On Thursday, Jan. 9, villagers packed the Yellow Springs High School media room to attend a nearly six-hour-long school board meeting. After the initial hour — during which board members conducted their annual reorganizing session, appointing Rebecca Potter as the new board president — the board delved into the censure of board member Amy Magnus, and the ongoing discourse on the low-income housing tax credit project. (Photo by Reilly Dixon)
More LIHTC questions than answers at school board meeting
- Published: January 16, 2025
Are the needs of a developer at odds with those of the school district? When will a local landowner donate property to the district, and under what conditions? How much does it cost to turn a cornfield into practice soccer fields?
These and other questions were raised at the most recent school board meeting Thursday, Jan. 9 — questions that largely went unanswered, or at best, received conflicting answers.
At the center of the fraught discussion was the ongoing, intergovernmental initiative to build a 30- to 50-unit low-income housing development on the district-owned Morgan soccer fields north of Yellow Springs High and McKinney Middle schools.
As previously reported in the News, Village Council agreed last month to authorize Yellow Springs Village Manager Johnnie Burns to enter into a development agreement with Columbus-based developer Woda Cooper Development, Inc. to apply to the Ohio Housing Finance Agency, or OHFA, for $15 million in federal subsidies — otherwise known as low-income housing tax credits, or LIHTCs — to construct such a housing development.
However, as representatives from Woda Cooper apparently told Burns and other Village stakeholders in the LIHTC initiative earlier this month, the development company would only apply to OHFA for the tax credits — an application that costs an estimated $40,000–$50,000 and is due Feb. 27 — if the developer has full site control of the Morgan Fields.
Last summer, the school board agreed to release those 3.6 acres to the Village — for a price of $339,000, based on an earlier land appraisal — should replacement land be secured. That has yet to officially occur.
Woda Cooper representatives had previously told the Village that this contingency — that is, the school board’s agreed-upon provision to first secure replacement land before selling the Morgan Fields — had to be amended to allow full site control by Friday, Jan. 10. The Village shared with the board ahead of their Jan. 9 meeting that the new deadline for such an amendment is now Jan. 21.
“Woda [Cooper] is doing some things in-house, which gave us another week or so,” Burns wrote in an email to the News following the school board’s Jan. 9 meeting.
With that extension, board members ultimately agreed last Thursday to table the matter of amending the resolution in which that contingency was stated.
“We don’t need to act today,” the newly appointed board president, Rebecca Potter, told her colleagues.
The decision to unencumber the Morgan Fields still looms, though. A special meeting to discuss the matter further is set for this Friday, Jan. 17 — the publication date for this issue of the News.
Potter and other district officials, including Superintendent Terri Holden, indicated Thursday that this extra week of deliberation may allow for additional pieces to fall into place — namely the finalization of an expected donation of 3.6 acres of land from neighboring property owners Matthew and Julie Jones.
As the Joneses wrote to the board ahead of last week’s meeting, the couple — who own an 84-acre property directly to the south of the schools, outside of Village limits — are “considering” the donation of 3.6 acres of their farmland to the district to “ensure the continuity of the rec soccer program in Yellow Springs.”
“To complete this donation agreement,” the Joneses wrote, “we have already spent a considerable amount toward attorney fees and reviewing contingencies to protect ourselves and the school while championing the rec soccer program’s goals. … Unfortunately, these steps take time, and we have had to change legal representation to expedite this process to align with the LIHTC application submission and the school board approval timeline.”
Their statement to the board, dated Jan. 7, noted that the couple expected the donation agreement to be completed by the following week. The Joneses did not respond to a query from the News by press time.
“I express my deep gratitude to Matt and Julie Jones for this gift,” Potter said at Thursday’s meeting. “It’s an incredibly generous one, but their gift would be contingent upon the successful award of the LIHTC funds for affordable housing.”
Her concerns notwithstanding, board member Amy Bailey agreed with Potter.
“What they offered to provide for the district is very heartfelt, and I very much appreciate it,” Bailey said. “But my concern is the ‘gap’ — what the price difference is between what we’re receiving and how much it’s going to cost to make the land usable and accessible.”
Whereas Village Manager Burns previously stated that Fillmore Construction LLC quoted him an approximate $475,000 to turn a cornfield into a replacement soccer field — acknowledging at the last Council meeting that “it could be more, could be less” — Potter said she had recently received an estimate of $240,000.
Potter didn’t state who provided such an estimate, but noted that such an amount is well below the $339,000 that the district would have at their disposal, should they sell the Morgan Fields to the Village for that price.
Board member Bailey insisted that regardless of the cost of transforming the Joneses’ donated 3.6 acres into “usable, accessible” practice soccer fields, any deficit should be covered by the Village, not the district.
“It’s critical to understand that the school district cannot be financially responsible for replacing what it already owns,” Bailey said. “The responsibility to ensure that the district is made whole lies with Village Council. … While the exact cost may not be known, it is not the district’s responsibility to account for or absorb these unknown costs.”
She added: “Any failure to ensure this would result in a financial burden on the district, which contradicts the principle of being ‘made whole.’”
Should the district part ways with Morgan Fields for the LIHTC project in exchange for the Joneses’ land, Bailey outlined five necessary expenses above $339,000 that the Village ought to incur along the way:
• All costs associated with converting donated land from farm field to soccer field;
• Building ADA-compliant accessible paths from the donated property to the schools’ parking lot;
• Creating a paved pad for portable toilets and a storage shed for soccer equipment;
• Additional money necessary to facilitate the donation agreement; and
• ll monies the school district has spent or will spend in legal fees for the transfer of any district properties pertaining to the LIHTC project.
By way of a motion, Bailey suggested those provisions be included in the verbiage of the proposed resolution to amend the district’s purchase agreement with the Village.
Owing to Woda Cooper’s extended deadline for such an amendment, and at board President Potter’s recommendation to defer any resolution until the board’s upcoming special meeting, Bailey’s motion stalled.
Near the end of the discussion, Bailey summed up her position: “I just want the Village to be as dedicated to the district as they are to the developer.”
As the News reported in last week’s issue, some Village officials have offered their commitment to make the district “whole” in this proposed deal. Council member Gavin DeVore Leonard said at last week’s meeting that he would be “supportive of the Village trying to help close the gap — if one exists.”
The News will report on the outcome of the school board’s anticipated Jan. 17 special meeting, as well as any further developments in the ongoing, villagewide discourse around the LIHTC project.
Contact: rdixon@ysnews.com
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