Unpleasantness

AS I SAID LAST NIGHT, I missed the first 30 minutes of the board meeting, and so I can’t report on that portion. Luckily, Tracy Daly’s fine Board Highlights (BH) fill in the blanks!

As usual, trustees offered their reports. According to the BH,

Board President David B. Lang congratulated Chancellor Mathur on an outstanding Opening Session, probably the best he has attended in his time on the Board. He thanked Vice Chancellor Andreea Serban, who lined up Dr. Robert Bramucci as a speaker.

Bramucci truly was excellent.

During his report, Trustee Don Wagner said that he’s written a response to a Lariat editorial. Hope they print it. Peevish Don never fails to entertain.

According to Tracy, Trustee John Williams, too, was pleased by the Opening Session, which he judged to be “the best he has attended during his 14 years on the Board.” Williams evidently found the music to be fun. You remember. Elvis, Neil Diamond.

Evidently, during his report, Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur said that “enrollment is healthy at both colleges.”

Virtually all the consent calendar items were approved.

Next came the ATEP proposals. (ATEP is the district’s Advanced Technology and Education Park, situated at the old Tustin helicopter station.) According to the BH, the board accepted for review and study “all of the 13 ATEP partnership proposals, in preparation for presentations at subsequent meetings,” namely, on Feb. 1.

See, it’s like this. Park Ranger BOB KOPECKY and his team have managed to attract 13 proposals for what to do with our facilities (or some of our acreage) at the old Tustin base. Everything turns on the quality of these proposals. If just a few of them are worthwhile, well, we’re in business at ATEP. That’s what the Feb. 1 meeting is all about, I suppose.

Hey, everybody, this is important!

LITTLE SAIGON

One proposal comes from EBD (Economic Business Development, Inc.). They’re the “Little Saigon” people I mentioned last night. For some reason, they were given a special opportunity to present who they are and what they propose. According to Tracy’s highlights, they propose

to build a business incubator and economic development center with a $2.5 million EDA grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce. The facility would be open to small or incubating businesses with educational resources determined by SOCCCD. Students would fill internships on a one-to-one ratio with business professionals and have opportunities for job placement.

I dunno what that means.

The presentation was made by an earnest Asian woman with a thick but not unpleasant accent. Alas, the video portion of her presentation sported its share of PA system gremlins. She made up for that by introducing half the people in the audience, including some Dean from CSUF. She took questions.


Lang worried that this project seemed focused on denizens of Little Saigon. What about South County? As I recall, Ms. EBD said that it’s illegal to zero in on one ethnic group, and anyone will be able to participate. Wagner said that he was unclear about the “educational component” of the proposal. She gave some kind of answer, I dunno. At one point, she seemed to refer to the need to design courses. Uh-oh.

IVC Senate Prez WENDY G zeroed in on this “course design” stuff. Ms. EBD sought to assure Wendy that her organization would consult with faculty. “You are the experts,” she said. Wendy seemed dissatisfied with that. She asked whether EBD would “dictate our curriculum.” That remark seemed to fluster Ms. EBD. She looked a tad desperate. Or maybe just annoyed.

As you know, curriculum is the responsibility of faculty.

Who knows, though. This EBD thing could turn out to be a good thing. Don't forget Feb. 1!

STREAMLINING

Item 5.7 was “Effectiveness of Board Agendas and Meetings.” During the December meeting, Chancellor Mathur showed up with a list of suggested changes to the agenda and the board meetings. Well, they reappeared last night. The board was being asked to approve them.

Naturally, the perpetually staunch Mr. Williams said that they are “long over-due.” But Trustee Marcia Milchiker objected to one of the suggested changes, namely, the idea that, when meetings run long, college presidents and governance groups might be told to turn in written reports in lieu of oral reports during the meeting. Trustee Nancy Padberg concurred, noting that a report that is filed in written form is ipso facto not “made public.”

Another controversial proposal was to diminish the right of a trustee simply to pull items from the consent calendar (i.e., the set of usually-routine items that are approved wholesale) for further discussion. Trustee Don Wagner chimed in to say that the changes that Mathur proposed were not as drastic as some trustees supposed them to be. Trustee Tom Fuentes reminded the group that trustees were supposed to provide feedback (about these proposals) to the chancellor between the last meeting and this meeting. Had these naysayers done that? Trustee Bill Jay said that he had made his objections to some of these ideas at the last meeting, so what further feedback was he supposed to provide? Williams chimed in to repeat one of his favorite idiocies, namely, that board meetings are meetings of the board, not of others (e.g., Academic Senate Presidents).

UNPLEASANTNESS

At one point, Mathur commenced saying unpleasant things. He said that Trustee Padberg’s requests for reports seem to “waste our time.” He and his staff produce a report, he said, and then “nothing comes of it.” He seemed to be suggesting that Padberg wasn’t really interested in gaining information, that she was somehow playing politics most foul.

Raghu seemed pleased with himself. His body smiled.

I suppose that all of this had something to do with Padberg’s history of shining light upon inconvenient truths. Take the case of trustee travel expenses. Not so long ago, Nancy asked for a report on trustee expenses for one year. The resulting report evidently (I never saw it) embarrassed John “Orlando” Williams. She then asked that the report be expanded to cover five years. The Board Majority ruthlessly voted the request down.

Gee, if some trustees are abusing the system, shouldn’t the public be made aware of it?

Eventually, the board got to Mathur’s recommended changes regarding the ability of trustees to remove items from the consent calendar. Padberg noted that that item was “directed at me.” She declared, defiantly, that she would continue to pull items from the CC, when, that is, she feels that questions about them are warranted.

That seemed to set Don off. You know how he is. “Yes,” he said, this is “geared at you, Trustee Padberg.” He seemed to join Mathur in accusing Nancy of asking “rhetorical” and “political” questions about board items.

“Frankly,” he said, “we’re tired of it.”

Nancy defended herself, noting that mistakes can be made in constructing the CC such that her questions might well be warranted. She alluded, too, to the Brown Act.

Williams, a man with no imagination and even fewer gray cells, seemed to say yet again that certain trustees (Padberg) should “do their homework.” Some trustees, he said, show up to meetings “unprepared.” Jay and Milchiker took Nancy’s side. But they didn’t have the votes to stop approval of this recommendation.


The board eventually turned to the proposal according to which the college presidents and governance groups can have their (oral) reports cut when meetings run late. Predictably, the minority (Jay, Padberg, Milchiker) argued on behalf of the presidents/governance groups. And, just as predictably, the majority (Lang, Wagner, Fuentes, Williams) argued on behalf of Mathur’s trustees-über-alles proposal.

Wendy G asked: what if the Academic Senates have an important issue, and then the board meeting runs late. Does this mean that the senates are just out of luck? That their concern will not be voiced?

No problem, said Dave. They can still turn in their written reports.

“OK,” said Wendy. That “OK” sure sounded a lot like “you, sir, are a jackass.” But I could be mistaken. My hearing isn't so good.

Fuentes, who had hung back, finally had had enough. With obvious annoyance, he declared that “anyone can fill out” a yellow form to make a public comment! So “what is all the debate about?”

I smelled sulphur.

In the end, the Board Majority got their way.


Another recommendation concerned the notion that trustees should contact the Chancellor before a meeting, should they have a question about an item. Nancy, I think, argued that she should be allowed to bypass the Chancellor to ask staff for information. This caused Wagner to play the M card. “That’s micromanaging,” he roared. “When we start freelancing, we get ourselves into trouble,” he declared.

The recommendation passed.

After this “agenda” shootout, Mathur made some remarks that were seriously pompous. I haven’t the will to describe them.

Next came Andreea Serban’s presentation concerning “Transfer Rates” for IVC and Saddleback College. It was excellent. Tracy provides a link to Serban’s full report in her Board Highlights.

I hope to provide a review of some of her findings in a future post. —CW