DALLAS - The Lone Star College System is asking voters in the district that spans four counties in southeast Texas to approve a $420 million general obligation bond package on May 10 so it can add new facilities and renovate existing ones at its seven campuses.
Cynthia Gilliam, vice chancellor of business affairs and chief financial officer of the community college district, said the funds are needed to provide programs demanded by area industries and by a rapidly growing student population.
"Things have really changed in just the last three years," she said. "We used to be very heavily focused on academic transfers, but now the workforce development side is becoming more and more important."
Gilliam said technical and vocational programs, especially in the health care sector, are so popular that there are waiting lists to get into some of them.
"Twice as many students as we have room for want to get into these programs," she said. "We have one of the two veterinary technician programs in the state, and every student who graduates has an average of eight job offers."
Enrollment in fall 2007 totaled 49,253 students, an increase of 51% since 2001. Demographic projections indicate an enrollment of 72,000 to 80,000 students by 2015. Lone Star is the third-largest community college district in the state, and the largest provider of higher education in the Houston area.
The district, which includes all of Montgomery County and portions of Harris, Liberty, and Wallercounties, changed its name in January fromNorth Harris Montgomery Community College District. The area served covers 1,400 square miles and includes 11 school districts.
The district's GO bonds are rated AA byStandard & Poor's and Aa2 by Moody's Investors Service. Outstanding debt includes $203 million of GO bonds and $56 million of revenue bonds, which are rated Aa2 by Moody's and AA-minus by Standard & Poor's.
District voters rejected a $249 million GO bond package in November 2006, but Gilliam said this time the district worked hard to get community input into the development of the facility improvement package.
"It wasn't that voters didn't like the 2006 program," she said. "It was confusing, which is one of the reasons why the name was changed. I had many voters tell me they were ready to vote in favor of bonds for, say, Tomball College, but they didn't see that name on the ballot. That's why we also renamed the campuses to LSCS-Tomball and LSCS-Kingwood, and others."
A citizen's advisory committee recommended a bond package of some $560 million based on the district's needs, but the total was reduced to $420 million to avoid an increase in the district's property tax rate of $0.1167 per $100 of assessed valuation.
If voters approve the 40-year bonds, Gilliam said the district will go to market quickly with the new debt.
"We'll probably sell the bonds in two installments," she said. "One would be almost immediately, and probably a pretty good chunk of the total. We need to move fast. We're way behind the eight ball."
Gilliam said the district had to sell revenue bonds to pay for necessary projects when the 2006 GO bond package was defeated.
"We sold about $30 million of revenue bonds last year, primarily to take care of critical infrastructure needs," she said. "We had some 35-year-old buildings that needed new heating and cooling systems, and we didn't have enough money in the budget to take care of those very expensive items."
The bond package includes $263 million for instructional facilities, $44 million for student services facilities, $38 million for traffic and safety projects, $26 million for technology infrastructure, $15.3 million for academic support facilities, $9 million for improvements to the physical plant, $4 million for administrative support space, and a $20 million contingency fund.
