Boyd said a deal like this would mean the county would be Triad’s landlord.

“That’s about a 4 percent return on our investment instantly,” Boyd said. “Then we have a piece of property that the county could use to attract business in the future.”

Necessities, niceties

Boyd said the purchase could allow them to reduce the KFCS loan to $2.7 million. Boyd said this would reduce KFCS’ loan increment repayments to the county, and personally give him better peace of mind that local taxpayer dollars were being fairly distributed for the KU remodel.

“There’s the necessities, and then there’s the niceties and the luxuries,” Boyd said. “I don’t have any problems with them going into a few niceties, but I don’t think we should be spending any county taxpayer funds to build luxuries.”

Commissioner Derrick DeGroot expressed hesitation over the decision, and said he would want to look at asbestos reports and other evaluation information of the property before moving forward. Kelley Minty Morris was absent from the meeting.

“I don’t necessarily know if I want to insert myself into the city schools’ budget process,” DeGroot said.

Investment return

Boyd said the purchase would allow the county to get a greater return on its investment, maybe up to 50 percent, than the 4 or 5 percent return they’d be slated to get under the county’s current loan agreement.

County Counsel Mika Blain said she had initial concerns about the idea because there would be other issues coming up this year that the county would need to spend on.

Commissioners agreed to think more over the idea.

KFCS superintendent Paul Hillyer said if the county does make an offer on the property, KFCS would likely accept it pretty quickly.

“It would be very helpful to us especially as we are trying to reduce that loan amount,” Hillyer said. “We would welcome having that revenue. We don’t have a use for the Triad property because it’s not in our school district.”

Boundary changes

Hillyer said KFCS had owned the Triad property for a little more than 10 years. They got it when city and county school boundaries changes around 2006, Hillyer said.

Triad’s current lease runs through the 2019/20 school year, Hillyer said. He said Triad currently pays KFCS around $60,000 per year to rent the property.

“As far as we’re concerned, it would be a very favorable transaction,” Hillyer said.

Property swap by jail

At the meeting, commissioners also agreed to move forward with a proposal for a property swap east of the Klamath County Jail with property owner Al White.

White owns property directly next to the jail, and Boyd said the county needs about 100 feet of it to accommodate construction for the expansion of the Youth Inspiration Program — a treatment and rehabilitation facility for at-risk juvenile girls. Governor Kate Brown allocated $12 million in her 2019-21 budget proposal to enhance the YIP facility with more beds and program space.

The county is proposing to change the tax lot boundaries of the area. The property swap would add the extra needed space directly next to the jail into the jail’s tax lot, and create another tax lot directly east of it which White would keep. In the swap, White would also get around 1,000 feet of county-owned property even farther east of the jail, adjacent to Foothills Boulevard.

Boyd said he didn’t know White’s intentions for the land.

KBREC purchase

Last week, Klamath County Commissioners approved a $165,000 property purchase by the Klamath Basin Research and Extension Center at 7209 S. Sixth St.

KBREC is a special county district partially funded by Klamath County taxpayer money that is part of the OSU Extension Service.