Fast Track Sought for School Air Conditioning

The chairman of the watchdog panel overseeing the spending of Proposition BB funds urged local officials Monday to cut through a normally cumbersome bureaucracy that otherwise would force Los Angeles schools to wait a year or more for air conditioning.

Steven Soboroff, in a memo to Los Angeles Unified School District officials, called on them to devise a “fast track system” to complete the work in a matter of months, much the way the shattered Santa Monica Freeway was reopened less than three months after the Northridge earthquake.

Soboroff, Mayor Richard Riordan’s appointee to the Blue Ribbon Citizens Oversight Committee, said he was prompted to action after learning of the long delays for air conditioning in a Times story Sunday. Riordan also said quick action was needed.

“It’s intolerable to have kids spend even one more summer in [hot] weather,” Riordan said.

“We have to challenge government, in this case the school district, to find better, more efficient ways to get things done,” Riordan said. “Clearly, it can be done, if you know bureaucracy. By putting outside pressure on, you can get a lot done.”

Although Proposition BB advocates emphasized new air conditioning in their campaign, many schools will not get cooler rooms for a year or more because the district must obtain state approvals of architectural plans and then follow a public bidding process to perform the work. Moreover, school officials are only now beginning to draw such architectural plans for dozens of schools because it was highly uncertain whether voters would approve the $2.4-billion bond issue.

About half of the 301 schools slated to get air conditioning will receive the equipment within a year, district officials said. The remainder will get their air conditioning over the next three years.

Soboroff said the lengthy approval process was unacceptable and affects the health and safety of students and teachers alike.

Julie Korenstein, a school board member whose Valley district broils in the summer, blamed the state for holding up the approval process.

Architectural plans for any changes costing more than $20,000 must be approved by the Division of the State Architect, an arm of the state Department of General Services that oversees school construction throughout California. The design and approval process usually takes up to a year.

After that, it takes six to nine months to select a contract and have the work performed.

Korenstein said she would urge that the board seek the help of state legislators to streamline the system.

“We need to fast-track things in Sacramento,” Korenstein said. “We will have to put together recommendations to change the approval of the architectural designs. If we can get help through Sacramento, that would be a way to push this forward more quickly.”

Beth Louargand, general manager of the district’s facilities services division, said the district is already seeking a solution. In a letter to Soboroff on Monday, Louargand said the district and the state are trying to determine how to increase the number of workers who review the plans.

Soboroff, who sent copies of his memo to Riordan and the office of Gov. Pete Wilson, said he hopes the district will follow the example of the city’s Recreation and Parks Commission, which sought to speed up repair and construction of more than 100 parks with $121 million in voter-approved bond funds.

The commission directed the department’s staff to create a master list of architects and engineers that would be tapped for various projects, eliminating the need to start from scratch every time. The regular process would have required a number of bureaucratic steps.

The result, according to Soboroff, is that since 1994, when the program was launched, 103 of 126 park repair programs are now under construction.

“I’m sure there is an onerous process full of many hurdles, but I can’t imagine that the process can’t be fixed,” Soboroff said of the air-conditioning delays. “We should be able to create a process for these health and safety issues that works in a matter of months, not a matter of years.”