$90 million Moore Norman Technology Center bond on the ballot of Tuesday special election

Early voting begins Thursday ahead of next Tuesday's special election, and one of the items on the ballot is a $90 million bond.

The Moore Norman Technology Center is asking voters in Oklahoma, Cleveland and McClain Counties to approve the bond, at the cost of a slight property tax increase.

News 9 spoke with Moore Norman Technology Center Superintendent Brian Ruttman about what the proposed bond could mean for students.

Q: Can you explain to us what happens on the Moore Norman Technology Center campus?

A: "Moore Norman Technology Center is one of the 29 technology centers in the state of Oklahoma. We are primarily serving Moore and Norman Public Schools, that's how our district lines are established, but we serve high school students and adults in career training programs. We do everything from healthcare, education, to construction trades like HVAC [and] electrical, we do welding classes. Then we also do short-term classes for, maybe, someone that's trying to get their workforce skilled up on a new software they're rolling out, or a new company's coming in, we would help them with onboarding those employees, giving them the training they need to be ready to go."

Q: How many students are we talking about on the short term side?

A: "We have about 12,000 students we served last year with our more traditional, long-term programs. That's where we have the high school and adults in one and two-year programs. We have 1800 students currently."

Q: Can you tell us about this bond proposal? $90 million to improve the campus, where will that money go? How will it meet current needs?

A: "This last year, we turned about 25% of our qualified applicants away, so we're really trying to get our capacity up to serve more students. We're not like a traditional K-12 high school system where you can put a portable building in a parking lot, put a teacher in there, put the books in there, and the students show up and go. Take our aerospace program, we have to have very specialized tools, equipment, and spaces to meet those student needs. So where we're seeing our greatest demand right now is with the healthcare field and with construction trades; huge shortages with workforce in our area right now, but in the next 10 years, you're going to see nursing demand increase by over 12%, over 9% in those construction construction trade fields as well. Our hope is by investing now, getting those students in that are desiring to be in our programs, getting them trained, we're going to have the workforce that's there to meet the needs of our industries."

Q: We've heard from people who are not happy when you say "property tax" to fund something. A lot of times it does come at the request of a property ta, so what do you say to people that this would impact?

A: "Absolutely, you know we try to be very fiscally responsible with what we do at Moore Norman Technology Center, and from our standpoint, we're seeing two big demands: student demand that wants to come into our programs, [and] industry ... Those employers that need a workforce. So to the community that's out there, next time you need a health care provider, there's a huge shortage there. Next time you need a plumber or an electrician [or] HVAC tech to come out and do repairs, there are shortages there, so we're bridging that gap. We're working to make sure that we can keep enough employees out there. When you need work to be done, the workforce will be there. Every bit of these dollars are going to be geared towards getting students in, getting them trained, and getting them out to the workforce."

Q: Where can people go to read more information about this bond proposal?

A: "Everything that we've got on this bond, all the questions that we've received from the county, from the community, we've been updating on our website. If you go to that website, click 'Bond' in the upper corner, it tells you everything, where the money's going, and answers those questions for you."