GCC’s trustees set aside $85K for consultants on funding improvements

With their eyes set on future facility-improvement projects, Glendale Community College officials recently agreed to set aside $85,000 to bring on consultants who will investigate and identify how to best fund the projects.

College officials are not ruling out putting a bond before voters, which is listed as one possibility among several others to secure those funds, according to a college report.

“Possible sources include state general-revenue appropriations, voter-approved state bond funds, federal appropriations, grants, donor gifts and local bond election,” the report states.

The consultants, which school officials expect to hire before the end of April, will explore each of the funding possibilities and gauge “the opinions of the local community,” according to the report.

For the past several months, college officials have discussed areas where the main campus and Garfield campus could benefit from improvement projects.

During their meeting last month, trustees approved a Facilities Master Plan, a 156-page document highlighting the facility-improvement needs at both campuses and the Professional Development Center in Montrose.

“With the approval of the Facilities Master Plan and the look at how we can better serve the community, we will now need to look at how do we find the funding for those facilities, those improvements — new and old,” said David Viar, the college’s superintendent/president. “That’s what we will now be doing, is looking at the different alternatives for providing funding and how best we can achieve that revenue.”

The master plan comes with several recommendations, including renovating the college’s auditorium, building a parking structure with about 650 spaces and constructing new facilities such as a building to house the engineering, robotics and computer-aided manufacturing programs.

The last time college officials pursued a local facilities bond was around the turn of the millennium when, in 2002, Glendale voters approved passage of the college’s $98-million Measure G bond.

As of late November, about $10.9 million of Measure G bond funds were still available and earmarked for projects such as energy conservation and computer-network upgrades.

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Kelly Corrigan, kelly.corrigan@latimes.com

Twitter: @kellymcorrigan