School’s Failure to Use Money Irks Cardenas

SYLMAR —  As Assemblyman Tony Cardenas likes to say, it isn’t every day that $4.8 million comes into the northeast San Fernando Valley.

The Sylmar Democrat says that explains his anger at Mission College administrators’ failure to meet deadlines, including two extensions, to use state funds for new instructional facilities. After the final deadline last December, the hard-won construction money reverted to the state.

So right after college President William Norlund announced he had dropped the ball, Cardenas set about to recover the fumble.

The smallest and newest of Los Angeles’ community colleges, 22-acre Mission College experienced a 12% enrollment increase this spring over a year earlier, bringing the number of students to 6,620. Some Mission classes meet at nearby high schools and community centers and the student population is expected to double by 2003. Administrators say they are desperate for more space.

Earlier plans for the $4.8 million called for the acquisition of 30 acres from a neighboring golf course, but that proposal was vehemently opposed by golfers, hang gliders, equestrians, ballplayers and other community groups.

After the deadline, Cardenas immediately inserted an item in the Assembly’s version of the proposed state budget reflagging the $4.8 million for Mission’s construction project--a 20,000-square-foot, two-story building for classrooms, laboratories and offices. Then he drafted a bill for the same purpose “as backup.” The bill cleared the Assembly Appropriations Committee last week and is headed for the Assembly floor.

“I wanted to make it clear to my colleagues and the governor and everybody that I wanted this money to come back to Mission College,” Cardenas said.

State Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar) has inserted an identical item in the Senate’s version of the budget. Now they must persuade Gov. Gray Davis to support the budget item, but analysts with the Department of Finance, which advises the governor, say they have not yet taken a position.

Patrick McCallum, the community college district’s lobbyist, said he suspects the agency opposes the budget item and that it faces an uphill battle.

Jose Cornejo, Cardenas’ chief of staff, said some Sacramento bureaucrats are wary of returning the money--originally allocated in a 1992 bond issue--to Mission College because of administrators’ failure to spend it promptly the first time.

“There’s a lot of hard work to do,” Cornejo said. “Some people up here are not going to want to give the money back to a college who wasted the money several times.”

But Cornejo also said recent developments have allayed skepticism about Mission’s ability to use the funds wisely, such as the district board of trustees’ hiring of a project development consultant and Norlund’s decision to retire next month, in part, because of his inability to spend the money last year.

Cardenas himself remains skeptical, praising college administrators for recognizing the importance of the money but criticizing them for not having a comprehensive construction plan.

“All my fears and concerns are not allayed with where they are today,” he said. “There’s been a lot of progress, but we’re not there yet.”

Norlund said the college has made sufficient progress toward completing a construction plan. And although he was grateful for Cardenas’ efforts to recover the money, he said statements from the assemblyman’s office were “confusing.”

“I’m a little disconcerted about the whole attitude” regarding the college’s current efforts, Norlund said.

Mission College Vice President Shari Borchetta said she hopes the money will be allocated next month. If that happens, working drawings of the building would be submitted for approval by the state architect, typically a four- to seven-month process. The project would then be put out to bid for two months and construction could begin by the summer of 2000.