All tomorrow's board meetings

The South Orange County Community College District Board of Trustees will meet twice tomorrow.

• At 3:00 p.m., they’ll convene for a Special Board Meeting (pdf) (in the Ronald Reagan Room, near Health Sciences).

According to the “notice,” the board will convene “for the purpose of discussing the Concept Plan at the Advanced Technology and Education Park in Tustin.”

Members of the community will be given an opportunity to make comments at the start of the meeting.

The city of Tustin needs to sign off on the district’s plan for ATEP. But it has been clear for quite some time that the plan is unacceptable to city officials. Unless things have changed recently, the district is likely headed for litigation.

For the last six months or so, Chancellor Raghu Mathur has made a great point of noting the rapidity of growth (courses, headcount) at ATEP. Some insiders have suggested that Mathur has pushed and highlighted development there in order to put the district in the most favorable position in the event of a legal tangle with Tustin. 

• The regular board meeting will start with a CLOSED SESSION at 5:00 p.m. and an open session at 7:00 p.m.

You can download the agenda for the regular board meeting here (“current agenda”).

Item 3.1 includes a board request for a report “on Reduction of District Property Tax Rate.”

Now wait a minute. As a “basic aid” district, we want property valuations in OC to stay high ‘cause that means we get more money. What we don’t want, then, is for property owners to request a downward valuation of their property.

So this ironic, right?

Tuesday’s discussion items are the “basic skills initiative” and “curriculum.” So we can expect the usual dog and pony shows. You know, embarrassed administrators, doing Mr. Goo's bidding.

Item 5.12 concerns ATEP in Tustin: approval of an agreement with “Austin-Foust Associates, Inc. on a time and material basis.” AFA is a consulting firm that does “traffic engineering and transportation planning.”

Item 5.19 seems odd (to these fiscally challenged eyes). It’s an amendment to the district budget. The update involves a change in expenditures, I guess. One item—07/08 Allocation to Saddleback, basic skills—shows the odd allocation figure of $5. What’s that about? Maybe nothing.  

Item 5.22 is ratification of contractor agreements. This lists such agreements as a $60K ATEP landscaping deal.

Oddly (again, to these fiscally challenged eyes), among the contractors are four that (as per recommendation) are slated to get $0, including “The City of Tustin.”

Apparently, the Tustin item involves a “Landscape Maintenance Agreement to require SOCCCD to install certain parkway improvements for the ATEP project.”

Item 6.5 is approval of the Santander, Spain “study abroad” trip. It’ll be interesting to see what Wagner and Fuentes do with this. Usually, they vote against it, I think, 'cause they're very staunch, as you know.

Item 6.9 concerns academic personnel actions—the hiring of instructors. Part-timers, mostly.

I noticed that, included among the “temporary part-time/substitute staff” is a Doctor of Chiropractic. (He started work in January.)

What on earth does this fellow teach for us? And do we teach homeopathy and acupuncture, too?

VELVET UNDERGROUND: All Tomorrow's Parties


Nico does same, in the eighties: All Tomorrow's Parties