Over the past few years, there has been a growing recognition that the public’s faith in higher education is slipping. If you want to know what the real impact of this is, you need only check the election results in Monroe and Jackson Counties. Voters in those counties turned down millage requests for their local community colleges.
Monroe County voters handed Monroe County Community College a dual defeat on Tuesday, when they turned down both a .85-mill, 5-year renewal of a millage that funded safety projects, accessibility projects, technology projects, learning environment projects, and maintenance projects. The current millage will expire following the 2025 tax collection and would have supplied the college with more than $30M in designated funds.
Perhaps more problematic for MCCC was the defeat of a ballot proposal that sought to apply a Headlee override to the school’s 2.25-mill operating millage for the years 2025-2029. That restoration would have counteracted the annual inflationary decay that will occur without it. MCCC’s tax collection will reflect the loss beginning in 2025.
Meanwhile, Jackson County voters dealt Jackson College its 17th consecutive funding request loss. In the most recent request, the school had sought to restore its original operating millage to 1.33 mills. The school currently operates on a 1.133-mill assessment, which is subject to inflationary reductions. Jackson College has asked its voters for increases to its operating millage and various bond issues unsuccessfully 16 other times since 1964.
(In case you’re wondering, Jackson College’s in-district tuition rate is $193 per credit hour for in-district residents. That’s nearly $100 higher than the per-credit tuition rate for WCCs’ in-district students.)
Community Colleges Need To Respect Their Voters
The underlying issues behind the millage defeats in both districts are complex, but they illustrate what happens when host communities lose confidence in their community colleges. The loss of funding will have a noticeable impact on MCCC’s operations because both losses reflected renewals of millages the school had previously secured. On the other hand, JCC has always had to do without because – despite a high degree of oversight by the JCC Board of Trustees – the voters just aren’t in a generous mood.
This is the danger that all community colleges face right now. Voters control a significant portion of a community college’s money. Asking for a renewal, a restoration, or even a bond issue at the wrong time is likely to leave an institution in a worse position than it previously occupied. Maintaining the goodwill of the voters is always paramount. The results in Monroe and Jackson Counties on Tuesday night may indicate just how difficult that may become in the near future.
Photo Credit: Jackson College, via Flickr
