In early 2024, Jeffco Schools carved out a special “municipal interest” process enabling Lakewood and other municipalities to bypass traditional bidding to acquire shuttered schools.
Eight months earlier, an appraisal had made it clear to the school district that competitive bidding was in fact viable for the closed Emory Elementary, meaning the district could sell the property and turn a tidy profit for taxpayers within a year.
Disregarding that appraisal, the board of Colorado’s second-largest district voted last November to sell the Emory property to the city of Lakewood for $4 million — without going through a bidding process…