$497 million proposal would not require property tax increase for residents
Following five years of unparalleled student growth, Lone Star College System officials have called for a $497.7 million bond election May 11. If approved by voters, the money will pay for several new instructional buildings and increased parking spaces at the LSC–CyFair and University Park campuses.
"The bond election is all about growth," said Ray Laughter, LSCS vice chancellor for external affairs. "The last bond election we held was in 2008, and we've had phenomenal growth since then. We've added 30,000 students system-wide in those five years. When you add 60 percent system growth in five years, you have to prepare for the next wave of it."
Bond details
Throughout the past several months, college administrators, community members and local business leaders took part in a multi-step process to determine which projects will be needed at each LSCS campus in the next few years.
"It started with an external review of the condition of our facilities to see what repairs and renovations were needed, and it looked at where we needed additional space for programs and campuses," Laughter said. "We took that information to a citizen's group. We had 80 people from across our district go through a two-month process to prioritize and come back to us with a recommendation in February."
This bond election, like the ones in 2000 and 2008, will not require a property tax increase for several reasons, college officials said.
"We have lowered the number of things we're asking for," said Audre Levy, president of Lone Star College–CyFair. "We're trying to be wise to maximize our resources."
The college system's Triple A bond rating also allows them to borrow money at a lower rate, and historically the LSCS has paid down debt early in order to not accumulate more fast enough to require a tax increase, Laughter said.
"We have a track record of being able to do what we say we'll do in terms of the tax rate," he said.
The average homeowner in the LSCS district boundaries would pay roughly $180 in taxes per year on a $150,000 home with a tax rate of $0.1210 per $100 of valuation.
If the bond package is approved, the LSCS will gather bids and then sell the bond money to construct the proposed projects. The college system will pay back the debt over time.
CyFair projects
The $497 million in proposed bond money is divided up among LSCS's campuses—CyFair, Tomball, University Park, Montgomery, North Harris and Kingwood.
LSC–CyFair—the system's largest campus, which grew from 13,000 students to 19,000 since the last bond election in 2008—has $55 million worth of future projects planned through the proposed bond money. One thousand parking spaces will be built at the main campus, and 200 will be added at the LSC–Fairbanks Center off Hwy. 290 and Fairbanks N. Houston Road.
"With the expansion of Hwy. 290, we're losing 140 parking spaces, which might not seem significant, but each spot is projected to carry six students," Levy said.
Two new instructional buildings—one 100,000 square feet and another 50,000 square feet—are planned to keep up with the student growth, much of which comes from Cy-Fair ISD. About 28 percent of the district's graduating seniors start college at LSC–CyFair, while most districts send about 10 percent to the local community college, Levy said.
"We need more classrooms at CyFair," Laughter said. "They're adding 150,000 square feet of instructional buildings to keep up with the growth."
University Park projects
When the LSCS purchased the former Compaq world headquarters near Hwy. 249 and Louetta Road in 2009 as the site for its sixth campus, University Park campus administrators could not have imagined the growth the site would see in three years. University Park saw a 44 percent student population increase in the past year, and the campus has more than 6,000 students.
"We built this, and they came," said Shah Ardalan, campus president. "The Lone Star College system is the fastest growing in the country, and University Park is the fastest growing within the fastest growing [system]."
With an increased number of students come the needs for more instructional space at the campus. Although there is a lot of office space on the campus, only basic science courses with no lab requirements are offered there.
"Fire codes and infrastructure is different for a chemistry lab, so we have challenges with changing from office to lab space—it's not practical," Ardalan said.
The proposed 50,000-square-foot science building will stand alone on the campus and will complement a proposed 45,000-square-foot instructional arts building.
