Community Colleges Consider Bond Issue

To help it cope with the state budget crisis, the Los Angeles Community College District is considering whether to put a bond measure of $500 million to $1 billion on the election ballot next year.

The district’s board is likely to decide at its Jan. 8 meeting whether to move ahead with the ballot issue, which would follow Proposition A, a $1.25-billion measure approved by voters in April 2001.

Warren T. Furutani, president of the district’s board, said the idea for a new bond issue had been prompted largely by the budget crisis.

The Davis administration has proposed midyear cuts of $215 million for the state’s community colleges, a reduction expected to hit the oversubscribed, nine-campus Los Angeles district particularly hard.

“We are looking into every possible way to limit the impact of the cuts,” Furutani said.

District officials, who are already struggling to deal with high enrollment and aging facilities, expect more state spending cuts next year because of the depth of California’s budget shortfall.

The district’s administration has begun to explore a bond measure of $500 million to $1 billion.

Part of the proceeds would be used to pay off the cost of energy-saving projects completed in recent years at Los Angeles City College and at Pierce College in Woodland Hills.

Bond money, officials said, would probably also be used to refinance property-acquisition debt and possibly to pay for construction of a satellite campus planned for the Glassell Park area.

One of the aims, officials said, is to refinance current debts with lower-interest bond financing. In all, such refinancing could save the district $7 million a year from its general fund, according to the district’s chancellor, Marshall “Mark” Drummond.

He said the bond money also could be used to purchase the district’s downtown headquarters, which the system rents for $2 million a year.