Defeat of School Bond May Stall CSUSM Plans

In one week, Cal State San Marcos moved a step closer to overcoming one obstacle to opening its new campus on time, only to ram headlong into another.

On Friday, the university received notice that, after 10 weeks of construction delays, a new contractor had been found to resume work on the first phase of its campus, scheduled to open in August, 1992.

But, even if the campus is able to make up the lost time--which is doubtful--the rejection of a $450-million higher-education construction bond by state voters Tuesday might leave the buildings unfurnished, and the opening delayed.

The Legislature already has approved $37 million to build the first phase of the campus, but the fledgling university was counting on $10 million from Proposition 143 for its furniture and library.

Ellis McCune, chancellor of the 20-campus California State University system, said the San Marcos opening might have to be delayed.

The defeat of Proposition 143 “may slow things down in San Marcos,” McCune said.

Because it is the newest state university established, Cal State San Marcos will be one of the first to feel the pinch. But McCune and University of California official William B. Baker said the failure of Proposition 143 will hurt universities statewide, deferring expansion of existing four-year state universities and community college campuses and delaying the opening of new colleges.

Despite the pessimistic outlook of state officials, Cal State San Marcos president Bill Stacy voiced hope Friday that he could get his campus open on time by going to the state Legislature for needed funds.

“The campus construction continues, and we just need to begin the search for alternative funding,” Stacy said. “There may be time between now and then to make a second pass at asking legislative leaders, the chancellor and the governor-elect on how we might finance it.

“It is devastating if there are no alternative sources, but I am not resigned to saying that there aren’t any.”

The bond measure would have given the university $2.4 million for the second half of the university’s core library building and the books and materials to fill it, with the balance going toward carpeting and furnishing the first academic buildings and drawing up the plans for the second part of campus construction.

The San Marcos campus had just begun to recover from a 10-week delay of campus construction with the announcement Friday that a new general contractor, Lusardi Construction, had been hired to replace financially plagued Louetto Construction.

Construction, however, will not resume until either C. W. Poss, a grading subcontractor, has been paid the more than $1.5 million it is owed for work already done, or another grading subcontractor is hired, according to construction officials.

The delays jeopardize the August, 1992 target date for the campus’ opening and might set it back by a semester, although the campus also had hopes of making up the lost time.

Lusardi officials said that they will be on site beginning next week, and that new estimates for cost and date of completion will be drawn up within the next two weeks.

“This is typical of a situation like this where a contractor enters a project midstream. It is necessary for us to acquaint ourselves with what has yet to be done,” said Kenneth Lounsbery, vice president and general counsel of San Marcos-based Lusardi.

At least construction on the San Marcos campus is going forward. Statewide university officials were wondering this week whether any other plans to build and expand state colleges and universities would be as lucky.

Voter rejection of Proposition 143 means that students will be tightly squeezed into existing colleges and universities, and that planned new campuses probably will be delayed, officials of all three segments of California higher education said Friday.

“This puts a dark cloud over a year of planning and leaves many necessary projects in jeopardy,” said Chancellor McCune of the California State University system. “It is a tragedy for higher education.”

In addition to delaying Cal State San Marcos, McCune said, plans for off-campus centers in Contra Costa and Ventura counties will be delayed.

“We’ve just got to face up to the reality that we might not be able to grow,” said Baker, vice president for budget and university relations at the University of California.

UC plans considerable expansion at its Davis, Riverside, San Diego and Santa Cruz campuses, as well as a new San Joaquin Valley campus, but Baker said the failure of Proposition 143 “gives us cause for concern . . . that we’re going to have enough revenue to even stay where we are,” much less open a 10th campus.

The higher education proposal was defeated by 51.3% to 48.7%, the first time a college and university bond issue has failed since 1968, when student protests were rocking many campuses.

The measure won in only nine of California’s 58 counties. “I was really surprised by that,” Baker said.

It was defeated in every San Joaquin Valley county, even though UC is planning to open its first campus in that part of the state by the end of this decade. The proposition also lost heavily in Riverside County, where there has been a UC campus for many years.

The Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges, meeting at Hartnell College in Salinas Friday, established a Commission for Innovation to study new ways to provide instruction without building new facilities.

The commission will study the possibility of offering community college courses through telecommunications to students at home and in the workplace, said Ann Reed, spokeswoman for the 107-campus two-year college system.

“It can’t be business as usual,” Reed said.

Although higher education officials were generally dismayed by Tuesday’s result, they saw a few silver linings among the clouds.

“I really don’t think this was an anti-higher education vote,” like 1968, said William L. Storey, an assistant director of the California Postsecondary Education Commission. “People were concerned about the economy and war in the Middle East. In times like these, people tend to be cautious about spending money.”

Others said voters were rebelling against the long ballot in general, especially the more than $5 billion in proposed bond measures, and not against California’s public colleges and universities.

“If this is just a one-year aberration, it’s not too significant,” UC’s Baker said, “but if this turns out to be the beginning of a three-, four- or five-year dry well on capital spending, then we’ve got real trouble.”

If UC cannot expand on existing campuses, especially at Davis and Riverside, “that certainly will slow down plans for a 10th campus,” Baker said.

The current timetable calls for the UC Board of Regents to narrow the choices for a new campus in the Fresno area to two or three sites next March and to make a final decision a year later. But Baker said the process might be delayed.

CSU Chancellor McCune said the construction priority list will be adjusted to give preference to projects that increase student capacity, with many other projects dropping to the bottom of the list or falling off altogether.

Coming on top of a $100-million cut in the CSU operating budget, these construction cuts make this “the worst year yet, and next year looks like it could be even worse,” the chancellor added.

The bond issue failure compounds a serious crowding problem at many community colleges throughout the state.

A study completed in September found that 28 new campus sites will be needed in the next 14 years to accommodate expected enrollment. If bond measures continue to fail, the money to build these facilities will not be there.

Larry Serot, acting vice chancellor for business services in the Los Angeles Community College District, said Tuesday’s vote cost the district $1 million to equip a new technical education building at Southwest College, another $1 million to renovate the main academic building at Southwest and a third $1 million for equipment in a new vocational education building at East Los Angeles College.