Board members ponder selling hall to local foundation
by Jacob Courtney
Phillips village board members discussed with a crowd assembled at its April 4 meeting the possibility of transferring full ownership of Memorial Hall to the Phillips Community Foundation.
The discussion focused on problems with current city entanglements at the hall and the issues that need to be sorted out in a future deal.
“We need to figure out how we want to present that to move forward,” said Chairman Les Dana, who is also involved with the Phillips Community Foundation. “The discussion is how the foundation would buy the property, what all of it entailed and what the future steps would be. The Phillips Community Foundation is still a bunch of people that volunteer their time to do the best they can, so we were discussing (in October) the idea of purchasing the entire property, and then working it out so that the village would still provide water, sewer and trash.”
The foundation currently pays for gas, electricity, cable and telephone charges while the village of Phillips, as owner of the property, pays for water, sewer, trash and insurance. With this division of payment, the village is on the hook for liability should there be any damage to the building.
“We didn’t look at it once it went into operations,” village board member Jim Crawford said. “That’s when we should have reviewed it, at that point, to see who’s going where. Talk with the insurance company that the concern is do you guys know what’s going on out there? No, well if the building burns down, that’s the village’s responsibility.”
Kent Rauert, the Phillips village attorney, stated that there was an ordinance passed last October to allow sale of the property. That would require a resolution passed by the board to approve the agreement. Then a notice would run in the newspaper three times, which would trigger a 30-day remonstrance period offering individuals a chance to try and block the sale. If no remonstrance is filed, then the sale would go through.
“So if everybody on the board is still in favor of this moving forward, we’re not asking for any approval at this point, there’s nothing on the agenda from an approval perspective,” Rauert said. “Other than to just, probably, get a consensus to move forward and then figure out how we’re going to come up with a number to present it to the community foundation.”
Francis McDonald, one of the Phillips Community Foundation directors, chimed in to state that going back to the original agreement would have the foundation owning the hall.
“We have an agreement right now that the foundation would run the hall,” he said. “It was never the city that was going to run this hall.”
Former village attorney of Phillips and Giltner Dorothy Benton agreed with McDonald.
“The original agreements says that the foundation was going to ‘acquire the building’, that’s the language that was put in the document,” she said. “The only reasonable interpretation of ‘acquire the building’ means the foundation owns the building.”
Benton also outlined the problems that come from the board and foundation ever coming into conflict.
“If you have a fight between the village board and the foundation, especially when you have members of the board also on the foundation, what happens there?” she continued. “...That’s what everyone here now is looking at, to try to avoid…It has to be better defined. It’s got to be fixed because right now it is a mess.”
Rauert also noted that since the building is a public facility, the village has to allow free speech and not be discerning in who can rent the facility.
“Anytime you have a public facility, it’s an open facility, and it has to be made available to all,” he explained. “I don’t care what side of the political spectrum you’re on, but envision in your head the worst possible group that you want to put into the community hall, to use the meeting area. If that’s a facility owned by the village, you can’t deny access to that if they’re willing to pay the fee. If you are the community foundation, you can deny access to that because you are not a public (entity).”
Rauert also stated that however this goes, one entity needs to be in charge of the facility.
“When I say too many cooks in the kitchen, there needs to be one cook in the kitchen,” he clarified. “If that cook is going to be the village, it needs to be the village 100 percent to the exclusion of the community foundation. When we sat down with the community foundation, they led us to believe that they wanted to take that responsibility with the understanding that the village is going to have restrictions on its ability to handle that facility.”
Rauert further stated that even if the community foundation wants help with utilities, the village probably won’t be able to do that.
“They want some help taking care of utilities, and what I would say is, I don’t think the village can do that,” he said. “We talked about a 99-year lease, but it still didn’t quite get the separation of everything. The village is still the owner of the property, so it still leads itself towards some of those entanglements.”
Dana and McDonald discussed that both entities were interested in asking for the same rates so that “anybody in Phillips can rent this place,” according to McDonald, and that they could keep all funds going back to paying for the hall’s utilities. Dana stated that the removal of the village from ownership could allow for more donations.
“We’re willing to take on these repairs because we do have donors that want to give to the foundation that don’t necessarily want to donate to the village,” he said.
There was concern about trash and how it is being picked up under the current village ownership, and how that would be handled by the foundation.
Dana and McDonald both agreed that from the beginning of discussions that there would be a parachute clause where the village would get right of first refusal.
“We were there from the beginning, that if we couldn’t make this work, somehow this thing just blew up in our face, the city is to take it back,” McDonald commented.
While not naming a price before negotiations, McDonald stated that the price should be low.
“I think that the board should be aware that property, it was school property, it was donated to the town at zero dollars or $1, I think it was basically nothing,” he stated. “I don’t think you should put too high of a price on that piece of ground because it really is the whole community’s property.”
Dana indicated in response that the funds of the sale would go towards tearing down the old Memorial Hall, which is a separate property, as Phillips has $20,000 already saved up towards that project.
Village board member and Phillips Fire Chief Jason Fry brought up the fact that the city does use the building for some storage and that would need to be addressed.
“We’re going to lose out for storage for what Scott does when he puts it away for the winter,” he said. “I guess if we’re going to rent it, all our stuff comes out.”
Dana reported that currently there are two table racks taking up about eight-foot square, stored in the building. Benton stated that there needs to be a clear line dividing who can put what in the building.
“It has to be that bright line or we’re going to create more problems because what happens if a bunch of stuff comes up missing,” she asked, emphasizing the term ‘bright line’ from what Rauert had said earlier in the meeting. “... (Or else) you’re going to muddy that up.”
Head of maintenance Scott Hooley asked for an easement on the north side of the property as there is a sewer main that needs to be accessed by the village.
The board agreed to meet April 11 to negotiate a purchase price and other subjects with the Phillips Community Foundation as holding an open meeting could sabotage negotiations.
“I guess I’ve always viewed those circumstances as needing to be in closed session because I don’t want somebody from the foundation showing up and sitting in the audience,” Rauert said. “And taking from that let’s make an offer X when you’ll really accept Y. Or, I want X, but I’ll take Y. If you have that discussion in an open session, we know that the number has got be Y, right? You eliminate your ability to negotiate at that point.”
Crawford stated that regardless of how negotiations go, the goal of keeping Memorial Hall running needs to be reached.
“Like Dorothy said, it has to be everything: the i’s are dotted, the t’s are crossed and that’s when it goes forward. We still have to keep that all alive.”