Are you sick of your property being taxed-to-the-max and your local elected officials continuing the spending spree? On the heels of the $58M City Center project, the majority of the Joliet Junior College board is directing the administration to move forward with another new $45M building.
The proposed building is referred to as the “Multipurpose” building. The primary use would be to hold graduation ceremonies. Currently JJC holds them at Lewis University because JJC doesn’t have a large enough indoor venue to hold all of the graduates, family, and friends who attend. But do they really need this? The University of Illinois doesn’t have a large enough venue either, so they hold multiple ceremonies on the same day. JJC could do this too.
The secondary use would be as a field house for athletics. The mission for a community college is to prepare students in the community for jobs and continuing education at the lowest cost possible to students and the taxpayers. Once again, athletics would be a want and not a need in this economy. The board rightly made such a decision two years ago when they decided to eliminate the football program due to the cost and the need to balance the ever growing budget.
The current city center building project quickly grew from the initial plan of $24M public/private partnership to $58M -all taxpayer funded today. There was no jobs study, graduate success tracking, or economic study to justify the expansion. Likewise, this proposed Multipurpose building has had no due diligence to justify it either. It’s a want, not a need. How large will the cost grow?
Since the millions from the referendum are already spent, the board is pushing for most of this building to be funded by major tuition increases again. Of course, the board majority has discussed spreading the tuition increase out over two or three years because as one board member put it, “If we’re gonna put the arm on the students…I think we should break it up into pieces so they don’t get something caught in their throat.” This after having already raised tuition $19/credit hour since the recession started (2008-09), a 21.5% increase by itself. Any additional cost increases and operating and maintenance will end up on the shoulders of taxpayers and students.
Go to www.WillCounty2013.com for fiscally responsible candidates.
Brad Baber
Joliet
Joliet Junior College Board candidate
JJC has the capabilities of being a GREAT school for our county. COD charges $136 a credit hour which equates to a bit over $3000 a year. In tax time alone, you get up to $2500 in education credits for 4 years. Couple that up with all of the LARGE federal grants that blindly show up in your student accounts throughout your educational career and an increase in tuition doesn't have that much of an effect on students, the feds are paying for it. I say take the money while the feds are still handing it out. If JJC doesn't, another school will.
http://www.jjc.edu/about/college-info/institutional-research/Pages/fast-facts.aspx
http://collegecompletion.chronicle.com/state/#state=il§or=public_two So, not only is it low quality, it is not efficient. Additionally, JJC treats people and employees terribly. It has very high administrative turn-over (discarding the good people, working hard to keep the bad ones) and the board micro-manages. In this case, Baber is correct - tax dollars spent on a better institution would be worthwhile. In this case, students and taxpayers are largely throwing their dollars away.
We have a very high tax burden in Illinois, yet we have decreasing services. Projects like this one are why. JJC has embarked on a $45 million expansion of their culinary center. They did so w/o a post-graduate study. They had no idea if students were getting employment. When pressed, the head of the department could only cite two students who received jobs from the previous class. I know business owners who hire graduates at minimum wage. JJC has a fine culinary arts program, it just didn't need expansion. You know what needs expansion? Caterpillar. They used to employ 7000 workers. Now it is only 2000. Illinois politics is the reason why. They have expanded in Indiana and other states. But they are leaving here. JJC raised their property tax levy over 23% the last two years. Do you know what that does to small businesses? Projects like the one Brad brought to light are breaking the backs of the job creators. Maybe when we look like Detroit, you will see the error of your ways. BTW, I know several students and parents waiting for the "magic" money to appear in their accounts.
We are discussing how poorly they are managing our tax funds. We all know this thing will go overbudget and require escalating maintenance and utility fees. There will be some high-tech solar roof that leaks and costs $7 Million to replace. Bureaucrats must increase their budgets. It's their sole purpose. Students really don't care where their graduation happens- ours was in a basketball stadium at a state university (40K enrolled) and we had 2 seatings. Nobody lost any sleep. No more boondoggles, please.