$9.32 a square foot

In today's standards, does $9.32 a square foot sound like a low selling price for a commercial building? It should because this deal was struck by the Hernando County Commissioners and the lucky recipients were the buyers of the old hospital building on Ponce de Leon Boulevard. Mind you, this square foot price does not even take into consideration the ten+ acres of prime real estate the building sits on in the city of Brooksville. The sale of this county taxpayer asset for $1.1 million, on ten acres, has left many of us scratching our heads. Will this really be a step forward for our county government space-needs crunch?

Last year, the Committee of 25 spent many months reviewing the long term capital needs for our county and the results of their review were ignored by the Hernando County Commissioners. Their advice was to remodel the old hospital for government office space. The commissioners sold this major asset even though they do not have a viable long term capital facilities plan to meet the future needs of the county. Why didn't the commissioners wait until they had the results of their consultant report before rushing in to sell this valuable asset?

Many test balloons have been floated by Commissioner Russell is his zeal to sell the public on his aspiration to rebuild the major functions of our local government. He has suggested a judicial wing in the existing government building, or maybe leased land space in a yet-to-be-built facility next to the jail. Nothing has been finalized yet but Mr. Russell has advocated the moving of all the government services back under one roof. Which roof would that be Mr. Russell? With all this speculation of space needs, the Supervisor of Elections, Annie Williams, is still storing election equipment at the old hazardous DPW site.

Hopefully, the county commissioners are not planning on using the proceeds from this hospital sale as a down payment to put our county further in debt with bonding. Look at it this way, in today's dollars, the average price for a new residential home is going for approximately $110.00 per square foot on the owners lot. Just image how high the construction costs per square foot would be for a new government facility.

Maybe the commissioners need to take a deep breath and formulate a plan, any plan, before moving forward...