WVNET to Mylan Pharmaceuticals? A Special State Deal?

August 3, 2011 — newcommunityschool

WHITHER NORTH ELEMENTARY? AND MON SCHOOLS?

The Daily Mail reports today that the state is considering selling the WVNET property in Morgantown, possibly to next-door Mylan Pharmaceuticals, possibly for $10.5 million.

Which causes one to wonder: if the state can get $10.5 million from Mylan for WVNET’s small site and small building, what might Mon Schools get for North Elementary’s large campus and large building, which also sits immediately next-door to Mylan, directly behind WVNET, uphill from route 705?

The North Elementary building is big and relatively modern, and the North Elementary campus consists of about 13 acres, much larger than WVNET. In other words, if WVNET would get $10.5 million for its modest facility and grounds, why wouldn’t Mon Schools get tens of millions from the pharmaceutical giant for its much larger facility and grounds?

And why wouldn’t Mon Schools want to sell and move the school and campus? After all, what is a pharmaceutical plant? It’s a chemical factory.

Proximity to industrial facilities is not exactly child friendly. And axing WVNET is not job and people friendly.

What on Earth are young children doing going to school directly beside the many vents of a massive chemical factory? Has anyone ever tested the air between the drug factory and the elementary school? Have the school campus air and grounds been tested, and if not, why not?

North Elementary is dangerously close to the heavily-traveled and congested route 705. It’s not nearly as close to the highway as Eastwood Elementary on the Mileground is planned to be, but it’s too close nevertheless for the sake of health and safety. Plus the school and campus are immediately adjacent, practically on top of the the chemical factory that is Mylan Pharmaceuticals. In fact the school has a lovely, close-up view of many of the behemoth factory’s vents and a parking lot, which should make every parent’s stomach queasy.

The school should never have been built there in the first place (1978) and should have been long since relocated, away from the chemical plant and the dangerous road. Also, there is only one way in and one way out of North, risking entrapment, in addition to the lousy bottleneck and congestion.

What might Mylan develop on the WVNET site in front of and partly surrounding North Elementary? Mylan Pharmaceuticals is a transnational, transcontinental industry that answers to no local board of directors.

Now is the time, long since, for Mon Schools to move toward its own deal with Mylan, to negotiate a sale of North Elementary School and campus. Such a sale should more than pay for not only the relocation of the school but for a major improvement of a new school or, much better, two new schools. Mylan needs to be made to feel its responsibility to the local schoolchildren. It’s not as if Mylan would get little in such a deal – very far from it. The smart heads as Mylan could think how to make out well off such a deal with Mon Schools, even as they see that Mon Schools gets all the funds it needs and everything the schoolchildren deserve for the property. Now is the time, now more than ever.

Mon Schools, what are you waiting for? Read the rest of this entry »

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