The Sauk Valley Community College Board of Trustees is moving forward with ways to make a proposed public safety building on the SVCC campus a reality.

“At this point, the question becomes how would we fund it?” SVCC President David Hellmich said.

At its February meeting this week, the board heard and discussed ways to fund the facility. One possibility is a funding bond.

“During my 11 years here, we have not done a funding bond anywhere close to $20 million. Conceptually, and this is just a concept, if we could invest $20 million and other agencies could invest $16 million, then we could get to the $36 million,” Hellmich said.

Other ideas include Sauk investing $15 million, with outside agencies investing the remaining $21 million.

“The amount that we would invest is by no means certain, but conceptually, we wanted the board to understand how we would do this if the board chose. What was entertained was the idea of doing a 20-year funding bond for $20 million. I don’t think we’ve ever done anything like that, but it showed the capacity we would have for funding bonds while keeping tax rates the same,” Hellmich said.

Discussions about funding are taking place with the board, so those conversations can take place outside the college.

“We did not want to get ahead of the board,” Hellmich said. “The board needed to know about this first. This was a continuation of a conversation with the board about the design of the building. It was a matter of here is how we might fund it. The board did not give us a green light to go out and make it happen. But the next step is we are starting to have conversations outside of the building with individuals, economic development people, with agencies, of ‘what if,’ would you be interested in the possibility of something like this?”

A proposed blueprint for the new building shows a 40,305- square-foot facility, with spaces for classrooms, meeting spaces and an indoor gun range. The building would be built to the east of the current SVCC main building, Hellmich said. The new building would house the SVCC criminal justice program.

“We have talked with the board several times over the past few years about the police academy. We give ongoing updates,” Hellmich said.

Discussing funding mechanisms for the proposed public safety building is the latest step in a process that started in 2025.

“We told the board many months ago that we were going to invest some college resources to get this building a design so that if funding came available, we would be shovel-ready,” Hellmich said.

Hellmich said the funding ideas include SVCC sharing the cost with law enforcement agencies that would use the facility.

“The question now is, would we be able to partner with external agencies where a combination of our funding and their funding would allow us to build and run a building like this?” Hellmich said.

Figuring out how that funding would look and how the costs could be parceled out is one of the next steps for the project.

“By no means is it certain that we will be able to but we know that we have some need as a college and we know that there is need beyond what we have at the college so our hope is that there will be communities and organizations who will say ‘we’ve been looking for something like this, we’ll be glad to partner with you.’ Our hope would be that not too far down the road we will have the facility as designed or maybe a variation of it,” Hellmich said.