In December of 1977, the Board of Trustees asked the ACC administration to prepare a master plan for ACC under the direction of C. C. Colvert, an esteemed professor of education at the University of Texas. A year later, surveys showed that 89 percent of Travis County residents knew about ACC, and one out of five had taken courses there. On Friday, April 18, 1980, ACC administrators and Travis County civic leaders attended a public meeting of the Steering Committee for Community/Junior Colleges and Continuing Education of the Coordinating Board of the Texas College and University System. The gathering’s purpose was to determine whether ACC was capable of meeting Travis County’s needs for higher learning and occupational training. Spirits were high. Even a “no” vote might actually yield positive results by establishing a new Travis County district for Austin Community college. Such an outcome could ultimately release the school from constraints imposed by its affiliation with AISD.
The 1972 vote authorizing the Austin Independent School District to offer college credit and occupational and technical courses was clearly favorable, but the ACC of that time was not altogether independent. It was an adjunct of AISD, which, among other things, curtailed its ability to levy taxes. The Coordinating Board was now considering a request that would make ACC a county-wide school and self-governing through its own governing board. A Travis County Community College could be freed of the alleged promise never to levy taxes on property-owners. If the Coordinating Board concurred, voters in the new district could resolve the school’s own economic issues. Insofar as property taxes were concerned, this would create a brand-new ballgame.
The Steering Committee and the Travis County Commissioners’ Court set the following January 17, 1981, as the date for an election on whether to define the College’s boundary as the Travis County line. Cecil Groves, ACC’s president, told the Committee that the ACC Board of Trustees had approved a budget for the upcoming fiscal year that that was 16 percent higher than the current one. Furthermore, that was the beginning of the Texas Legislature’s base year that determined state funding for the next two years. That, coupled with an expected increase in enrollment of as much as 20 percent, meaning that the College would have to turn away as many as 2,000 students trying to enroll in classes.
On August 25, President Groves responded to these circumstances enthusiastically and confidently. There were votes for the College among its 1,000 employees and 18,000 students expected to enroll for the fall semester. On August 25, he gathered a college-wide assembly to drum up support for a tax issue. He reminded everyone that in 1972 critics had said nobody in Austin would attend a junior/community college in Austin. They were wrong. During the discussions, the steering committee considered merging ACC with a nearby college, but the consensus was that such cooperative ventures typically did not work out well.
Along with the financial issues, candidates were signing up to compete for places on the new ACC Board of trustees.
Source: Speak-easy, ACC Faculty and Staff Newsletter April 8 and 29 and June 17, 1980.