Glendale Community College officials weigh adding bond measure to November ballot
Glendale Community College officials have started to explore the feasibility of asking voters to pass a multimillion dollar bond to upgrade campus facilities, nearly 15 years after the college passed its last bond.
During a trustees’ meeting on Tuesday, a consultant said that a recent poll showed more residents would favor a bond than vote against it.
About 57% of 600 local voters said they would support a Glendale Community College bond measure, said John Fairbank of the Los Angeles-based opinion research firm, Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Matz and Associates.
Fairbank’s firm interviewed 600 randomly-selected residents who have voted in presidential elections. If college officials decide to ask voters to pass a bond, they may place the measure on the Nov. 8 ballot.
The interviews took place over the phone in English, Armenian and Spanish during late February and early March, Fairbank said.
The measure would need 55% voter approval, and college trustees could adopt a resolution as early as July in order to place the measure on the November ballot, according to David Casnocha, an attorney who was one of four consultants the trustees heard input from during the meeting.
One of those consultants, Frank Vega, a graduate of Glendale Community College and director of RBC Capital Markets, offered a range of scenarios for the trustees to consider regarding the bond’s value.
One option would have college officials issue a $300-million bond over 12 years.
Another scenario would have them issue $600 million in bond funds over 23 years.
The tax rate in both scenarios would amount to $25 per $100,000 of assessed value.
The legal limit at which community colleges can currently issue bonds is $705 million, Vega said.
Trustees didn’t comment on whether they favored one option over the other regarding the bond’s dollar amount, but Anita Quinonez Gabrielian, trustee president, said the input, overall, offered “a lot of good information.”
The trustees’ consideration over a potential bond comes several months after they approved a 156-page facilities master plan in December.
The document listed a local bond election as one way to fund improvements for the college’s main campus on Verdugo Road, its professional development center in Montrose and its south Glendale campus on Garfield Avenue.
Among the recommendations in the plan is to renovate the college’s auditorium, build a parking structure with about 650 spaces and construct new facilities to house the campus’ robotics, engineering and computer-aided manufacturing programs.
The last time voters approved a bond for Glendale Community College was in 2002 when the $98 million Measure G bond paved the way for officials to build its current parking structure and spend about $22.8 million to upgrade its Garfield campus, which included a new 38,000-square-foot building with classrooms, a career center and administrative offices.
Locally, the last bond passed in Glendale was Glendale Unified’s $270-million bond, which voters approved in 2011.
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Kelly Corrigan, kelly.corrigan@latimes.com
Twitter: @kellymcorrigan
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