The Chemeketa Community College board has placed a bond measure on the Nov. 5 ballot.
The college, which is based in Salem but has a satellite campus in McMinnville and education centers in Dallas, Brooks and Woodburn, is asking voters to approve a bond that would generate $140 million in improvements.
The bond, if approved by the voters, would replace an expiring 2008 bond and use the same rate of 27 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value. For a home valued at $400,000, the property owner would pay $108 per year, or about 30 cents per day. The board placed the measure on the ballot by a unanimous vote on June 26.
Here is a look at the key initiatives that the bond will pay for, if it is approved:
• Increase capacity in health care, trades, and emergency services.
• Reconfigure the Brooks Center to expand programming for health care and emergency services.
• Renovate Building 33 on the Salem campus and create a new trades center for apprenticeship programs (plumbing, HVAC and sheet metal).
• Renovate Building 7, the gymnasium. The 1981 structure would be modernized for health and wellness programming and reconfigured with the assistance of federal matching funds to serve as a disaster resource site.
• Modernize classrooms to keep pace with technological and academic best practices.
• Improve parking lots across Chemeketa’s campuses/centers.
• Introduce a new science lab at the Woodburn Center, which would allow students to complete associate degrees locally.
• Create spaces to support student engagement on the Salem Campus using Building 2 and the athletic fields.
