Blog note: This article
references a 2008 grand jury report criticizing the college.
STOCKTON — Seven years ago,
when San Joaquin Delta College came under intense scrutiny for mishandling a
$250 million voter-approved bond, critics warned that Delta would never again
be able to pass a bond measure in this community.
That statement may be tested.
Delta College officials have
begun to discuss pursuing another bond, though a formal proposal to the voters
won’t be made until 2018 at the earliest.
The Measure L bond that
property owners barely approved in 2004 was never expected to pay for all of
the aging college’s needs, President Kathy Hart said Friday.
But the language presented to
voters did contain a kind of “wish list” of projects. And when there wasn’t
enough money for all of them, some who had supported the bond felt swindled.
The process will be different
next time, said Hart, who blamed the earlier confusion in part on the college’s
“inexperience” dealing with bond measures.
“We are going to have to have
very specific projects that we promise the voters we are going to do,” she
said.
The need is clear, she said.
Delta’s new Mountain House campus, funded through Measure L, is still just a
collection of portable buildings. The long-promised north county campus will
need more cash if it’s to become a reality. And the nearly half-century-old
Stockton campus is falling apart, according to some faculty and staff who
participated in recent college-wide surveys. Some faculty went so far as to say
they are embarrassed to bring community members on campus.
Hart’s not sure the situation
is that dire, but does declare Delta’s overall need.
“It doesn’t take a genius to
figure out that unless $20 or $100 bills start raining down from the sky, we
are going to have to come out for another bond,” she said.
Delta’s current bond passed
by a mere 500 votes. It wouldn’t have passed at all, had Californians not
approved Proposition 39 four years earlier. That measure lowered the threshold
required for such bond initiatives from a two-thirds vote to 55 percent.
A south county campus was to
be a cornerstone of the original bond. But years of tussling over the location
jacked up the price and ultimately forced the college to temporarily abandon
plans for a permanent building there.
A San Joaquin County Grand Jury
report later concluded that the college had squandered millions of taxpayer
dollars. The California State Controller’s
office followed with an equally critical audit. All but one of the seven
trustees at the time either resigned or was booted out of office by voters, and
many of the administrators who managed the bond have also moved on.
Ultimately, the voters got
what they wanted, said Steve Castellanos, now the president of the college’s
Board of Trustees.
“There were missteps in
planning originally, but the (bond) program has really been on track for a long
time,” he said.
Stroll across the Stockton
campus and you’ll find a new student services center, where essential services
long scattered across campus have been consolidated. You’ll find an even newer
math and science building where students are trained for careers in high-demand
fields of science, technology, engineering and math.
The library has been refurbished,
athletic fields have been modernized, and even the seats in the theater have
been upgraded.
But 11 years after Measure L
passed, the goal of building a campus in the north county remains unfulfilled.
The college is studying whether land it already owns near Galt may be suitable;
Lodi interests want the campus closer to home.
“We were promised there would
be a Lodi campus,” said Pat Patrick, president of the Lodi Chamber of Commerce,
which campaigned in support of the original bond. “Do I think Lodi would
support another bond? I’ll just say if things continue to go the way they have
been and the way they’re going today, I don’t know anyone in Lodi who would
vote for a bond.”
And despite the bond-funded
improvements on the Stockton campus in recent years, many needs remain there,
too. Faculty and staff say classrooms are old and drab and equipped with
out-of-date technology. There are complaints about lighting, furniture,
electrical, sewage and heating and air conditioning systems.
And even in 2015, Delta lacks
campus-wide wireless Internet.
Trustees on Tuesday approved
spending up to $500,000 in existing bond money to fund a new facilities master
plan, which will identify projects that could become part of the new bond pitch
in a few years. Approving the plan in and of itself drew controversy, with
Sacramento government watchdog and consultant Kevin Dayton warning trustees in
an email that it wasn’t appropriate to use voter-approved bond money to plan
for a future bond. (The facilities plan would have been written regardless of
whether a new bond is proposed, the college says, denying that there’s anything
wrong with using Measure L money to fund the study.)
David Renison, head of the San
Joaquin County Taxpayers Association, also questioned trustees’ action in an
email Friday.
“Using public money to create a
need for spending hearkens back to an approach used in 2008 when the grand jury
found that the college wasted millions of dollars,” wrote Renison, who served
as foreman of that particular grand jury.
In terms of a new bond, he
asked a number of questions: Will it be justified by Delta’s enrollment? Can
Delta prove it has pressing needs vital to the college? Has Delta demonstrated
that it can be trusted with the money that taxpayers have already given it?
Eventually, it will be up to
voters to decide.
September 19, 2015
Stockton
Record
By Alex
Breitler
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