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Forsyth voters OK $62M bond package
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Published: November 5, 2008
Forsyth County voters approved a $62 million bond package yesterday, paving the way for Forsyth Technical Community College to expand and Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools to move its administrative offices and build a new Career Center.
According to complete but unofficial results, 90,930 residents voted in favor of the bond package and 55,252 voted against it.
The majority of the bond money will go to the school system, which will spend $38.6 million to build a new Career Center and move its offices.
Forsyth Tech will spend $21 million of the money to renovate the school system's administrative offices and the Career Center space. College officials plan to use the expansions for classrooms and labs.
The college will use another $2.6 million to tear down old buildings near the campus to use the land as green space, officials said.
The Piedmont Building, for example, which houses Forsyth Tech's diesel program, is one of the buildings scheduled for demolition. Its foundation is more than 50 years old and is deteriorating, officials said.
Gary Green, the president of Forsyth Tech, said that an enrollment increase was behind the push for the bond package. More people are coming to the college during the hard economic times, he said.
"It's the community college where people turn for new opportunity and hope in tough economic times," Green said. "I think that's resonated with the voters."
Forsyth Tech has 2,965 full-time students enrolled in classes this fall and expects up to a 10 percent increase to 3,262 next fall, Green said.
The new space will also give the college room to develop some new programs, including a culinary-arts and food-service program, he said.
"There's a lot of new opportunity that we think will come with taking in the Career Center for programs that can lead to good jobs for people," he said.
The bond could add 1.25 cents to the existing property-tax rate of 69.6 cents for every $100 of assessed property valuation, which could mean a tax-bill increase of about $19 for the owner of $150,000 house, county officials have said.
Don Martin, the superintendent of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, said that the school system will work to find the best places for its offices and the Career Center.
"It's a matter of what we can sort of make work and what we can afford," Martin said.
"From our standpoint, the very first time that Gary Green talked to me, I said we're happy to cooperate, it just doesn't need to cost us any money," Martin said. "We're just looking to have comparable space to what we have."
■ Lisa Boone-Wood can be reached at 727-7232 or at lboone-wood@wsjournal.com.
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