A Longer View for Pierce

The Los Angeles Community College District board is more likely to draw cheers than protests if it votes Wednesday to scrap controversial plans to develop a golf course on Pierce College farmland. But that won’t necessarily make the next step any easier than at Mission College, where the board’s decision to start over on a presidential search sparked a community uproar.

A campus committee recommended the golf course months ago, over the objections of nearby residents and others who wanted to preserve the farm as open space and as part of the San Fernando Valley’s agricultural past. The trustees held off voting on the proposal until a newly hired district asset manager looked into it. His recommendation is to not develop any of the 200-acre farm until the college creates a master facility plan, which would take about a year.

We have supported the golf course as a regrettable but practical solution to Pierce’s fiscal problems. But the current thinking within the district sees the proposed development as well-meaning but shortsighted, an attempt to solve an immediate financial pinch without taking into account how the development could affect the college 10 or 20 years down the road. The fiscal crisis that spurred the plan has been eased somewhat, the thinking goes, by stable enrollment and improved state funding. And a new set of players, from newly elected trustees to a new district chancellor to a new Pierce president, believe a longer view is worth a year’s delay.

Of course, the $800,000 a year the golf course is projected to generate over 20 years could be seen as a pretty good long-term view, one that would shore up Pierce’s academic programs and help repair its sagging buildings. We could also argue that if plans changed with every election of new trustees or appointment of new officials then the community colleges would never achieve anything.

And we could argue--and the trustees should make clear--that a vote to start over won’t necessarily mean the farm will be preserved as is, a message that could easily get lost in the cheers of golf course opponents. Uniting Pierce College around a master plan could prove every bit as challenging as bringing Mission College neighbors together around a new president.

It is, of course, the trustees’ right to choose none of the above at Pierce College, as they did in the Mission College presidential search. If the vote goes as expected, what will be needed at Pierce College, and what is needed now at Mission College, is clear communication among district officials, campus members and the community.

The board will have to explain where its advocacy of decentralization ends and its responsibility for key campus decisions begins. District officials will have to provide assurances that the time and effort being put--again--into a search or planning process won’t be wasted. And all parties will have to make sure the emphasis stays on what is best for each college and for the students studying there.

District officials will have to provide assurances that the time and effort being put--again--into a planning process won’t be wasted.