LCC board weighs bondcampaign.

Byline: Greg Bolt The Register-Guard

Lane Community College board members will decide tonight whether to spend up to $323,000 to gauge public support for a possible $80 million bond measure to repair and upgrade buildings.

The board won't decide until next spring whether to put the measure on the November 2008 ballot. But after voters turned down the college's request for a much smaller local option levy following a low-key campaign last year, LCC officials don't want to go into another vote without testing the public's appetite for a new money measure.

"If nothing else, the local option levy told us we can't just assume that just because we think we have community support that something like that is going to pass," said LCC President Mary Spilde. "We can't just sit back and take that for granted."

The meeting will be held on the coast at the LCC Florence Center, 3149 Oak St., starting at 6:30 p.m. Before to the meeting, the board will tour the renovated Siltcoos Station Retreat and Learning Center.

Before last year's levy vote, LCC had enjoyed an unbroken string of levy successes stretching back as far as anyone at the college could remember.

But in the years since voters last approved a levy - a $42.8 million construction bond measure in 1995 - the community college budget landscape has changed dramatically.

Measure 5 shifted much of the funding for colleges to the state.

Local property taxes still are an important source of revenue, but the formula used to distribute state funds and limits on property tax increases have diluted the local contribution.

On top of that, the state's deep recession starting in 2000 prompted severe reductions in community college funding. That led to large tuition increases and also forced LCC to sharply reduce the popular personal enrichment and hobby classes that helped generate support in the community.

The board will be asked to approve a budget of up to $323,400 to hire Funk/Levis & Associates to test voter support for a bond measure and, if the board decides to put it on the ballot, conduct a public information campaign prior to the vote.

Not all the money would be spent if board decides against the levy.

The company would use polls and focus groups to determine public attitudes about LCC and probe support for a bond measure.

If a measure is placed on the ballot, two mailings would be sent out next fall to explain the request.

Money for the campaign would not come out of the college's strapped general fund. Greg Morgan, LCC's assistant vice president for finance, said it will come from a tax refund the college will receive. The refund is for taxes paid on interest the college earned on the current bond measure before the proceeds were spent.

The college will pay off those bonds next year. A new bond measure, if approved, would keep the same tax rate, currently 21 cents per $1,000 of value.

But because of new construction and rising property values, a tax levied at the same rate as the 1995 levy would raise an estimated $80 million to $100 million. That amount still wouldn't be enough to do all the work needed on LCC's main campus, where most of the buildings are more than 40 years old.

Although the board is just beginning the process of choosing which projects to tackle with bond money, Spilde said the emphasis will be on fixing what the college already has rather than building new. Many of the main campus buildings were built in 1965 and are in need of roof repairs, plumbing and electrical upgrades and technological improvements in classrooms and labs.

The LCC Downtown Center on Willamette Street, a former Montgomery Wards store, also needs a major overhaul.

"We've done everything we can to make it usable and there's no more we can do with it," Spilde said.

None of the buildings built or improved with the current bond funds would be targeted under a new measure, she said.

The college is planning one new building, a health and wellness center, but will use a $6.75 million state allocation matched by private donations to pay for it.