I have the highest personal respect and regard for former Mayor John Cutillo.

But I must respectfully dissent from his suggestion in last week’s Times that our School Board should sell its three surplus school sites to pay for the costs that the school override, on the ballot which all local voters have received, are designed to cover.

The school override is intended to augment available funds needed to pay for student classroom expenses, such as books, computers and similar expenses.

State law is quite specific as to the permitted and prohibited uses of proceeds from the sale of surplus properties. One thing such proceeds cannot be used for is to pay the cost of maintenance and operating expenses, the very type of expenses that the school override is designed to cover.

Perhaps it is time for our School Board to consider disposing of the three properties that it received from MCO or its predecessor in the early 1970s. These were intended as future school sites, which we have never needed.

Two items that are specifically permitted by state law is to use the sales proceeds to reduce outstanding school district bonded indebtedness. The proceeds may also be used to pay the cost of acquiring additional educational facilities.

We are not ever going to need to build an additional school. But when our high school was built in 1991 the desired school auditorium was omitted because of lack of funds. These surplus properties would be an ideal source of money to build that auditorium sometime in the near future.

But to repeat, they are not an alternative source to pay the costs covered by the override, which has been in effect since 1999.