Lane Community College president Margaret Hamilton passed out pizza and met with students to discuss the budget on the second floor of the Center Building on Tuesday Feb. 11. The pizza was provided by Bartolotti’s on the first floor allowing for a steady stream of pies.
A poster of the school’s current budget of over $128 million was displayed in the shape of a pizza and round orange — faux-pepperoni — stickers were available on the table beneath it.
Hamilton explained, “It’s getting to be budget season, so we want to know [how you] feel about these fees? Just to be fun, we said to put the pepperoni on the slice you value the most, we just want to get a sense of what the pattern is.”
By the end of the event all slices had received a couple stickers. However, the vast majority of the stickers were clustered in the technology and online courses slices.
Discussing the allocation of funds is important as the president and the Board of Education seek support for the 2020 LCC Bond. While students and faculty members stood in line for a slice, board member Rosemary Pryor passed out stickers and asked people to tell their families to support “Lane’s bond proposal on the May ballot.”
Hamilton motioned to the building as she said, “This is one of the nicest buildings on campus. However, there are other buildings that are not so nice. There are buildings where the Wi-Fi is weak, there are buildings where we’ve had to close the steps because they are broken so we are going out for a bond.”
According to Hamilton, the bond will help pay for further safety and security measures, improving infrastructure and equipment and bringing our career and technical education up to current standards. “If voters vote yes we can hopefully keep the tuition lower.”
The bond has yet to receive an official measure number but if approved, would provide approximately $121.5 million in additional funding. The proposed bond would increase the property tax in Lane County by $0.12 per $1,000 assessed value. The vast majority of the possible funding is set to go toward updating facilities, technical education programs and workforce training.
Hamilton and Pryor, while unable to talk to all of the over 75 people present, were engaged in conversations about budgeting and the bond throughout the hour-long event with various students and faculty members.
