SFCC Bond: What's Next?

After voters approved Santa Fe Community College's

$35 million bond

request

, SFR put in a call to SFCC President Sheila Ortego to see what that means for the college's immediate future—

and whether SFCC board members got tax write-offs to push the plan.

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As the roughly 5,000 Santa Feans who voted on the bond will

, the bulk of it—approximately $12 million—is slated for the construction of a new

Higher Education Center

near the College of Santa Fe (which on Aug. 30 will

to the Santa Fe University of Art and Design).

Ortego says the prototype for the Center, which has been touted as a means of giving SFCC students more degree options at a site closer to town, will run as a

pilot project

in fall 2011. Ortego says she expects "between 200 and 500" students for the pilot degree program.

"We're expecting larger numbers when we roll out the full program," Ortego tells SFR.

Ortego, who says she was "cautiously optimistic" that the bond would pass, says SFCC will release an RFP—request for proposal—under which other colleges and universities across New Mexico can offer to partner with SFCC in the Higher Ed Center in the next few months.

SFR also asked Ortego about an odd item on the

from an April 29 meeting of SFCC's governing board. From those minutes:

Now that the campaign is organized and “

” has been established,‘we are requesting the following from Board members.

1. Make a personal tax-deductible contribution to the campaign committee through the

.

The GROW Foundation, which supports the College's programs and facilities, is tax-exempt. As such, it can offer tax write-offs to donors.

But here's the catch:

What if the

donations were made for the specific purpose of advocacy?

Advocacy, no less, for

increasing the public's share of funding SFCC through a bond?

"The GROW Foundation

can't spend more than 5 percent of the time on advocacy

, and we certainly pass that test," Ortego tells SFR. But since taxpayer money can't be spent on advocacy, Ortego adds, it's "very standard practice" to use foundation money instead.

In the recent bond vote, though, board members' donations and tax breaks were something of a non-issue.

"We only had one board member who contributed

to the campaign," Ortego says. Ortego says she doesn't know whether that board member will claim his/her

$100 donation

as a tax deduction.

Santa Fe Reporter