Trustee candidates speak

COEUR d'ALENE - Candidates vying for seats on the North Idaho College Board of Trustees went head-to-head Tuesday on the college campus they each hope to help govern.

With two weeks to go until the Nov. 2 general election, the candidate forum, hosted by Associated Students of North Idaho College - NIC's student governmental body - brought nearly 200 students, faculty and community members out to hear the candidates respond to a series of student-prepared questions.

The candidates all said NIC should continue to offer a broad range of opportunities that meet the educational and economic needs of the community.

"As board members, we look at all areas that students look to for a career path or just academic enrichment," said incumbent Christie Wood. "We try to focus and balance all those areas that are important, and as a board member you're constantly faced with those kinds of decisions about where do we put our resources, and I think we listen very carefully to the community, we look at the job trends, and again, we look at where students want to be."

Robert Ketchum, former longtime director of NIC's Workforce Training Center in Post Falls is challenging Wood, a six-year NIC board member, for Seat B.

Ketchum said his focus is to ensure the college is offering "a broad range of services at times and locations that meet your need, and in as low cost a manner as possible."

Coeur d'Alene attorney Ken Howard, and Post Falls businessman Ron Nilson are competing for board Seat A being vacated by retiring trustee Rolly Williams.

Howard said keeping an open mind about the needs of the community, by communicating with all groups - business, retail, technical and the students themselves - is imperative to maintaining a student-centered focus at NIC.

Howard's own four children all received college degrees in Idaho, but for employment after graduation, he said they all had to leave North Idaho.

"There has to be a connection between job opportunities, a decent pay scale for those opportunities, and the education that we're able to offer," Howard said.

Nilson called for a greater effort to inform students about available local employment opportunities.

"Our job has to be at this college to build a bridge between the business community, between the jobs, and make sure that our students that come here know that those jobs exist," Nilson said.

Ketchum said the board should be seeking better ways to provide efficient service to students, including dealing with the high cost of books which he estimates to be $1,000 per year for the typical college student.

"We need to be looking at ways to overall reduce the cost of being a student, so you can get the most out of being here at the lowest possible cost, accelerate your passage through the system rather than keeping you there for a long time," Ketchum said. "The college needs to be very careful about how much money we're taking from the taxpayer, how much money we're taking from the student, get you what you need and move you on, and serve you later when you have other needs."

Regarding prioritizing the college's master plan, Ketchum pointed to finding new ways to deliver education, through online offerings and blended classes that offer a mix of online distance education and classroom time.

Wood said programs are the most important planning concern.

"When we decide what program we're going to go with, then we look at what the facilities will be," Wood said.

She said NIC's board has made building a joint-use facility on the former mill site adjacent to the college campus its top priority.

"If that comes to play, what an amazing opportunity for students in the future," Wood said. "That's part of the board's role, is to always be not only focused on what our needs are now, but what do we need in the future, and how do we position the college so that we'll be successful in the future so they have the space to grow, the space to accommodate those programs we know we'll need."

Trustees approved the college's acquisition of the roughly 17-acre mill site in 2008, and completed the $10 million transaction last year. The NIC Foundation purchased the land, and is leasing it to the college. The land will become the property of the college when the lease ends.

The joint-use building will be funded and used by project partners NIC, Lewis-Clark State College and the University of Idaho.

Nilson said master planning of facilities has to come after the needs of the students and community are met.

"There's a huge disconnect between the way we're doing it today, and the possibilities, the dream of the future, for this college," he said.

Nilson said that four years ago the North Idaho Manufacturing Consortium, a 47-member group of area businesses, presented the college with a list of jobs that need to be filled in the region, and some still remain unfilled "because we didn't do the job that we need to be doing at this community college."

"Who knows better of the jobs in the future than the people that are hiring these people?" Nilson said.

The candidates fielded a question from the audience regarding their thoughts on whether the mill site land for the education corridor should have been purchased for NIC.

Howard said he supported the acquisition, calling it "a tremendous necessity to the life and vitality of this educational institution."

"If we had not accomplished the feat of adding that mill site to the land surrounding it, NIC would have been trapped in a much smaller footprint, and its opportunity to grow and to meet the needs of this community would have been severely confined."

Nilson disagreed with his opponent, and criticized the current board for moving forward on the land deal without a plan.

"We moved forward without a clear understanding of what we were doing, and felt this tremendous amount of pressure," Nilson said. "Do I believe the education corridor could be something special? You bet. But I believe that spending, doubling the taxes on our taxpayers here in North Idaho in the last five years, without a plan is irresponsible."

Wood said she believes the community will look back in a decade, and be grateful the trustees decided to move forward with land transaction.

"It's really a unique model. I think it will be a model for the rest of the state to follow when you look at higher education that is no longer demanding to have their own footprint, and have their own identity," Wood said. "Instead, they're willing to collaborate and share resources, and that can only help our students and our taxpayers."

The community college trustee position is nonpartisan. Trustees are elected at large from within Kootenai County, and serve as volunteers with no compensation.