Panel Seeks Leverage to Revive Belmont

Ten months after the Los Angeles Board of Education voted to abandon the Belmont Learning Complex, the nearly completed structure stands as a bleak and silent monument to civic dysfunction.

The board, unable to move forward and unwilling to reconsider, has spurned several attempts to end a bitter stalemate over the future of the $200-million project, including a suggestion by Supt. Roy Romer that the district at least complete environmental studies so he can consider other uses for the site.

Now, supporters of the badly needed high school say they plan to step up pressure on the board to review its vote and perhaps complete the project. Next week, members of the citizens committee that oversees the district’s $2.4-billion school construction bond are expected to threaten to withhold funds from a handful of other school projects if the board does not reconsider its Belmont decision.

The strategy is being closely watched by a broadening coalition of politicians, activists and lawyers who have concluded that the board should reevaluate its position.

But a majority of board members say they will never budge from their conclusion that environmental contamination on the site just west of downtown makes it unsuitable for a school.

They also have refused to discuss a variety of proposals that would close the book on Belmont, from tearing it down for a park to offering it up for commercial development.

So Belmont waits. Plastic sheathing stretched across its unfinished walls as protection against the elements has peeled away. Weeds cover its expansive grounds. And 4,500 students who would have streamed into its classrooms last summer--had the original schedule been met--are still crammed into the original and much smaller Belmont two blocks away, or riding buses to other parts of town.

“It’s thumbing its nose at everybody, that building,” said Michael Lehrer, an architect who is a member of the Proposition BB oversight committee. “As long as that thing sits there, it just reminds us all we can’t work together to make intelligent decisions.”

Romer Hopes for Solution to Deadlock

Romer concedes that he’s grasping for a solution. “I am trying to figure out how to put together a proposal which can get four votes [on the board],” he said. “To date I don’t have the right package.”

So much has Belmont come to symbolize mismanagement and waste in the Los Angeles Unified School District that activists who want to complete the school thought it best not to press their case during the fall election season. They feared that any publicity reminding voters of the debacle could weaken support for Proposition 39, the state initiative that lowered the threshold for passing local school bonds.

With the success of the initiative, they now feel free to argue once again that finishing the high school is the best way to serve crowded downtown neighborhoods and to recoup the estimated $170 million already spent on the project.

The bond oversight committee, which will meet Wednesday, has asked the board to complete studies that will answer three key questions: Can Belmont be made safe, how much would that cost and how long would it take?

Robert Garcia, chairman of the Proposition BB committee, said members need answers to those questions because they are being asked to fund new schools that would replace the Belmont complex. The district has proposed five sites that would serve Belmont students.

Some committee members say that the environmental hazards the board found insurmountable can be solved and, if so, that there is no justification to keep Belmont closed and fund the others.

Hard-liners on the committee favor a complete suspension of the district’s massive school building program until the board reviews Belmont, Garcia said. But he fears that doing so would jeopardize hundreds of millions of dollars in potential state funding and undoubtedly precipitate an all-out war with the board.

Garcia favors a more tailored approach. He would deny funds to any of the proposed schools that would draw from the Belmont attendance area. That would affect at least five projects, including the district’s plan to convert its own headquarters into a high school.

Although Romer has said he too hopes Belmont can be opened as a school, he criticized the committee’s proposal, saying it would hold schools hostage.

“We just need to proceed on all the alternatives,” Romer said. “We need all of them even if we have Belmont.”

It isn’t clear whether the committee can prevail in a showdown with the board. A judge has ruled that the school board cannot act on bond funding issues without a review by the committee, which was created by voters when they approved Proposition BB in 1997. Once the committee has made its recommendation, however, the board is free to ignore it.

In the past, the board has yielded to the committee on all but one minor decision. But Belmont could be the wedge that breaks that precedent.

Conflict over Belmont is nothing new. Since its conception in the early 1990s, the project has left a trail of litigation and broken careers.

The board’s 4-3 vote to award the Belmont project to the highest of three bidders in 1994 led to a lawsuit by the district’s own teachers union as well as another union involved in a labor dispute with the developer’s parent company.

After Belmont unraveled in early 1999 over inadequate investigation and mitigation of the site’s environmental problems, it became the central issue in the school board election that resulted in the ouster of three incumbents. And it was a key factor in the new board majority’s decision to dump then-Supt. Ruben Zacarias.

The board also sued its outside counsel, O’Melveny & Myers, and its developer, Temple Beaudry Partners. Both suits are pending.

In September 1999, district Inspector General Don Mullinax concluded that nine senior district officials in addition to the law firm and the developer were to blame for allowing construction to begin without adequate environmental assessment. Four of the employees left the district or retired, and five were recently reinstated after being on paid administrative leave for more than a year.

In the meantime, Mullinax has issued a second report alleging criminal overbilling by Belmont contractors. Those allegations are still under review by the district attorney’s office.

In January, the board voted 5 to 2 to abandon the project.

Backers Push for Environment Study

Through all the turmoil, Belmont supporters continued to agitate for its completion. In July, they filed a lawsuit asking a court to order resumption of environmental testing. That suit is also pending.

The pro-Belmont coalition rallied around Supervisor Gloria Molina, who at one point offered the board $1 million from her discretionary fund to complete the environmental studies, an offer the board snubbed without a public hearing.

Aligned with Molina are several Latino advocacy groups such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

The coalition has attracted some new and unexpected allies.

Since it was sued by the district, O’Melveny & Myers has provided information and lobbying support to the campaign. For example, as part of its defense strategy in the lawsuit, the firm conducted tests at the current Belmont High School and found similar environmental conditions.

The Los Angeles City Council voted 12 to 1 in March to ask the board to complete the studies, and even two environmental groups, the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Fund, have taken up the Belmont cause in the name of environmental justice. They argue that the environmental studies should have been completed before a decision was made.

“People usually think of environmental justice as fighting an incinerator,” said Sierra Club organizer Jessy Cadenas. “Environmental justice also has to do with having a fair and complete process and allowing for communities to decide what they want to do.”

Officials at the state Department of Toxic Substances Control, who would oversee testing of the site, have added fuel to the pro-Belmont movement with public statements that they see no reason the site could not be made safe.

As the coalition grows, the two most forceful critics of the Belmont plan have lost their positions of power. State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblyman Scott Wildman (D-Los Angeles) are both about to leave office because of term limits.

Board member Mike Lansing, one of only two who favor pushing forward with the studies, said he is seeing a change in public perceptions about Belmont.

“Where people across the board were solidly against this eight months to a year ago, I think a lot of the hysteria has died down,” Lansing said.

Despite their increasing isolation, however, the board majority has shown only increased resistance.

Those members were unmoved even when the new superintendent signaled his support for completing the environmental studies. Romer views Belmont in the context of a long-term school-building program that will add 200,000 seats to eliminate year-round schools. To reach that goal, the district would have to build many schools on land that is far more seriously contaminated.

“I personally hope that the study will say that you can safely use this for a school,” he said.

After the board rejected his August proposal, Romer promised to return with a new recommendation. Since then, though, he has been distracted by his involvement in the Democratic National Convention, the national elections and stalemated contract talks with the teachers union.

Romer said he is now looking for a way to let a private charter school operator run the school and assume future legal liability, one of the concerns cited by the board. Recent changes in state law might allow the district to help the school with the costs of completing construction, a sum that would be at least in the tens of millions.

Board member Caprice Young said that she might consider allowing a charter to take over the school but would absolutely oppose the district committing any money to such a plan.

Like Young, several board members have said they consider the site’s environmental conditions beyond redemption and do not want to spend more money on studies.

In a deposition taken by attorneys for O’Melveny & Myers, board President Genethia Hayes said she found no reason to pursue the study because “no one had ever told me that . . . completion of the study would say this building can absolutely be made fail-safe.”

Board member Valerie Fields said she has suggested selling the property “as fast as possible,” but has not pushed to get that on the agenda. Young said selling the property is an option she would consider.

But, concerning the timeline, she sees no hurry.

“I guess we’ll have to wait and see,” Young said. “The superintendent will no doubt make good on his promise to bring back some kind of recommendation. We’ll either adopt it or we won’t and then go forward.”