WINNSBORO – After voting last month against purchasing the building that houses the Ridgeway library, council voted Monday evening to present a revised lease to the owner of the building. The action had been recommended last week by the County’s Finance and Administrative Committee.
“With the option to purchase pretty much off the table,” interim Deputy County Administrator Laura Johnson said during the committee meeting last week, “we need to decide whether to extend the lease for two more years, terminate the lease or present the owner with this new lease revised by our attorney (Tommy Morgan). We still have 90 days to let the owner know what we’re going to do.”
The term of the revised lease is for a year, with the option to extend it for five additional years. The new lease reduces the monthly lease payments from $892.50 to $750 for each of the first twelve months and those lease payments would increase by two percent every other one-year option term beginning July 1, 2023.
The revised lease would also include an option to purchase the property for $100,000, down from the current asking price of $160,000. It also specifies that any payments made by the county from the period beginning July 1, 2018, to the date of purchase, would be subtracted from the purchase price and credited toward the total consideration paid by the county.
