Katie Larson
On February 6th voters approved a $25.5 million general obligation bond issue for Iowa Central Community College. The bond needed to be approved by at least 60 percent of voters, and the final numbers showed that 67.5 percent of people voted yes. The bond easily passed this year after it failed by such a slim margin last year.
“We just didn’t educate the community well enough last year, I think they just wanted to know for sure what we were doing. This time we got our message out more clearly, and worked with the community through reaching out to newspapers. Another idea was reaching out to our own students at Iowa Central. I think working together really helped us get it to pass this time around,” Iowa Central Community College President Dan Kinney explained.
This bond issue will pay for infrastructure improvements at the college campuses in Eagle Grove, Fort Dodge, Storm Lake and Webster City. Specifically for the Fort Dodge campus we can look forward to seeing changes in the classroom. The idea is to make the buildings ready for more technology that can make classrooms more innovative and interactive. Another upgrade would be turning the Student Support Services building into a creative space to link programs that work together all in the same place.
Dr. Kinney added, “The original intention behind this bond issue was to figure out how we could continue upgrading our school to move forward and create a workforce for the future. Most of these buildings are 50 years old, so we need general maintenance to get our campus ready for another 50 years of running.”
You can expect to start seeing changes on the Fort Dodge campus hopefully by this summer of 2018. Meetings are taking place almost every Friday to come up with a master plan, as well as completing functional designs for all of the upgrades. Making a timeline is a main focus right now so that they won’t have to shut down buildings or classrooms.
Bond projects:
- Improvements to Decker Auditorium on the Fort Dodge Campus
- Remodeling of the Student Services Building
- Upgrades to the Applied Science and Technology building
- Repairing the Liberal Arts building
- Upgrades to the Science Building
- New industrial training facility in Storm Lake
- Creation of new career academies
- Safety improvements
- New biofuels testing lab
- Upgrading the Webster City campus
Dr. Kinney continued, “We have a lot of two year programs here at Iowa Central, and these upgrades are designed to figure out how we can keep our youth in our local communities, as well as get them into the workforce. We’re looking forward to seeing how these upgrades will support our classrooms, and maybe even add some new programs to our campus eventually.”
