News: TCC chancellor
is house proud 
TCC releases senior staff evaluations
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Dear Friends:
The Tarrant County College District continues its impulsive spending on a new $300 million plus ill-conceived downtown campus—just for phase one. The budget has increased 300 percent in five years! In the end, our tax dollars will go to a monument to the Administration and Board of Trustees—not to helping pay our teachers well and keeping students enrolled so they can have a better life.
Are we fulfilling our mission to offer the most affordable and broadest educational opportunities to all Tarrant County residents? Or, are we giving up our educational conscience for concrete?
Are we constructing a campus that is so highly-designed, so beautiful, so extravagant, that it takes all of our resources to make it work—when students who want and need more education struggle financially to go to school so they can earn decent wages for themselves and their families? Just think, the first phase will NOT even have a library!
Is this Downtown Campus really the most cost effective use of our local tax dollars? We must be prepared for state cuts in education at anytime, and spending $300 million for just one new building downtown leaves us exposed.
There is an old adage, “when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you do is quit digging.” Three of the college's four campuses have acres of excess property on which we can expand, without spending $750 per square foot. There are over 180 acres at the Northwest Campus where we can build the same space for 1/4 of the cost. This location is just 15 minutes from the proposed site and more accessible to North Fort Worth families. Or, we should identify another "downtown" location.
Please join me in asking the Board of Trustees to step back and scrutinize this project and its spiraling costs. Ask them to stop construction on the current site immediately; sell the property; and get back to the purpose for which this college was created, affordable education for all. Ask them to spend the money they save on the badly needed repairs on other campuses, teacher pay and affordable tuition.
Click here for the names and contact info for the Tarrant County College Board of Trustees.
Sincerely,
Larry Meeker
Fort Worth native, Member, Blue Ribbon Committee to establish the Tarrant County Junior College District in 1965; Chairman, Election and Petition Committee
PD. Pol. adv. by L.H. Meeker
