MARK WAITE / PVT Paul Killpatrick, center, and Bill Reinhard, right, president and vice-president of Great Basin College respectively, get a tour of the computer lab from Bob Lurker, director of the Pahrump Valley Center at left. Advertisement

Officials from Great Basin College will be scouting out property in the Pahrump area in the next couple weeks, searching for a site for a new college building that will be their only capital funding request in the next state legislative session.

The plan is to request the planning money in the Nevada legislative session that begins in February 2009, Great Basin College President Paul T. Killpatrick said during a stopover in Pahrump Wednesday morning.

"You're going to grow more here than we are at any more of our outreach centers in Elko, Winnemucca, Ely or Battle Mountain. So we're looking at this as a growth center for us. So we want to put our resources in here," Killpatrick said.

"We're here to look at land acquisition to see what are the best possible sites to build a new campus because we do envision in 10 years Pahrump could be bigger than the main campus in Elko."

Great Basin College officials want to reconstitute the Pahrump Advisory Committee to build community support for a new college facility, which is essential to show the legislature the project is needed, Killpatrick said. The Pahrump Valley Community Action Team already has a higher education task force, which conducted a survey of 700 adults, seeking their input on the demand for a community college.

"This is the only capital construction project that we have on our list for the next biennium, is to get a building in Pahrump," Killpatrick said.

Great Basin Vice-President of Administrative Services Bill Reinhard said it could cost a couple million dollars for the planning alone. The actual building itself may cost $30 million.

Members of a realty group will study different sites and issue recommendations. Reinhard confirmed one of the sites being considered is 280 acres of U.S. Bureau of Land Management property near the new BLM fire station east of Manse Road and Highway 160. That will involve going through environmental studies, including desert tortoise mitigation.

Great Basin College is just about finished constructing its new electrical and industrial technology building at the main campus in Elko, Killpatrick said.

"We need to get the planning finished first before we can look at the construction because if the legislature invests in planning dollars, the building is soon to follow," he said.

A small, local delegation addressed a joint legislative commission on higher education last April, late in the session, about funding a Pahrump community college. State Sen. Barbara Cegavske, R-Las Vegas, lent her support, though other committee members were largely silent.

Reinhard said it will take more than a few community leaders to address the legislature. He said the community needs to do something more along the lines of what they did before getting funding for the existing Pahrump Valley Center, when a bus load of supporters went up to Carson City in the late 1990s.

The number of full-time equivalent students attending the Pahrump Valley Center increased 21 percent, from 117 to 142 this year. A full-time student is someone enrolled in 15 credits. The actual head count rose 17 percent from 326 to 383.

John Patrick Rice, director of institutional advancement and executive director of the Great Basin College Foundation, said what's significant is a 42 percent increase in new students, a sign the Pahrump Valley Center is providing higher education opportunities for significantly more new college students in Pahrump.

Unfortunately, the governor's 4.5 percent cut in the budget means a hiring freeze is currently in effect at the campus. The hiring of a third full-time faculty member will have to be postponed; the Pahrump Valley Center has another 26 adjunct faculty teaching classes.

"We're planning for the future. Also as temporary measures, there's property around here we can lease. So we may be at capacity within the next year," Killpatrick said.

It could take three years for the building project to happen, he said, the first biennium of the legislature for the 2009-2010 years, then the second biennium in 2011-2012 to start construction.

Killpatrick said Chancellor of Higher Education Jim Rogers has already had talks with Nye County School Superintendent Rob Roberts about taking over the Pahrump Valley Center if a new college building is constructed.

Killpatrick said the fact the Pahrump Valley Center was constructed in 2001, shouldn't be an argument against more funding for higher education here.

"I think it's one related to necessity and growth and we have to plan for the future, otherwise the future will be staring us in the face and we won't be prepared for it," he said.

Reinhard said an "iron triangle" has to be in place: a willing bureaucracy like Great Basin College asking for the money, the community saying the facility is desperately needed and legislators listening to both of those sides. It will take "a huge group effort" by the community, he said.

The Higher Education Board of Regents needs to know Great Basin College officials objectively located the best property, Killpatrick said. The 280-acre site near the BLM fire station would be about the size of Disneyland, Killpatrick said remarking it's, "the happiest place on earth."