A letter presented to the Selma City Council Tuesday night raised some interesting questions about the construction process of the new Selma High School, but in the end, the request made to the city council may prove to be just a formality.

According to a letter from Selma Superintendent of Education Donald Jefferson to Selma Mayor George Evans, the property where the school is currently being constructed is not owned by Selma City Schools, rather it is still owned by the city of Selma.

“In order to complete the construction of the new high school and comply with the laws of Alabama the [school] board must show that it owns the property where the new high school will be located,” Jefferson said in the letter.

Evans said Selma’s attorney Jimmy Nunn must now review the matter before the council can move forward on finding a way to transfer the property to the school system.

“Mr. Nunn will have to look over everything and then lay out the details to us at the next council meeting,” Evans said. “Only then will we know what has to be done and what — if any — costs there will be in making this happen.”

The letter, which was dated Tuesday, March 22, was presented to each of the attending council members by Evans, who told them that no action was needed at this time.

The council may take the measure up at their next, regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday, April 12 at 5 p.m.

If approved, this will be the third school property transferred to the now separate school system, joining Payne Elementary and Clark Elementary. The remaining eight schools would still be owned by the city.

“This is simply a formality and the abstract process has been going on, I think, since August,” Jefferson said Wednesday. “It really is a slow, long process, researching documents back to the 1930s.”

According to information in Jefferson’s letter, the property was conveyed by the City National Bank of Selma to the city of Selma on Aug. 9, 1938. At that time, ownership of the property was not an issue since the school system was a part of the city and not an independent entity as it is today.

Jefferson said this process has not slowed construction work at the site and that crews are continuing work on the foundation and should be laying bricks in the coming days.

“This would have only been a problem if we did not have ownership by the time we took ownership of the new building in August 2012,” Jefferson said. “At this point, it is merely a formality.”