Community College Districts Could Be Solution

For several years now, property owners, lawmakers, college administrators, staff and boosters have debated the best way to fund community colleges in Idaho.

Since Kootenai County citizens voted to levy a property tax to establish North Idaho Junior College some four decades ago, the scope and function of what has become North Idaho College have changed considerably. So too has the way community college functions are being funded elsewhere in the state.

Several decades ago, citizens in particular counties, including Ada, voted to levy a local property tax to establish junior colleges in their communities. At the time, public postsecondary education options were nonexistent in those communities. Well-meaning citizens wanted their children to have access to public education beyond high school, and the colleges were formed. Today, the situation that existed when the districts were first formed has changed drastically.

The University of Idaho, Idaho State University and Lewis-Clark State College have moved outward from the towns where their main campuses are located. Today those colleges and universities offer on-site and distance learning in virtually every major city and some not-so-big cities in Idaho. Residents of Kootenai County, one of the main beneficiaries of the extension of the UI and LCSC, can now complete a four-year degree without crossing the county line. Similar opportunities abound outside of Boise, home turf to Boise State University, and Pocatello, where ISU’s main campus is located.

Perhaps the greatest change driving the growing consternation in residents of Kootenai County continuing to support NIC with their property tax is the fact that other areas of the state are receiving community college programs without having to pay a property tax to support them. Since local residents voted for property tax support of what became NIC, the Legislature has discovered the importance of community college functions. Thus, LCSC, BSU, ISU and Eastern Idaho Technical College in Idaho Falls now deliver these services to the counties surrounding their main campuses without burdening those counties with a property tax to support these efforts.

Today, BSU delivers the same community college functions to residents of Ada County. Soon, with the completion of the BSU Canyon County campus, the same opportunities will be available to residents there. And, most unfairly, residents of those counties will not pay a penny in property tax to support the community college functions they are receiving.

EITC, located in Idaho Falls, is perhaps the most egregious example of the unfairness currently dealt to residents of Kootenai County, and the two counties that support CSI with property taxes. In the last decade, the citizens of Bonneville County voted by a huge majority to not support a community college there with their property taxes. Since then, EITC has evolved into a substantive vocational-technical institution that offers everything NIC offers, minus certain academic courses, which are supplied in Idaho Falls by ISU and UI.

Because of these and other facts, large property owners, with little or no association to NIC or CSI, have regularly called for the complete removal of the two-year colleges from the property tax rolls, insisting that they be funded completely by general fund revenues. The Kootenai County Property Owners Association and similar self-appointed watchdog groups have sung a similar song over the years. Conversely, some champions of NIC and CSI have, in the past, fought every effort to remove even a small portion of local property tax support from those institutions.

Insisting that Idaho’s community colleges be immediately and totally axed from any and all dependence on property taxes is not a reasonable option. Similarly, demands that NIC and CSI continue at current levels of property tax dependence are just as thoroughly unreasonable.

In the last year the debate has grown to a more universal look at the age-old impasse. It has thankfully evolved into a discussion that should yield quantifiable results within the foreseeable future. The discussion, initiated and led by local state Rep. Don Pischner, has matured into a comprehensive discussion of all reasonable options for funding community colleges in Idaho.

One idea, among several that seem to have merit, is the notion that Idaho’s colleges and universities should get out of the community college business - a role for which they are demonstrably ill-suited - and be replaced by statewide community college districts. Not surprisingly, in the 1960s the Idaho Legislature divided the state into six junior college districts (ID Code: Title 33; Chapter 21).

The North Idaho junior college district includes the five northernmost counties. If the district were to be formed, Kootenai County property owners would share their property tax burden with the other four counties in the district. In doing so, local property taxes would plummet as the burden is spread across the five-county district. In doing so, NIC would incur a demand for services in North Idaho’s most rural communities and the ability to fund those badly needed services.

With the implementation of the community college districts, the same scenario would be seen across Idaho especially in the smallest, most rural and poor communities in the Gem State where community college services are needed the most.

Perhaps most fair to the taxpayers of Kootenai County, implementation of the statewide community college districting would not only lower their local property tax burden, it would also diminish the need to pay increasingly higher taxes into the state’s general fund to support community college functions in areas of Idaho for people who voted to not support a community college.