Chemeketa Community College is returning to the voters in May for a facilities bond identical to the one that failed last November.
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 May 20 that would generate $140 million in improvements.
If approved, the bond 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.
Marie Hulett, Chemeketa’s executive director of institutional advancement, said that college officials thought that voters in November did not understand that the bond did not represent a tax increase.
Also a challenge strategically for the college was when to put the measure back on the ballot. Conventional electoral wisdom is that the more money measures there are on the same ballot the greater the chance that one or more will fail. The Chemeketa district includes all of Marion and Polk counties, most of Yamhill County and a sliver of Linn County in the Santiam Canyon.
The key initiatives that the bond,would pay for are:
• Increase capacity in health care, the 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 to serve as a disaster resource site.
• Modernize classrooms to keep pace with technological and academic best practices.
Improve the 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.
Employees of the college cannot advocate in favor of the bond, so a political action committee has been formed. For more information go to yesforchemeketa.com.
