Senator Jay Costa: Thank you very much, Mr. President. I want to rise and lend my very sincere support to the resolution that was offered by our friend Senator Manchin supported by Senator Boscola as well. Mr. President, I stand here as one of those individuals who has been able to utilize the community college system in Allegheny County and was able to go onto a four-year degree and ultimately a law degree. And it allows me to stand here today making these remarks in strong support of the efforts that we have done along those lines.
But more significantly I want to talk about the role that our community colleges play in our commonwealth. We have 14 colleges and maybe a 15th coming on board. We’re not sure how that’s playing out at this point. But what’s most important is the role that they play in our community in terms of job growth and job development and how it is that they are connected to the business community in particular are in a position to be able to frame and craft courses that are clearly aligned to what the needs are of our business sector in our commonwealth. And I can tell you in a variety of ways our community college system in Allegheny County has been doing that.
I think we have a great president, and Dr. Clinton Bolick [phonetic 00:01:03] who has done an outstanding job in about the year and a half that he’s been with us. Has taken the helm at this college and has done a tremendous job with a number of issues. But more importantly with the frustration with regard to the lack of resources that made their way to our community college systems. Dr. Bolick was very helpful that the budget proposed by the governor where he was going to add approximately $15 million to our general fund spend for community colleges to Allegheny County. Would be able to sort of stem the tide with respect to what needs to be done.
I’ve had the privilege of serving on the trustee board as a board of trustee member probably for about 10 years now. And I can say to you as treasurer of the board I see first-hand some of the concerns of the finances and how important it is that we provide the necessary revenue to our community college system. That is where the rubber meets the road with respect to many individuals. Not only those students like myself. I’m not going to tell you how many years ago, but those students like myself who weren’t sure where we wanted to go to school and what we wanted to major in. The community college system provides a relatively low cost, high-quality education to those students that’s on par with all of our four-year institutions. But it’s also a pathway to four-year institutions, as I indicated. And when you look around the commonwealth now, when you look at the number of articulation agreements that exist with all of our colleges and universities, whether it be a state system, private universities and colleges or state-related, they become an outstanding resource for families to be able to experience higher education. But it’s beyond that with the technical stuff.
We have a number of programs in our county that works with volunteers trying to recruit volunteer fire guys for example. Great program that we’ve done. Programs we develop with veterans. Those are the type of programs that give folks a second chance at creating a new career as they want to go forward and move forward. So I’m very pleased at the gentleman who has put the resolution up before our colleagues here. I no doubt expect that it will all be supported by everyone as we go forward. But we want to make certain that we keep the community colleges in mind as we go through this budget process because they’re extremely important to our commonwealth and they’re such a big part of our communities and they present and provide great opportunities for young men and women and other folks as well. Older men and women who are trying to restructure a career. It just provides a lot of opportunities for a lot of folks. They need to have our support as we go forward.
So I want to thank the gentleman for his resolution and I stand in strong support of it. Thank you, Mr. President.