Features

The newly constituted board of directors of the Peralta Community College District acted swiftly to tighten up spending procedures at the four-college district, sending back to district administrators $17 million of a $5 million Measure A bond project authorization request after complaining about details missing from the request papers. 

The funding setback capped a day of bad news for the district. Shortly after reports were published in a Daily Planet article last Tuesday of discrepancies in a Measure A bond project list posted to the district’s website, the list was pulled from the website without explanation. 

Later that day, members of the Laney College Faculty Senate learned that district administrators have cut a promised $213 million in Measure A Laney projects down to $140 million. And far more ominously, the East Bay Express reported in its online blog that a federal grand jury is investigating a land development deal that was proposed two years ago between the Peralta district and a local developer. 

At Tuesday night’s trustee meeting in the Laney College Auditorium, trustees elected Area One trustee Bill Withrow (Alameda-West Oakland-Chinatown-Downtown Oakland) as president and Area Six trustee Cy Gulassa (North Oakland-Montclair-Berkeley Hills) as vice president, turning the officers positions over to the class of trustees that was first elected by voters only two years ago. In addition, newly-elected trustee Abel Guillen was sworn in to take the Area Seven (West Oakland-East Lake) seat formerly held by Alona Clifton, whom Guillen defeated in last November’s elections. 

Guillen was the swing vote in a 4-3 decision on Gulassa’s motion to send the major portion of a $21 million Measure A request back to the administration and colleges for further work (Withrow, Gulassa, Guillen, and Nicky González Yuen voting yes, Bill Riley, Linda Handy, and Marcie Hodge voting no). 

The request, backed up with 73 pages of supporting documents from the district and the four colleges listing specific items requested, would have set aside the $21 million in Measure A money for instructional equipment, furniture, computers and ADA-compliant equipment and library materials so that staff could begin the procurement process of those materials. $8.2 million of that money was requested by Laney, $5.3 million by Merritt College, $4.4 million by the College of Alameda, $1.6 million by Berkeley City College, and $1.3 million for district-wide needs. 

Saying that there were “significant problems with the presentation” in the request, Gulassa immediately moved to set aside $5 million of the request for approval, but to send the remaining $17 million back to the district and colleges for revamping. 

Gulassa complained that the requests for the four colleges were presented in different format with different wording, making it difficult for trustees to judge the requests uniformly, adding that “some of the requests are presented in a format that makes it difficult to understand what is being requested.” 

Yuen added that he was supporting the motion to send the request back because it did not include promised backup materials justifying the expenditure requests. 

That set off a storm of heated debate, with trustee Hodge saying that “I hope that the direction of this board isn't moving into micro-management” and Handy charging that rejecting the request because the forms were not uniform “is like handing in your masters thesis and having it rejected because it's signed on the left side rather than the right side. The presidents of the colleges went through these items and approved them. We should respect that.” 

A visibly angry Handy left the auditorium for several minutes while the debate was going on, and both Handy and Hodge left the meeting before it was adjourned. 

At one point, Gulassa said that he was “not challenging the needs presented in this request. I know these items are needed. I'm objecting to the format as it has been presented. It's unprofessional. It's presented in a helter-skelter fashion.” 

That got a sharp retort from Peralta Chancellor Elihu Harris, who called the “unprofessional” allegation a “charged word.” Harris noted that the request was not for an allocation of the funds for the items, but only a request that the money be set aside for that purpose. 

But when Withrow asked if that meant all of the money requests would eventually come back to the board for final review, Director of General Services Sadiq Ikharo at first said yes, but then clarified his remarks by adding that “but some items have established long-term contracts already, and for those items, it will not come back to the board.” Ikharo did not clarify how much of the $21 million request came under that category. 

It was also not certain from the debate how long the actual purchase of the requested items would be held up, assuming the requests come back to the board and are eventually all approved. 

The debate also included impassioned pleas from college representatives for passage of the full $12 million authorization. Laney President Frank Chong said that while he understood the need for the board to have more backup detail, he urged approval. “There is a pent-up demand for these materials at the colleges,” Chong said. “There's some fatigue among the faculty and staff over getting this through--it's been a six month process.” 

And Laney College Faculty Senate President Shirley Coaston said that Laney faculty members “have cynicism about how this money is going to be spent. The faculty helped to pass Measure A. We need to get up-to-date equipment. That's why we passed this bond.” 

Coaston added that if the board did not approve the expenditures, faculty would have to go back to students and explain why they would have to wait longer to get the equipment. 

The disapproval of the full $21 million request was the second Measure A blow Coaston received that day. Earlier, at a noon meeting with General Services Director Ikharo to clear up discrepancies in the full Measure A expenditure going to Laney, members of the Laney College Faculty Senate learned that the college was, indeed, going to get a cut of some $73 million from the $213 million Measure A money promised to Laney by district officials when the bond measure was approved by district trustees last February. 

The total amount of the Measure A bond, passed overwhelmingly by area voters last June, is $390 million. 

Evelyn Lord, Laney's representative on the District Academic Senate, said by telephone following the Tuesday noon meeting that “I don't think we're satisfied at Laney about those figures. A lot of the faculty members are upset, particularly because of the poor condition of our campus.” 

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Will Harper of the East Bay Express reported on its 92510 blog that a federal grand jury investigating corruption in Oakland politics “is investigating [Oakland] developer Alan Dones and his dealings with the four-college Peralta Community College District.” 

Dones won approval from the outgoing Peralta Board of Trustees in late 2004 for the exclusive rights to put together a development deal that involved portions of the Peralta administrative properties and adjacent Laney College sites. 

The proposal generated an enormous controversy in the district, causing Chancellor Harris to delay negotiating a contract to allow Dones to move forward with writing his proposal, and eventually Dones backed out of the deal himself. 

This week, the Express reported that last October, the federal grand jury issued a subpoena to Peralta district officials that demanded records of work performed for Peralta by Dones or his associates going back to 1998, with specific attention to the proposed 2004 development deal. 

Included with the subpoena was a request for such records on Virtual Murrell. Murrell, a former aide to former Oakland City Councilmember Leo Bazille and the brother of Peralta trustee Bill Riley. Murrell received a one year sentence in 1995 after pleading guilty to taking a $750 bribe from a developer while Murrell was working for Bazille. 

It was not clear from the subpoena whether Murrell actually has any involvement with Peralta. 

The Express reported that Dones has denied any wrongdoing in the abortive contract talks, and that Peralta spokesperson Jeff Heyman would only say that Peralta is cooperating in the investigation, and that “no district employees are targets” of the investigation. That left open the unconfirmed possibility that district trustees could be.