ELECTIONS / PROPOSITION 1C : $10 Million for Improvements at 3 Colleges Depends on Vote

Although voters may not realize it from reading their ballot materials, Ventura County’s three community colleges have an estimated $10 million in construction projects at stake in a little-known measure in Tuesday’s state election.

Proposition 1C, a $900-million higher education bond issue, would fund several local projects, including drawings for Moorpark College’s planned improvements to its science and math building, equipment for Oxnard College’s letters and science facility, and preliminary blueprints for renovations to Ventura College’s math and science building.

“If the proposition doesn’t pass, it would move those projects back,” said Barbara Buttner of the Ventura County Community College District. “We would have to come back again with another bond issue” in the future.

The district would receive about $827,000 for the three capital improvement projects if the initiative passes. But more than a dozen additional projects on the district’s $10-million capital improvement plan could be speeded up if the measure is approved, Buttner said.

Not everyone in the three-campus district supports Proposition 1C.

Trustee Gregory Cole said California cannot afford to spend $900 million it doesn’t have at this time.

“I feel the state has too much indebtedness already,” said Cole, who announced earlier this year that he would not seek reelection to the governing board in November. “We can wait on our facilities for a year or two.”

Gil Putnam, the district’s director of facility planning, said the initiative’s failure would set back the improvement and renovation timetable by up to five years.

“It would hurt us a lot because we would basically be vacating a building that is set up for a science building now,” he said, referring to the Oxnard science facility.

“We’re not going to let a brand new building sit there, but I don’t know where we’d get the money from,” Putnam said. “If you stop the (renovation) cycle, you’re looking at five years before you could have a building on line again.”

The proposition’s local impact remains unknown to many voters because state election materials for such bond measures do not detail specific projects.

“It’s the act that has the most direct potential impact on Cal State Northridge. But I would not say there’s general public awareness of the impact,” said Blenda J. Wilson, president of Cal State Northridge.

If passed by a majority of voters, Proposition 1C would fund most of the planned construction and renovation projects at the state’s 136 University of California, Cal State and community college campuses during the next two years. If defeated, state officials said, some projects might proceed with other funds, but most would be delayed.

David Laveille, director of institutional relations for the Cal State system, said there would be no immediate money from Proposition 1C earmarked for the Ventura campus of Cal State Northridge or for the separate Cal State campus planned for Ventura County. But if all of the funds are not spent on projects at the main campus, some funding may become available for the satellite facility.

But the Northridge campus would be in line for $21.6 million for a new plant to centralize heating and cooling for campus buildings and upgrade other utilities, nearly $3.6 million to equip the engineering building addition, and nearly $2.1 million for the seismic strengthening of the Sierra Tower classroom building.

Leaders of the state’s three public higher education systems are selling the measure as an educational investment necessary to help support a comeback of the state’s economy. Most of the funded projects statewide involve seismic strengthening, modernizations and legal mandates such as disabled access, though some new construction is included.

Unlike local general obligation bond measures, state propositions do not translate into local property tax hikes. Instead, the bonds issued for the projects are repaid from the state’s general fund, typically over a 20- to 30-year period. If passed, Proposition 1C annually would drain an average of about $64 million from the state budget, less than $2 per state resident.

The measure, endorsed by Gov. Pete Wilson, was placed on the ballot by the Legislature and has little organized opposition. But college and university officials expect the outcome to be close either way, and worry that recession-weary Californians may not be in a spending mood, especially in Southern California after the January earthquake.

In a May 21-25 statewide survey of likely voters, the Los Angeles Times Poll found 72% did not know enough about the measure to offer an opinion. But when read a summary, 53% favored the measure, 35% opposed it and 12% were undecided. An earlier statewide Field Poll showed 47% in favor and 43% opposed, with 9% of likely voters undecided.

For education supporters, the good news is that California voters have approved the past seven consecutive school bond measures and four of the five higher education bond measures on the state ballot since 1986. The bad news is the share of voters favoring such measures has fallen from above 60% to just a bare majority in recent state elections.

Also, complicating next week’s contest are three other huge state bond measures: $2 billion for earthquake relief, $1 billion for elementary and secondary schools and nearly $2 billion for parks and recreation. The total of the four measures, $5.9 billion, is the state’s largest ever for an election, and not all are expected to pass.

Because the state has increasingly relied on such bond measure to finance public projects, their passage in recent years has led to a steadily increasing level of bond debt draining the state’s general fund. That amount was projected to hit 5% this year and rise to above 6% if all four measures pass, more than double the level from 1990.

Chandler is a Times staff writer and McDonald is a Times correspondent.