On election day, Mt. SAC President Martha Garcia sat in the “Yes on V” campaign office with the rest of the staff in a watch party for the first results for Measure V. Previous Mt. SAC bonds like Measure RR in 2008 and Measure GO in 2018 passed with a solid majority.
But when the first results flowed in, Garcia felt an aching nervousness. The screen displayed a 53% approval rating for Measure V, two points behind what is needed to pass.
“I was mostly nervous because I knew that … if we went out to get a loan for the Tech and Health [building] and the fact that we were going to have to make that payment on the loan, which was worth between 3.5 to 5 million dollars a year,” Garcia said.
“That money we needed to invest in other programs,” she added. “So I was really worried; I knew we were going to do what we needed to do, but I also knew that there were ramifications for our students.”
Over the next few days, LA County votes were being counted and Measure V found a slim majority in the last public election results on Nov. 26 with a 55.6% approval rating, barely 0.6 points above the 55% needed to pass.
With Measure V and California’s Proposition 2 passing, Mt. SAC’s construction worries have largely subsided. Now, the college gears to start planning on library and continuing education upgrades.
Mt. SAC’s Measure V is a $750 million bond that comes from East San Gabriel Valley property taxes to finish ongoing construction and for future renovations. Although a majority of voters approved of the bond, the support for Mt. SAC’s ever expanding projects have significantly decreased as the measure squeaked its way into passage.
In 2008, Mt. SAC put Measure RR on the ballot to ask voters if the college could borrow $33 million. It garnered 164,000 votes with a 70% approval rate. Then in 2018, Measure GO which mirrors Measure V’s $750 million bond passed with 121,000 votes and a 62% majority.
Mt. SAC President Martha Garcia said that she will not put another bond on the ballot during her tenure and would not recommend it for the next 15 years at least.
“We understand that this is a great sacrifice that [voters] are making and that they’ll be paying for our students to have these amazing facilities,” she said. “It’s clear to me that it’s difficult times and I think that’s the reason why it was more challenging for us to see the level of approval that we’ve seen in the past.”
One of the factors in the decrease in support for Mt. SAC’s construction endeavors are about transparency in the college’s finances. Measure GO and Measure RR have a combined Citizens Oversight Committee and some in a group called the United Walnut Taxpayers say Mt. SAC needs better oversight.
Joseph Fafseh Jr. has been the Student Organization Representative for this Oversight Committee for this past year and he commented on Mt. SAC’s transparency regarding the bonds.
“Finding the meeting times and the meeting minutes, it isn’t necessarily the most accessible thing,” he said. “Some marketing could be done to publicize that these committees meet and that we do want input from nearby representatives, or well nearby taxpayers.”
“We take written public comment at the start, we review it, and if anyone has any public comment or wants to observe the meeting, spectators request to receive any of the written materials beforehand, they absolutely can do that,” Fafseh added.
When asked if he recalls the United Walnut Taxpayers ever having public comments at the meetings, he said he hasn’t heard from them at public comment in his tenure at the committee.
Along with the $750 million bond for construction, Mt. SAC will also see some money from California.
“With the guidance of our consultant, we’ve been told we could potentially generate over $220 million in state matches since Prop 2 passed as well,” Garcia said. “If Prop 2 would have not passed at the state level, then we could not confidently state that, but it did.”
Proposition 2, approved with a 59% vote this November, gives $10 billion to schools across California and $1.5 billion of the total would go to community colleges in matching funds to renovate, fix and construct facilities. If the college’s consultants are correct, Mt. SAC would stand to gain 15% of this despite serving 0.3% of the California community college student population.
Now, with close to a billion dollars to renovate the campus, a timeline for all the future projects are starting to be developed.
There are two major building projects currently under construction as of 2024: the new Instructions office and the Technology and Health building.
The Instruction office has two floors with the first floor planned to be the new campus bookstore and the second floor would be an instructions office. But, there’s been a change of plans.
“We know that it’s the instruction building, but now there is not going to be a bookstore on the bottom,” Garcia said. “We changed that to a welcome center.”
“Because for me, when I was informed of the plan — which had been created years ago — I was concerned about the fact that I know there are so many other needs on campus and utilizing that space in the most effective, efficient, beneficial way for our students is what is a priority,” she added.
The president continued, saying this decision was to use the Measure V money to achieve the greatest return on investment based on student benefit. The new welcome center would include all the resources new students need conveniently in one place. Currently, students need to walk around Mt. SAC’s ever-expanding campus to different offices to get ready for the semester.
The instructions office will open in 2025 and the welcome center will open a year later in 2026.
After the welcome center’s completion, the simultaneously constructing Technology and Health Center is projected to finish sometime between 2026 and 2027, said Garcia. This building complex towers at three floors with an area of five football fields and is touted to be the largest California community college building project on any campus.
The next project is split between renovating the 61-year-old library and constructing a building for Mt. SAC’s School of Continuing Education which sits in modulars at the far corner of the campus.
“It is likely the library would be next, but the reality is there’s a huge need for the continuing education school,” Garcia said.
In between all of this construction, there is also a priority in upgrading the campus cooling system which are the pipes underground.
“We also have to understand that [upgrading the cooling system] needs to happen in a way that we are causing the least amount of interruption to instruction,” Garcia said. “So it’s going to have to be timed in during breaks because we cannot afford to impact instruction.”
The infrastructure renovations are expected to last a few years, but would last the campus 20 years of upgraded cooling.
LA County will certify the results of Measure V and other county level ballots on Dec. 3.
