Portland Community College in Portland, OR will ask voters in its district to sign on to a $450M bond issue to fund multiple upgrades to its campuses. PCC asked for (and received) a $185M bond issue in 2017. PCC operates four major campuses and ten centers where they offer job training, transfer classes and special programs. In addition, PCC offers non-credit classes in about two dozen community sites+. PCC charges $123 per credit hour to district residents.
In terms of enrollment, PCC reported to the Department of Education that it delivered more than 737,000 credit hours of instruction in 2020. PCC has approximately 16,400 full-time-equivalent students. Of the more than 30,000 students they served in 2020, 21,200 were enrolled in degree programs.
PCC’s $450M bond issue will cost $0.38 per $1,000 of taxable value for a period of 16 years. (That doesn’t sound like much, does it? An assessment of that size on my home would raise my taxes by $19.)
The bond issue, if approved, would pay for $190M in upgrades to two of PCC’s four major campuses. These improvements include teardowns and replacements of some of PCC’s original buildings. The bonds would also provide $70M for career and technical education improvements, security improvements and technology upgrades. It would also address $60M in neglected maintenance.
Bond issue would keep tuition affordable
What surprised me most about the bond request was neither its size nor its cost to taxpayers. I wasn’t even surprised by the fact that PCC’s original buildings need full replacement. Or that PCC has accumulated $60M in neglected maintenance. Rather, I was surprised that they’re asking their voters to underwrite capital projects for the second time in five years.
I shouldn’t be surprised. That’s actually the way capital financing happens at a community college. WCC hasn’t asked for a bond issue since the mid-1990’s. Instead, our Trustees prefer to lard capital improvement costs onto the students. The only time WCC students get a break is when the Trustees have not approved capital improvements.
In her response to MLive’s questions regarding the 2022 WCC Trustee Election, Angela Davis said that her first priority was keeping WCC tuition low. If the Trustees were truly invested in keeping tuition low, they would ask the voters to fund capital improvements at WCC. That would remove the entire burden of paying for capital projects from the General Fund, which actually would enable WCC to keep tuition affordable.
Side note: PCC, which is three times as large as WCC in terms of credit hours of instruction, and twice as large as WCC in terms of FTE students, somehow manages to get by with just six Vice Presidents.
Photo Credit: Thomas Le Ngo, via Flickr
