PROPOSITION 143 : Bond Measure Called Essential to the Future of Higher Education

The rock musicians and the guy in a gorilla suit had a higher purpose Thursday: to exhort the milling crowd of UC Irvine book-packers to safeguard the future of higher education with a vote for Proposition 143 next week.

“What we need you to do is get out and vote, get your parents out to vote and get your friends out to vote for it,” Student Vice President Gary Miles said of the $450-million bond measure for higher education on the Nov. 6 ballot.

“Your future and the future of California depends on it,” added the 20-year-old political science major from Brooklyn, speaking to a crowd of more than 150 UCI students breezing through the student center on their lunch break.

The student-sponsored rally, the flyers handed out by an anonymous man in a rented gorilla suit and the numerous mailers and articles appearing in student newspapers across Orange County serve to underscore growing fears on the state’s public college and university campuses that Proposition 143 could fail.

If approved, the measure would provide nearly $87 million for construction and renovation projects at UCI, Cal State Fullerton and eight community colleges in Orange County. Cal State Long Beach, which is heavily attended by Orange County students, is slated for another $9.4 million in campus projects.

The projects have been approved by the Legislature and the governor, but they will not be completed if voters fail to pass a bond measure to fund them. Proposition 143 is a companion to the $450-million ballot measure for higher education that voters approved in June.

Educators across the state are increasingly worried that voters--buffeted by higher taxes, higher gas prices and a declining economy--will reject any money measure, even one that has no organized opposition. They also fear that in its trailing position on a lengthy ballot, Proposition 143 will get lost in the shuffle.

“We’re quite apprehensive,” said UCI Chancellor Jack W. Peltason, who has sent informational letters about the measure to campus faculty and staff and UCI Medical Center employees. “There are so many measures on the ballot, and ours is way down there at the bottom. We’re afraid . . . people might not focus on our needs.”

He is not alone in his efforts.

Cal State Fullerton President Milton A. Gordon reminds virtually every group he speaks to these days that the very quality of education offered at his university hinges on passage of Proposition 143. “I am very concerned. . . . I have been speaking out in a variety of ways so that everybody understands what is at stake,” he said.

What the measure means for Cal State Fullerton is about $9.8 million, the bulk of it for renovation of its aging heating and cooling plant as well as equipment for a planned science laboratory annex.

It would also provide $507,000 for architectural drawings and plans for a long-awaited expansion of the campus library.

Without passage of the measure, Gordon said, the $22.4-million science laboratory annex, which is expected to break ground in December and open in the fall of 1993, could sit unfinished and empty. The measure would provide $3.1 million to install laboratory equipment.

“And we need the library expansion to make sure we keep the necessary supply of books and periodicals that our faculty and students need,” Gordon said.

UCI’s stake in the ballot measure is far greater at $39.8 million. The single biggest item is $27 million for a new engineering facility, plus $3.8 million more to renovate and upgrade the existing overcrowded building.

Much emphasis has been placed on soaring population growth in California, which is expected to send 57,000 more students to University of California campuses by the year 2005. But the need for the capital projects covered by Proposition 143 is far more immediate than that, say academic leaders.

“Yes, it will be important for the future,” Fullerton’s Gordon said of the ballot measure. “But the new science labs that will be under construction are needed now for the students we currently have. The library expansion is needed for the students we have now.”

UCI’s chancellor concurred.

“We have inadequate space to educate the students that are at our door now,” Peltason said. “We can improvise classrooms, and we can improvise even with private funding (to support programs). But to do major next-century engineering, we need to do the kind of building that only the state can afford.”

Among community colleges, Orange Coast College has $31.5 million in capital projects hinging on the bond measure’s passage. About $12 million would go for a new vocational technology center to help train the workers of the future. Another $17.7 million would be for land acquisition at the burgeoning campus, which claims to be the largest community college in the nation.

Voters regularly hear dueling commercials about several more controversial ballot measures. But so far, the only opposition to Proposition 143 comes in negative ballot arguments by three individuals who oppose all bond measures on principle.

“There is no opposition to Proposition 143 that I’m aware of,” Gordon said. “But we have to get the message out. We have to really emphasize that this is an educational bond and it is important to maintain the quality of education that California has always been known for.”

PROP 143 FUNDS

The following is a list of how much money local colleges will receive if Proposition 143 is approved Tuesday and what that money will fund:

CYPRESS COLLEGE $1.58 million

Maintenance facility

FULLERTON COLLEGE $1.48 million

Maintenance facility

GOLDEN WEST COLLEGE $488,000

Upgrade health-science building

IRVINE VALLEY COLLEGE $118,000

Facilities yard

ORANGE COAST COLLEGE $31.49 million

Vocational technology building

Centralized maintenance

Land acquisition

RANCHO SANTIAGO COLLEGE $918,000

Business/computer building

SADDLEBACK COLLEGE $568,000

Reclaimed irrigation system

SADDLEBACK COMMUNITY

COLLEGE DISTRICT OFFICE $279,000

Management/computer services center

Source: University of California

CAL STATE FULLERTON $9.79 million

Science building addition and renovation

Central plant, Phase V

Electrical infrastructure renovation

Library building addition

Science building addition

Physical-education building addition

Langsdorf Hall alteration

Auditorium

CAL STATE LONG BEACH $9.41 million

Electrical infrastructure renovation

Central plant addition

Utilities

Upgrade and add to arts and science facilities

Upgrade and add to fine arts facilities

Peterson Hall renovation

UC IRVINE $39.80 million

UCI Medical Center psychiatric inpatient facility

Steinhaus Hall renovation

Science library

Engineering Unit 2

Engineering Unit 1 renovation

Central-plant boiler modifications

Social Sciences Unit 2