MARCH 8TH LACCD ELECTIONS: ANYBODY BUT MONA FIELD...

By the Van de Kamps Coalition

After a 20 month investigation that started about the same time as the Van de Kamps Coalition began alerting the public to potential corrupt abuse of bond funds in the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD), the Los Angeles Times is releasing an in-depth series of articles focused upon serious problems in the $5.7 billion bond construction program.  The Van de Kamps Coalition expects the series of articles (six or more leading up to the March 8 elections for Board of Trustees) to provide compelling evidence of why voters should reject and/or remove the candidates for the Board of Trustees of LACCD whose campaigns are substantially funded by public unions.  

The candidates in the upcoming election who are endorsed by and receive substantial financial assistance from public unions include:  Mona Field (Seat No. 1), Steven Veres (Seat No. 3), Scott Svonkin (Seat 5), and Miguel Santiago (Seat 7).  In contrast, there are other candidates running, many of whom have pledged to provide better oversight of the District, enact term limits, and support a clean sweep of problem administrators from the community college district.  Here are the names of the candidates who are not tied into public union money and endorsements:

Seat 1 - Gwen Walker, Oswald Lopez, Jozef "Joe" Thomas Essavi  (Any of these but NOT Mona Field or Derrick Mims)

Seat 3 - Joyce Burrell Garcia (Not Steven Veres)

Seat 5 - Manuel "Manny" Aldana, Jr., Mark Lee, Lydia Gutierrez, Nicole Michelle Chase, Octavio Pescador, Pamela Bolin (Any of these but not Scott Svonkin)

Seat 7 - Erick Aguirre (Not Miguel Santiago)

Our young adult students deserve more than a board filled with those who take their marching orders from the public unions they are SUPPOSED to govern.

The Van de Kamps Coalition expects the LA Times articles to focus on incompetent oversight of the $5.7 billion bond program by a number of long-time LACCD Board members, especially Mona Field (who is running for re-election), Sylvia Scott-Hayes (not running for re-election), Georgia Mercer (not running for re-election), Nancy Pearlman (not up for election), and Kelly Candaele (not up for election).  For the past nine years during the life of the bond program, LACCD Board members have used bond funds to pay for public relations services that in effect reinforced their re-election.  For instance, the Van de Kamps Coalition has seen a Request for Proposal issued by LACCD that called for the public relations firm to target "green sustainability" awards for the LACCD to win across the country and then to feature Board members or Director of Facilities Larry Eisenberg in acceptance of those awards.  Thus, our tax dollars may have been spent on elaborate efforts to promote the Board and Director of Facilities using restricted bond funds.

NELA [and Atwater Village] readers are encouraged to open their email address books up and send this message across the City because each seat for the LACCD Board of Trustees is at-large.  The District encompasses a voting area larger than that of the City of Los Angeles. Your friends across the City need to be aware of how our tax dollars have been wasted by public union supported candidates.  Only through passing this information on to voters do we have a chance of defeating some of the union candidates who will give us more of the incompetent management that the LA Times is about to reveal to the world.

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