GRAND CHUTE — Plans are under way to expand Fox Valley Technical College’s main campus and one off-campus site with five major projects totaling $65 million to $85 million, officials said.
FVTC’s Board of Trustees is considering a facilities development plan that identifies five top-priority projects, along with the purchase of land next to the college's Advanced Manufacturing Technology Center in Oshkosh and the purchase/expansion of a leased facility in Chilton.
♦ FVTC facts and figures
The centerpiece of the proposal is a $32 million public safety training center that would be located at the Outagamie County Regional Airport in Greenville.
The facility would provide state-of-the-art classroom and hands-on training opportunities for students along with police, firefighters and emergency medical services professionals from throughout the U.S.
With a sensitivity toward the current economic conditions, FVTC officials have embarked on a deliberate process and are seeking to gauge public support for the projects — including a possible spring 2012 referendum to finance some or all of them — through “school perceptions” surveys distributed this week to community leaders throughout the Fox Cities, along with a random telephone survey of the public.
Survey results are expected to help the nine-member Board of Trustees make a recommendation on how to proceed at its Nov. 15 meeting. As it stands, the proposal is the largest in FVTC’s history.
A growing student population seeking technical training, employer demands for a skilled work force and historic low borrowing costs are mitigating factors that offset the economic concerns, officials said.
“It’s a very challenging thing to do in any economic condition,” FVTC president Susan May told The Post-Crescent on Thursday. “The board is really trying to assess, ‘Is this the right time to go to the public?’ It’s a huge balancing act for us.”
During the past three years, FVTC’s former nontraditional students — adults in their 30s, 40s, 50s and even 60s — have become traditional
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