Thank you. I am pleased and honored to be with you. I would like to thank you, the members of the Association, and Ron Aycock and his staff, for your strong support for community colleges over the years and especially for your forthright resolution in support of the higher education bonds.

    County commissioners have been our partners in community college education since day one. Our success is dependent upon you. It has been in the past, it is in the present, and it will be in the future.

    Since the beginning, you have willingly assumed your legal responsibility for building and maintaining community college facilities. You have built the finest campuses you were able to build and maintained and operated them. However, the responsibility for community college facilities is an increasingly difficult one for county governments to bear on your own.

    Since our system was established in 1963, you as county officials have faced much larger financial responsibilities for many vital programs, including social programs such as public health and welfare, and for fast-growing public schools.

    In 1963, a fairly small percentage of North Carolinians attended college, and only a portion of those chose community colleges. The programs offered by the community colleges at that time were relatively inexpensive and very much local in focus, tailored just for your county.

    In 2000, the economy and education have been changed dramatically. Many more jobs demand education beyond high school. A larger percentage of our people go to college; even more should be going, if we’re going to keep up with industry demands. Our big industries are shifting to high-tech. Community college programs that educate and train our people for these good high-tech jobs are increasingly expensive and, as is the economy, increasingly regional in scope.

    You and your colleagues have worked diligently to try to keep up with these changing demands. In 1993, the successful statewide bond referendum provided $250 million in state investment for community colleges. Many of you have launched successful local bonds and made sacrifices in order to maintain your community colleges under a "Pay as you go" system.

    But now you…and we…just can’t keep up with the needs we already have, and we are looking increased enrollment just in community colleges of the equivalent of more than 58,000 students by the end of the decade.

    Fortunately, the members of the General Assembly have recognized this, and have put on the ballot for November a higher education bond package that includes $600 million for community colleges and $2.5 billion for the 16 campuses and other facilities of the University of North Carolina.

    The bond payout extends over six years, which allows each institution time to plan and build.

    All of the repair and renovation funds for community colleges, totaling $101 million, will be available to the community colleges without ANY requirement for non-state matching funds. Our system has been in existence more than 35 years. The repair and renovation needs are very great, and this investment will make a tremendous difference to every community college.

    In addition, $387 million of the money designated for new construction at community colleges will go to counties without ANY requirement for non-state matching funds. That adds up to a total of about $488 million without matching requirements.

    The General Assembly decided to base the match calculation on a formula similar to the one used by public schools to determine ability to pay. Counties also received credit for previous local investments which exceeded matching requirements for state funds provided in the past; this "overmatch" credit has reduced or eliminated the requirement for non-state matching funds in many additional counties. The bonds won’t automatically require any county to provide local funds. The proposal allows local officials to decide whether to accept full funding and provide matching funds, or to accept just the funds that don’t call for a match.

    No matter how you look at it, however, the fact of the matter is that this bond proposal represents savings for counties, not a cost. That’s because without the bonds, you are responsible for 100 percent of the cost of maintaining, repairing, renovating and building community college facilities. With the bonds, the least you will get is all your repair and renovation money, plus half the cost of new construction!

    Everybody wants to know, "Will this raise my taxes?" As far as state taxes go, our State Treasurer says no. Harlan Boyles has said that given our state’s strong economy, North Carolina should be able to handle the bonds with no increase in state taxes.

    As far as local taxes go, well, it’s clear to me that there’s much more chance they will go up if the bonds fail! That’s because the entire obligation falls back on your county budgets.

    So the first thing that will happen if the bonds fail is that property taxes will go up.

    The second thing that will happen if the bonds fail is that opportunity for your citizens and for your voters will go DOWN. Community college folks pride ourselves on our role as the open door to economic and educational opportunity for North Carolinians. Without these bonds, many people who want and need education and training will find those doors slammed shut. The same is true within the four-year campuses of the University of North Carolina system.

    What then? If the bonds fail, the third thing that will happen is your county’s economy and the state’s economy will suffer.

    Business and industry locate and expand where they can count on a trained workforce. That’s no accident. Look at the critical mass formed by UNC-Chapel Hill, NC State, Duke, NC Central, Durham Tech and Wake Tech in the thriving Triangle. The labor market is so tight in the Triangle that companies snatch high-tech students out of the classroom before they finish. The programs that train them have to grow to keep up, here and across the state. Otherwise, very quickly, these employers of the future will go elsewhere to grow.

    If the bonds fail, the fourth thing that will happen is that your county will miss the economic stimulus of $3.1 billion spent in construction jobs and materials. Many of you come from counties blessed with a community college and a University. You will have a double impact.

    Think about the positive impact of 5,000 new college students. Think about the goods and services they buy from your local merchants.

    This is a bargain we can’t pass up. You need to be our greatest allies and champions. Your executive committee has passed a resolution. Each of you needs to make sure that your commission passes a resolution. And please don’t stop there! Campaign your heart out for these bonds.

    This is money in your county’s pocket. It is opportunity for your people.

###