Voters in the Iowa Central Community College District will go to the polls on Tuesday, Feb. 6, to cast a ballot on a $25.5 million bond issue for improvements and construction to the college sites. A 60 percent majority of the voters from the 19 counties must vote yes for the matter to carry.
Polls in Greene County will be open from 12 noon to 8 pm. There are four polling places in the county, divided by school district lines.
Voters in the Greene County school district will cast ballots in Scranton at the Community Center; Jefferson in the south assembly room of the courthouse, and Grand Junction at St Brigid Parish Center. Paton-Churdan voters will cast their ballots in the Churdan Community Room.
Dr Dan Kinney, president of Iowa Central Community College, said, “The projects included in the $25.5 million funding request are based on input from faculty, staff and area business and industry leaders.”
Projects include:
•Improved safety and security/notification systems at all centers;
•Continue to replace windows, roofs, HVAC, electrical updates in many buildings;
•Create classroom environments that create a collaborative learning environment for departments to share equipment;
•Create new collaborative labs in current student services building;
•Leverage the $3 million donation made by the Greehey Family Foundation to build a new one-stop Greehey Family Student Support Services building to better serve students;
•Move the current fuel testing lab potentially to the Ag Industrial Park west of Fort Dodge, which has outgrown its current space and convert that space for additional science labs and update current science labs; and much more.
“While we could probably invest much more in improvements, I believe this plan addresses all the critical needs that our faculty and staff identified in our department meetings over the past few months, and aligns our current and future budget with operational and infrastructure needs,” said Mark Crimmins, Iowa Central board chair.
Kinney said the more specific outline and use of the $25.5 million would focus on:
•Safety improvements – $3 million
•Storm Lake Center Facility improvements and Industrial Training Center – $2.5 million
•Webster City Center – $.5 million
•Main Campus Science Building updates – $3 million
•Main Campus Applied Science and Technology Building improvements – $1 million
•Main Campus cooperative classrooms updates – $2 million
•Main Campus Liberal Arts Building updates – $.5 million
•New Bio Fuels/Chemical Testing and Research Center – $2 million
•Career Academies – $2 million
•New Greehey Family Student Success Center on Main Campus – $6 million
•Decker Auditorium modernization and updates – $3 million
TOTAL $25.5 million
Absentee ballots are available from the Greene County auditor’s office in Jefferson. They can be requested by mail or may be cast in person at the office.
For information on voter registration, contact the Auditor’s office. ~courtesy of The Scranton Journal
