San Diego Unified school board member Kevin Beiser says that the contentious sale of the Camp Elliott property that the school board awkwardly scuttled last month doesn’t have to go forward and the district can still get money from it.
He said in an email that district and county officials were meeting Friday to begin the process of swapping the Camp Elliott parcel with the county.
“Land swap means the parcel will remain open space and we could sell the other land it is swapped for. After more research and visiting with community members I think this is a win-win,” Beiser wrote.
He did not say what county land the district would get or why that would be easier to sell.
The district recently decided again that it would sell more land parcels just to meet its budget for next year.
Beiser squashed the sale of Camp Elliott at the end of last year even though the district had gotten a bid far higher than it anticipated. The district needed four votes to sell the land. New board member Marne Foster and trustee Scott Barnett also voted against it.
The board had already decided to sell the land and was just evaluating the bids when the deal was thwarted.
The whole process is scheduled to begin again with a new decision to sell the land at the end of the month.
But this is what Beiser, apparently, hopes to avoid.
Perhaps the most prized parcel of land, the Mission Beach Center, was also put up for sale, again, this week. The school board had put it on the block last year only to reject the bids.
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