Palmdale AVC campus bleeding to death

State chancellor's office axes expected building funds

This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press October 4, 2000

By JENNIFER WOFFORD
and BOB WILSON
Valley Press Staff Writers

PALMDALE - Plans for a second Antelope Valley College in Palmdale may be dead.

Money believed to have been earmarked for the campus has been allocated to other projects by the California Community College's Chancellor's Office, school officials learned Monday.

The reallocation stemmed from the implementation of new guidelines for prioritizing building projects, according to Tom Brundage, AV College's vice president of business services.

The new guidelines stipulate that all building projects must be evaluated on a cost-per-full-timestudent basis, which means projects slated for existing campuses automatically will be more cost-effective than those involving new campuses, Brundage said.

"These new guidelines make it virtually impossible to fund a new campus from state funds," he said.

College officials have been working since 1993 on a plan to build a Palmdale campus in conjunction with the College Park housing project.

Under agreements reached with land owner David Bushnell, the college was to receive free land in return for spending state funding on sewer, water and utility services and other infrastructure Bushnell needed for a housing project bounded by Barrel Springs Road and Avenue V, and 37th and 47th streets east.

Patricia Sandoval, interim college president, said the loss of funds does not mean a Palmdale campus will not be built.

"We are going to (Sacramento) on (Oct.) 16th to speak with the chancellor personally," Sandoval said Tuesday.

The goal is to "get some clarification on what we thought the college would be getting," she said.

The discussion with Chancellor Thomas Nussbaum will give AV College officials a better idea of what options remain, Sandoval said.

College officials learned Monday that hoped-for money from a multimillion-dollar state bond issue approved by voters in 1998 had been allocated to other projects planned for the state's 2001-02 fiscal year.

They also learned that construction money for the 2001-03 fiscal year would be subject to the new guidelines.

Together, that means AV College will need a new source of funding for a Palmdale campus, Brundage said. In the past, that has meant passage of a state bond issue.

The college's board of trustees met Monday to discuss the College Park issue in closed session. The board's agenda showed only that its members would be discussing a real-estate transaction.

After the meeting, board President Betty Wienke said only that there were "major concerns" about funding for the Palmdale campus.

Wienke emphasized, however, that plans for the campus were not dead.

Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford agreed, saying, "We're not going to give up" on the project.

"We will work to play all the options and promote this," Ledford said, calling the funding change "politics at its worst."

"We were under the impression the chancellor's office had money from the last bond committed to the AV campus," he said. "This is a switch that came from the governor's office - all things in California go through Davis."

If the land for the college had been dedicated to AV College by Bushnell, the project's position for funding might have been stronger, Ledford said.

A three-way deal between the city, the college and Bushnell has been stalled for years because of disagreements over the number of houses, the amount of park land and other details, the mayor said.

To assist the college with its south Valley campus, the city agreed to change requirements normally necessary for developments such as the one proposed by Bushnell, he said.

"We would have never entered into negotiations for the project, as planned, without a college," Ledford said.

"I think the whole project could certainly be in jeopardy" because of the loss of money for the infrastructure, he said.

Bushnell was planning on the state to pay for at least $8 million worth of infrastructure, which was expected to cost about $11 million total, Ledford said.

Attempts late Tuesday to reach Bushnell representative Jack Schoellerman were unsuccessful.

Board member Betty Lou Nash declined to comment, and attempts to reach members Mike Adams, Earl Wilson and Wayne Woodhall were unsuccessful.

College officials had been planning to have the 80-acre campus ready to accept up to 3,000 students in the fall of 2004. Initial work was to bring three buildings encompassing 94,426 square feet of offices, classrooms and laboratories.

That work was to cost more than $30 million, and the campus was to be expanded to eventually accommodate 10,000 students.

The nearby housing development was to include 150 acres for a golf course, 4 acres for a shopping center, and 306 acres for 847 single-family homes.

College officials had been optimistic that state officials would put the Palmdale campus near the top of their community-college construction list for fiscal 2002-03.