The Cherokee County Board of Education on Thursday night voted to pay a total of $21,060 to four separate property owners for easements needed to bring sewer service to the three schools in the Holly Springs and Hickory Flat area.

The board voted to pay $90 for 3,335 square feet to Bradshaw Farm Homeowner’s Association for property appraised at $107; $1,420 for 41,136 – which is the appraised amount of the property – to the estate of Harriett Grant; and nothing to the Sequoyah Regional Library System, which waived the cost of the 17,464 square feet of property they own that is valued at $21,650.

The school board also voted to pay $19,550 to ALSF Capital, LLC for 27,451 square feet appraised at $9,660. The extra $10,000 will be used to demolish three houses and a garage on East Cherokee Drive across from Holly Springs Elementary School.

“They’re both a danger and a nuisance,” Superintendent Frank Petruzielo said. “This is a good compromise. We’re paying more than the appraised valued, but we’re getting some things done that will be very beneficial for the school and the school system.”

Although that one payment exceeds the property’s appraised value, the school system is coming in under the total appraised values, said Tom Roach, the board’s attorney.

The board voted at its last meeting to award the low bid for the project of 1.32 million to Strack Incorporated. Work is slated to begin as soon as school lets out for summer vacation. There were five bids submitted for the project, which ranged in price from the high bid of $1.83 million to Strack Incorporated’s low bid.

The work will bring sewer service to the three schools in the area—Holly Springs Elementary, Dean Rusk Middle and Sequoyah High. Lines will be brought in from two directions to the area of Sequoyah High for project, which also includes replacing the drainage fields. The sewer project needs to be completed before work can begin on the Dean Rusk Middle School replacement, Superintendent Frank Petruzielo said.

The new Dean Rusk Middle School is slated to open in Fall 2015 and, while it will be a carbon copy of the new Booth and Teasley Middle Schools, plans will have to be altered to fit Dean Rusk’s smaller, more limited campus. The new building will have enough room for Dean Rusk’s sixth-graders to move from Holly Springs, Hickory Flat and Indian Knoll elementaries and join the seventh-and-eighth-graders at the middle school.

Both projects will be funded with the Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax approved by voters last year which begins in January and runs through 2017.