Trustee: Reduce college projects

This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press
Sunday, October 5, 2008.
By BOB WILSON
Valley Press Staff Writer

LANCASTER - Antelope Valley College Trustee Steve Fox is asking district administrators to reduce the scope of some Lancaster campus improvement projects and to set the savings aside for development of a campus in Palmdale.

In a memorandum sent Thursday to college President Jackie Fisher, Fox contended members of the board of trustees have had no voice in setting the district's construction priorities. He said his request should set the stage for that voice to be heard.

Fox's request was spurred by complaints from Palmdale's elected leaders about the college district's use of money obtained in 2004 under a Valleywide bond measure approved in part because it was supposed to help fund a Palmdale campus.

The complaints arose after Fisher told Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford nearly all of the money under Measure R - $139 million in local funds and up to $278 million in state matching funds - either had been spent or earmarked for projects and improvements in Lancaster.

Of the $417 million, the district has spent only $5 million in Palmdale; that was used to acquire 60 acres of land for a future campus.

Fisher later said he was prohibited from building a new campus in Palmdale because the district lacks permission from the California Postsecondary Education Commission to do so.

To obtain such permission, the district must go through an approval process that will take at least a year, the AVC president said.

In response, Ledford said he and other Palmdale officials were "appalled and outraged" by what he called "bait-and-switch tactics" used to obtain bond money that will not be spent as promised in the south Valley.

On Wednesday, the Palmdale City Council directed the city attorney to investigate suing Antelope Valley College over its "waste or misuse of bond funds."

The investigation is to include consulting with "outside litigation counsel regarding possible causes of action regarding the alleged misuse of bond funds and inaction by the board of Antelope Valley College and the (bond) oversight committee," City Attorney Matt Ditzhazy said.

Palmdale's leaders directed City Manager Steve Williams to schedule a public hearing for the council's Oct. 15 meeting and to ask the college to send a representative to explain its use of the Measure R money.

Fisher has said that the college met its obligation to Palmdale by leasing space for temporary classrooms in an office building on Palmdale Boulevard at 15th Street East.

District officials are making efforts to attract enough students to the temporary location to have it qualify as an education center, a designation that is required before state officials will consider approving construction of a new permanent campus, Fisher said.

After Measure R was passed, the cost of construction rose dramatically, the college president said.

"We had to make a decision on the projects here on the Lancaster campus and the project in Palmdale without jeopardizing the projects we had approved," Fisher said. "If we didn't come up with additional matching funds, we would have lost those projects here in Lancaster."

At Wednesday's council meeting, Councilman Steve Hofbauer said, "I take real issue with people trying to blow this off as 'Construction costs went up. Sorry, you don't get your college.' That's baloney. It's hogwash. We were flim-flammed, and I'm furious about this."

"The whole bond was a dishonest statement," Councilman Mike Dispenza added.

Fox asked the council to forego a formal investigation in favor of convening a joint meeting with the members of the college board.

The next day, Fox sent his request asking Fisher to schedule items that will allow the college board to consider:

Ordering administrators to prepare a report on which bond projects might be "scaled down or eliminated" and how much bond money might be saved from those actions.

Telling administrators which bond-funded projects to scale down or eliminate.

Directing administrators to establish a trust fund for any money remaining from completed projects, scaled-down projects or eliminated projects, with those funds being "earmarked in trust for building the Palmdale college campus."

John Mylnar, public information officer for the city of Palmdale, said municipal officials declined Friday to comment on Fox's request.

The request to the college board will not change the City Council's plans for an Oct. 15 public hearing and a report from the city attorney concerning possible civil litigation, Mylnar said.

Late Friday, Fisher and college district board President Betty Wienke issued a joint letter defending the district, saying Palmdale's mayor has chosen "to launch an unsubstantiated attack against Antelope Valley College."

"We believe such a tactic is divisive and will only serve to generate ill will - not only among those directly involved but also in the greater community," the letter said.

"We are actively pursuing a full-service campus in Palmdale - a lengthy process involving several state and regional agencies."

After reiterating problems with finding a suitable site for a Palmdale campus and rising construction costs, the letter said the district now faces a problem of "too little money, too many projects. … Thus, there's not enough Measure R money for all the many projects we had planned in both Lancaster and Palmdale."

"Under the provisions of Measure R, we are under a deadline for expending bond funds. Even if we set aside $11 million, our current forecast shows we couldn't even begin work on Palmdale's infrastructure until 2014 - assuming all the necessary state requirements fall within our timeline."

And 2014 "would take us beyond the allowable time window for spending our bond funds. Furthermore, $11 million would not even cover the infrastructure costs for the current site in today's dollars," the letter said. "No one would like to see a Palmdale campus more than we would. Unfortunately, this is the situation in which we find ourselves."

Under state law, the college district created a committee composed of 18 community members who were assigned responsibility for overseeing the use of the Measure R funds.

In his request to Fisher, Fox said, "It should be noted that the current board of trustees of Antelope Valley College has never been given the opportunity to set priorities as to what order the (Measure R) projects are to be funded and built. This motion will give the board that opportunity to express the will of the public.

"The citizens of Palmdale were substantially responsible for the passage of the bond funds in Measure R. The citizens of Palmdale materially paid and subsidized the fund that funded the list of projects in Measure R, of which the main project was to be a junior college to be built in Palmdale.

"The citizens of Palmdale detrimentally relied on the representations made by the authors of Measure R" in reaching a decision whether to vote in favor or opposition to the ballot proposition, he said.

In his complaint, Ledford said Fisher and other college representatives garnered Palmdale's support for Measure R by falsely promising that as much as $52 million would be spent on the Palmdale campus if city voters cast ballots to help approve it.

Fisher countered that the text of Measure R text did not specify how much bond money was to be spent in Palmdale.

In that text, the college district said it would use bond money to, among other things, "establish (an) Antelope Valley College Education Center in (the) Palmdale/South Valley area to accommodate growth and increasing student enrollment: Provide permanent classrooms, labs, job training and college-transfer counseling buildings facilities in the Palmdale area, including the acquisition of a site to allow local students greater access to an affordable education."

The college's Web site lists projects funded by Measure R as a new health and sciences building, a new 400-seat theater, a new agriculture lab and greenhouses, a new auto-body repair training facility, a new shipping and warehouse building, a new campus telephone system, various infrastructure and parking lot improvements, and the renovation of Marauder football stadium and several physical education fields in Lancaster plus the acquisition of land for a future Palmdale campus.

bwilson@avpress.com