Monday evening, October 6, City Council has a special meeting to decide whether to pledge $500,000 to the expansion of the Roane State Community College branch campus in Oak Ridge.
Details of square footage are a bit confusing, but it seems that Roane State wants to add a new 53,000 square foot building for health occupations and add 22,000 square feet of space to the existing building, including adding a second story to the library. This would increase the size of the campus by 62%. The college says this is needed to accommodate high enrollments and meet community needs in the areas of healthcare and nanotechnology occupations. The college wants to gather $5 million in pledges (about 15% of the total project cost) in order to get the state to add this project to its priority list for higher education projects — and eventually commit to paying the rest of the project cost. Anderson County has already pledged $500,000.
As Monday’s Oak Ridger reports, funding the request would add about 1/2 cent to the City tax rate because the money could be obtained through borrowing. Roane State is important to the community (for students, their future employers and future medical patients, ORICL partiicipants, and the jobs the school provides), and that’s not a big addition to the tax rate. I hope that area residents are enthusiastic enough to make generous pledges from their personal and business resources. I have serious doubts, however, about whether City Council should pledge to spend “other people’s money” (city taxpayer dollars) on a state project when there are significant unmet capital needs in areas that are the city’s responsibility. (To name a few of these, the city preschool is in a building that was thought of as “too old” long before the Roane State campus was built, the municipal building needs significant work, and the city has been chronically unable to address needs for a senior center.)
Just as I am uncomfortable with “spot zoning,” I am not comfortable with the “spot budgeting” that this request represents — I’d like to consider this proposed capital expenditure alongside other city priorities.
Also, I wonder about alternative ways to address Roane State’s needs. The Roane State Oak Ridge campus is abuzz with activity in the morning but gets real quiet in the afternoon — couldn’t some enrollment growth be handled by adding more classes in the afternoon? Oak Ridge just completed a new state of the art high school, and it is not at capacity — couldn’t some Roane State classes (particularly dual enrollment classes) be held there? The Roane State proposal is ambitiously large — what could be accomplished with a smaller expansion (say, just a new health building), and what would it cost to do that?
Update: At the October 6th meeting, Council voted unanimously to refer the request to the budget and finance committee for consideration during our study of the entire budget for FY 2010 and beyond. Also, we learned that Roane State’s capacity issue in Oak Ridge is mainly related to the health occupations courses (such as nursing and dental hygiene), which are having to turn away many of the qualified students who apply to enroll due to lack of facilities (such as dental chairs needed for training future dental hygienists) for additional students.
RSCC is not important to me. Meeting the issues of the Seniors currently is the most important issue.
I personally am not against funding the new building for Roane State but I agree with you about needs of the city. I am a supporter of the pre-school and recognize how many Oak Ridge students have been helped due to its staff. A new building is needed for that. Given adequate funding a better facility for seniors would be good.
I agree with your leanings on this one in terms of priorities but I am not in favor of a property tax increase when new retail is voted down in the same year. Too bad a majority of citizens of Oak Ridge voted down Target and some members of council continue to oppose retail opportunities that could add sales tax for uses such as this. Perhaps you will consider yes on the next opportunity.
I do not understand your comment about retail voted down Mike? What was voted upon was the use of tax coffers to prop up business in Oak Ridge. Whatever is gained in sales tax will be used to offset the cost of that business being town. Business is not here to pay for all the civil needs of a community. Any tax break given will be offset by the sales tax earned. It is a zero gain.
Ray your memory is failing again. Your zero gain does not take into account that there would be much desired retail here. The fact that it would not cost us anything (your tax offsets) means it would have been a great deal for the city and would have met a critical social need.