One thing that is becoming clearer as Suffolk awaits a decision on a new school site to replace the aging Southwestern and Robertson Elementary schools is the degree to which the politics of the issue have begun to affect the debate.

After years of back-and-forth over the need to replace the schools, the City Council and School Board finally reconciled one another to the fact that there would be money only for one new school, which would combine the student populations from both. The question for months since that decision has been a simple one: Where?

With the hearts and ballots of voters in two Suffolk boroughs — Whaleyville and Holy Neck — at stake, the issue has taken on a political cast that threatens at best to sabotage the process and at worst to result in a decision that costs Suffolk taxpayers millions of dollars more than they should spend.

Add to the mix the fact that the city is without a permanent school superintendent, and things get even more complicated. While nobody questions the ability of Dr. Deran R. Whitney to perform adequately in the job of interim superintendent, it seems evident that he wants to make his position permanent, leaving him at risk of the public perception that his job could be bought with the support of one particular school location or another. Whether any factual basis would exist for such a conclusion would be a moot point; for many people, the perception would always be there.

It’s time for both the City Council and the School Board to acknowledge that they’ve allowed the process of replacing the two schools in Holland and Whaleyville to become irredeemably corrupted by politics. Given the problems that are now evident in almost every public discussion of the issue, it’s time for the City Council and School Board to put the brakes on the process until the corrupting influence of the November election is past and until a new school superintendent can be installed without fear of the perceptual taint of favoritism.

It wouldn’t be a popular move for those parents who are hoping their children will soon have a new school to attend, and it wouldn’t exhibit the highest level of fiscal responsibility, since the city would effectively be ignoring the best construction prices in decades. But such a decision would give Suffolk citizens more confidence that it had been made wisely and on the right basis. For that reason, it would be the right decision right now.