School Board Chief Alters Stance on Bond Funds

The president of the Los Angeles school board on Friday softened an earlier pledge that the district would not use proceeds from a new school bond measure to help build an expensive downtown high school.

Board President Jeff Horton’s statement came at the first meeting of the Blue Ribbon Citizens Oversight Committee, which was created as a watchdog group by voters this month when they approved Proposition BB, a $2.4-billion measure.

In related developments:

* The teachers union filed a suit to block the board from approving plans for the Belmont Learning Center when it meets Monday.

* Potentially complicating the troubled project even further, state officials said the expected level of matching funds would probably not be available to build the school.

On Thursday, Horton--hit by allegations that the district had campaigned misleadingly to pass the bond measure--said he would propose paying for the high school with a loan instead of bond proceeds from Proposition BB.

The measure was largely promoted as a way to repair crumbling schools; little was said about construction of new ones. Revelations that the district planned to use $40 million in bond funds to pay for half of the learning center sparked criticism.

But on Friday, Horton said the board will vote on the Belmont project Monday without deciding how it will be financed. He warned that financing the school with a loan would cost up to $10 million more than funding it with bond proceeds.

“We have to ask if we should spend the [bond] money because of the public’s perception, but we also have to shepherd the public’s money,” Horton said.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials said that the new 3,600-student school, which will cost $87 million to $100 million to build, will not be more expensive than comparable urban high schools in California.

At $262 per square foot, the Belmont project’s construction cost is comparable to schools in San Jose and Pomona, LAUSD planning and development director Dominic Shambra said.

LAUSD hopes the other half of the school’s cost will be financed by the state. However, Lyle Smoot, assistant executive officer of the state Allocation Board, said the state would be unable to contribute as much as the district expects.

Most of the roughly $2 billion for public school construction projects provided through Proposition 203, which voters passed in 1996, already has been allocated.

“We’re pretty much broke,” Smoot said. “Coughing up even $20 million or $30 million would be very difficult but we might find a way to do that.”

The state Legislature has appointed a special committee to look into how school construction projects are financed. And several proposals for putting additional revenue bond measures on the ballot are being talked about in Sacramento.

Members of the oversight committee Friday appeared open to using Proposition BB funds to pay for the new school.

Steven Soboroff, Mayor Richard Riordan’s appointee to the panel, said the millions of dollars saved by using the bond proceeds instead of a more costly loan could pay for college scholarships or other school improvements.

David Barulich, a committee member representing the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., cautioned that public outrage over the project could be strong enough to prompt a ballot initiative to reverse the April passage of Proposition BB.

While the committee members were meeting with school officials, the United Teachers-Los Angeles and Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees unions filed a lawsuit alleging that the district broke several laws by negotiating the project with one developer--Kajima International--instead of following a conventional competitive bidding process. The lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order on the Belmont project. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert O’ Brien said he would issue a ruling Monday.

Meanwhile, another development company rejected in favor of Kajima International took a second step toward filing suit Friday, sending a letter to the school board warning it not to approve the project.

California Partnerships Inc. charges in its letter that the bidding process should be reopened because “the basic nature of the project has fundamentally changed” since the original request for proposals.

“The elements that produced the highest ranking for [Kajima] were either eliminated or substantially reduced,” the letter states. “The favorable financing mechanism at the heart of the . . . bid disappeared. The mixed-use elements of the plan were substantially reduced. Yet the amount of the . . . bid increased.”

Times education writer Richard Colvin contributed to this story.

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