The Roanoke Times | File February

A Blacksburg police officer patrols the former Blacksburg Middle School building. The Montgomery County School Board and Board of Supervisors met Tuesday to talk about the property.

The Roanoke Times | File February

The former Blacksburg Middle building been deteriorating while officials debate over what to do with the property.

ELLISTON -- The saga continues.

With a design competition that could decide the next use for the former site of Blacksburg Middle School set to begin next month, county supervisors and school board members still are arguing about who gets the property.

The issue this time?

School board members want to see enrollment projections for the next few years -- especially in the neighborhoods around Blacksburg's downtown and the Mount Tabor area -- to find out if they might need to keep the campus. Those figures should be in by the end of September.

Meanwhile, Blacksburg Town Council members, who are running the design competition and passed a resolution Tuesday promising to pay its $87,500 fee, have told Supervisor Gary Creed they will halt the competition if there is an indication the campus won't be turned over to the county. Because the campus is in Blacksburg, the town is in charge of zoning the land.

The middle school property has been a hot potato since the new middle school was built in 2002.

In 2004, the school board passed a resolution to consider giving the county the school and its 20 acres if the county found land for new elementary schools in Elliston and Prices Fork and a new stadium in Blacksburg.

The stadium is being built, and bids are set to go out on the new Elliston-Lafayette Elementary School next month. That leaves land for Price's Fork Elementary.

Some supervisors said they interpreted the school board's resolution as a contract and worry the school board could renege on its words.

"This is penny ante, childish hogwash," Creed said during a heated, 45-minute debate between school board members and supervisors during a joint meeting Tuesday night.

Creed, who served on a joint town and county committee that has been looking at what to do with the school for two years, said he worries the school board will have wasted his time if it decides to keep the land.

The two boards met at Eastern Montgomery High School on Tuesday to talk about the middle school property and to learn about the design plans for Elliston-Lafayette Elementary. It's the same design that could be used for a new Price's Fork Elementary.

Now all that's needed is land.

Creed suggested the school board just use the 68 acres the county already owns on Prices Fork Road adjacent to the current middle school.

"We've got enough land out there that you could build a high school and elementary school," he said.

But the school board wants to wait for the enrollment projections. The old middle school land, down the line, could help relieve any overcrowding, board member Penny Franklin said.

Besides, school board members say, with no future site for Price's Fork Elementary being discussed publicly, the county has not met its end of the bargain, and the town has made no movement on rezoning the former middle school building for something else.

"We've been wasting taxpayers' money for eight years to keep that building up," said school board member Joe Ivers. "If the town council wants to use this as an excuse, then so be it. They've used everything else as an excuse."

The school board spends about $50,000 a year to keep up the former middle school building.

School board Chairman Wendell Jones, who has been pushing his colleagues to look at issues from a long-term perspective, said holding onto the land could be the best move for children.

"Right now, we don't need it [the former middle school building]," Franklin said. "And right now, I'd vote to surplus it. At the same time, if we've learned any lesson, [it] is that land in Montgomery County is hard to come by, and it takes a long time.

"Why would we want to give up land if our numbers show a need?" she asked.