FAIRFIELD — A scathing Solano
County grand jury report issued Monday reports that local voters were duped in
2012 by Solano Community College staff and supporters of a $348 million bond
measure.
The report claims the wording
of Measure Q on the November 2012 ballot was deliberately misleading and
violated state laws and the California Constitution. The grand jury report also
accuses the college’s board of trustees of neglecting the public interest.
The grand jury found no
evidence of criminal activity on the part of either the board of trustees or
any employee of Solano College, according to the report; “however, the loose
manner in which the college conducts its business leaves it open to the
potential appearance of misfeasance.”
Grand jurors reported that “. .
. A lack of engagement and oversight by the board of trustees, coupled with a
cavalier attitude on the part of some of its members is an issue of great
concern.”
The grand jury states that
college staff fabricated the existence of project master plans that detailed
how Measure Q funds would be spent when they reported “The master plans are on
file and available for review at the Solano College president’s office and
include the types of projects listed below.”
“The cart was put before the
horse – rather than identifying the specific needs of the college, and figuring
out the costs of those needs, the district sought first to identify the amount
of money it could obtain through the public through a bond measure.”
The grand jury report said a
facilities master plan was not finalized until nearly two years after the
election.
Solano College Superintendent-President
Jowel Laguerre was blasted in the report for ignoring the law and claiming that
the college “deliberately elected not to tie its hands with an exact list of
Measure Q projects. Instead, we have taken the time to carefully research how we
will best spend your tax dollars and have kept in mind the potential for
projects that were ‘on the horizon’ but not finalized as we worked to pass the
bond.”
Laguerre’s last day at the
college is Tuesday.
Grand jury members interviewed
each of the seven elected college board members who told them that they never
saw any type of project list or any projected spending plan before the 2012
election and “nothing at all with numbers” until 2014. One trustee, unnamed in
the report, claimed to have “all relevant documents” prior to the election. The
trustee later retracted the claim and referred grand jurors to the college’s
website.
The ballot pamphlet referred to
Measure Q as the Solano Community College District Student/Veterans’ Affordable
Education, Job Training measure, which the report said was misleading because
state law precludes bond funds from being used for any of those purposes.
The grand jury report says
voters were misled by simple deceptive techniques such as using bold typefaces
and capitalization in the Measure Q bond measure to reference various purposes
of Measure Q such as to provide essential job training and workforce
preparation, improve access to disabled students and war veterans, expand
high-quality affordable college options for students transferring to four-year
colleges and offer middle college options to high school students.
“Job training is not allowed under (state
law), nor are job placement programs. Any relationship between offering high
school students college courses or ‘high-quality affordable college options’
and buildings, facilities or land purchases is difficult to understand,” the
report said, adding that “Measure Q is presented as much more than bricks and
mortar.
“It is difficult to ascertain
how a physical building or land acquisition relates to ‘affordable education,’
” the report states pointedly.
“The casual attitude of some of
the college administration coupled with its assumption that voters would
positively respond to buzz words like ‘veterans,’ ‘disabled’ and ‘job training’
” without investigating the bond measure resulted in “a bond that was not
properly presented, and was arguably misleading at best.”
The grand jury report notes in
closing: “Forty years is too long for a bond measure! Serious consideration
should be given to shorter bond measure obligation time for future projects.”
July
1, 2015
Fairfield
Daily Republic
By Jess
Sullivan
No comments:
Post a Comment