brimming shelves sorted A to Z by author; beyond that are shelves for individual Bigboy poets. This does not include the anthologies or what may be on the floor, where piles are waist high. Most sections in the store are like this.

There are numerous rooms, crowded aisles and culs-de-sac, sort of like the basement in The Silence of the Lambs (although Doull is a much more genial host). There is an apocryphal story of some homeless guy living undetected for a while in the store. Ladders, motley chairs and milk crates provide rest for travellers; cheeky art work begins with the coffee cooling station just inside the door, continues with manipulated Penguin book covers and riffs on Harry Beck's London tube map and culminates in Francis Bacon's study after Velázquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X hanging in the stairwell. One hopes that the last is a fake, but anything's possible.

John William Doull looks very much at home in this kingdom. If there were to be a bust made of him, and plopped it down in a row of busts of say, Balzac, Twain, Voltaire and the like, you would have a hard time picking him out. He's got that genius hair---silvery and longish, almost a mane but not quite. His sartorial splendour is that of absent minded arts professors: a herringbone jacket over a vest over a striped Oxford shirt. He wears metal frame glasses and sandals with socks.

Born in Ottawa, raised in Halifax, Doull has fond memories more of being read to than reading as a child. “I was read to a lot longer than most people,” he says, “by my mother. By the end she was reading me books on military history.” Doull still loves books on military and history. “I love fragile things that have survived,” he says, “and small things.”

Doull has the Barrington space until the end of April, but the move to Main Street begins now. Let's see. Fifteen books per box, divide into 175,000…

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• Reverend Rhonda Britton of the Cornwallis Baptist Church rallies north end community members at the school site, last Sunday.

North end community members were upset by the sale, and said that neighbourhood non-profit organizations like the Mi’kmaq Friendship Centre and the North End Community Health Clinic should have been given the opportunity to put forward proposals for the site before it was put on the open market. That view is supported by the “Policy and Procedures for the Disposal of Surplus Schools,” adopted by council in August of 2000; that policy document can be found at thecoast.ca/bites.

The vote to reverse the sale came at at the end of Tuesday night’s council meeting. After a working through an agenda full of other items, at 11pm the school issue came forward, with councillor Jennifer Watts moving for the reversal. Immediately, Richard Butts, the city’s chief bureaucrat, said council should go into secret session to get advice from the city’s legal team. This suggestion angered the gallery full of community members, who had waited patiently for five hours to witness how council would handle the issue.

Next, councillors and staffers played a ridiculous game of procedural chicanery too complex to relate in this space. We’ll have a longer write up at thecoast.ca, but the gist of it is that by nearly 1am it was plainly obvious that Butts, mayor Peter Kelly and city lawyer Mary Ann Donovan were attempting to avoid a public vote on reversing the sale, which was to be completed Friday. Even councillors like Tim Outhit and Reg Rankin, who had supported the sale in December, were too embarrassed to go along with the raw display of political manipulation intended to frustrate a community’s wishes.

For now, the December vote to sell the school is rescinded, but the issue will come back before council in coming weeks, accompanied by a staff report which will supposedly examine whether city procedures were violated. It’s unlikely city staff will fault itself, so council will be right back where it started in December. Conceivably, a majority of councillors could say the procedural issues have been dealt with, then vote again for the sale.

In short, the community gained a bit of time, but final disposition of the school site is still in limbo.