Building for tech college scrapped
By MICHAEL HALL, The Brunswick News
Glynn County business leaders and state legislators were taken by surprise Wednesday when they learned that a $14 million rug had been yanked from under their feet.
The General Assembly’s Legislative Conference Committee this past weekend cancelled $14.3 million that had been budgeted to construct a 50,000-square-foot building for Altamaha Technical College on 21 acres adjacent to the college’s current home in the Golden Isles Career Academy.
The money was rebudgeted to get the $25 million needed for a satellite campus of Gwinnett Technical College. That campus will be built more than 300 miles north of Brunswick, in either Milton, Johns Creek, Roswell or Sandy Springs, all metro Atlanta cities.
The news was devastating to leaders of Altamaha Technical College, the Brunswick Golden Isles Chamber of Commerce and the Glynn County Development Authority.
Woody Woodside, chamber of commerce president, said the committee was acting on bad information.
The committee shifted the $14.3 million in bond money on a presumption that Altamaha Tech would not be able to spend it before the funds would have to be returned to the state, Woodside said.
“It is gravely concerning to the chamber and development authority that a project of this nature – one that is so vitally important to our community’s future workforce and economic development opportunities – has fallen victim to such blatant misinformation,” Woodside said.
Nathan Sparks, director of the development authority, feels the same way. “Frankly we feel it is fictitious reasoning,” he said.
Lorette Hoover, Altamaha Technical College president, said bonds for the building were sold in June 2011. The college then had five years to spend it, she said.
A year-long construction of the building was to start as soon as the State Property Commission approved the acquisition of land in June – well before the five-year deadline, Hoover said.
“It’s devastating,” Hoover said. “It looks like we will have to work to get that money appropriated in another year.”
State Rep. Alex Atwood, R-St. Simons Island, said some prior notice of an impending budget transfer by the committee would have been nice, especially since the move was made in the eleventh hour. The last day of the General Assembly’s session is today.
“I am going to try get the money for Altamaha Tech,” Atwood said Wednesday from Atlanta, before entering a meeting to discuss the issue with Chris Riley, Gov. Nathan Deal’s chief of staff, and Sen. William Ligon, R-Waverly.
State Rep. Roger Lane, R-St. Simons Island, who did not attend the meeting said a delay in starting construction to wait for the property commission’s decision in June
was likely the culprit. “(The Altamaha Technical College building) is a very important project, not just to this community, but to the entirecoast,” Lane said. “We have talked to (the committee) about it, but it will be a hard fight."
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