OCCC Future: Career, tech education support opportunities | News

On Feb. 15, the Oregon Coast Group Faculty (OCCC) Board of Training will decide whether or not the faculty will place a poll initiative within the Could 2023 election.

The measure would search voter approval for the faculty to resume the power’s present bond to assist profession and technical schooling alternatives in Lincoln County.

The necessity

OCCC President Dr. Birgitte Ryslinge mentioned increasing the faculty’s skill to supply cutting-edge workforce coaching in quite a lot of trades has lengthy been a aim of OCCC management.

“Since becoming a member of OCCC in 2014, I’ve typically been requested ‘when will the Faculty provide extra coaching alternatives for college students trying to work within the trades?’ After cautious examination of employer and pupil demand, we concluded this was completely an space the place we would have liked to develop. And we don’t have the specialised services wanted to accommodate full trades packages,” she mentioned.

Ryslinge mentioned OCCC efficiently secured an $8 million problem grant dedication from the state to assist fund such services. Nonetheless, the faculty received’t obtain the state assist if it doesn’t obtain important native funding for the mission.

“We partnered with Lincoln County College District and the Port of Toledo to start out a welding program in 2020, she mentioned. “Within the intervening years, now we have been busy – incomes impartial accreditation, responding to the pandemic, and including and increasing different packages (Instructing, Early Childhood, increasing well being packages, and extra). It’s time now to maneuver ahead with a bond to safe the matching funds from the state, construct the brand new trades facility, and guarantee the remainder of our areas will evolve to satisfy the long run.”

“An expanded welding program is only one of many packages we anticipate delivering over the lengthy lifetime of this new constructing, ” OCCC’s Vice President for Tutorial Affairs Dan Lara mentioned. “This facility shall be designed from the bottom up as a cutting-edge, versatile, industrial house. Nearly all of the fixtures on this facility shall be on wheels in order that lecture rooms, workshops, and different studying areas can flex and adapt over time to satisfy altering wants – the wants of our college students and our county’s employers.”

Timing

The OCCC Board of Training heard a primary learn of the poll title for the proposal at its Jan. 18, assembly, and can formally determine at its Feb. 15 assembly whether or not to place this bond measure to the voters within the Could 2023 election.

At their annual retreat in September 2022, board members set the aim of securing the matching funds in 2023.

“This mission has been in planning for the reason that 2017 submission for state funds,” OCCC Board of Training Chair Chris Chandler mentioned. “Since then, now we have labored with varied businesses, finishing influence research which place us to maneuver shortly into facility design as soon as we safe the funds.”

Chandler added that the design course of will contain engagement with native business, employers, and the neighborhood.

In response to Ryslinge, a number of components led to the faculty selecting the Could 2023 election for the bond election.

“First, we really feel an incredible sense of duty to stretch our native funding so far as doable, and performing now means we will guarantee Lincoln County has the trendy and related profession coaching it wants – and that it secures the state’s $8 million in matching funds in the direction of this building.,” she mentioned. “Moreover, the bonds that constructed the Faculty’s present services in Waldport, Lincoln Metropolis, and Newport are maturing in 2025, so we might be asking voters to think about approving changing the outdated bond with a brand new one. Lastly, we efficiently achieved impartial accreditation and have constructed the staffing and methods to operate as a very impartial faculty, now not depending on different neighborhood faculties for a few of our operations. We will and will concentrate on securing what is required for college students, households and the employers of Lincoln County.”

Funding assist

Most Oregon neighborhood faculties are supported by property taxes by two charges: a everlasting levy price for operations, and a bond price used to pay for building of latest services and modernizing present buildings.

Oregon Coast Group Faculty at present has the bottom mixed levy price of any faculty within the state, at .3902, or 39.02 cents per thousand {dollars} in assessed worth, in response to a launch from OCCC. 

In contrast, Clatsop County property homeowners pay 91.7 cents per thousand, whereas Lane’s price is 94.81 cents per thousand, and Treasure Valley Group Faculty’s price is greater than $1.22 per thousand, the discharge states.

“We’re pleased with our skill to serve our college students and our communities as effectively as doable,” Ryslinge mentioned, “and we’ll proceed working in a frugal, accountable method. The Faculty anticipates remaining close to the underside of the listing of Oregon faculties’ whole levy charges, even after voters approve this new bond proposal.”

Ryslinge mentioned that when the Faculty first went to the voters in 2004 to construct its present services, it did so efficiently.

“The Faculty delivered what it promised to the neighborhood, on time and underneath finances,” mentioned Chandler, who has served on the board since earlier than the 2004 bond was accredited by voters. “That’s a monitor report we take severely transferring ahead.”

When voters first accredited the OCCC constructing bonds in 2004, the levy price accredited was 34 cents per thousand in assessed worth, in response to Ryslinge. 

Since 2004, as property values have grown within the county, the 34-cents-per-thousand levy price has declined. Over the previous eight years, the common annual levy has been 24.36 cents per thousand, and the precise levy is projected to be 21 cents per thousand in 2023, the discharge stats.

Subsequent step

If confirmed by the OCCC Board of Training in February, and accredited by voters in Could, the prevailing levy would get replaced with a brand new levy price of 26 cents per thousand for bonds that will increase nearly $32 million and would safe the $8 million match at present supplied by the state of Oregon.

These funds would cowl the price of the brand new industrial coaching facility in addition to security, expertise, and different wanted upgrades to Faculty services in Lincoln Metropolis, Newport, and Waldport.  The school additionally intends to take care of and develop the business partnership on the Port of Toledo, which homes the welding coaching facility, the discharge states.

Discussions between the faculty and native emergency preparedness businesses have begun as plans gel for emergency preparedness tasks that may be funded by bond proceeds.

Tasks being mentioned embrace designing the car parking zone for the brand new constructing on the Newport campus to satisfy necessities to function an emergency helipad for heavy rotor plane, within the occasion of a Cascadia seismic occasion or different catastrophe.

On the North middle in Lincoln Metropolis, a contemporary dual-fuel generator coupled with a low-power FM station might serve to assist metropolis and county efforts to speak with the general public and handle occasions such because the evacuation attributable to the 2020 Echo Mountain Complicated fires.

The school is crafting an engagement technique to assemble extra enter from residents in south, north, east, and central Lincoln County to tell these and different enhancements to every of the faculty’s present services, in response to the OCCC launch.

“In 2004, the voters of Lincoln County made a transformational funding in college students of all ages and backgrounds by committing to the development of the wonderful buildings the Faculty occupies as we speak,” Ryslinge mentioned. “This spring, given Board approval in February, we’ll ask voters to assist us take the following step within the ongoing progress of the Faculty, and the expansion and growth of our college students and our native industries – and of the spectacular county we name house.”

Study extra at oregoncoast.edu/cte, or electronic mail bondinfo@oregoncoast.edu.