The folks at Red County Placer were kind enough to post a column from me entitled “Sierra College: Finding a Way Forward”. I’m cross-posting it here…

A special thank you to Jeff for giving me the chance to add some perspective regarding the recent Sacramento Bee article. As happens at times with the Bee, the headline of the article, “Sierra College Makes a Case for Funds”, is a bit misleading.

 

It has been a privilege to serve my community as a Sierra College Trustee since my election in 2004. I am one of seven trustees, and we each have the individual responsibility to represent and communicate with taxpayers across our entire 3,200 square mile district, which ranges from the Antelope area of Sacramento, all the way to the Nevada border.

 

For those of you who weren’t reading newspapers a few years ago, here’s where we’ve been: after a campaign calling for balanced budgets and a return to accountability, 90,000 people voted for change at Sierra College, and Scott Leslie and I were elected to the board.

 

After being sworn in, things didn’t go quite the way I’d planned them, but we nevertheless had a very tough change in leadership and direction at the college. My best vote as a trustee was to appoint Dr. Leo Chavez as the fifth President of Sierra College. He is a nationally known and visionary leader, dedicated to excellence in education, and integrity in everything we do.

 

As a conservative, I’m very pro-education, for several reasons. First, I believe that a well-educated citizenry will choose freedom over the tyranny of a powerful government any day of the week. Second, education equips us to start new businesses, create new jobs, and build the skilled workforces needed to fill those jobs. Sierra College is at the center of this effort in Placer County.

 

Over the past several months, Trustee Bill Martin (elected in 2006 as the board’s newest member) undertook his own project to compare Sierra College’s tax revenue and expenditures over the last twenty to thirty years with those of other community colleges.

 

He summarized in some creative new ways the data that was presented to me throughout my orientation as a trustee. Due to low tax rates set by its board prior to the passage of Prop 13, Sierra College has saved the taxpayers some $300 million dollars during the last thirty years. The college spends $5,461 educating each student…about a third less than the $8,133 it costs to put the same student through kindergarten in this county.

 

The inaccuracy of the Bee article came early, in the headline, when it said that “Sierra College” was seeking new funds with this analysis. Trustee Martin was abundantly clear that his report reflected his own personal opinions and research, and was not intended to reflect the views of any other college trustees or staff. The Auburn Journal and Auburn Sentinel reported this very accurately, to their credit.

 

There are definitely some differences of opinion about our next steps as a college. One thing we all agree on: after 40 years, many of the classrooms and labs on the main Rocklin campus are nearing the end of their intended lives. We also face a dramatic need for more classroom space: even with the slowing of the housing market, our student enrollment is predicted to double in as few as 20 to 25 years.

 

Ken brings up an interesting point about “leaky roofs” and how this kind of maintenance is supposed to be financed. One thing to note is that Sierra College’s tax rate has not changed since 1978, when it was frozen at its low level by Proposition 13 (and thank heavens for Prop 13, or we would have all lost our homes a year or two ago). Those local property tax dollars, plus supplemental funding from the state, pay for the college’s annual operating expenses — faculty, staff, utilities, routine maintenance, technology and operations.

 

No college has ever been able to afford the construction of new buildings, or the modernization of old ones, using these “general fund” dollars. So what has changed in the last twenty years? As you might guess, the politicians in Sacramento got greedy.

 

Up until the late 80s and early 90s, the state would pay for 100% of the community college system’s construction costs as part of its own budget. Each college would apply for funding based on its student population growth, and would receive grants of state money to construct or modernize its facilities. The state even added allowances for furniture, fixtures and equipment inside the buildings.

 

But then the Sacramento crowd came up with a great idea to raise our taxes without getting the blame themselves. In effect, they confiscated about half of the state funding for community college facilities, and told local community college trustees to go pass local financing measures to pay “their share”.

 

So either way, it is the taxpayers in our community that get fleeced. We either accept a new bond measure and pay “a little more” in property taxes for 25 years so that we can receive matching funds from the state, or we turn down a local measure, but watch our facilities money be spent elsewhere on Sacramento priorities.

 

It’s a pretty rotten system, and people of all political persuasions have a right to be upset with it. I’ve spoken about this issue with each of our representatives in Sacramento, and they’ve all agreed with me that it needs to be fixed, but as we all know, the Democrats aren’t about to change a system that tilts more state money to the liberal communities that vote for tax increase after tax increase.

 

So the real question is: what do we do now?

 

There are those who think the best choice is to go back to the old way — proposing big-time bond measures (I’m not necessarily referring to any other college trustees, but I have heard this sentiment directly from a few community members). This approach is not only the wrong choice, but it will also bog the college down when it needs to be productively moving forward.

 

As I said in 2004 before I won the election, I am open to supporting a small, efficient and conservative financing measure. Any such measure would be much like a mortgage — the amount financed would be for building and repairing classrooms and labs only, would be to the benefit of the taxpayers who are paying for it, and would be financed no longer than the useful lives of the new buildings.

 

But I strongly believe that Sierra College needs to be much more creative in finding a way forward. We do have some resources — such as 72 acres of undeveloped land — that could be used as a partial solution for funding classroom and lab repairs. I think we should spend the next few years working much harder with the resources that the taxpayers have already entrusted us.

 

By being the place that over 40% of our local high school graduates go to train for their career, or prepare for their four year degree, Sierra College is a key cog in the engine of our local economy, and the provider of a workforce to the businesses who create the real return on investment. We need to come together as a community, think outside of the box, and find new ways to give our local college the resources it needs — so that it can deliver the future and the opportunity that we all want for our kids.