Questions raised over Foothill project

Plans are underway at the Foothill-De Anza Community College District to construct a new $18 million administrative building on the Foothill campus in Los Altos Hills. The project is a reversal of earlier plans and has raised questions about whether it’s an appropriate use of bond money.

District officials, using money from the $490 million Measure C bond that passed in 2006, are considering spending about $18.5 million to construct the 20,000-square-foot office building to house administrative services, the chancellor’s office and a new board room, according to Kevin McElroy, the district’s vice chancellor of business services.

The original plan was to build a new data center to house technology services for the district, as well as renovate the district office building — both long overdue, say district officials. For years, the technology services for the district and the Foothill College have been scattered all over the campus and are badly in need of a centralized building, McElroy said. The district office, likewise, needed substantial work on the roof, new support beams and had problems with dry rot.

But technology changes over time, and McElroy said it became clear to district officials that they didn’t need a “full-on data center” with redundant power sources, so they have redistributed that money towards building a new administrative building and moving education technology services to the renovated old district office.

“It’s making adjustments according to operations, and meeting the needs of the district in a changing environment with technology and construction costs,” McElroy said.

But to Foothill teacher Ken Horowitz, the change did not seem like an appropriate use of the bond money. Horowitz said he believes the original bond measure didn’t call for a new administrative building, that the proposed project was not clearly listed when it was approved by voters, and that it wasn’t appropriate for the district to redistribute project costs in a way that does not benefit students.

“If they wanted a new computer lab or a gymnasium or a swimming pool or anything that would benefit students, I wouldn’t have a problem with it,” Horowitz said. “(The district) is redirecting our money to serve their individual purpose.”

The bond language states that the district will “build (a) data center to support new District-wide computer and technology systems and integrate with renovated central office facility.” The original intent was to create a new building and combine it with the renovated district office, but that proved “impractical” for the district, according to a document by Art Heinrich, the bond program director. After also learning that a data center building was both overkill and too expensive, district planners dropped the plans in favor of the new administrative building.

McElroy said he and district staff verified with the district’s legal counsel that the newly proposed project does not violate requirements under Proposition 39, which requires school districts to adhere to a project list that appears in the bond language prior to voter approval. The new building is an appropriate use of funds, he said, and the building itself will be fairly modest, economical and functional.

The new plans also came before the district’s board late last year and received a unanimous vote, and were later approved on a 5-0 vote by the Citizens Bond Oversight Committee earlier this month, McElroy said.

Susan Silver, vice chair of the Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee, said the district has been diligently following its fiduciary duty to spend the bond money the way it’s supposed to be spent, and that the administrative building plans fit the intent of the bond. The change didn’t come as a surprise to her or the rest of the committee when it came to a vote, she said.

“The district has been very careful to stay within the legal guidelines and within the spirit of it,” Silver said. “The money is supposed to be used to benefit the school community, and that is the intent of the people doing it.”

The new building will be on the southwest edge of the campus on one of the parking lots, taking up about 140 parking spaces, according to district spokesperson Becky Bartindale. But the building will free up space in another parking lot where a number of portables currently house district services, which staff calls the “temporary village,” while the old administrative building is being renovated, Bartindale said. The school will have a net increase of about 20 parking spots.

Concerns over Prop. 39

Measure C is subject to greater legal requirements and scrutiny because it was approved by voters under the framework of Proposition 39, which allows school districts to pass bonds with only 55 percent of the vote — rather than two-thirds majority — if the bond is more limited in scope.

Bonds passed by community college districts under Proposition 39 cannot tax property owners for more than $25 per $100,000 of assessed value, and require the district to make a specific list of projects funded by the bond.

Horowitz claimed that districts are using the proposition to pass bonds more easily, but are skirting around the requirements for a list of district projects by making it as vague as possible. In this case, he said, the district is able to legally move millions of dollars in construction away from student-related services and toward benefiting administrators.

“Districts can make the language vague and flexible enough that they can do what they want to do anyway,” Horowitz said.

A similar controversy hit the Los Altos School District last November, when voters were asked to approve a $150 million school bond. Opponents of the bond contested that the bond project list was too vague and allowed district staff and the school board to decide how to spend the money, giving people little idea of what improvements they were voting for. The bond passed by a slim margin of 57.4 percent of the vote.

Measure C passed an extra level of scrutiny when it faced a lawsuit during a validation action — where the district essentially says anyone seeking litigation against the bond should come forward and fight its legality by a certain date. After Saratoga attorney and local landlord Aaron Katz answered the call and sued the district claiming that the bond was not in compliance with Proposition 39, but ultimately lost following 19 months of court appeals.

A long time coming

The district has been badly in need of a new or renovated district office since the 1990s, when the district originally tried to secure bond money to renovate the current administrative office building. McElroy said Measure E, a bond passed by the district in 1999, was supposed to renovate the old office building, which was built 50 years ago and, while functional, needed to be refurbished.

But funds for Measure E projects ran out before the district was able to renovate the building, and the plans were pushed back until the next bond made its way to the ballot. In a complicated series of bond fund transfers from one project to another, money from Measure E is now funding the renovation costs, and Measure C is funding the new district office building, according to Heinrich’s report. The renovation costs are expected to be $3.9 million.

The tentative schedule for the project is for a conceptual design of the new building to come before the board in either April or May, with construction expected to begin in the summer of 2016, according to Bartindale. The building is slated to be ready for use by either spring or fall of 2017.