Jeff Shaffer, vice president, and Tim Cook, presenting information about the bond. Photo taken by Jackson Arterberry.

By Daegan Waagmeester and Gabriel Elmosleh
Staff Writer and News Editor

Clackamas Community College is asking voters to tax themselves for a new building to replace Clairmont Hall, as well to finance a new track nice enough that student athletes can actually compete on it. With the November election right around the corner, The Clackamas Print sat down with Tim Cook, college president, and Jeff Shaffer, vice president of finance and operations, to discuss details on projects if the Nov. 5 bond proposal passes. Bond measure 3-613, the college argues, will not increase taxes because it replaces the 2014 bond measure tax, which is expiring.

The Clackamas Print: Can you explain what this bond measure will do? Why should we vote for it?

Cook: So bond measures are the only way that we can build or repair facilities, unless somebody decides to give us a big lump of money. Learning has changed a lot in the last five years, and will continue to change. So online learning is the technology that we need to be thinking about. So a big part of the bond is looking at those buildings and making sure that we have up-to-date technology in ways for our faculty and students to learn. I think the exciting project that’s coming out of it is the Center of Excellence for Agriculture and Horticulture, where we’re looking at our wildland fire or horticulture program, as well as the possible OSU extension.

A water-damaged ceiling outside of Pauling. Photo taken by Carlos Rodriguez-Picazo.

Shaffer: The project that President Cook referenced, the Center of Excellence, is really about building a nice, iconic building right by our back door. If you go down Beavercreek Road entrance, it’s like the back door of the horticulture center. This will be an opportunity for us to take that entrance and make it a beautiful building right at the entrance. And take the classes and the academic programs that are currently in our oldest building, Clairmont.

TCP: What else would the bond measure pay for?

Shaffer: Other projects are that our athletic fields are out of compliance to be able to do large regional events for track and field because it’s not an Olympic size track. Our women’s soccer team currently has to go down the hill in Oregon City to the Pioneer Stadium to practice and play. So this would allow us to build a synthetic field in the middle of that track and actually have our own soccer fields on campus. And then we’re going to modernize classrooms in our oldest buildings, such as McLoughlin and Dye. And that’s another opportunity where they’re just the old traditional classrooms of 30 desks looking at a whiteboard. And other projects like updating our Douglas Loop Trail to have a complete trail.

TCP: We wanted to ask something about the Challenger Center. What led to the development of what we’ll call the space simulation for STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) growth?

Cook: A couple of years ago, the Challenger Center organization reached out about a possibility of a partnership. It was an interesting way to increase STEM opportunities for our K-12 students in the area and get them onto campus. And then as we talked to our science faculty, there was some excitement around that too. The closest one is in Spokane. It’s not anything that’s in Oregon or around here.

TCP: A lot of the bond advertisements mention security improvements. Are there any specific areas or, even specific buildings, you guys intend to implement those updates?

Shaffer: When we built the new parking lots, we got new cameras for those lots. On the old cameras, like over by the bookstore, you see a car and it’s pixelated. You go over to the bus center and you have a beautiful high-def vision. So tells us that we really should have those consistent, nice high-definition cameras across our campus. There’s also some areas where there aren’t any cameras already. So this would be an opportunity to have consistent nice cameras, covering most of our areas around campus and Wilsonville and Harmony campus. And another piece is the access control. If you notice access control doors for the key card openings on these doors, the newer buildings have them but there’s still a handful of buildings that have key doors along with some of the interior areas. So the access control would be for doors that need to have security, but could do it through keycards instead of through physical keys. So those are the types of good examples of where we have gaps and some safety and security that we know of.

TCP: With expansions being made to the horticulture and welding buildings, can we expect more classes to be held there? Maybe even some new majors?

Cook: When we look at adding new programs, it’s almost a separate conversation from this bond. In this case really about updating and upgrading. We’re not necessarily even looking at expansion as we are looking at making sure we’re using our existing spaces better.

TCP: You mentioned enhancing the online and distance learning side of things. Any ideas on what the physical campus enhancements would be for distance learning? Webcams, computers, that sort of thing? Or will this be more on the software side of things?

Cook: Yes and yes. I have had experiences where you’re sitting here in a physical meeting, talking to somebody, and then right afterwards, you need to get on Zoom or you need to connect in some way. And so having spaces where in the classroom you could be there physically or you could be watching the lecture from home or in a sort of a hybrid version of that classroom and really being able to do that requires both hardware and software upgrades. We’ve got some classrooms that are set up to do that. We want more, and then beyond that we want to take some existing spaces and create spaces where if you need to hop in again on a Zoom classroom or something like that, and you can’t get to where you need to be, here could be this little conference room where you walk in and it’s one button then you can get onto your class.

TCP: You mentioned working with Oregon State University. Would you mind maybe elaborating a little bit more on what a partnership with OSU would entail?

Cook: Oregon State University Extension is in every county in Oregon and they do things like 4-H and small farms and they also teach a lot of cooking sort of things. They do what I would call noncredit community education. But they’re really important parts of the community, and they get used quite a lot. So the Clackamas County OSU extension office is about a mile from here. It’s on the Red Soils campus. And they also came to us, not unlike the Challenger Center, a few years back and said, hey, we’re interested in coming onto Clackamas Community College’s campus. Do you have space that we could rent or we could lease? We said, not really, but we’re getting ready to do this bond and put together this building. What do you think about maybe going in with us? And they were pretty excited about that because we could plan this together. This is not new. There are two or three that I know of, community colleges in Oregon that have the extension office on their campus, and they, in some cases, are just leasing space and in other cases, they’re more integrated. I’m really into more of the integration. It could be a real showcase on Beavercreek Road. They do forestry work and they do a lot of tree work. We have our tree school here that they run, but we host it here on our campus. So think about it, you’re driving by on Beavercreek Road and you’ve got a big lighted two story building with big huge trees inside of it, that’s cool for them. It’s also cool for the arboriculture program here on campus. That’s teaching people how to manage trees and how to prune. And so that was an area where we could collaborate potentially and do something really interesting.  We also could have a commercial kitchen and classroom where we could teach some of these things. As long as there’s a multi-use space that we could have for classrooms, there’s some opportunities to really collaborate with them.

TCP: Some voters are concerned about the financial cost of the bond measure. Anything you can say to reassure them about voting for the bond measure?

Shaffer: The key piece is that it doesn’t increase anybody’s taxes. That’s why you do a renewal bond is because it’s already built into what folks are currently paying for taxes. So it’s an average of around $87 for the average homeowner paying taxes here in Clackamas County per year.

TCP: Do either of you have a specific thing you’re looking forward to seeing added to this campus through this bond?

Cook: I’m really excited about this Natural Resources Center of Excellence. It just feels to me like a game changer for the campus. When we talk to different businesses and nurseries and people and farmers that are not just current farmers, but as they’re passing this down, generationally to really have places to learn and learn about advanced farming techniques. You can get kind of geeky about it when you’ve got robots out there managing your fields and growing your crops. There’s a lot there that I think Clackamas Community College could be really on the cutting edge of that I’m pretty excited about. The other one, I would say, is having an outdoor grandstand. We don’t have a place in Clackamas County that’s big enough to really host large outdoor events. So for us to be able to have graduation outside in our field and having a covered grandstand is something that we don’t currently have access to.

Shaffer: I’ll say one thing that I’m really excited about is we have a large pot of money for deferred major maintenance here to take care of our older buildings that have old water piping and they have old heating and cooling systems. Big brick buildings like Barlow and Randall, they’re actually hard to keep cool during summer and keep warm during winter. So things like this really excite me. Or we can get some of those big, huge things that really need to get done on those old buildings built in the late 60s, early 70s and get them more efficient and up to modern standards of repair. So I feel like that to me is those types of things are really kind of exciting to be able to use money to not just build a bunch of shiny stuff, but also really take care of what you have.

This interview has been edited for clarity and space.