Cal State Channel Islands’ Timeline Hinges on State Funding

CAMARILLO —  The agenda for the year ahead at Cal State Channel Islands is short and straightforward at the moment: Carve out a $10-million slice of the state budget to ensure that the fledgling campus opens on schedule in 2002.

It doesn’t take an accounting degree to figure out the motivation.

With that money--intended to establish a permanent operating budget for the Camarillo campus--university officials would be able to speed creation of the four-year college, hiring key faculty to craft the academic programs that will serve as the foundation for Ventura County’s first public university.

Without it, university officials would fall into a holding pattern for the year, a delay that could postpone opening the campus under development at the former Camarillo State Hospital.

“We are quite anxious to see in the governor’s budget recommendation a $10-million amount . . . to open up this campus in 2002,” said Charles B. Reed, chancellor of the Cal State University system. “We’re prepared to do that if the state is prepared to put the operating resources up.”

University officials should soon get a good idea of where they stand, either when Gov. Gray Davis delivers his State of the State address on Wednesday or when he unveils his preliminary spending plan for fiscal year 2000-01 next week.

Early indications, however, are that they’ll have to work for their money.

University officials learned two weeks ago that Davis intends to tie funding for the Channel Islands campus to development of another state university in Stockton.

Davis apparently has grown frustrated with the lack of progress at the Stockton site, where CSU officials set out in 1997 to convert another state hospital into a university.

The plan in Stockton is similar to the one conceived for Channel Islands. In both cases, university planners are relying on private development to generate the cash to expand the college campuses.

But while Channel Islands has made good headway toward that goal, the Stockton site has languished. Now Davis wants to know what can be done to jump-start the process. And he has told CSU leaders that he wants the Stockton situation resolved before he funnels the $10 million to Channel Islands.

It’s unclear exactly what steps will have to be taken to satisfy Davis’ concerns, Channel Islands President Handel Evans said.

But Evans said that even if the governor’s preliminary budget has no money for the university, he is confident that CSU officials will be able to address the governor’s concerns in time for Davis to include the allocation in his revised budget in May.

“He’s sort of holding [CSU trustees’] feet to the fire, and we are the lever he is using to make that happen,” Evans said.

“If we don’t get a major slug of money, then we won’t be able to meet the deadline to open the campus in 2002,” he added. “I’m trying to remain optimistic and anticipate that there will be support.”

If Evans is wrong, it won’t be for lack of trying.

He and other university boosters have orchestrated a vigorous letter-writing campaign to drive home the urgency of the $10-million allocation and the need to keep the campus on track to welcome its first students in fall 2002.

The Ventura County Board of Supervisors fired off a letter to the governor. So did officials in several local cities. Even the county’s legislative delegation in Sacramento--led by state Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo)--put aside partisan politics to collectively urge Davis to support the Camarillo campus.

That letter--signed by O’Connell and Assembly members Hannah-Beth Jackson, a fellow Democrat; and Tom McClintock and Tony Strickland, both Republicans--reminded Davis of the successful conversion last fall of Camarillo State Hospital into the new home for the 1,800 students at the satellite campus of Cal State Northridge.

The letter also reminded the governor that a vote last May by Cal State University trustees to adopt Channel Islands into the CSU family was contingent on the willingness of state lawmakers to set aside an extra $13 million a year to operate the new campus.

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CSU officials are asking for $10 million in fiscal year 2000-01 and an additional $3 million in 2001-02.

“It’s more important that the money be there in July, when the governor signs the final budget, than it is for it to be there in January,” O’Connell said. “I’m optimistic that in the final analysis, the money will be there.”

If all or a significant portion of the $10 million is earmarked for the university, officials would immediately set out to hire about two dozen faculty planners who would be responsible for defining the curriculum and designing programs of study for each degree to be offered at the new campus.

On a parallel track, university officials intend to push forward this year with efforts to build a self-contained community around the campus core--complete with 900 houses, a small retail center and a research-and-development area.

Those projects are intended to generate the $300 million needed to expand the university over the next quarter of a century. University planners are working with county officials to refine the blueprint on that development for review by the county’s Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors.

University officials hope to have final approvals in place early this year and to break ground on the development by spring.

Channel Islands officials also hope to expand a campaign to help local high school students sharpen the basic skills they will need for college-level work.

The goal of the program, launched in 1998 in the Santa Paula Union High School District, is to prepare college-bound students to pass the university system’s basic proficiency exams in English and math. Those tests have proven to be significant stumbling blocks for a growing number of students in the state university system.

Finally, university boosters want to step up private fund-raising efforts this year at the new campus. Those efforts received a huge shot in the arm last year when Oxnard rancher John S. Broome donated $5 million to establish a library and media center at the Channel Islands campus.

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Not counting Broome’s gift, the university’s private fund-raising foundation has raised about half a million dollars since its creation in 1996 and hopes to raise another half a million by next summer.

“We’ve really got to keep up this momentum,” said Broome, whose generosity will be rewarded by having the new library named after him. “My hope is that the university will continue to move forward at an ever-accelerating rate and that it will do what it’s supposed to do: Provide education for future generations.”