MHCC Bond On May Ballot

April 25, 2025Informative, News0

The long–sought Mt. Hood Community College bond measure (following a handful of unsuccessful attempts, the most recent in 2017) is finally going to have its moment on the ballot, again.
Oregon’s May 20 special election will include the $136.4 million tax proposal for all property owners in the college’s far-reaching district, which was formally adopted on Jan. 15 by the MHCC District Board of Education.

The summary submitted to explain the bond proposal to voters mostly focuses on how the bond money would repair aging facilities, update classrooms, create a new health professions center and construct a cover for the college’s outdoor swimming pool. These are the top-line items the college is focusing on as it goes to ask the community to support funding the bond.

Otherwise, the explanation to voters about the bond is rather sparce.

The best available information we have about how the bond could change MHCC comes from the 10-year facilities plan presented to the Board in June 2024. The plan includes all the items described above, plus a more detailed explanation about what renovating the campus could look like.

Any final impacts are still in play. Responding by email, Jennifer DeMent, vice president of finance for the college, explained to me that bond projects are often “conceptual and require extensive stakeholder engagement to finalize details.”

In that context, the bond should be understood more as starting a process than approving a completed proposal. For now, as point of conjecture, we can examine the ideas presented in the facilities planning document to get a sense of what the college hopes to achieve with the bond.

Health Professions

The bond proposal explicitly includes the creation of a health professions center, which the facilities plan recommends should create an interdisciplinary environment for students in the college’s health professions programs.

Currently, one of the college’s mini-campuses, The Bruning Center near central Gresham, is the location of the college’s nursing program. The creation of a health profession center would likely relocate the nursing program to the main campus.

This centralizing of the college’s health programs could create an opportunity for the college to reduce its total footprint and operating costs. In light of the “surplus of general-purpose classrooms” the facilities report describes currently at the Gresham campus, this might make sense.

As it now stands, DeMent said, “No decision has been made regarding the future of the Bruning Center after the Nursing program relocates to the Gresham campus.”

Aquatics

The construction of a permanent, retractable roof around the outside Olympic-sized swim pool at Mt. Hood’s Aquatics center seems to serve two purposes for the college.

First off, the pool roof has been one of the clearest talking points I’ve seen the college manage to get out into the public. As a part of campus used by more members of the community besides just students, the pools seems to be a feature the college believes it can get people to relate to: Updating its pools is a tangible benefit the college can show to community members in return for them supporting the bond.

Second, the Aquatics center is a side business the college runs that earns revenue. The thinking behind the roof is that if the pool can remain open longer during the winter months, the center can produce more revenue by hosting more events, in working with its partners. A roof also would allow year-round use by Mt. Hood students.

Maintenance

Several parts of the campus are showing the effects of aging as time passes. The bond aims to renovate the campus to replace aging infrastructure that is either approaching or already beyond its intended lifespan.

Charles George, Mt. Hood’s associate vice president of facilities, public safety, risk and environmental health and safety, said that only about a third of roofs on campus have been recently replaced or treated, leaving the rest at the cusp of pushing beyond their expected lifespan.
As the roofs continue to age they are going to require increasing maintenance to prevent water damage, but even that will only work for so long, he said.

It’s a similar story for the fire control panels. George said if he isn’t able to make improvements or changes soon, the college will be left with another problematic patchwork system to maintain.
“We’re at a point where I have to upgrade all the fire panels or at some point eventually I’m not going to be able to get replacement parts and I’m (going to have) multiple fire systems, which would be weird,” he said.

In addition, the bond measure proceeds would go toward repairs of siding, floors, air conditioning and electrical systems.

General Modernization

The college wants to update all the classrooms across campus to be equipped with consistent, newer technology, replace the remaining chalkboards on campus with whiteboards, and have dedicated hybrid learning instructional space (available for in-person and virtual sessions).

Accessibility

The college’s plan would make the campus more accessible by increasing the number of elevators and updating some of the campus’s older existing ones. The college has two main elevators used for accessibility purposes – the elevator next to the library and the elevator in the Student Union. George said the elevator in the Student Union “is at an age that it needs to be modernized to prevent future breakdown.”
The plan also includes renovating bathrooms to be both more accessible and non-gender specific.

Safety and Security

One of the features of the bond-funded plan emphasized by the college is the ability to instantly lock down the building in the event of an active shooter scenario.

This change would require replacement of physical door keys with a key card system. Currently, George says that the college must order physical keys, replace lost ones and even replace the locks on doors in the case that a employee departs MHCC and forgets to return that key. With an access card system instead, changes would be easier and the college would have the ability to secure the system “almost immediately,” he said.

Besides more easily securing the physical doors on campus, bond money could improve the college’s security camera system by replacing a patchwork of incompatible security camera systems with a unified security camera system, school officials say.

Renovating science labs

The facilities document notes that current set-up of the science labs and associated storage is “very outdated and require[s] a signifcant renovation to promote current science instruction and safe chemical handling.” The college is planning to get $8 million in funding from matching grants from the Oregon Legislature to fund these classroom upgrades – but must come up with $8 million of its own, and the bond would surely help. (Currently, the bill that would authorize that funding (SB5505) is making its way through the Legislature.)

Student Activity Centers

Along with the other very practical suggestions for what types of infrastructure improvements are essential and would better suit the requirements of specialized instruction, the planning document also discusses creating new areas that would give students more informal spaces on campus in which to socialize and to work on group projects.

The addition of any new student lounges would aim to serve all of students’ most basic needs in one space: bathrooms, food and water, and group study areas. The facilities plan suggests adding a microwave and a vending machine in the student lounges, at a minimum. This would be a continuation of the college’s efforts to increase access to food options on campus (outside of the recent large expansion of the Barney’s Pantry).

Library Renovations

The Mt. Hood Library appears relatively unchanged since the college was built in the 1960s, with the exception of improved technology and some hanging decorative panels that were removed. Focus on any large plans to renovate the library has decreased since the earlier stages of the bond development process.

In sum

At its core, the MHCC bond proposal is about fueling a modernization project. The bond would fund critical infrastructure repairs, less obvious preventative upgrades, and changes in suitable classroom capabilities and allow for reimagining how its spaces should serve student needs.
The fallout of missing out on a successful bond could be significant.

According to DeMent this could be a critical point in time for what trajectory the college takes into the future: “If we’re not able to pass the bond, our risk increases even more with the age and condition of our facilities.”