Early voting begins this week

Yahoo

19-04-2025

Apr. 18—After the failed November 2024 bond issue, Odessa College officials want to build momentum and get a yes from voters on a modified bond May 3.
The Odessa College Vision 2030 $325 million bond would fund workforce development, facility expansion, campus improvements, and infrastructure upgrades. Officials say the college has grown since the last bond passed in 2010. Graduates have increased by 280 percent and 80 percent of people who graduate from OC stay in Odessa.
The bond would raise property taxes for Odessa property owners. Based on a taxable home value of $167,000, property owners would pay about $14 more a month on their taxes or $168 a year. There is a tax calculator on the OC Vision 2030 website, ocvision2030.com/finance.
It now includes what taxes are now and what they would be if the bond passed.
The total project cost is $331,753,406 with OC putting in about $7 million.
The $355 million bond that failed in November received 19,137 votes for and 20,542 against.
When asked during the College Bond Town Hall on Basin PBS Thursday about bringing a bond issue back so quickly to voters after the November failure, OC President Gregory Williams said they were "really close last time, but we didn't do a good enough job of explaining it. We don't feel we communicated effectively enough."
"But if I were to dress up and put on my best shoes and clothing and apply for a job and they turn me down, I'm not just going to say OK I'm done. I won't ever have a job again. I'm going to go back, do some more research, spruce myself up a bit, polish myself (up), make some adjustments like we've done and then I'm going to go back.
"Because no doesn't mean no forever. No means not right now and we want to go back to our voters and explain to them what we're talking about."
Williams said this May bond is $30 million less than the November bond. "We think we have a very attractive package. We think we've done some really good things."
Major projects include a workforce center, a business building for the downtown green space where the college's business programs would move. It would also include community spaces and small business spaces.
Additionally, a new sports center, performing arts center, a retrofitted Jack Rodgers Fine Arts Center for a larger childcare center, and retrofitting the old health sciences building for OCTECHS and Odessa Collegiate Academy, the two early college high schools housed on campus.
Those schools are part of ECISD and have a total enrollment of about 900.
Early voting is April 22-25 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. April 28-29. May 3 is Election Day.
An additional $6.7 million would come from the college bringing the total estimated project cost to $331,753,406.
There has been a big push from OC on social media about the benefits of OC and the importance of the bond passing. Some comments have pushed back on the tax increase with many citing tough economic times and rising appraisals and already high property tax numbers.
The tax calculator on the OC bond site was taken down and put back up and updated. Vice President for Student Services & Enrollment Management Kim McKay said it was removed because it was inaccurate. It has been reprogrammed.
"It's important to differentiate between the taxable value and the market value of a home. A taxable value of a home that's $167,000 with the homestead exemption is a market value of over $200,000. So when we're talking about an accurate representation, or an appropriate representation, I think that's an important differentiation for people to understand. And hopefully the tax calculator and questions that people have in social media and other forums has given a better representation of what that looks like for our community because ... not everybody's going to have that," McKay said.
Typically in May elections, people tend to vote against measures and the turnout is low.
"Our approach to this May election is to appeal to those 19,000 voters who said yes. We're spending a lot of time through our education information efforts, letting them know that they've got a second chance to support Odessa College," McKay said.
"We're hoping for a strong turnout in early voting because we know that's what will win an election. We had a strong turnout in early voting in November and so we're really transitioning our efforts to make sure that people understand the democratic process and that they understand that this is a critical opportunity to vote to change the community," she added.
McKay said some of the feedback they heard from voters after the November election was they didn't know enough about Vision 2030.
"I hope that through the increased information, education, forums and interviews like these that will answer the questions that remain before people have an opportunity to cast their ballot in early voting and then on to election day," she added.
Basin PBS hosted a college bond town hall for OC and Midland College Thursday. Officials from OC were Williams, McKay and OC Board of Trustees Chair Gary Johnson.
For MC, there was President Damon Kennedy, and board member Christine Foreman and Adrian Carrasco.
Midland College has called a $450 million bond. According to reimaginemc.com, the MC Bond is a capital improvement initiative to expand workforce training and modernize facilities to prepare more students for high-demand jobs — building a stronger future for our community.
There were changes made to the OC May bond package compared to the November one.
McKay said that was based on feedback they got from community about what they felt the campus, community and business and industry needed.
She added that it's critical that OC grows space for career and technical education because the college's programs are at 89% capacity, growing at about 10% each year.
"Within one year, those programs and those spaces will be at capacity. In order for us to meet the workforce needs and the employment needs that we know are projected in the future, we've got to have more space. We've got to have more space for our faculty to do the innovative things that business and industry requires of their community college partners and more space for our students to learn and to experience what it is going to be like as they transition to the business and industry," McKay said.
"We made the decision to remove the academic building that was originally proposed in Vision 2030 in November, and sort of repurpose some of the existing spaces on campus, which I think is a smart way to reimagine what this campus can look like and how it can respond to campus and community needs," she added.
The best example of that, she said, is transitioning the now vacant Health Science Building on the west side of campus to a new facility for both OCTECHS and Odessa Collegiate Academy.
"Vision 2030, gives each of those high schools their unique identity in that building, sharing a space but preserving their identity, one designed for transfer and one designed to place students directly into the workforce," McKay said.
Deaderick Hall, which McKay said is probably as old as the college, is currently being used for Odessa Collegiate Academy, but it is in in disrepair.
"It's difficult to heat it, it's difficult to cool it. The spaces aren't ADA accessible, and it's time for us to create a space for our visual and performing arts, which is a growing program that hosted over 50 events on campus this year, to a space that's deserving of those students and of those programs," McKay said.
The plan is to raze Deaderick Hall and create a visual and performing arts center where all of those programs will be housed.
McKay said it will also be a place where OC can develop new programs such as recording arts, digital media, education and possibly broadcasting, a program they have had in the past.
Childcare is also in the bond. West Texas is considered a child care desert because there is not enough child care and this impacts business and industry.
McKay said plans are to retrofit the Jack Rodgers Fine Arts Center into a children's center and learning lab for education programs that "will allow us to almost triple in size" the number of young students and families it serves.
It will also give OC's education programs a chance to have experiential learning with young children as they earn credentials, certificates and degrees, McKay said.
Director of Marketing and Communications Alexa Moulakis noted that OC's bachelor's degree in early childhood is "nearly one of the most enrolled" degrees available right now and it just started recently.
"We had our first bachelor's of applied science in education graduates in December, and we know that program will continue to grow and meet the educational needs in our community," McKay said.
Another new build that is part of the bond is the downtown academic and business center.
The Community Health and Wellness Center, Workforce Center, Competition and Celebration Center and Conditioning and Kinesiology Building are among the proposed growth bond projects, according to a mailer.
The Sports Center is 43 years old and the pool is 40 years old. The building is not up to code, Moulakis said, that is why the decision was made to tear it down and build a new one.
"Through really proactive and preventative maintenance, we've extended it, but it's not sustainable and it's time to develop a space that the community can use, not only for recreation and physical fitness, but also that our academic programs can use for experiential learning," McKay said.
Other items
— In the Basin PBS College Bond Town Hall, Vice President for Student Services & Enrollment Management Kim McKay said Odessa College puts aside $750,000 each year for deferred or preventative maintenance, including master planning for Vision 2030.
She said there are things that happen on the campus that they haven't planned for or that they didn't expect.
McKay said one example was that the women's basketball team was preparing to leave for the national tournament and a sewer pipe busted right above the locker room.
— As to why they need a Workforce Center when Ector County ISD is building one on the south side as part of its bond projects, they said they still need more capacity to meet workforce needs. The facility can be used by OC students on nights and weekends to reskill and upskill.
"ECISD came to us and said they didn't have space in their current CTE building for auto tech. So their auto tech dual credit students go to OC Sewell, and even with this new building that they're building, they're still not going to have room for auto tech. Their auto tech students are still going to remain at OC Sewell," Executive Director of Marketing and Media Relations Alexa Moulakis said.
"There is talk that we might even partner with them and use part of their facility at night, if we don't have the capacity to do so here, but that still only increases capacity in certain aspects. Being a community that's fueled by workforce, it's not some place you want to see hindrance. You want to see growth at all avenues. You can see growth at the high school level, and more students can get more training to come here and finish the credential quicker and get more people into the workforce. That's great. There are older students that want to go for career and technical training that can't do so at the high school level. Maybe they're 25 and just realizing they want to get into welding. ECISD is not an option for them. Companies send people to us for training all the time, and they want to take them from ... a FRAC hand and train them as a pipe fitter or something like that. Those kind of trainings need to happen at our facility. The ECISD facility isn't an option. There's so much room for both in this community," Moulakis said.
McKay said the new ECISD facility will not meet the demand in the community.
"There shouldn't be an expectation just because you're not a traditional high school student, that you can only be educated in the evenings and the weekends. That's not fair to students, and that's not fair to business and industry. What we do know about this community is that there's over 20,000 people that have some college, no degree, and a workforce center like we will have on our campus, will ensure that those students have an opportunity for reskilling and upskilling, and it's not fair to limit them to an evening program or a weekend program when we don't expect that of our traditional college students," McKay said.
For the last five years by year how much property tax revenue did OC collect?
— Per the audited financial statements 2020: $30,124,510
— Per the audited financial statements 2021: $29,970,836
— Per the audited financial statements 2022: $31,302,789
— Per the audited financial statements 2023: $33,227,334
— Per the audited financial statements 2024: $36,038,060
— What is the principal left to pay off the last bond? As of 4/16/2025: $52,205,000.00
— When will that bond be fully paid: 8/31/2041