WEST MILFORD The West Milford Board of Education recently asked the town council to consider selling its half-interest in the Wallisch property for enough money to rehabilitate Hillcrest Center. The Wallisch property, 85 acres located off Lincoln Ave, was donated to the board of education and the township jointly. Drafted by board of education member Drew Murray and President Midge Touw, the proposal says the board of education will give the town its interest in the property in exchange for enough money to totally rehabilitate the Hillcrest Community Center. The school district owns the building which was a former elementary school. Although it uses three of the classrooms, the majority of the building is used by the Township for the price of $1 per year. It is badly in need of repair. Touw said the proposal was good for everyone, providing the town with space to build ballfields, a library and an environmental center, while at the same time giving the town and the district an improved community center. She said the district could not afford to let go of Hillcrest because of the future possibility of increased enrolment requiring an additional elementary school. The proposal, she said, gives everyone what they need and in the event that the district needed to take back the school any time in the next ten years they would repay the town for the renovations on a sliding school. The town council is considering the idea and the two groups will meet again on June 10. According to Touw, the feedback was very positive, especially from Councilman Carmen Scangarello and Mayor Joseph DiDonato. “The best thing was opening a line of communication between the town council and the board, I can’t tell you how pleased I was and I saw several councilmen and the mayor at an event on the weekend and they said great things about it.” But not everyone is on board with the idea. Councilmen Jim Warden and Bob Nolan look at the proposal another way. They think the town gets a property it mostly can’t use in exchange for investing millions of dollars in a building the town doesn’t own. Warden said, “Councilman Nolan and myself have a different proposal. It will cost millions of dollars to restore Hillcrest and to bring the Wallish estate into respectable shape. We think that the school district and the town should jointly donate the property to the Audubon Society. They can fix it up and make it a tourist attraction for West Milford.” Warden and Nolan also think the Hillcrest Center is not worth repairing. They suggest the community center move into St. Joseph’s School building, which only needs minor repairs and will be vacant as of the end of the school year. They believe that it would be more cost effective for the district to build a new school on the Hillcrest property if the need were to arise than to rehab the old one. He also suggested it might make a good site for the library. Warden and Nolan plan to present these ideas at the June meeting.