Plan to Lease Land at 2 Community Colleges Stirs Debate at Hearing

Community residents, college students and teachers expressed mixed opinions Thursday night at a public hearing on proposed commercial leasing of land at two area community colleges.

While some speakers gave qualified support to the idea, most who testified strongly opposed leasing of land at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa and Golden West College in Huntington Beach. About 100 people attended the hearing on the Orange Coast campus.

At issue was a proposal being studied by the Coast Community College District board of trustees to lease about 36 acres of land at OCC and about nine acres at Golden West. No board vote on the matter is likely for about three months, said Walter Howald, president of the trustees.

Howald and the other four trustees said commercial land leases might be a way of helping the community colleges through a tight financial period. Like all community colleges in California, Orange Coast and Golden West have suffered in the last four years from decreasing state funding.

“This is just one idea,” Howald told the audience. “The time frame is just to start discussion and see if the board wants to explore this further.”

But some college faculty and students who testified accused the board of having already decided to lease the land and of “steamrolling” the proposal.

“There does seem to be a sense that things are rolling along on a financial crisis management basis,” said Susan Smith, an Orange Coast history teacher. “Why do we find ourselves in a position of having to part with something as valuable as real estate without considering other things first?”

Trustee Armando Ruiz responded: “We’re not going broke. We’re going to meet the payroll. We’re not steamrolling anything. But we’ve got to start taking care of things ourselves. We can’t depend on the state.”

Two Costa Mesa community leaders said they had no problem with the leasing concept, as long as the commercial users don’t cause excessive traffic and noise and air pollution. Russell Millar, a member of Concerned Citizens of Costa Mesa, said: “We’re not opposed if this is carefully done.” Millar is a political science professor at OCC.

Jim Aynes, a director of Mesa Action, a citizens’ organization that has worked for slower growth in Costa Mesa, said: “So far we haven’t seen anything in this proposal that we’re opposed to. But if you allowed high density or heavy traffic, there would be considerable opposition.”

Most who spoke were from the community colleges, and they were overwhelmingly opposed to the leasing idea.

“What’s going to happen when we need more land for more facilities at Orange Coast College?” asked Bill Smith, an Orange Coast student government member who spoke against the proposal.

Added Gary James, a dean at Orange Coast: “We don’t have to give up the land; there are other ways.”

Theo Mabry, president of the Academic Senate at Orange Coast, told the board that a poll of faculty members showed that more respondents opposed the idea than supported it. Mabry said Orange Coast teachers want a study of whether Coastline Community College and educational TV station KOCE are consuming excessive amounts of the district budget.

“This (land-lease proposal) has the potential for a lot of divisiveness,” said Jay Zimmerman, an Orange Coast faculty member.

Board President Howald, at the end of the hearing, told a reporter: “I can’t speak for the entire board, but my personal feeling is that maybe we should wait awhile on this.”