Many thanks to Bruce Krasnow for his Feb. 13 article, "SFCC nixes property tax vote," which summarized the current status of the Santa Fe Community College's proposal for a higher learning center.

I am pleased to learn that the community college's leadership has finally grasped the concept of "skin-in-the-game" for the key higher-learning center consortium stakeholders. After all, higher education is a business, not a free lunch. These stakeholders would now be responsible for the proposed center's operational costs versus the originally proposed mill levy-based property tax increase for Santa Fe folks.

Still, SFCC plans to go forward with an election in August for a $35 million bond proposal that will include $12 million for building the higher-learning center. While the Krasnow article correctly points out that the current low interests rates will "...bring down the SFCC portion of property tax bills...," the article also notes that the state is the body that will set any property-tax rate. In this economic climate, it would be a welcome, but unlikely, fantasy to see our property taxes actually go down.

This brings us back to the proposed bricks-and-mortar funding for the higher-learning Center. This approach reminds one of the considerable organizational "empire building" of bricks-and-mortar infrastructure that took place in the 20th century. Organizations that practiced such bricks-and-mortar behavior now find that they own a lot of "white elephant" real estate, and this is an expensive proposition to maintain and operate.

With the Internet and the rapidly advancing digital and multimedia technology revolution in the 21st century, there is also a revolution well under way in higher learning globally. Higher-learning environments are moving toward distance learning-based curriculum for bachelor and higher degrees, just-in-time learning courses, and virtual classrooms and meeting sites. Here, unless one is dealing with special wet lab courses like physical organic chemistry, the higher education infrastructure needs in the 21st century are very different than the just physical presence and bricks and mortar.

So, we need to be realistic about what we can ask people to pay for before we ask them to vote for more bricks-and-mortar infrastructure and for something that may become outdated sooner than later. Perhaps, as an initial step, a cost-effective demonstration by the SFCC of the higher-learning center concept in leased or "borrowed" facilities could be undertaken.

This would achieve two important goals:

• the clear demonstration of "skin-in-the-game" commitment by all key stakeholders, for example, the four-year universities and colleges that want a presence in Santa Fe;
• actual data that shows a sustainable local demand for bachelor's and master's degrees via the proposed higher-learning center and a demand aligned with job growth opportunities in Northern New Mexico.

Alternatively, the SFCC could re-think what a 21st century higher-learning, consortium-based infrastructure should look like besides the current bricks-and-mortar thinking and then come back to the public with a solid business case.

The bottom line: The business and taxpayer case for the higher-learning center has not been made. Rather, like many New Mexico/Santa Fe bond-indebtedness "investments" in the past few years, the assumption is that once built, local businesses, via higher gross-receipts taxes, or taxpayers via increased property taxes, will pay for ongoing costs.

This assumption has been shown to be unfounded, and such "investments" as the Railyard Parking Garage, the Railyard development, the Capitol Parking Garage, and the Rail Runner continue to bleed red with taxpayers' dollars. As proposed, Santa Fe Community College's higher-learning center would seem to be joining this growing list of local business- and taxpayer-subsidized ventures, and, in these difficult economic times, the community college needs to recognize that the bar for public support of these kinds of ventures is now much higher.

Thomas C. O'Brien, Ph.D., retired in 2004 from DuPont as a new business development and corporate venture manager and moved to Santa Fe in 2005.